Perhaps the improved reception Kathleen received owed as much to time as location. It is easy to forget how much freer speech has become over the last year on many topics. The arrogant censorship of trans activists has unravelled as the Tavistock scandal and the absurdity of some sporting competitions undermined their arguments, A more scepticial attitude to DEI and BLM and even some of aspects of “Me too” is emerging. I have no idea where the debates on these topics will end up but at least there will be a debate – and not just the imposition of an arbitrary orthodoxy. I think the pendulum first started to swing back precisely between the debate in Cambridge (Nov 2022) and Oxford (June 2023). It has swung further since.
I think it started when statues were brought down in Bristol. Not explicitly. But with this continuing with Oxford debate, and what happened to stock her self, the shift in sentiment becomes more vocal. People are sick and tired of what to think being forced.
UnHerd Reader
4 months ago
Beautifully written, common sense fuelled and (today at least) optimistic article from Kathleeen Stock, who is fast becoming a national treasure.
A national treasure? Oh dear. I don’t think she’ll like that… She’s not quite ready to be exhibited at the British Museum. (And, on current performance, it’s quite likely she’d be stolen and sold on Ebay.)
UnHerd Reader
4 months ago
It is unfortunate that extreme minorities, be they trannies, islamists or the far left, are allowed to rampage through society with impunity.
Their absolute intolerance makes the Khmer Rouge look like a church group.
Or the Far Right UH? One assumes you do not exempt them?
Your suggestion the extremists you mention are worse than the Khmer Rouge hyperbolic and just makes you look daft. You didn’t need to demonstrate that lack of proportionality to have a valid point.
Shrunken Genepool
4 months ago
I have met one or two brave students. But far left woke professors are baked in for 40 years. 1/4 of my department are diversity hires since 2020. Male recruitment has plummeted. 90% undergrads are now women. We are a soft environmental science dept. I don’t see any path to sanity
Unlike today’s children, I don’t have to face so many bleak decades of extreme weather and its consequences. I still find hope for humankind, though mostly in environmentally conscious and active young people, especially those approaching or reaching voting age.
In contrast, the dinosaur electorate who have been voting into high office consecutive mass-pollution promoting or complicit/complacent governments for decades are gradually dying off thus making way for voters who fully
Also, relatively trivial politics diverts attention away from some of the planet’s greatest polluters, where it should and needs to be sharply focused.
Likewise try working in a health faculty where mediocrity and ideology masquerading as research reigns supreme, mandatory woke indoctrination courses, and where i am quite literally the last man standing. I am waiting eagerly for the redundancy letter after 25 years in what was academia but is now a cess pool of fanatics and zealots to woke dogma…
Hugh Bryant
4 months ago
Isn’t the real issue that the establishment media is nowadays entirely produced, written, edited and presented by people from the same background who therefore have an interest in promoting narratives that distract attention from their own class privilege. This is just old-as-the-hills divide and rule.
Right-Wing Hippie
4 months ago
Protestors disrupting a debate in the name of denying any right to offend. The Irony Gods are pleased.
Brian Villanueva
4 months ago
I do wonder how quickly these idiots would stop supergluing their body parts to things if the UK police adopted a policy of removing the superglue bond with neither solvent not anesthetic. It’s a lot less entertaining when you know you’ll require a whole hand skin grafts and permanently lose feeling in half your finger pads.
And no, I am not kidding. If you choose to assault all standards of decency, you have no right to demand we apply them to you.
You’re a brave woman, Kathleen.
Last edited 4 months ago by Brian Villanueva
UnHerd Reader
4 months ago
Thanks for the informative and well-written article. On a minor point, why don’t the media interview anyone other than, say, Kathleen, and consciously fragile trans or other identitarians? Eyeballs and laziness. The press wants to write articles that paint the world as black and white. It plays to readers’ basest instincts. And it’s easier. Otherwise, the reporters would actually need to do some work. Which I suppose would be “centering whiteness.”
j watson
4 months ago
We’re going back 40years, through rose tinted spectacles no doubt too, but from recollection Higher Education and University politics always had a small proportion of immature narcissistic extremists the rest of us generally ignored. I think we instinctively knew it was phase they’d grow out of.
The issue today may be more what Higher Education Authorities ‘ratchet in’ as regards views on Hate speech. One tiny upside to the conflict in the Middle East is it’s re-sensitised, re-illuminated many of the inconsistencies applied on Hate Speech and that’s a good thing.
Perhaps the improved reception Kathleen received owed as much to time as location. It is easy to forget how much freer speech has become over the last year on many topics. The arrogant censorship of trans activists has unravelled as the Tavistock scandal and the absurdity of some sporting competitions undermined their arguments, A more scepticial attitude to DEI and BLM and even some of aspects of “Me too” is emerging. I have no idea where the debates on these topics will end up but at least there will be a debate – and not just the imposition of an arbitrary orthodoxy. I think the pendulum first started to swing back precisely between the debate in Cambridge (Nov 2022) and Oxford (June 2023). It has swung further since.
I think it started when statues were brought down in Bristol. Not explicitly. But with this continuing with Oxford debate, and what happened to stock her self, the shift in sentiment becomes more vocal. People are sick and tired of what to think being forced.
Beautifully written, common sense fuelled and (today at least) optimistic article from Kathleeen Stock, who is fast becoming a national treasure.
A national treasure? Oh dear. I don’t think she’ll like that… She’s not quite ready to be exhibited at the British Museum. (And, on current performance, it’s quite likely she’d be stolen and sold on Ebay.)
It is unfortunate that extreme minorities, be they trannies, islamists or the far left, are allowed to rampage through society with impunity.
Their absolute intolerance makes the Khmer Rouge look like a church group.
Or the Far Right UH? One assumes you do not exempt them?
Your suggestion the extremists you mention are worse than the Khmer Rouge hyperbolic and just makes you look daft. You didn’t need to demonstrate that lack of proportionality to have a valid point.
I have met one or two brave students. But far left woke professors are baked in for 40 years. 1/4 of my department are diversity hires since 2020. Male recruitment has plummeted. 90% undergrads are now women. We are a soft environmental science dept. I don’t see any path to sanity
Unlike today’s children, I don’t have to face so many bleak decades of extreme weather and its consequences. I still find hope for humankind, though mostly in environmentally conscious and active young people, especially those approaching or reaching voting age.
In contrast, the dinosaur electorate who have been voting into high office consecutive mass-pollution promoting or complicit/complacent governments for decades are gradually dying off thus making way for voters who fully
Also, relatively trivial politics diverts attention away from some of the planet’s greatest polluters, where it should and needs to be sharply focused.
Likewise try working in a health faculty where mediocrity and ideology masquerading as research reigns supreme, mandatory woke indoctrination courses, and where i am quite literally the last man standing. I am waiting eagerly for the redundancy letter after 25 years in what was academia but is now a cess pool of fanatics and zealots to woke dogma…
Isn’t the real issue that the establishment media is nowadays entirely produced, written, edited and presented by people from the same background who therefore have an interest in promoting narratives that distract attention from their own class privilege. This is just old-as-the-hills divide and rule.
Protestors disrupting a debate in the name of denying any right to offend. The Irony Gods are pleased.
I do wonder how quickly these idiots would stop supergluing their body parts to things if the UK police adopted a policy of removing the superglue bond with neither solvent not anesthetic. It’s a lot less entertaining when you know you’ll require a whole hand skin grafts and permanently lose feeling in half your finger pads.
And no, I am not kidding. If you choose to assault all standards of decency, you have no right to demand we apply them to you.
You’re a brave woman, Kathleen.
Thanks for the informative and well-written article. On a minor point, why don’t the media interview anyone other than, say, Kathleen, and consciously fragile trans or other identitarians? Eyeballs and laziness. The press wants to write articles that paint the world as black and white. It plays to readers’ basest instincts. And it’s easier. Otherwise, the reporters would actually need to do some work. Which I suppose would be “centering whiteness.”
We’re going back 40years, through rose tinted spectacles no doubt too, but from recollection Higher Education and University politics always had a small proportion of immature narcissistic extremists the rest of us generally ignored. I think we instinctively knew it was phase they’d grow out of.
The issue today may be more what Higher Education Authorities ‘ratchet in’ as regards views on Hate speech. One tiny upside to the conflict in the Middle East is it’s re-sensitised, re-illuminated many of the inconsistencies applied on Hate Speech and that’s a good thing.