Anti-terror laws risk 'chilling effect' on academic debate – Oxford college head

[rug]

Ken Macdonald, a former director of public prosecutions, warns government Prevent strategy may stifle free speech and university research

Richard Adams Education editor
Sunday 7 February 2016 10.48 EST
Last modified on Sunday 7 February 2016 17.01 EST

The government’s anti-terrorism laws aimed at universities risk having a “chilling effect” on academic debate and a “deadening impact” on research, according to a former director of public prosecutions.

Ken Macdonald, warden of Wadham College, Oxford, said while it was fair to ask universities to curb attempts to radicalise or recruit students, the government’s anti-radicalisation strategy, Prevent, could be abused to stifle otherwise legal debate.

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He said Prevent endangers freedom of speech and research in universities. “One is forced to contemplate a level of uncertainty that plainly risks a chilling effect on intellectual discourse and exchange, not to mention a deadening impact upon research into difficult contemporary questions,” he said.

Macdonald – a barrister, whose role as director of public prosecutions between 2003 and 2008 made him one of the most senior legal figures in England and Wales – said under the government’s guidance “the list of unacceptable topics might plausibly include much philosophical discourse, any Marxist analysis of a supposed class basis for our rule of law, and many atheist deconstructions of religion”.

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/feb/07/anti-terror-laws-academic-debate-oxford-college-ken-macdonald-prevent-strategy-university

[Jim__]

1. “Read literally, it envisages a future in which people might be constrained from arguing ...

... that democracy is wrong in principle – goodbye Plato,” ...

Well, yes. At least, "Goodbye Socrates." Socrates was convicted of corrupting the youth and impiety and he was convicted in Athens, often pictured as the birth place of democracy. I F Stone in his book The Trial of Socrates argues, IIRC, that, at the very least, Socrates may have been guilty of crimes against Athens - at least tacit support for the thirty tyrants.

Any regulation of free speech is extremely problematic. At the same time, recruitment of Islamic youth to fight and terrorize for ISIS is a current threat to all western societies. Any law that tries to prevent that type of recruitment is going to threaten aspects of free speech. It's a difficult line to define, but, given the current situation with ISIS, there're going to be some attempts to legally outlaw that recruitment, and those attempts will threaten free speech. I don't know the details about this law; but, it appears to raise some difficult issues.

[rug]

2. When threatened, the state's first reaction is to silence opposition.

It's been that way here as well, from the Aliens and Sedition Acts, through the Palmer Raids right up to the Patriot Act.