The Office for Students has a new intern, but not the fun, unpaid kind. No, instead they’ve picked up an absolute fucking nerd who’s squaring up to the UK’s students.
Arif Ahmed is the worksworth Rishi has employed to wage the war on woke in universities, because if there’s one thing people need more of it’s figures of authority feeling emboldened by the government to promote hateful discourses.
Big Rish will claim that the appointment of a Director for Hate Speech Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom (not a very SEO-friendly name, lads) will “encourage all to engage respectfully with the ideas of others”, but we know why they’ve really done this. 12th-century serf Lee Anderson said it best: Tory success in the next election will rely on a “mix of culture wars and trans debate”, so whenever those things are threatened by reasonable arguments and successful progressive action, more draconic action must be taken.
It’s the same as how the new Public Order Act is really a means to oppress, to sail straight past the point of disruptive action and question-asking, removing it at the source. Want to block a road? No can do. Wanna ask a tutor why in lectures they employ dog-whistles found more commonly in the MailOnline than in any academic textbook? No can do.
Frankly, much as they might disagree, the freedom of speech of professors is not being tainted by students protesting their ‘civil little discussions’ about controversial topics. They’re being protested by students for promoting harmful half-baked discussions on topics, primarily around trans rights, which the government seems to believe are a threat to women and children.
They’re not.
Removing pronouns from schools, banning trans women from sports, and platforming anti-trans ‘debaters’ like Kathleen Stock at supposedly prestigious universities are attacks on trans people, attacks that are not being fired back from the trans community. Trans people are represented as deceitful, predatory, and immoral on a regular basis, but the people DOING the representing are in need of protection?!
The dweeb Rishi has put in charge of this totally real job said in a Times interview that university should be “the intellectual equivalent of stepping into a boxing ring.” Hey, loser, chill out. Kids at university have not had an easy time recently, either because of the pandemic, frankly, evil university organisations making bad accommodation situations worse, the cost of living crisis induced by an incompetent lettuce, or the constant onslaught towards trans people, EXISTING is not easy for a lot of young people right now.
The last thing they need is a left hook from some upset transphobes vying desperately for power as it slips out of their hands.