The Critic Podcast | 0:18:20 – 0:25:37
Given at Christ’s College, Cambridge on the 7th March 2024
If it wasn’t for may people in this room, I would almost certainly have dropped out of my undergraduate degree at several different junctures. Finishing my degree was perhaps the greatest achievement of my life, but one that I am regretting on a daily basis. It is only for meeting the people in this room that I don’t regret coming here.
When I decided to apply to Cambridge, I was very small. I had been watching a documentary on the BBC and there was an image of the Backs with a voiceover, talking about universities – these places where you can ask any question and you will be given an answer; and if there is no answer, well, together, we will find one.
I come from a working-class background – not to bring diversity into it. But this matters because the education you get in a state school is functional and bureaucratic. You are told, “You don’t need to know that because it is not in the exam”. And this was an endless frustration of mine from a young age. I would ask a question and the answer would be either, “You are too young” or “it is not in the exam and therefore you do not need to know.” And so the idea that there was a place that I could come and ask these questions and would receive an answer seemed like my idea of heaven.
“They do not know that the students and academics that are attempting to preserve academic freedom are the heroes of our time.”
But, because I came from a working-class background and this is the attitude toward education, I didn’t aspire to go to university. I am a very practical person. I went into the Arts and worked in the big London theatres for a time; and it is only when I began making progress there that the directors I was working said to me, “You should go to and get a degree and learn about the heritage of your craft: we have taught you all we can practically.” And I rolled my eyes and said, “I don’t want to go to university, this is why I have come to you.” But, I eventually conceded and said, ‘Okay, which university should I go to?’ And they said, ‘Oh, well, we all went to Cambridge, so you should go to Cambridge.’
“Oh, yeah, I’ll go to Cambridge,” I said rather sarcastically.
But I went to my school and I said, “I’m going to apply to Cambridge.” And they laughed. My head of school laughed and said, “Oh, wait. You are being serious.” I say it with this posh accent by they don’t have posh accents. And so, applying, it was a very long hard process of chronic back and forth emails with Cambridge; I had to be sent off to the local private school to see what an entrance exam and entrance interview even were for Oxbridge because my school didn’t know how to apply.
And so, having overcome all of that, I thought, “Yes, I have finally made it to the place where I can ask any question and get an answer.” But I soon found out that wasn’t the case. And that it still isn’t the case. And this is a problem.
I didn’t know we had to write speeches, which is why I am riffing on personal experience which David [Butterfield] decries in his own essay in The Critic this month – rightly so. But I took the questions he sent me very literally, so:
What is my piece about, and
Why does my piece matter?
I am going to answer those two questions for you, now.
So, what is my piece about? It is about the prevalence of self-censorship in the universities and the steps that are being taken to counteract the suppression of free speech. This is namely though, I argue, the formation and emergence of secret societies and exclusive salons within the universities – like this one: invite only, with Chatham House Rules. In this piece I sketch out how it is I ended up finding and becoming involved with these secret societies, and what goes on in these secret societies. It is only a sketch. It is vague because these societies (for the time being, at least) still need protection and anonymity.
Why does my piece matter? Well, I touch upon it in my opening statement: for someone who had no prospects and thought I had one in Cambridge, to find out that it is not quite the place I thought it was – one of free speech and bold exploration – matters, not just to me, but to any person who does not have much upward mobility.
Why does my piece matter? It is because people within the universities – and the general public more broadly – do not know what students and academics put themselves though to keep academic freedom alive and preserve our history, namely from the deconstructionists (and the Godless, I add in retrospect). They do not know that the students and academics that are attempting to preserve academic freedom — the freedom of conversation, the freedom to meet and discuss — they do not know that they are the heroes of our time.
To put the situation in to contexts, two-thirds of student’s self-censor upon at least one major political issue. Yet, two-thirds of students also report that they have the freedom to speak their minds at university. The quick witted among you will realise this is a contradiction in terms.
We also know that right-wing students self-censor twice as much as left-wing students, at a rate of almost seventy-percent. When I asked Cambridge students on an anonymous online platform whether this was an acceptable state of affairs – that seventy per cent of their right-wing peers couldn’t say what they thought, couldn’t say what they believed to be true – the responses were that, “This is a mark of progress” and that, “We need to work together to ensure that the number of right-wing students who self-censor gets up to one-hundred per cent.” And this was followed by a handshake emoji, if you needed the extra sardonic taunt thrown in there.
This piece matters because the general public need to understand that there is a conspiracy on the Left to shut up the Right; and the conspiracy is run by students and it is aided and abetted by academics, be they malicious or simply suffering from a mild case of cowardice.
The university needs to understand that there are groups of us who will not take this censorship, this restricted freedom, lying down.
They will have to bloody catch us first.
The article to which I refer to throughout this speech is a feature entitled, ‘Campus Confidential’ which appeared in the March 2024 Special Edition of The Critic Magazine.
READ FULL ARTICLE: https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/march-2024/campus-confidential/