The LSE regularly talks about valued ‘Freedom of Speech’ but it does not always follow that path
Violence is actually a solution. No, really, it is. Imagine Joe and Jack argue, and you know words won’t satisfy their desire for mutual exchange. Unless Joe does not beat up Jack a little bit and Jack does not beat up Joe a little bit, their faces will remain insalubriously red, whereas if they fight they will embrace each other afterwards, bursting into tears how they could have done such beastly things to each other. But, leaving aside alcohol (and love), what was the beef all about?
Assume it was opinion. I mean, it is unfair to judge others because of their political opinions. Or their opinions on tidiness. Or on appearances. Or because of what they eat. But at the end of the day, it is hard to live with somebody who wants chilli sauce on his kebab. Not that the choice of sauce matters for other kebab consumers, but it supports one of the most trivial kitchen sink psychology truths that we cannot help but have prejudices towards others because of their opinion.
However, the empire of civilisation has been invocated, which means we do not anymore submit ourselves to primitive instincts and animal-like behaviour – gorging, hunting, and eliminating competitors – as opposed to what some civilisation theorists might claim. Rather, we have adopted a policy of mutual respect and acceptance, which entails that we may have negative opinions on the opinions of others but we won’t kill to satisfy our inclinations. Thank God, we have laws that are supposed to ensure nobody falls back into the Medieval period. These laws protect our opinions and we have even invented a term for the protection of these opinions. We call it Freedom of Speech.
Let us for a moment leave aside that in 1990 members of the press in the UK established the so-called Press Complaints Commission, a self-regulatory body, in order to obviate the Home Office founding a legally-empowered department which would thenceforth control the press. Let us also leave aside the reasons why such a commission was regarded necessary. Let us for the moment accept that Freedom of Speech is unconditionally an achievement, namely of Western civilisation, and let us for the moment completely focus on the pioneering role the LSE plays with respect to Freedom of Speech.
I do not exaggerate nor do I dissemble when saying I was deeply moved by this professor’s efforts to uphold Freedom of Speech at one recent LSE event. In the face of half of the audience shouting “racist”, but not to the professor, and the other half shouting back “shut up” on the respective person’s behalf, whilst some young guys in black suits already looked very nervous, reaching to the left under the jacket, the professor kept repeating his mantra: “He has the right to deliver his opinion as has everybody else of us. I do not agree with him personally, but let us first hear what he has to say.”
He is Danny Ayalon. Deputy Foreign Minister of Israel and member of the party Yisrael Beiteinu, who has allegedly demanded that all Israeli Arab members of the Knesset should be strung up on lampposts. Leaving this aside, some other observers would call the party racist. Now, to really be able to comprehend the LSE’s stance towards Freedom of Speech, one must know that, red-faced as he was, this professor would not let the security throw out the shouting students, in spite of some comments to that effect by the others and in spite of the two aforementioned, very alarmed looking young men in black suits. No. He was trying to convince them, to convince them that everybody has the Freedom of Speech.
Leaving aside that LSE boosts its image as a brand, the School considers itself a platform. And beyond? It claims to be a university – although it does not say so in its name – teaching on internationally high level included. Yet, hopefully, the reader has understood that LSE does not do things by halves. Thus, I assume it comes within Freedom of Speech that in an Econ B lecture, the lecturer, a person who is entrusted with 900 young and pliable brains, talks at length about the reason why Obama’s new health system is wrong, obviously leaving aside other things that neither the Peacock Theatre nor Econ B lectures are appropriate forums for. Not to speak of the minor detail that economic models in an introductory course are pretty much simplified models.
Well, before delivering the big blow, taken en masse, it cannot be regarded more than a marginal note that a teacher’s membership of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamic movement which was banned in Germany, is of no significance to his teachership at LSE. This is consistent. Just as it cannot surprise that the public utterances of another LSE lecturer, whose identity I invite you to find out yourself, seems only to bother the persons concerned and some knights in shining armour. But yes, let us hear what he has to say in March 2008: “Imagine that, on September 11, 2001, when the Twin Towers came down, the President of the United States was not George W. Bush, but Ann Coulter. […] On September 12, President Coulter would have ordered the US military forces to drop 35 nuclear bombs throughout the Middle East, killing all of our actual and potential enemy combatants, andtheir wives and children. On September 13, the war would have been over and won, without a single American life lost. Yes, we need a woman in the White House.”
Suppose it was only a bad joke – even Chuck Norris would have sacked him (though, he would maybe have liked to play a role in one of the other lecturer’s scientifical scripts perhaps “Men do everything they do in order to get laid III”)! But Howard Davies, the LSE director, at the weekly Student Union’s General Meeting (UGM) made clear that “Well, I don’t agree with him, but…” Oh sure.
Admittedly, the big blow is a very small step. Nearly needless to say, that LSE students have not managed to be completely unaffected by the university’s policy. Just recently in the name of Freedom of Speech a motion was rejected at the said UGM, which proposed not to sell The Sun and FHM at Students’ Union’s Shops anymore. Whether the voters have left aside that it is quite plausible not to make money out of selling papers which do not comply with the policy of the seller, namely the Students’ Union, will unfortunately remain a mystery. That Freedom of Speech has nothing to do with the decision of a group to abide by its own rules is an insight, which was not given to the respective students, let alone the people from the Athletics’ Union. We haven’t waited for the 21st century to come to see that page three of The Sun is upheld as evidence of the accomplishments of Western societies – if there is something alike.
Enough. The patient reader might think the impetus to write this article is obvious, but she is mistaken. This article is rooted in me stumbling over the Bernard Levin Award, a journalistic prize awarded at LSE . Promoting the concept of Freedom of Speech, it asks the participants to write “an article or column of up to 1000 words which celebrates the benefits to an LSE student of the intellectual, cultural, political, professional, business, media, or entertainment life surrounding the School’s campus in the heart of London.” Now the first answer to this, which popped into my head was: How can they ask you to do that when LSE is avouching for Freedom of Speech without even providing a proper room to discuss it? I mean, you are not even allowed to talk in the Shaw Library! How inconsistent.
Related posts:
- Leaving no room for debate
- Leaving on a jet plane
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on Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 at 05:55 and is filed under Comment.
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Leaving aside Bernard Levin
by Kurt Krap on 9 Mar 2010 in Comment
The LSE regularly talks about valued ‘Freedom of Speech’ but it does not always follow that path
Violence is actually a solution. No, really, it is. Imagine Joe and Jack argue, and you know words won’t satisfy their desire for mutual exchange. Unless Joe does not beat up Jack a little bit and Jack does not beat up Joe a little bit, their faces will remain insalubriously red, whereas if they fight they will embrace each other afterwards, bursting into tears how they could have done such beastly things to each other. But, leaving aside alcohol (and love), what was the beef all about?
Assume it was opinion. I mean, it is unfair to judge others because of their political opinions. Or their opinions on tidiness. Or on appearances. Or because of what they eat. But at the end of the day, it is hard to live with somebody who wants chilli sauce on his kebab. Not that the choice of sauce matters for other kebab consumers, but it supports one of the most trivial kitchen sink psychology truths that we cannot help but have prejudices towards others because of their opinion.
However, the empire of civilisation has been invocated, which means we do not anymore submit ourselves to primitive instincts and animal-like behaviour – gorging, hunting, and eliminating competitors – as opposed to what some civilisation theorists might claim. Rather, we have adopted a policy of mutual respect and acceptance, which entails that we may have negative opinions on the opinions of others but we won’t kill to satisfy our inclinations. Thank God, we have laws that are supposed to ensure nobody falls back into the Medieval period. These laws protect our opinions and we have even invented a term for the protection of these opinions. We call it Freedom of Speech.
Let us for a moment leave aside that in 1990 members of the press in the UK established the so-called Press Complaints Commission, a self-regulatory body, in order to obviate the Home Office founding a legally-empowered department which would thenceforth control the press. Let us also leave aside the reasons why such a commission was regarded necessary. Let us for the moment accept that Freedom of Speech is unconditionally an achievement, namely of Western civilisation, and let us for the moment completely focus on the pioneering role the LSE plays with respect to Freedom of Speech.
I do not exaggerate nor do I dissemble when saying I was deeply moved by this professor’s efforts to uphold Freedom of Speech at one recent LSE event. In the face of half of the audience shouting “racist”, but not to the professor, and the other half shouting back “shut up” on the respective person’s behalf, whilst some young guys in black suits already looked very nervous, reaching to the left under the jacket, the professor kept repeating his mantra: “He has the right to deliver his opinion as has everybody else of us. I do not agree with him personally, but let us first hear what he has to say.”
He is Danny Ayalon. Deputy Foreign Minister of Israel and member of the party Yisrael Beiteinu, who has allegedly demanded that all Israeli Arab members of the Knesset should be strung up on lampposts. Leaving this aside, some other observers would call the party racist. Now, to really be able to comprehend the LSE’s stance towards Freedom of Speech, one must know that, red-faced as he was, this professor would not let the security throw out the shouting students, in spite of some comments to that effect by the others and in spite of the two aforementioned, very alarmed looking young men in black suits. No. He was trying to convince them, to convince them that everybody has the Freedom of Speech.
Leaving aside that LSE boosts its image as a brand, the School considers itself a platform. And beyond? It claims to be a university – although it does not say so in its name – teaching on internationally high level included. Yet, hopefully, the reader has understood that LSE does not do things by halves. Thus, I assume it comes within Freedom of Speech that in an Econ B lecture, the lecturer, a person who is entrusted with 900 young and pliable brains, talks at length about the reason why Obama’s new health system is wrong, obviously leaving aside other things that neither the Peacock Theatre nor Econ B lectures are appropriate forums for. Not to speak of the minor detail that economic models in an introductory course are pretty much simplified models.
Well, before delivering the big blow, taken en masse, it cannot be regarded more than a marginal note that a teacher’s membership of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamic movement which was banned in Germany, is of no significance to his teachership at LSE. This is consistent. Just as it cannot surprise that the public utterances of another LSE lecturer, whose identity I invite you to find out yourself, seems only to bother the persons concerned and some knights in shining armour. But yes, let us hear what he has to say in March 2008: “Imagine that, on September 11, 2001, when the Twin Towers came down, the President of the United States was not George W. Bush, but Ann Coulter. […] On September 12, President Coulter would have ordered the US military forces to drop 35 nuclear bombs throughout the Middle East, killing all of our actual and potential enemy combatants, andtheir wives and children. On September 13, the war would have been over and won, without a single American life lost. Yes, we need a woman in the White House.”
Suppose it was only a bad joke – even Chuck Norris would have sacked him (though, he would maybe have liked to play a role in one of the other lecturer’s scientifical scripts perhaps “Men do everything they do in order to get laid III”)! But Howard Davies, the LSE director, at the weekly Student Union’s General Meeting (UGM) made clear that “Well, I don’t agree with him, but…” Oh sure.
Admittedly, the big blow is a very small step. Nearly needless to say, that LSE students have not managed to be completely unaffected by the university’s policy. Just recently in the name of Freedom of Speech a motion was rejected at the said UGM, which proposed not to sell The Sun and FHM at Students’ Union’s Shops anymore. Whether the voters have left aside that it is quite plausible not to make money out of selling papers which do not comply with the policy of the seller, namely the Students’ Union, will unfortunately remain a mystery. That Freedom of Speech has nothing to do with the decision of a group to abide by its own rules is an insight, which was not given to the respective students, let alone the people from the Athletics’ Union. We haven’t waited for the 21st century to come to see that page three of The Sun is upheld as evidence of the accomplishments of Western societies – if there is something alike.
Enough. The patient reader might think the impetus to write this article is obvious, but she is mistaken. This article is rooted in me stumbling over the Bernard Levin Award, a journalistic prize awarded at LSE . Promoting the concept of Freedom of Speech, it asks the participants to write “an article or column of up to 1000 words which celebrates the benefits to an LSE student of the intellectual, cultural, political, professional, business, media, or entertainment life surrounding the School’s campus in the heart of London.” Now the first answer to this, which popped into my head was: How can they ask you to do that when LSE is avouching for Freedom of Speech without even providing a proper room to discuss it? I mean, you are not even allowed to talk in the Shaw Library! How inconsistent.
Related posts:
This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 at 05:55 and is filed under Comment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.