Last year, I was invited by the Debating Society at RHUL to give a talk about the Academy of Ideas, the House of Lords and other parts of my work. But what began as a lovely invite turned into a bureaucratic nightmare - with risk assessments, safeguarding checks and other onerous procedures enforced by the students’ union (SU) on the society. After I was finally given a clean bill of health by the SU, the Debating Society was forced to cancel, when other students complained that I had retweeted this - a Ricky Gervais joke on the gender wars. My account of events is published in the Telegraph - take a look.
But to give you an even better sense of how this all plays out, my colleague Jacob Reynolds talked to one of the students who was at the centre of the controversy, Omar Loubak. Omar was an organiser at the Debating Society, and has a unique insight into how these kinds of cancellations proceed on campus. Listen below for an episode of Podcast of Ideas where he and Jacob discuss the case.
Ironically, this all took place while we were discussing protections for free speech under the government’s Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill - something which is in danger of having no teeth at all. I made a strong defence of academic freedom in the context of government ministers backing down and fudging on their own amendments in the Lords this week:
The story has since been picked up by the press, and I wrote about it for the Telegraph:
‘The chilling truth about my cancellation’ - me in the Telegraph
‘Claire Fox: students cancel peer’s talk over Ricky Gervais trans joke’ - The Times
‘Peer disinvited from university debating society over support for Ricky Gervais trans joke’ - Telegraph
‘Peer has university talk on cancel culture and free speech shelved after being cancelled for retweeting Ricky Gervais joke about transgender people’ - Daily Mail
‘Students should be able to invite who they like’ - spiked
I was interviewed by Stig Abell on Times Radio, where I explained that I actually hadn’t planned to discuss my gender-critical views during my speech. As Stig pointed out, being banned from campus because of another man’s joke is somewhat unfair…
Cancel culture comes for Claire Fox...