Life is full of people with bad ideas and awful opinions. Try to meet as many at university as you can

It's neither surprising nor wrong that an LGBT organization would criticize the Royal College of Psychiatrists for hosting her, any more than it'd be wrong to criticize the AMA for giving a platform to anti-vaccine cranks or gay 'conversion' 'therapists'- because she promotes views that are unscientific, bigoted, and actively harmful to people.

Criticizing is one thing, but trying to claim that her views are "actually harmful to people" and that she should not be allowed to speak at a university debate is quite another. We're not talking about incitements to violence here, we're talking about one feminist's slightly unorthodox views on gender. Trying to get her banned with this logic means you think that students are too thick to listen to her speak and make a decision for themselves. I think you're also ignoring the fact that she was not the only speaker at that event, but was there to act as a counterpoint.

This writer seems to believe that activists are idiots who don't actually understand (and/or don't want to understand) their opponents' arguments.

This is not about understanding someone's viewpoint, though engaging in a dialogue with someone just might help clarify it. It's about assuming that others students don't have the intelligence to think for themselves and make their own decisions about its merits. It's also about being curious/brave enough to accept a challenge to your own. The more I argue with people whose beliefs I find abhorrent, the stronger and more nuanced my own become.

Seriously. We know what the 'bad people' have to say. If the 'bad people' bothered to spend two minutes on Google, they'd know exactly how we'd respond to whatever arguments they want to post, because after however many years of vicious Internet warfare, there really aren't any new arguments left

By this same logic the "bad people" know exactly what you have to say as well. Would you be happy if your speech was curtailed on campus because your views can be found after a two minute google search?

  • and it's unfair, I know

I don't think you do. If you did I don't think you would be trying so hard to tear this article apart and defend banning opinions that are counter to you own.

but activist groups get really tired of explaining basic principles to clueless newbies who can't be bothered to spend two minutes on Google before posting things like 'doesn't calling it 'feminism' instead of 'humanism' mean it's inherently biased against men?'.

Her entire point was that your "basic principles" are not sacrosanct and most certainly not agreed upon by everyone. I mean, it's not like we're talking about denying the existence of gravity or something. Most of the opinions getting shouted down in academic settings are political, social, or philosophical. The "basic principles" are very different for different people. Why shouldn't someone else get to explain their "basic principles" without you screaming them off campus?

... wait, so the journalists can still talk - and the students can still, therefore, hear them - so what are the students being denied here?

They were denied the right to hear an opposing or even controversial viewpoint on their campus. They were denied an opportunity argue their own side, to question their own "basic principles", and to maybe even modify or qualify some of them. The fact that they can go on the internet to read about these controversial opinions is totally irrelevant.

The takeaway here is that the intense strongly held beliefs you have at 19 years old can and will change as they are repeatedly challenged by your experiences and the people you meet. This is the whole reason that colleges exist.

Hell, there are probably more 'colleges' refusing to teach evolution on those grounds, and yet 'silencing' is supposedly a tactic of the 'SJW' left...

The reasoning and tactics are identical. Why can't both be true?

But is there any evidence that barring obnoxious and hostile activists from the use of college resources leads along a slippery slope to banning discussion of historical events in the classroom?

I am pretty sure that BYU might consider pro choice activists "obnoxious and hostile" as well. Would you support them banning pro choice speakers from university debates? How about anti semitism? Banning a neo nazi group certainly makes sense, but what happens when a pro israel group tries to ban norman finklestein or a pro palestinian group on the grounds that their speech is anti semetic?

/r/TrueReddit Thread Parent Link - newstatesman.com