What is more, if I want to hold lectures or seminars on the topic of empire, I will do so privately, since I cannot be sure that my critics will behave civilly. On one occasion recently, I held a day-conference to discuss Bruce Gilley’s controversial article, “The Case for Colonialism,” and found myself having to use pseudonyms to hide the identities of some participants. One young scholar only attended on condition that his name nowhere appear on print, nor his face on any photograph, lest his senior colleagues find out and kill his career. What this shows is that the legal right to freedom of speech is not enough. What’s also needed are colleagues who are willing to conduct themselves according to informal norms of civility and responsible, rational exchange. Clearly some colleagues are not so willing. So the question is, will middle-managers in universities—faculty and college heads—do anything to uphold norms of civility against colleagues who trample over them, or will they abrogate their civic responsibility and off-load it onto the courts?
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Oxfam America, who presumably are concerned they may have to pay the going rate for white hookers if Trump’s ban on admitting starving teenage waifs from third-world disaster zones is upheld. June 9th, 2018 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Recent acts of manly valour have all come from men from traditional cultures where they’ve never heard of sexual politics. We recently watched online as Mamoudou Gassama, an illegal migrant from Mali, scaled a tower block in a Paris suburb to save a child about to fall to his death. ‘Luckily, there was someone who was physically fit and who had the courage to go and get the child,’ a firefighter told a French news agency. We can’t call them firemen, although that is what they were. No French man or woman came forward to save the child. In 2015 a migrant from Tunisia rescued two children from a burning building near Paris. June 8th, 2018 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
Undoubtedly you are a prima donna, but this is a good thing. Imagine if we had to depend for harmless entertainment on the likes of your mates, Nicola Sturgeon, Anna Soubry, and other pompous assholes. At least you are unashamedly a figure of much merriment. My advice is that you should trade on this. Start dressing up as some of the cartoon characters you want banned from cereal boxes. And imagine the fun if you burst into a Parliamentary Committee Room dressed appropriately and shouting, “The Milky Bars are on me!” June 7th, 2018 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Turkish cab drivers aren’t opposing Uber because it is bent. But because it is honest. – ‘Chester Draws’ commenting on the Continental Telegraph. June 5th, 2018 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
Fuck off! Seriously, just fuck off. We are not responsible for what happened before we were born. My own family, for example, comes from a mix of poor Irish, French and Scottish stock. One died destitute in a workhouse. So, sure, we did well out of the transatlantic slave trade. I do not feel guilty, I will not feel guilty and I’ll be damned if I apologise or give money to people as a consequence of something that happened hundreds of years before my birth and for which I have no responsibility. Whitten can go fuck himself with a pineapple wrapped in razor-wire, the vile little creep. June 2nd, 2018 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
Holocaust denial is, of course, completely irrational, has no basis in historical fact, and is almost always motivated by deep-seated racism. But there are no specific laws against Holocaust denial in the UK. Britain has even resisted attempts to enforce an EU directive outlawing Holocaust denial. In 2008, British courts prevented the extradition of suspected Holocaust denier Frederick Toben to Germany. No matter how abhorrent Holocaust denial is, there are important reasons not to ban it in law. Deborah Lipstadt, who successfully defended a libel suit from the notorious Holocaust denier, David Irving, argues against giving politicians ‘the power to legislate history’. Banning Holocaust denial simply turns deniers into martyrs. It should be defeated by the facts, not by the law, argues Lipstadt. May 31st, 2018 | 30 comments - (Comments are closed)
In fact, Oxford has a disproportionately high number of black students, although you wouldn’t know this from the comments made by Lammy and others last week. He quoted the seemingly shocking statistic that, between 2015 and 2017, several Oxford colleges had failed to admit more than one or two black British students. This set the tone of the news agenda, prompting Oxford graduates to tweet their scorn at their old university. But, as ever, statistics are the last refuge of the scoundrel. May 30th, 2018 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
A media that taught us to mock authority and culture was unprepared for the day when the audience would mock their authority and their culture. May 29th, 2018 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
At the end of a week in which the House of Commons defeated Labour’s draconian plans to regulate the press, the Tories revealed their own draconian plans to regulate the internet. The culture secretary, Matt Hancock, has pledged to make Britain ‘the safest place in the world’ to be online. But when the world’s ‘safest’ internet is currently found in China, where access is heavily restricted and censored by the state, it becomes clear how terrifying the government’s safety agenda really could be. May 27th, 2018 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
The cliche is that it’s personal ambition that propels most politicians. Unfortunately, I think it’s true, at least for the biggest of them. What really drives most of them round the twist is not failing to get their policies enacted, but their ascent up the greasy pole being blocked. May 26th, 2018 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
May 23rd, 2018 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
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