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Study: “Cancel Culture” Decimating Free Speech At World’s Leading Universities

“Academics cannot speak freely of the leading subjects of their day including on race, gender, the outcomes of elections, their views on religion, or on discrimination itself for fear of judgements that lead to eventual penalty or censorship”

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2 years ago

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A study by leading education focused think tank Civitas has found that free speech at the world’s leading universities is being eroded at an alarming rate owing to the rise of “cancel culture”.

The study found that within the past three years, more than 68 per cent of universities in the UK have seen free speech severely restricted, with academics unable to meaningfully discuss the nuances of issues such as race and gender.

The report notes that universities including Oxford, Cambridge and St Andrews, three of the world’s premiere institutions are among those that have fallen into a “red” category for free speech following instances of “no platforming” of scheduled speakers.

The study warns that the situation has gotten so severe that it requires government legislation to stop campus censorship at 48 universities, the equivalent of at least 35 per cent of institutions.

Civitas noted that a further 70 institutions, over half, placed into a “amber category”, have experienced restrictions on freedom of expression that should be looked into by university watchdog The Office for Students.

Researchers noted that freedom of speech “could be curbed by perceived transphobic episodes” in an alarming number of institutions, and that a “cancel culture” of open letters and or petitions from “external pressure groups” is eroding free speech.

Lead researcher Jim McConalogue noted “Our findings suggest that 86 per cent of universities faced either severe or moderate free speech restrictions which need to be addressed.”

“The fundamental issue must be dealt with because students and academics find themselves in educational institutions in which they cannot speak freely of the leading subjects of their day including on race, gender, the outcomes of elections, their views on religion, or on discrimination itself for fear of judgements that lead to eventual penalty or censorship,” McConalogue explained.

A previous Civitas report, published last month, found that “The racialisation of campus relations is driving a wedge between students and undermines any sense of our common humanity”.

The report also noted that there is no statistical evidence that ‘ethnicity’ determines the educational attainment of higher education students:

The latest Civitas study was undertaken before another prominent incident at Cambridge University, with dons rejecting ‘authoritarian guidelines’ from the university that decreed opinions should be “respectful of the diverse identities of others”.

Academics instead said they will promote ‘tolerance’ of differing opinions, and are backing amendments to make it more difficult for public speakers to be ‘no-platformed’ based on their beliefs and opinions.

In one particular incident, some students at Clare College, Cambridge, attempted to get a city councillor (who is also a porter at the college) fired for refusing to support a pro-trans motion.

The decimation of free speech at universities has become so severe that the Education Secretary Gavin Williamson announced earlier this year that stamping out ‘no platforming’ was a top priority.

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Williamson has warned that legislation for new laws against censorship will have to be introduced if the trend continues.

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censorship

“Something Very Dramatic Has Changed”: Matt Taibbi Says Democrats Ditched Free Speech

Published

2 days ago

on

29 March, 2023

Zero Hedge

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Independent journalist Matt Taibbi – of recent “Twitter Files” fame – has exposed the fact that civil liberties are no longer popular among Democrats. Taibbi appeared on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo” to reiterate his perspective that the modern Democratic Party no longer represents the values of the everyday American. 

“About all of this — Matt, how do you feel about all of this? I know before you started discovering this bad behavior, you identified as a Democrat, and now you’ve got all of your friends, quote-unquote, in the media attacking you for exposing this,” Bartiromo asked.

“Yeah, it’s funny, I mean, I was raised in a traditional ACLU liberal, I believed in free speech all my life. That was one of the things, frankly, that attracted me to the Democratic Party when I was a kid, the idea that we were the party that believed in letting everybody have a say, and we’ll just make a better argument, and that’s how the system works,” Taibbi said.

He continued, “Apparently, something very dramatic has changed in politics in America, and there’s been a shift. There’s no question about it anymore, that now the parties have had a complete reversal on how they read these issues.”

Taibbi leads a team of journalists, including Michael Shellenberger, who have been given access to Twitter Files, revealing a startling network of government agencies, think tanks, and Twitter personnel coordinating efforts to attack the First Amendment. 

What we’ve learned from the Twitter Files is the ever-expanding coalition of groups working with the government and social media to target and censor Americans, including government-funded organizations.

Twitter files are chilling in the details and show how Democrats have weaponized government and colluded with corporations to wage war on the First Amendment. 

The modern Democratic Party is not the same one that your parents or grandparents were members of in the past.It’s obsessed with starting World War 3 in Ukraine, eroding the First Amendment, dismantling the Second Amendment, and normalizing ‘woke’ culture.

What caused such a significant shift in the party in just a few short years?

And what kind of blowback will Taibbi get for telling these truths?

This post was originally published at Zero Hedge

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White House Tried to Censor Private WhatsApp Messages About Vaccine Skepticism

Alarming leaked emails reveal attempted level of intrusion beyond public forums.

Published

4 days ago

on

27 March, 2023

Matt Cardy via Getty Images

Leaked emails show that the White House was intent on pressuring messaging platform WhatsApp to censor private conversations about ‘vaccine skepticism’.

The revelation is perhaps even more alarming than the Biden administration’s efforts to shut down dissent on public social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter, because the lobbying pertained to information exchanged between as a few as two people.

The leaked emails were featured in a Substack article written by journalist and author David Zweig.

From March 2021 onwards, Rob Flaherty, the Biden White House’s Director of Digital Strategy, demanded WhatsApp owner Meta explain the actions it was taking to intervene in private conversations about the COVID vaccine between WhatsApp users.

“If you can’t see the message, I’m genuinely curious—how do you know what kinds of messages you’ve cut down on?” Flaherty asked.

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Flaherty and Andrew Slavitt, then the White House Senior Advisor on the Covid Response, wanted to set up phone calls with a Meta executive a “couple of times per week” if necessary to oversee the censorship.

“I care mostly about what actions and changes you’re making to ensure you’re not making our country’s vaccine hesitancy problem worse,” Flaherty wrote on April 9, 2021.

“I still don’t have a good, empirical answer on how effective you’ve been at reducing the spread of vaccine-skeptical content and misinformation to vaccine fence sitters,” he added.

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The White House wanted non-public messages about vaccine skepticism to be brought “under control,” a chilling interference in private encrypted conversations.

“What, exactly, was he hoping to get Meta to do?” asks Zweig.

“It was obvious from the start that WhatsApp’s interface didn’t allow for the granular control Flaherty appeared to desire. And his smiley face response suggests he well understood this. Yet he kept badgering the Meta executives anyway.”

Meta was seemingly unable to satisfy the Biden administration’s demands, perhaps wary that directly censoring people’s ability to communicate with their own friends and family would have represented a massive public relations disaster.

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Sam Harris: Conservatives “Should Not Have Opinions” On Ukraine, Vaccines, Climate Change

“You’ve got people who are moving the opinions of millions of others, who should not have an opinion on these topics”

Published

2 weeks ago

on

20 March, 2023

Steve Watson

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Leftist ‘thinker’ Sam Harris declared last week that conservatives should not be allowed to voice their opinions on issues such as the war in Ukraine, climate change, or vaccine safety.

Making the remarks on a podcast, Harris’ argument is that conservative commentators are making a living out of “not caring” and thus should not be allowed to influence anyone else’s opinion.

“We’re swimming in a sea of misinformation, where you’ve got people who are moving the opinions of millions of others, who should not have an opinion on these topics,” Harris proclaimed.

He continued, “There is no scenario in which you should be getting your opinion about vaccine safety or climate change, or the war in Ukraine, or anything else that we might want to talk about from Candace Owens, right?”

“She’s not a relevant expert on any of those topics. And what’s more, she doesn’t seem to care, right?” Harris continued, adding “And she’s living in a culture that has amplified that not caring into a business model, an effective business model, right? That is something very Trumpian about all that.”

Watch:

This is all very rich coming from someone who previously admitted he supported the suppression of reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop immediately prior to the election, if it would prevent Donald Trump from being reelected.

Sam Harris Offers Feeble ‘Clarification’ After Bizarre Comments About Trump

Indeed, Harris went as far as saying “Hunter Biden could have had the corpses of children in his basement. I would not have cared.”

Harris later pathetically claimed that the New York Post’s reporting on the story was accurate only “by accident.”

Video: Sam Harris Claims It Was An “Accident” That NY Post Was Right About Hunter Biden Laptop

After he received backlash for the remarks, Harris rage quit Twitter and is still absent from the platform, refusing to even entertain debate or opinions antithetical to his own:

Sam Harris Rage Quits Twitter Days After Claiming Hunter Biden Laptop Story Was Right “By Accident”

Given that she was used as an example by Harris, Candace Owens responded:

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