No to ‘no platform’

Tuesday May 10, 2011

Patrick Hayes says that the National Union of Students is wrong to censor student debate

The reaction to the election of two students with alleged links to ‘Muslim extremists’ as union representatives at a London university reveals the contempt the National Union of Students (NUS) has for the students they claim to speak for.

Instead of encouraging Britain’s brightest young minds to engage in a battle of ideas at university, the NUS sees students as vulnerable, easily manipulated individuals who it needs to protect from ideas it deems ‘inappropriate’.

Student Jamal Achchi, who recently stood for the position of Vice-President at the University of Westminster, declared in his manifesto: “I have been a politically active student throughout the duration of my studies… I am a fighter, and NEVER back down!”

His colleague Tarik Mahri, who ran for president, said he wanted to “create a politically aware atmosphere at university whereby undergraduates and post-graduates are fully engaged in what’s affecting students domestically and internationally”.

Compared to the tepid, bureaucratic, careerist individuals who tend to run for election at universities, Achchi and Mahri stand out. It sounds like they’ve got some balls and may do something to stir up the stagnant waters of student politics. It’s perhaps unsurprising, then, that they were successfully elected by the student body with a considerable margin between themselves and the other candidates.

Their election was however treated with horror by the National Union of Students. According to some bloggers, Mahri and Achchi have apparently had links to the ‘extremist’ Muslim group Hizb ut Tahrir (although, judging from a lot of the claims, saying they had posted links to a few articles about the group on Facebook would be more accurate).

The NUS president Aaron Porter immediately expressed his concern to Westminster University, claiming that the election may go against the NUS’s ‘No Platform’ policies, which prevent certain groups and individuals from speaking on campus should union officials disapprove of what they say:

“Our rules state individuals or members of organisations or groups identified as holding racist or fascist views are not allowed to stand for election or go to, speak at or take part in conferences, meetings or any other events.”

Can anything better sum up Porter’s contempt for his fellow students? Porter has done much to upset the students he represents over the past year, being widely seen to have betrayed the anti-fees movement, to the extent that he has fallen on his sword and is the first NUS president not to stand for a second term in office since 1969.

But this statement takes the biscuit.

What Porter – and the NUS more broadly – is actually saying here is that they think students are too stupid, too vulnerable, too naïve to listen to certain individuals and make up their own minds about what they have to say. The fear, seemingly, is that students are too easily manipulated to be trusted. If they are allowed to hear someone express ‘extremist’ or ‘inappropriate’ views then, rather than challenging these ideas or rejecting them, they may unthinkingly adopt these views themselves.

Furthermore, Porter is implying that he and his colleagues at the NUS know what’s best for students’ minds. They see themselves in a paternal role, filtering out ideas that may harm, offend or infect the poor, inferior beings making up the student body they claim to represent. How could a third year undergraduate student in Philosophy, for example, be trusted to hear a member of Hizb ut Tahrir and respond rationally afterwards? Some ideas are simply too potent – and the NUS couldn’t possibly allow students to engage with them.

The most offensive argument of all, ironically, is that students should be shielded from views lest they be offended by them. As if university should be a safe space where students need to be kept wrapped up in cotton wool, separate from the horrors of the real world.

Surely the contrary is the case. A university should be a place where people are exposed to ideas that offend them, that make them question deep-seated beliefs, so that they test out their own assumptions and become robust and able to grapple with other ideas and perspectives. To hide students away from ideas because – like children in a playground being called names – their feelings may be hurt, is the most patronising aspect of ‘No Platform’.

Beginning with the University of East Anglia in 2007, students are increasingly standing up to the NUS and rejecting ‘No Platform’ policies. They are calling for referendums where – more often than not – these restrictive policies are abolished. Because, on the whole, students don’t like to be told there are certain things that they shouldn’t be allowed to hear because their superiors at the NUS think them to be too dangerous or offensive.

It’s high time that students called for the removal of ‘No Platform’ from the University of Westminster and indeed all other academic institutions that still hold such polices.