This discussion may change your mind.
Should Universities be Intellectual ‘Safe Spaces’?
Beatrix Campbell OBE is a writer, journalist, broadcaster, playwright and influential feminist. She was active in the Women’s Liberation Movement, a founder of Red Rag (a Marxist and feminist journal), worked for the Morning Star (formerly the Daily Worker), member of the Communist Party, and was active among the feminists who criticised the sexism of socialist and communist parties. In February 2015, she published a letter in The Observer, co-signed by prominent academics, feminists and free speech advocates, calling on universities to stand-up for freedom of speech. Afterwards, she and other signatories were subjected to harassment and abuse.
Bahar Mustafa is an elected representative of Goldsmiths University Students’ Union. A former Gender, Media and Culture graduate, she was elected for the second year running as Welfare and Diversity Officer. Bahar stood on a platform that values collective direct action as a means for those affected by class, race, and gender oppression to liberate themselves. Unapologetically feminist, anti-racist, and anti-capitalist and revolutionary.
She argues in favour of no-platform for fascism and the merits of safer spaces as not only a set of principles but fundamental in practicing anti-oppression politics.
Brendan O’Neill is editor of Spiked, the online magazine that wants to make history as well as report it. He is also a columnist for the Big Issue and writes for the Spectator and the Telegraph. If you believe the Daily Mail, he is “one of Britain’s leading left-wing thinkers”; if you prefer to listen to the Guardian he is a “sub-Danny Dyer obnoxious intellectual wind-up merchant”. He was nominated as Columnist of the Year at the Professional Publishers Association Awards. He is, proudly, the only journalist to have written for both the Catholic Herald and Abortion Review. He doesn’t tweet.
Pam Lowe is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Aston University’s School of Languages and Social Sciences. She specialises in sexualities, feminist theory and parenting culture. Dr Lowe has recently completed a research project into student experiences of teaching and learning sensitive issues.
Chaired by journalist and broadcaster Samira Ahmed
