Queen’s University in Belfast was scheduled to hold a conference on June 4 and 5 on the Charlie Hebdo affair. Its title, “Understanding Charlie: New perspectives on contemporary citizenship after Charlie Hebdo Symposium,” shows clearly that it was an academic symposium, but journalists and novelists were also invited to speak; and I gather its aim was to discuss issues about the magazine’s satire and the terrorist attack that killed its writers and cartoonists.
Sadly, Queen’s University has followed many of its peer schools by canceling the symposium. They did so on two grounds: a supposed “security risk” and worries about the University’s “reputation.”
As the Guardian notes:
An email circulated from the vice chancellor’s office to staff earlier this week said: “The vice chancellor at Queen’s University Belfast has made the decision just this morning that he does not wish our symposium to go ahead.
“He is concerned about the security risk for delegates and about the reputation of the university.”The university, which is based in the south of the city has declined so far to elaborate further on the decision.
Vis-à-vis the “security risk,” what evidence is there that that was the case? Were there threats? If so, why didn’t the university mention them? And even if there were, are we to cancel all conferences where an offended group (you know who they are) threatened violence? To even consider canceling a conference because of “security risk” in Belfast, of all places, is ridiculous. That city has experienced real violence, and has weathered it, making it seem silly to cower before unstated risks that could easily be managed.
The bit about “the reputation of the university” is simply embarrassing. Seriously, how would that have been damaged by this meeting? In my eyes, it would have been enhanced, for the issues raised by the Charlie Hebdo affair are among the most pressing for Western democracies who must deal with an increasing population of Muslims whose religious tenets conflict with Enlightenment values.
What this is really all about, and why the University has really damaged its reputation with the cancellation, is fear. And while perhaps some of those fears involve attacks by Muslim terrorists, it seems to me that its greatest fears are of offending others, including nonviolent Muslims. Instead of being a beacon of free speech, and a symbol of how such speech must be defended against even violent detractors, the Charlie Hebdo issue has become an embarrassment to academics and leftists—something to be avoided at best.
Why? Because Charlie Hebdo, and the whole issue of Muslim terrorism and that faith’s demonization of critics and apostates, as well as its invidious repression of women and gays, puts two characteristics of leftism into direct conflict: our general embrace of Enlightenment values, and a particular one of those values—concern for the oppressed. Muslims are seen as oppressed, a label that many of them encourage, and therefore are heartened when, out of guilt, we jettison the criticism that many of their religious values deserve. When the trope of oppression comes up against free speech, the former seems to win. Guilt, it seems, is stronger than reason.
As Jason Walsh noted, who was scheduled to speak at the conference:
The only conceivable reason this conference would be cancelled is that someone — someone like me, for instance — might say something that might upset someone else. That is what passes for reputational damage today? Back when I was knee-high to a parking meter we called that debate, and isn’t that what the university is all about?The real reason for the cancellation was given away with the mention of reputation. What damage to Queen’s reputation could have happened, though? That it would develop a reputation for tackling difficult subjects?
Clearly, the “reputational damage” involved perceived offense, or so I think.
Queens University had no requirement to hold such a conference. But once it planned to, and then called it off, they exercised a form of censorship. (This also goes, by the way, for the revocation of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s invitation to speak at Brandeis.)
In the end, this kowtowing to “hurt feelings”, and its effect on freedom of speech, will harm us all. It encourages other groups to adopt that tactic to avoid being criticized. Christians are already learning this trick, as are some feminists (see what happened when Christina Hoff Sommers spoke last week at Oberlin College). In the the end, the “hurt feelings” trope will produce a society in which nobody can voice criticism for fear of offending others. And that kind of society is incompatible with democracy.
Over at his Spectator column, Nick Cohen (whom I’m coming increasingly to admire as a latter-day Orwell) comments on the Queen’s Uni kerfuffle. I’ll leave you to read what he says about that, but I want to highlight what he said about freedom of speech in a talk he gave at King’s College London on Monday. (He says the talk did not go down well!):
The only justification for censoring opinion is when it incites violence. You can use every other weapon a free country gives you to confront speakers you oppose. You can fact check them, mock and undermine them, expose their fallacies and overwhelm their defences. But you cannot ban them. Give up on that principle, and you lay yourself open to every variety of dictator and heresy hunter rigging debates and suppressing contrary opinions.
They seemed to like that. But where, I continued, might the state have got the idea that it was acceptable to ban speakers, who were not advocating violence. The question was so obvious it answered itself. To me, at any rate.
For years the National Union of Students blacklisted feminists because they had once said in frank language that trans-sexual women weren’t real women. In recent months, Oxford University cancelled a debate on abortion because protesters objected to the fact it was being held between two men; officials at London Southbank took down an atheist society’s “flying spaghetti monster” poster because it might cause religious offence; the students union at UCL banned the Nietzsche Club after it put up posters saying “equality is a false God”; and Dundee banned the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children. Meanwhile half the campuses in Britain have banned the Sun. You may be transsexual, God-bothering, pro-abortion, egalitarian, supporter of the Leveson inquiry. But you cannot pretend that any of these individuals, groups or images promoted violence.
Nope, for every one of those incidents of censorship involved “hurt feelings.”
h/t: Coel
Ashamed of my alma mater.
Indeed. However, meanwhile, we have 14 European countries where mere inquiry into the history and factual details of the holocaust can expose one to running the risk of criminal prosecution.
Even publicly voicing a reasonable question such as, say, why this particular atrocity requires special enshrinement where other, equally if not more devastating, crimes against humanity do not.
Sub
Pure poltroonery.
That overused allusion of oppression always gets me. When many countries of the world are majority Islam and in fact, many of these countries allow no other religion, the oppressed excuse does seem to wash.
What is more oppressed than the Islamic female or more oppressive than Sharia Law? What is the condition in the Islamic state and I mean regardless of the type of government. How does the human condition compare with other societies? The idea that the modern western society is the evil behind this condition is mostly an excuse.
Last week someone informed me that the Muslim rules on veiling were formed in response to their seeing the way American men ogle and catcall American women. They want to protect women from that. Modern Western society is to blame for the introduction of the burka, niqab, and chador.
Quite a few years back, St. Paul required Christian women speaking in public to wear veils (not required if they were speaking in private homes). I’ve read that this was due to Greco-Roman cultural influences on Christians of the time. Although Islamic countries are the most egregious perpetrators requiring women to cover up, many non-islamic cultures also still require women to wear wigs (orthodox Jews) or head coverings (some orthodox Christians, Mennonites, Amish, etc.)
I don’t know what it is about women’s hair that is, apparently, so sexy to men. Maybe we should go bald in self defense. I have read that rape has increased in Scandinavian countries as a result of male Muslim immigrants thinking it’s their right tor apebased women based on how they dress and behave. The cover up of women is to prevent inciting men to lust for and, rape, women.
Equality for all human beings is essential.
Sorry! “tor apebased” was intended to be “to rape women based”. Clumsy fingers and clumsy edit. But, “apebased” might be appropriate when used to describe some Muslim men, if it weren’t insulting to our near relatives.
Agreed. I did try to bring up the long history of covering-up women in Islam and elsewhere, but debate is confrontational and does not promote peace.
Well, that being said, women are under many dress codes in modern western cultures too. As are men. The bikini was just invented in, I think, the 1950’s. Before that, beach attire was much more extensive. Likewise, modern western standards do not allow breasts exposed in women, nor total nudity for both sexes. Yet 50 and 100, and 200 years ago, the west had far stricter standards. Islamic and other cultures can perhaps be compared to some degree to western cultures of the past. So, it might be that if left to their own evolution, these cultures would advance to the level of undress achieved by the West. Parallel cultural evolution. Or not.
How a Woman dresses should be of no concern to anyone except the Woman and is no excuse for the crime of Rape, but why is it that a Woman who complains of Rape in a Country under Sharia “law” has to provide 4 Witnesses
Male of course to back up her Story? in many cases the Woman herself is punished for being Raped ! because it must have been her fault that she so inflamed the Mans Lust he couldn’t contain himself. The Burqha is nothing less than a means of subjugating Women and has no place in Western or any other Society.
Imagined offense to anonymous believers trumps the feelings of known, flesh-and-blood faculty and students who presumably busted their arses (as if they weren’t busy enough already) putting the symposium together.
The bit about reputation is a slap in the face to the serious, well-meaning organizers. I don’t understand how an administration can throw good people under the bus like that. Be craven, if that’s what you are, but don’t go insulting people who aren’t.
The folk at Queen’s University in Belfast seem to be unaware of the difference between speech that incites violence against someone versus speech that might elicit a violent response from someone.
The first is to be avoided, the second must be protected and encouraged at all costs.
As the saying goes, “violence is the last (and sometimes first) refuge of the incompetent” and criticism of an idea that results in a violent rebuttal is an indication that the idea in question is a very, very bad idea.
There must be a gene in human beings that pushes us toward political correctness and repulsion at debate and confrontation. The civilized concept of free speech is just an abstraction and cannot compete with those primal urges.
I wonder whether Stéphane Charbonnier’s new book “Open Letter to the Fraudsters of Islamophobia Who Play Into Racists’ Hands,” will be released outside France…
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/17/world/europe/book-by-slain-charlie-hebdo-editor-argues-islam-is-not-exempt-from-ridicule.html?smid=tw-nytimesworld&_r=0
I reckon that, in the current climate, the chances are sadly very slim.
That sound like an extremely worthwhile book.
Indeed, and what’s ironic, people who need to read it most, probably won’t, as they are paralyzed with fear at mere thought of discussing the issue.
The book will probably be banned at Western Universities, just like Malala Yousafzai’s book “I’m Malala” was in Pakistani schools.
Depressing as it sounds, I’m afraid you may be right!
The story about the cancellation t Queen’s University is unsettling, but the comments on display in the link about Christina Hoff Sommers speech at Oberlin college is really disturbing. If for no other reason than, presumably as a result of a complete lack of any criticism or objective inquiry, they are touting patently absurd statistics t make their case.
Contemporary feminism has devolved into misandrous morass that only makes sense if one is obtuse to facts.
I do not agree with most of what Christina Hoff Somers says. Sometimes, imo, she’s just wrong, sometimes her conclusions are misleading, and sometimes for other reasons. However, to treat her the way she was in the example here is counterproductive and embarrassing. Quite apart from anything else, it gives her the moral high ground and means all her opponents become associated with this ignorant and childish behaviour. These people damage the cause of feminism.
When I was a Christian I was ashamed to admit it because of all the ignorant ones who made it into the spotlight doing things like making homophobic rants. Although it’s a slightly different thing, I feel similarly about the feminists who are about attacking men rather than promoting gender equality.
I agree. There are times that I feel a connection with former theists when they talk about they finally have theor moment of clarity. I identified as a feminist for over twenty years. But, in the wake of the Elliot Roger nonsense, I was no longer able to ignore the obvious. That movement has, at least on college campuses anyway, devolved into a philosophical invective that has little to do with equality and even less to do with facts. I haven’t changed in my commitment to actually fairness and equality. Which is why I am a humanist and no longer a feminist.
Do Irish universities have “big donors” to worry about like Canadian and US ones?
Yes and No. Queens is in Belfast and is part of the UK education system. Someone who is more au fait with the UK system could tell you.
There are large donations to Universities south of the border, but mostly funding comes from the state.
My experience of student union politics is they waste so much time on things that really don’t have any influence on a students lives. Instead of focusing on supporting poorer students by lowering food, rent on campus and providing support services. They seem to get side tracked on international issues.
UCD banned coke on campus because of the assertion by one union in Columbia that the bottle company there was targeting their leadership. The Irish unions went out and found that this wasn’t the case but UCD student union banned coke via a referendum. Only one constituency in UCD passed it but since it was Arts and the largest it carried the vote.
They always remind me of the campaign for equal heights in terry pratchett
The reputation excuse is hypocritical hogwash, definitely, but I can sympathize with the security one (up to a point). When satire gets people killed, I know I’d be scared about talking about it at a big public event, even in an academic setting. Who knows what nutjobs might burst out of nowhere to kill you?
I don’t like it – the symposium should be protected rather than called off, as society should host such events – but I can understand it.
I had similar thoughts. It occurs to me that the university may have received threats and to hold the conference they might have had to institute a serious security protocol. So, to be generous the decision to call it off might have been partly the logistical problems they’d face. It is a telling comment on today’s jihadi Islam that in order for our educational institutions to function as centers of discussion they would first have to fortify their campuses. It’s appalling.
If the real problem was concerns over security they lost the high ground the minute they started framing it as a “reputation” issue.
Imagine a situation where a university in the Southern US contracted to sponsor a civil rights speaker — in the 1920’s. Credible threats from the KKK might indeed force them to cancel. But if they quickly followed it up with a lot of wash about not wanting to offend white students, they can’t brag today about how they were ahead of the curve way back when.
Very apt.
Institutions that make such excuses are acting as if islamic violence is winning now, and going to be winning for a while.
Nice slam, but if Irish Universities are anything like US ones, there could be some truth in this. US universities care a lot about enrollment and tuition dollars. I’m guessing that one reason (US University) Presidents and Chancellors often go along with all this hyper-PC bullflop is because they don’t want to get a “hardass” reputation amongst high school students (i.e., potential tuition payers). They want prospective customers to think that they will be coddled, their needs and wants taken care of, etc., etc. Bursting that bubble could mean lost business, lost income, and for a Uni President, that often means finding another job.
NI always has a section of its society prepared to molly coddle the faithful – particularly Christianity. Witness our politicians recent efforts to bring in a ‘conscience clause’ not unlike that proposed in Indiana. Also, I’m wildly guessing here, but back in my own student days, we always had a very large representation of Malaysian students in the engineering faculty. Most of these students were polite but extremely aloof, and one got the impression this was for religious reasons. I wonder if QUB along with the general zeitgeist of not being seen to criticise Islam is also kowtowing to it’s own student populace?
An epidemic of the vapors.
Weren’t we inoculated against that?
The link to what Christina Hoff Sommers had to go through is also very … illuminating. I am not certain if what she is saying is true or not (that is that there is no wage disparity between men and women), and I do think there is a rape culture of a sort. Still, she should not have to go through that and her opposition just comes across as repressive and delusional.
To give the Queens’ administration some credit (deserved or not), the announcement said that the sponsors hadn’t supplied a Risk Assessment. I would think that any organization in Belfast ought to analyze what the risk is before holding a public event. They do shoot off bombs over there, I recall.
That said, I would have been much happier if the admin had said something about it being rescheduled when appropriate criteria have been met.
In a country where the law is Sharia, debates like the proposed one about ‘Charlie Hebdo’ aren’t held because the law won’t allow it. In effect, the same situation is being forced on countries that have freedom of speech and expression by threats of violence.
It is ironic that while ‘Charlie Hebdo’ stood up to those trying to silence them, those trying to talk about their stance are being silenced by the same source.
The university is being bullied, and unless more reasonable folk speak out, it will continue to give in to the squeaky wheel.
I cannot understand why so many fail to recognize the importance of the principle of freedom of speech. To me, this is a major failure of our education system.
“I cannot understand why so many fail to recognize the importance of the principle of freedom of speech.”
But free speech is a fairly recent discovery and is applied by democratic societies when they have seen how pandering and caving don’t work. Free speech is a principle of civilization which probably did not exist as a concept for untold ages. It is the failure to anticipate the outcome of the politically correct gut instincts we have inside us. More education certainly wouldn’t hurt.
It is a pretty new concept, and often imperfectly applied.
I’m frequently driven to face palm status by the (particularly American) statement that our right to freedom of speech is God-given.
In the United States, our so-called “God given” rights are for “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”. Freedom of Speech came later when concern for individual freedoms became a concern. If I understand correctly, many (if not all) of the original amendments were derived from Virginia laws presented by proponents George Mason and James Madison.
Quoted from Wikipedia: “The First Amendments derived from Virginia laws.t to the United States Constitution codifies the freedom of speech as a constitutional right. The Amendment was adopted on December 15, 1791. The Amendment states:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Although the text of the Amendment prohibits only the United States Congress from enacting laws that abridge the freedom of speech, the Supreme Court held in Gitlow v. New York (1925) that under the incorporation doctrine, the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits state legislatures from enacting such laws.”
In regards to international human rights laws Wikipedia has this to say:
“The right to freedom of expression is recognized as a human right under article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and recognized in international human rights law in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Article 19 of the ICCPR states that “[e]veryone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference” and “everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice”. Article 19 additionally states that the exercise of these rights carries “special duties and responsibilities” and may “therefore be subject to certain restrictions” when necessary “[f]or respect of the rights or reputation of others” or “[f]or the protection of national security or of public order (order public), or of public health or morals”.[2][3]”
We have become less and less restricted in free speech over time, but some countries and some people want to regress. Usually, it’s OK for “me” to denigrate your beliefs, nationality or race, but not OK for “you” to return the favor.
We must have equal human rights in speech, as in all else.
I had an interesting conversation with my 84-year-old mother on this topic. She had cut out several newspaper essays on how Charlie Hebdo had violated the basic kindness and civility of a modern society. That argument resonated with her because she has worked for over 50 years with the mentally handicapped. Wasn’t Charlie Hebdo wrong to hurt the feelings of Muslims? Isn’t the most important value one of respecting others?
I pointed out that this was approaching and treating Muslims like the mentally handicapped. Christians, Jews, atheists, and people in other religions are all expected to be able to handle strong criticism and mockery. They do it all the time. But Islam is ‘special.’ We need to be gentle, temper our expectations, give them what they can handle, and accept them for what they can do.
In the larger sense, I think Charlie Hebdo respected Muslims more. It’s a problematic analogy. Kindness is not necessarily kind.
It’s just simple racism, the “we can’t expect too much from the little brown people” attitude. It’s okay to mutilate Muslim women’s genitals because they’re not white. Disgraceful chauvinism is what it is.
Their lack of reasoning, possibly based on fear, even amongst all that sophisticated learned surroundings allows small minded localized thinking to dominate and dictate outcomes.
Freedom of speech is not a balance the books subject and has a cost, real or otherwise. Easier to cancel and hide. Weasel Universities are common these days it seems.
“The only justification for censoring opinion is when it incites violence”. No, no, and no again. Defenders of free speech cannot capitulate when it “incites violence”. Otherwise, those who are intent on suppressing free speech have to do no more than commit acts of violence, blame it not on themselves (after all, they are self-described “victims”) but rather on believers in free speech, and then wait for free speech defenders to cave. The essence of free speech is that it must be protected at all times, particularly and pre-eminently in times of threatened violence.
“In the the end, the “hurt feelings” trope will produce a society in which nobody can voice criticism for fear of offending others.”
It was the fear of offending others and looking like the wrong kind of person which lead to the hyper-morality of the Victorian age, when pianos had frilly pantaloons on their legs for fear of offending the delicate sensibilities of the womenfolk. Now we can’t offend anyone who could possibly be perceived to be oppressed.
It’s not just incompatible with democracy, it leads to people covering up all kinds of abuses and inequities because it is impossible to discuss them without causing offense. Prostitution was called “the social evil” because it was unacceptable to use the word “prostitute”, it would offend too many people. The clerical rape of children was covered up for decades to our certain knowledge, and presumably for centuries before that, because it was seen as too offensive and delicate a topic to even mention.
Insisting that you can’t talk about things which offend people is a one way trip to serfdom in general and submission to Islam in particular.
sub