On Tuesday 29^th September, Oxford University’s Student Union (OUSU) banned the distribution of a new political magazine, No Offence, at its freshers’ fair. Citing the magazine’s inclusion of content such as “a graphic description of abortion” and “a celebration of colonialism”, OUSU announced that they “do not wish to be associated with the offensive views in this magazine.”

The battle lines in this issue ought to be clear. It is not a question of the legitimacy of offensive or obscene satire. Explicitly, the magazine was banned from the fair because it gave an airing to views –to opinions – that OUSU found offensive. Concerns about the allegedly edgy satire were secondary in their statement. Whilst it is obviously within a student union’s rights to run its own events however it wishes, we can and should be seriously concerned about the wisdom of this decision and what it represents.

The restriction of No Offence is just the tip of an immense iceberg. The sad truth is that British universities are no longer places where ideas can be judged on their merits in a climate of mutual respect. In the 1960s students gained the right to campaign for political causes without pastoral regulation, but this has become a poisoned chalice for students who do not share the very specific brand of socially left-wing politics advocated by OUSU and other students’ unions.

At many a modern British university, you simply cannot criticise the student unions’ version of feminism, or their views on racial or sexual politics, without unpleasant consequences. Last year, here at Oxford a pro-life society tried to organise a debate on the ethics of abortion. Within days a huge protest was planned, with feminist campaigners, supported by OUSU, threatening to disrupt the debate as much as they possibly could. Unsurprisingly, the college hosting the event, unable to secure the attendees’ safety, felt forced to cancel it.

Nearly four in ten students’ unions in the UK now enforce a ‘no platform’ policy, whereby offensive speakers are officially barred from addressing students on campus, as do almost a third of universities themselves. According to an anti-campus censorship campaign run by online magazine Spiked, 60% of universities and 70% of student unions restrict free speech in some way.

The real costs of all this, though, go far beyond the headline statistics. Every day, students with different worldviews to their supposed leaders find themselves feeling intimidated and unwelcome at their own universities. At Oxford, I have spoken to Conservative-voting fellow students who were terrified of social ostracism if their friends found out about their political views. Others feel the need to conceal even the newspapers they read from public knowledge.

All this adds up to an enormous stifling of free discussion. Ideas that fall outside appropriate bounds – be they traditional religious or conservative ones, or branches of radical feminism with unorthodox views of transgender liberation or sex work – simply cannot safely be aired in most public forums at universities.

Of course, challenges to our deeply held beliefs can seem offensive, and bigoted attitudes can reinforce the oppression of marginalised groups. But if our tolerance towards those different from us depends on artificial protection from ideas that might challenge our specific views on social questions, it is a tolerance unworthy of the name. Rather it is a degraded, cowardly ignorance, and an ignorance that defeats the entire purpose of a university.

If this continues an entire generation of Britain’s finest minds will never have been taught to learn from challenges to their opinions, and instead to view them as personal attacks. They will have been educated in ‘safe spaces’ – universities where the whole idea of ‘free speech’ is mocked and vilified.

“But what about our freeze peach!” screamed the OUSU acolytes when met with complaints of censorship over forcing the cancellation of the abortion debate. Anywhere else in Britain, this rank contempt for a fundamental principle of liberal democracy would be met with the horror it deserves. Not so at Oxford University.

We owe it to each other, and to Britain’s future as a free country, to do things differently. It’s about time the real world realised what our universities have become and a serious national debate was had about how to fix them.

And to the new freshers just arriving, or recently arrived, at universities across the country, I say this. The best argument against censorship is always that the view being censored might be true. By preventing others from expressing it we risk a huge loss for a paltry gain and make ourselves stupid and dogmatic into the process. So if you hold controversial opinions, ones your student union might not like – if people tell you you’re a bigot, an oppressor, that you have a ‘phobia’ of some description – don’t be disheartened but excited, because you have the chance to make a difference.

The real bigots on campus are those who hound and vilify people who respectfully disagree with them. Expose them to the fresh air of reason and shout your controversial views from the rooftops. Once they realise you won’t be intimidated they’ll be forced to listen, and listening is the first step towards the mutual understanding that underlies any true democracy. Britain is still a free country but at many universities you’d be forgiven for no longer thinking so. It’s time this changed: time we all came together and smashed this censorious sect of secular zealots once and for all. 

Jacob Williams is the co-founder and editor of No Offence, and co-founder of the Facebook discussion group Open Oxford.

A response to Williams’ letter from the Cherwell Comment editors can be found here.

In his open letter published in Cherwell, Jacob Williams, editor of the ‘No Offence’ magazine, claims to be a champion of ‘Britain’s future as a free country’. Despite its ban from next week’s Freshers’ Fair, Williams upholds the magazine against the ‘stupid and dogmatic’ Oxford University Student Union (OUSU). In his words, OUSU are ‘the real bigots on campus… who hound and vilify people.’

‘No Offence’, however, is not a neutral publication. Through articles justifying colonial rule and graphically describing the abortion of 12 week foetuses, Williams and his writers use the veil of the struggle for free speech to voice abhorrence. In his immature publication of all the extremes of free speech, Williams has forgotten that ‘Britain’s future as a free country’ depends on everyone’s right to express their views free from intimidation.  We should be free from the frankly disgusting content of ‘No Offence’.

Why, then, has Cherwell decided to publish Williams’ letter? Here at Cherwell, we do support open debate, and this means the open demolition of the arguments voiced in ‘No Offence’. We feel that OUSU has made a mistake by failing to let the magazine be shown up for the nonsense it contains at the Freshers’ Fair. By banning ‘No Offence’, OUSU has given students like Williams the biggest coup they could have hoped for: a chance to be the heroes of free speech, without the scrutiny of public debate. Such scrutiny would surely expose the magazine’s flawed principles.

You might ask, what is so bad about ‘No Offence’? Cherwell has received a preview of the magazine and its contents, as expected, are disappointing. So long as this debate rages without public exposure of this extremely low quality publication, Williams can pretend that he is the victim of a great injustice. Instead, publishing horrifically unbalanced articles that describe ‘Rhodesia: The End of a Great Country’, without mention of the appalling racism of the regime, the magazine is exposed as the fraud it is. The bullying tone of the magazine’s articles is made worse by the terrible quality of its writing. Why on earth should we take ‘No Offence’ seriously when it climaxes with an article entitled ‘Finger Me Like One of your French Fries’?

Williams’ argument ultimately falls down when we consider the responsibilities of freedom of speech. Yes, Williams can exaggeratedly call for an escape from the ‘censorious sect of secular zealots’, but no, we should not let him and his writers go unchallenged. With freedoms of speech we have a responsibility to make sure that good ideas are developed and bad ideas demolished. We have a responsibility to make sure that no one is intimidated by someone else’s free speech to the point that they are scared to paricipate in debate. Most of all, we have a responsibility to see that articles designed only to offend and intimidate are shown up for what they really are.

Doctors don’t usually go on strike. In the last 40 years they have taken to the streets only twice to voice their dissatisfaction about working conditions. Given the BMA’s decision on Saturday to ballot its junior doctor members on industrial action over their proposed new contract, this statistic more than anything shows just how angry people are with the government’s plans.

As a second-year medic, it’s hard not to worry about what the proposed changes will mean for me. For current junior doctors, this anxiety can only become more pressing, as the contract is set to be introduced as early as August 2016.

One of the BMA’s biggest issues with the contract is the extension of routine working hours (or ‘plain time’) from 7am to 7pm on Monday to Friday to 7am to 10pm on every day except Sunday. This will inevitably lead to pay cuts for junior doctors who currently work evening and weekend shifts, as routine working hours are rewarded with the most basic rate of pay. In specialties involving a lot of out-of-hours work such as A&E and acute medicine, existing staff shortages will only be exacerbated if inconvenient working hours are no longer properly compensated with overtime rates.

The job of a trainee doctor is that much harder outside of the current routine working hours, as they are often left with huge responsibilities when fewer consultants are present. The new contract could lead to trainee doctors working longer shifts just to make ends meet, potentially risking the safety of the many patients under their supervision.

The extension of routine working hours for junior doctors could also have larger implications for the whole NHS. If this precedent is set, other professions within healthcare such as nursing (many nurses currently rely on overtime rates as a main source of their income) could fall victim to sudden contract changes.

The new contract has also been accused of being discriminatory against women, as junior doctors who work full-time will see their annual pay increase more quickly than those working part-time, many of whom are women returning from maternity leave.

The idea of rewarding those who progress through training rapidly may well be a good one, and could potentially lead to a larger number of highly-trained doctors in a shorter period of time. This point has a link, albeit a tenuous one, with the idea that staff within the NHS should be rewarded mainly on the outcomes of their patients, with less emphasis on the number of years they have been working, or the number of procedures they carry out.

Having said that, an inflexible contract that penalises women for having children is not fair, and efforts must be made to ensure that people who progress through training more slowly due to genuine, unavoidable reasons are not punished.

Since the new contract has been proposed, the GMC has received huge numbers of requests from junior doctors for certificates to work overseas. When combined with the very real threat of industrial action, it is no wonder that leading figures at the BMA are warning of impending disaster.

Few can argue that we need to see real change in how the NHS operates in order to cope with the huge challenges that it now faces. Some of this responsibility may well fall onto the shoulders of junior doctors. Despite this, the sudden and unfair proposed contract will not help the cause. Not only will it drive junior doctors away from the NHS altogether, but it might just put off prospective medical students and medical students alike from following a medical career. And that would be a disaster. 

Recently, Emmeline Skinner Cassidy published a moving and eye-opening piece detailing her relationship with a Syrian family exiled in Jordan. It was an account that described the generosity and humanity that flourished in a terrible situation. Like her, I agree that we should give a voice to individual suffering and hardship; tragedies comfortably forgotten as anonymous statistics on the 10 o’clock news.

Her account gave me pause for thought. Putting a face to the events behind the headlines is undoubtedly important. This task has been facilitated on an unprecedented scale by social media, allowing otherwise neglected stories to be recorded and disseminated. Intuitively, you might think that this is a good thing. Sadly, the intervention of social media is a development heralding bad as well as good.

Celebrated theorist John Berger once made the provocative comment that Vietnam War photography did not desensitize the public to suffering, rather it duped them. Rather than eliciting meaningful change, these photos forced the spectator to reconcile his/her guilt with the horror of the tragedies before them. Confrontation with arresting imagery therefore shifted the attention of the public from ending the photographed atrocities, to dealing with their guilt. By forcing the public to swallow the horror in these photos made the public complicit in the continuation of this horror.

In relation to social media, such a theory fails to account for the many positive and meaningful changes that the online dissemination of injustice has facilitated. Yet Berger’s fundamental point bears consideration, namely that emotions of guilt, indignation and anger are no substitute for making a real difference to the situation that has provoked such sentiment. In short the stories that move us aren’t about how we feel, but about the situation of those in need.

This distinction is crucial in light of the effect social media has had in defining the relationship between our empathy and those with whom we empathize. A paradigmatic case study is the ‘Humans of New York’ stream. The comments on posts that detail hardship fall into two tellingly distinct types. The first type complains about the more general structural, social or political factors that have created the suffering of the subject. The authors see the tragedy as representative of a problem beyond its incarnation in one human. The other half makes the opposite observation. Their comments lament the particular circumstances of the people or person in need. These are the sorts of posts that demand to know the detailed circumstances of the subject in order to help.

It is easier and seemingly more effective to donate to the plight of one family or person than to change the circumstances that led to their difficulties. This in part explains why the latter reaction is so widespread. But this is not simply a case of shortsighted charity; it can do more harm than good. Having helped the family in whose narrative the donor has invested himself or herself, they can now feel good about themselves. They have purged themselves of their guilt with an emotional pay-off: follow-up pictures of the happy family, reports of how they are now on their feet with jobs and safety. Meanwhile, thousands if not millions continue to suffer conditions similar those of the family that was helped.

The impetus behind campaigns to change the lives of individuals is no doubt well-intentioned, but Berger’s comment seems relevant.  If Vietnam war photos forced the public to reconcile themselves with atrocity, so too does the internet. It purges the guilt of spectators by allowing them to participate in facile short-term solutions that pacify their horror in lieu of creating real, long-lasting solutions. Indeed, the case-by-case solution that social media offers becomes more about making you feel good than about meaningfully helping people. This shortsightedness is not innocent; it ultimately results in a handful of people being generously assisted and the rest often forgotten.

The ineffectuality of distributing charity on a case-by-case basis is in addition perverse in what good it can do. It may reasonably be asked how it is people can still feel good about creating a solution that will ultimately change little. The answer is that we have been taught to understand tragedy precisely through the sort of exception that social media allows. In Hollywood, the dramatization of real life tragedies never tells the story of those who died. United 93 is about the foiled 9/11 hijacking , Captain Phillips is about the captain who was recued from pirates, The Impossible is about the family who survives the Indian Tsunami. Is it not worrying that the way in which social media encourages charity is by telling a tragic narrative, and then allowing you to pay for it to finish like a film? This is not only ineffectual, it is insulting to those in need that they should be helped not as humans deserving of fundamental rights, but as cathartic pay-offs for the delusional sentimentality of the first world.

This further begs a question. How, and by what criteria, does a stream like HONY decide whose story will receive the salvation of online exposure? Indeed, how does the public decide whose story will be shared enough to change someone’s life? It is almost as if the distribution of the first world’s best intentions is a lottery. This is perhaps the most disturbing point, that the people the internet ends up helping are not helped because of their fundamental, intrinsic human right to be saved from the injustices they suffer. Rather, they are helped because of the pity of self-appointed internet crusaders. This is why we should be wary of how social media has changed the process of putting a face to the suffering: the salvation it offers is shortsighted, unjust and frankly humiliating as a response to the problems of the world.

What about those who comment about the wider problems of which tragic stories are a symptom? While their appraisal is perhaps more appropriate, they, too, are guilty of doing nothing to change the situation. They see that a larger solution is necessary, but provide none. They therefore have two problems. The first is that unlike the other group, this first group has no consensus either about the nature of the problem or how it can be tackled. Their second problem is that unlike the solutions to the problems of individuals, resolving these deeper underlying problems requires resources far beyond haphazard kick-starters and Facebook groups.

The shortsightedness of the first group and the impotence of the second are both symptoms of the same situation. Both are apolitical attempts at finding solutions. The appeal to humanity of the first group avoids ideology, while the lack of unity and organization of the second avoids collective action. Collective action and ideology: surely the hallmarks of politics?

If a political solution is needed, then perhaps this explains why there is currently no solution. It will have been noted that for all the mention of authentic change and action, this article has given no suggestion of what that might be. Truthfully, I do not know. From aid to intervention, the action of political entities (by which I mean democratically mandated governments) will have to find a solution. But first, the deadlock that has characterized the politics of recent years will have to be broken. Not for the sake of the guilt-stricken, but for that of the suffering. 

‘In my German words, we have totally screwed up.’ Speaking in New York on Monday to the assembled American press, Michael Horn, Head of Volkswagen America, could only be apologetic for the scale of the scandal that his company had presided over. As of Tuesday, Volkswagen has admitted to selling as many as 11 million diesel vehicles fitted with so-called ‘defeat devices’ designed to mislead US emissions testers. The American Environment Protection Agency (EPA) has found that this technology has been used to hide pollution levels released by certain Volkswagens as much as 40 times the American legal limit. As the British transport secretary, Patrick McLoughlin has called for an EU wide investigation into whether similar technology has been used in Europe to mislead the testers, Volkswagen faces fines of more than $18 billion in the US alone. When the scandal broke on Monday, Volkswagen shares lost as much as 17.1 per cent of their value. Europe’s largest automobile manufacturer faces a possibly fatal crisis and consumer confidence in the motor industry has been severely dented across the world.

Speaking on Tuesday in an emergency press statement, VW’s chief executive, Martin Winterkorn, put it bluntly that ‘manipulation at Volkswagen must never happen again’. Winterkorn reiterated the opinion that ‘the irregularities in diesel engines of our group contradict everything which Volkswagen stands for’. Yet, the fact that such a large manufacturer could integrate premeditated mechanisms for misrepresentation on so massive a scale suggests otherwise. For so large a programme of what Winterkorn describes as ‘manipulation’ to have taken effect, people very high up the command structure must have been complicit. Whatever Volkswagen has told the public it stands for in the past, this scandal has demonstrated a profound disrespect for its customer base deeply ingrained within the company.

When Horn told the American press that the scandal was ‘completely inconsistent with our core values’, he highlighted the gap that had developed between the ‘core values’ the company presented to its public and its shareholders. The rigging of emissions tests for certain diesel engines meant that Volkswagen could continue its narrative of being a producer of clean diesels for a clean future. By designing engines that could at times be economic with the truth about emissions, Volkswagen secured the lucrative position of one of the largest diesel manufacturer in the United States. At the expense of those people who were envisaged to be using and living around their products, Volkswagen secured a profit for its shareholders. The company’s rigging of the emissions tests meant that it could continue to supply a sub-standard engine to the American people. Beyond the ‘core values’ advertised in its showrooms, Volkswagen’s main motivation for this technology was greed. It was a misrepresentation that could save millions of dollars in expense developing less pollutant engines.

The wider problem is that this priority of profit over people, practice over ethos, is not confined to this company alone. Nobody yet knows how far this scandal will extend and how many other car manufacturers may or may not be found to have committed the same crimes. The share price of other European car makers has taken a battering in the last few days and, until further tests have been carried out, the market remains unsure as to whether Volkswagen is an isolated case. Recently, the public has been misled and, at times, cheated in scandals as variant as the 2013 horsemeat fiasco and the fixing of the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR). Customers are beginning to realise that they are no longer making transactions in a market designed to cater for their needs, but rather the markets are selling customers ideas of the truth that are remote from reality. Misrepresentation has, in other words, become a symptom of how we do business in the twenty-first century.

Now that this has all happened, we need to ask ourselves how we should go forward from this. This scandal will, no doubt, rumble on for months, if not years, after this. The reputation of the EU’s biggest car manufacturer has been seriously, if not terminally, damaged, and the whole diesel motor industry has been thrown into ill-repute. As consumers, however, this fiasco should be seen as a chance to call for a re-conception of our relationships with manufacturers. We need to make sure that car manufacturers, like Volkswagen, are never again confident enough to deliberately cheat the public and expect to get away with it. We need to expose the widening gulfs between what companies describe as their ‘core values’ and the realities of their practice. Ultimately, we need to demand basic respect from the people that sell things for their clients: the general public.