Further to my recent post (October 9) on academic freedom of speech, Stuff's Your Weekend has an excellent piece by Yvonne van Dongen on Professor Jim Flynn's refusal to kowtow to leftist authoritarianism:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/opinion/116443386/the-complicated-issue-of-hate
The freedom to state one's personal opinions in public must be sacrosanct - equally sacrosanct must be the right to allow or disallow such opinions to be stated (or shown on posters) on your personal property or in spaces which you are legally responsible for (such as a university). And open protest letters signed by thousands should be just as freely delivered. I hope Auckland University's management stand their ground.
ReplyDeleteThe real danger is for so-called hate-speech legislation to be passed which will now govern what can be legally published - rather than the time-honoured way, namely relying on a court of law to decide whether a published statement is true in substance and in fact. This is a terrible development - and completely unnecessary. We must fight it tooth and nail. Vote ACT next year!
I salute that hero.
ReplyDelete...and now we have Massey uni doing it's weasely thing again, providing the exemplar of precisely what Flynn is writing of.
ReplyDelete