Thread by @donmoyn

The UK under Boris Johnson has gone down the road of policing campus speech, including fining protests they disagree with. They oppose regulation, except in the marketplace of ideas. theguardian.com/education/2021…

Speech on campus is messy and attacks on free speech are bad. But academics have managed it for hundreds of years with pretty decent outcomes. Having govt police campus speech and protest is a hallmark of authoritarian countries.

BTW, this proposal to give a right to sue protestors and universities for financial liability was adopted first in US universities like WIsconsin, the brainchild of a Arizona libertarian think tank. Is this where the Johnson govt is getting its ideas?

For a longer explanation of the above tweet, here is a thread about how conservatives targeted WI to be a lab for their efforts to have government control campus speech there. Sad to see these ideas jumping across the Atlantic.

https://twitter.com/donmoyn/status/974289837745459200?s=21

https://twitter.com/donmoyn/status/974289837745459200

This is why it’s become pointless to debate terms like “woke”: whatever their origins or specific individual conplaints, such terms are primarily used as propaganda tools at this point, to create a false sense of a collective attack on your rights

Its the same old playbook: those who rail against cancel culture and cultural marxism use their considerable political power to protect their beliefs at the expense of academic freedom and student protest rights. bylinetimes.com/2021/02/16/fre…