This is more pathetic than alarming:
A motion which mandates the Oxford University Student Union (SU) to condemn the use of “hateful material” in mandatory teaching was passed in Student Council this Thursday....
Named the ‘Academic Hate Speech Motion’, the motion sets to establish a new policy on hate speech within the University to include ‘incitement of hatred on the grounds of gender identity, disability, and socio economic status, including to trans, non-binary, disabled, working-class, and women*’.
Current University policy on academic free speech protects most academic speech as long as it is within the law. The motion notes that hate speech which is ableist, misogynistic, classist or transphobic is not criminalised but believes that the University should amend the relevant policy to ‘ensure that trans and non-binary people, women, and disabled people receive equivalent protection from hateful speech within University contexts as groups which are protected by the criminal law’.
A committee member of the Student Union’s Disabilities Campaign, who seconded the motion, told The Oxford Student “....The University’s current policy towards such issues falls short of protecting many students who are particularly vulnerable to hate speech due to the shortfall in legal protection – the examples given in the motion are particularly concerning for student wellbeing...."
The motion also mandates the SU to lobby for trigger warnings on readings lists and for lectures, tutorials, and examinations with content deemed prejudicial against the aforementioned groups to be non-compulsory for students....
Under the new policy set by the motion, courses that contain ‘prejudicial content’, such as the FHS Medical Law and Ethics course- which was noted as the sole example in the motion- should revise their course content and reading lists. The motion states that articles on the Medical Law and Ethics reading list are ‘ableist content’. An article entitled “Why We Should Pick the Best Children” [by the philosopher Julian Savalescu] advocates for a moral duty not to have disabled children whilst another advocates for the ‘murder of disabled children after they have been born’, the motion noted.
This came to my attention on FB from a colleague at Oxford (not Professor Savalescu) who teaches in the "Medical Law and Ethics" course who was contemplating legal action given the defamation of the professional competence of the teachers of this course. Perhaps a libel judgment would wake these New Infantilists up?
ADDENDUM: Several readers point out that philosophy's leading champion of New Infantilism, Justin Weinberg, has a typically convoluted rationalization for this display (as usual, it's mostly unreadable, but for those with morbid curiosity, I include the link). You would think a philosopher at a public university in a reactionary state would be motivated at least by prudence, if nothing else, in actually defending academic freedom for a change.
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