Free speech discourse is tedious. Its principles have been hammered until we’re blue in the face. The relentless eruption of case studies showcases the dangers of restricting freedom of speech and enquiry, particularly in the academic world. Yet there are still brave scholars who, from the loftiest ivory towers of the university, find the courage to call out the “baffling provisions” of free speech policies as part of a “political onslaught on universities”. We thank these warriors for their service, but, one question: is there a British idiom for people who are unable to see straight and need to retire?

Scholars, just like merchants and their guilds, developed an awareness of themselves as a community long before others did — that is to say, a consciousness of their place within society. To make this run smoothly within the walls of academia, relationships are fuelled by trust. You can quarrel, you can disagree, you can argue, but you do so on the basis that your opponents see you as a peer and don’t judge you exclusively through politically-tinted glasses. Some might even argue that the articulation of self-awareness and non-political friendships are a decent recipe for a healthy civil society — but what do I know, I’m French.

Srinivasan doesn’t tell us who could deliver this idyllic promise

Extraordinarily, though, there are some who appear to subscribe to neither. Shortness of breath is an inescapable consequence of reading Amia Srinivasan’s epic LRB essay on why free speech is a right-wing obsession. It isn’t, really, that the politicisation of the issue is surprising per se. Rather, there is an astounding cognitive dissonance surrounding her beliefs — in particular, the idea that “It is the left that has made the act of engaging with people across deep ideological divides”. Rest assured, there are many, many others that make you smile. Pearls include, for example: “Of course, academics can and sometimes do abuse their power” or “Are today’s students unprecedentedly censorious? Perhaps” but also “Were we never censorious?”

Then there are the big guns: “We would all benefit from a less punitive culture, one with fewer gleeful pile-ons, greater appetite for complexity, less anxiety over self-expression, and more allowance made for mistake-making and personal change. But such a culture will not be ushered in by those, whatever promises they make, who oppose themselves to ‘cancel culture’.” Unfortunately, Srinivasan doesn’t tell us who could deliver this idyllic promise of a “less punitive culture”. We can rest assured that it won’t be those she frames as political opponents, though. That makes sense.

Of course, Srinivasan shrugs at the idea of establishing Free Speech Compliance Officers. Surely, those would be chosen from amongst the “architects and supporters” of the recent Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act — people like Eric Kaufmann who, you will be scandalised to hear, writes for Policy Exchange and ConservativeHome. Or like Arif Ahmed, appointed “free speech tsar”, who despite being “a serious scholar [ … ] a fierce atheist and libertarian” also has friends amongst conservative figures. Basically Hitler. As we know now, these people, who are all packed into one uniform political clan, are incapable of enlightening the naturally left-leaning cocoon that is academia. One might be tempted to ask, then, where most Diversity and Inclusivity Officers come from.

It also appears that meetings in which people address issues Srinivasan disagrees with or disregards are deeply problematic. If you didn’t know this, there is apparently a cabal of “right-wing academics” going around. Some time ago, many of them assembled in Cambridge and talked about “threats to conservative values on campus” and other shocking things. Thankfully, many people on the left prefer to have their own discussion “in private”, we are told, “because it is all too easy to fuel a conservative narrative” otherwise.

It turns the idea of the non-activist scholar into an abstraction

Frolicking between the examples of bad scholarship and bad scholars, the final destination is a cri du cœur. The push to “eliminate “leftist ideology’” under the banner of free speech campaigns is read as a political “threat”. When the whole field is portrayed as a political bloodbath, what else can you expect? There is something vaguely De Mestrian in the logic that most scholars are always engaging with one another from a political angle. It turns the idea of the non-activist scholar into an abstraction, something that doesn’t exist. “Il n’y a point d’homme [qui ne soit pas activiste] dans le monde [académique]”.

Censorship is, by essence, very hard to measure. It is good to proceed with caution on this, as appearances can sometimes be deceptive. Yet, little was published against Srinivasan’s piece apart from by the usual suspects who have already put their heads above the parapet, or were forced to do so by the circumstances. There are two logical explanations here. Either it is true that academia is so left-leaning that everyone more or less agrees with Srinivasan’s arguments — or self-censorship is insidious to the point that many prefer to stand still rather than speaking up.

It’s not clear when All Souls had its own share of courageous minds. It’s perhaps telling that members of the community who speak publicly about matters related to the College are generally ex-fellows who left the institution about half a century ago, like Robert Jackson. Regardless of whether this speaks to a culture of intimidation, All Souls’ silence merely mirrors that of the rest of the University of Oxford. It might be time to take Srinivasan’s piece of advice seriously and ask yourself, “if they stand up for you, will you stand up for them?”

I happen to agree that additional regulation is a short-term solution, and I don’t believe adding layers of administration will help to solve the issue. I also agree that ideological issues in academia aren’t simply rooted in a minority of “woke students”. Likewise, I believe that scholars ought to create bridges, hopefully civic friendships, amongst themselves. I am unsure about how we can all recover from the lack of trust that seems to run deep within the veins of the university, but I’ll make a first step and say this: if you’re someone who assumes your political beliefs are different from mine and still wanna hang out, I’m game.