Good news from Cambridge:
Cambridge University has been forced to drop rules requiring students, lecturers and visitors to “respect” opposing views after overwhelming opposition from academics.
In a vote crucial to the free speech issue and watched closely by other universities, dons successfully challenged a “vague and authoritarian” policy they feared would stifle debate and threaten staff with disciplinary action or sacking for being disrespectful.
The amended version will also make it almost impossible to “no platform” speakers by cancelling their invitation, a controversial practice condemned by ministers and other critics.
More than 1,200 academics — at least 77 per cent of those who voted yesterday afternoon — were in favour of the three amendments to the freedom of speech policy that the university wanted to introduce. It now urges speakers to “tolerate” rather than “respect” each others’ views.
The earlier version had been approved by the university’s council but Arif Ahmed, a senior philosophy lecturer, put forward the amendments that replaced the word respectful with the word tolerant and made it harder to disinvite speakers.
Read Stephen Fry's contribution to the free speech campaign here.
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