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{"id":2517,"date":"2015-11-26T23:33:34","date_gmt":"2015-11-26T23:33:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rightdishonourable.com\/?p=2517"},"modified":"2024-01-19T00:45:07","modified_gmt":"2024-01-18T23:45:07","slug":"brunel-students-who-protest-katie-hopkins-still-dont-get-free-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rightdishonourable.com\/2015\/11\/brunel-students-who-protest-katie-hopkins-still-dont-get-free-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"Brunel students who protest Katie Hopkins still don’t get free speech"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brunel became the latest university this week to diminish the standing of free speech<\/a> as students turned their backs on rent-a-gob Katie Hopkins and then quit the lecture theatre.<\/p>\n

Footage uploaded to the Internet showed the incident, which took place on Monday as Hopkins and other panellists debated the future of the welfare state as part of the university’s 50th anniversary celebrations.<\/p>\n

<\/iframe><\/p>\n<\/p>\nAli Milani, the Brunel Student Union president, <a href=\"http:\/\/brunelstudents.com\/blogs\/blog\/Union%20President\/2015\/11\/24\/Our-students-were-right-to-walk-out-Brunel-is-better-than-Katie-Hopkins\/\">wrote a blog defending the protests<\/a>, veiling his desire to stop Hopkins propagating her views variously on grounds of taste, \u201cpolitical credibility\u201d and the value of her intellect.<\/p>\nDespite this high-mindedness, laced throughout Milani’s post is the clear suggestion that what troubles him are Hopkins’ \u201covertly bigoted views\u201d, which he clearly wants to stifle on political grounds.<\/p>\nMilani claims that:<\/p>\n\u201cIt is important to note that the conversation at no point has been about banning Ms Hopkins from speaking on campus<\/strong>, or denying her right to speak.\u201d \n<\/span><\/p>\nBut he then goes on to ask, with obvious political bias:<\/p>\n\u201cIs inviting someone who has no intellectual or political credibility providing any valuable intellectual nuance to debates in our society? At a time when we must be discussing how we do more for disabled people<\/strong>, is this a valuable addition to debate? In an age where thousands of refugees are dying in the Mediterranean Sea, attempting to escape persecution<\/strong>, is this a valuable addition to the debate?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nYet even if we overlook Milani’s clear ulterior motive, the answer, as has clearly escaped him during his time at university, is yes.<\/p>\nBecause free speech is not merely about stopping the police arresting people for having opinions unhelpful for the government; it is about a culture that protects unpopular views such as Hopkins’.<\/p>\nFor a university, which has a special role in stimulating public discourse, this means entertaining dissenting opinions. Indeed, one could argue the highest mark of intellect is to be able to fully entertain an opinion one disagrees with. Obviously, <a href=\"http:\/\/rightdishonourable.com\/2015\/10\/milo-yiannopoulos-and-julie-bindel-ban-proves-feminism-has-a-problem-with-free-speech\/\">this means hearing it in the first place<\/a>.<\/p>\nPerhaps it’s time Mr Milani went back to school…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brunel became the latest university this week to diminish the standing of free speech as students turned their backs on rent-a-gob Katie Hopkins and then quit the lecture theatre. Footage uploaded to the Internet showed the incident, which took place on Monday as Hopkins and other panellists debated the future of the welfare state as…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[593,197,280,335,472],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rightdishonourable.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2517"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rightdishonourable.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rightdishonourable.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rightdishonourable.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rightdishonourable.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2517"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/rightdishonourable.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2522,"href":"http:\/\/rightdishonourable.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2517\/revisions\/2522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rightdishonourable.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rightdishonourable.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rightdishonourable.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}