Mick Hartley

The state of our universities. From the Telegraph:

When Charlotte Tredgett won a place at King’s College London to study philosophy, the bright, enthusiastic teenager envisaged thoughtful exchanges, intense discussions – even heated debates – about the most pressing moral and ethical questions of the day….

“When classes started, it became abundantly clear that fellow students did not welcome views questioning the prevailing ideologies around gender, religion, capitalism or colonialism,” says the student, from Colchester.

An hour-long seminar on gender in philosophy provided the ultimate illustration of how “wokeness” is stifling debate on campus.

“It was the most silent seminar I’ve ever attended,” says Tredgett, 20. “We had read an academic paper and were supposed to talk about it, but barely a word was said.”

The teaching assistant running the class worked valiantly through a list of questions, waiting 30 awkward seconds for a response, before giving up and answering each himself.

“For an hour, it was the sound of his voice as he ploughed on,” says the undergraduate. “In that whole time, there were about two comments from the group of about 10 students, and those were very carefully worded – almost rehearsed.”

Self-censoring undergraduates were simply terrified to speak in a climate where saying the “wrong thing” can make you a social pariah.

“It wasn’t that everyone in the room was a ‘sex realist’ or gender critical and afraid to ‘out’ themselves,” says the philosophy student. “There will have been people who were gender positive and people who didn’t know either way, but everyone was scared of wording things wrongly, and the reaction of their peers if they did.”

Tredgett, who attended an independent school on a scholarship and gained four A*s in her A-levels, had already been on the receiving end of students’ moralising “wokeness”, after revealing to her flatmates that she was a Eurosceptic and would have voted for Brexit.

As she explained her views on the EU and British sovereignty, they accused her of not caring about human rights and began to laugh, filming her on their mobiles and sending the footage to their friends.

“There were groups of people whom I had never met who knew me as ‘the racist girl’,” said Tredgett. “If you disagree with prevailing ideological views, you are not just wrong, you are morally wrong and evil, and that justifies almost bullying tactics.”

Ostracising those who are perceived to be out of line has become the punishment of choice across campuses.

The tale of Connie Shaw, ostracised at Leeds University for her gender critical views, is a case in point:

“It’s strange,” I told a friend. “As feminists, we’re trying to move away from gender stereotypes. So why are we now reaffirming them, rather than teaching children that whatever body they have, they can do what they want?”

It occurred to me then that the concept of switching genders relied on the reinforcement of gender stereotypes. It was this that planted a seed of doubt in my mind….

Some students get it. Some students are fighting back.