Just a short thread on students following Rhodes statue's fall and grim harassment of Hitchens: don't blame student activists; they are kicking an open door. It's acquiescence of university authorities which should worry people 1/
Very many students - maybe most - (and this is not a code for white - but of all ethnicities) - do not go along with these trends. They fear speaking out - anyone who dares challenge is renounced, not just by peers, often by their own tutors who theorise/preach white privilege 2/
Students are just young people & sometimes their idealism is muddled and misplaced. But important to respect what is admirable in wanting to change world for better. Their sense of certainty and arrogance is part of being young. But young develop ideas when creatively interact 3/
That creative interaction is squandered when 'adults' fawn over activists & abdicate responsibility, refusing to look anyone who is young in the eye and say "I disagree" or "you are wrong" or - as was said to me as a young activist - "never mind the slogans, read more books". 4/
For me, question is: will any adults step up, dare to expose serious flaws of BLM-style activism & dangerous divisiveness of white-privilege race theories and argue for humane, Enlightenment universalism (as espoused by likes of CLR James before anyone shouts dead white males) 5/
Those young students who desperately want to understand the world past & present with a view to changing it, deserve access to a wide range of views/ ideas/theories to mull over/argue about. We owe it to them: not to bend the knee to a mono-orthodoxy; to speak truth to power 6/
