by Hugh Fitzgerald
University College London president Dr. Michael Spence, in office for less than two months, has said in a radio interview that he would have no problem with the University hosting a Holocaust denier to speak on campus. The report on his free-speech absolutism is here.
In a radio interview Monday that the school’s “commitment to free speech” would extend to hosting a Holocaust-denying campus speaker, if invited, but that it would make sure Jewish students were “looked after.”
Free speech is nowhere an absolute. Even in the United States, where free speech is enshrined in the Constitution, speech that tends to incite or provoke “imminent lawless violence” – the rule in Brandenburg v. Ohio – can be prohibited. There are now sixteen European countries that have banned Holocaust denial; none of those countries believes it is impinging upon legitimate free speech. Those who publicly insist that the worst crime in human history never took place, know full well that such denial is part of what feeds the contemporary resurgence of antisemitism worldwide. It is a form of hate speech.
And he will make sure Jewish students were “looked after”? What a strange and condescending phrase. How exactly would these hypersensitive Jewish students and staff be “looked after”? Would there be psychologists standing by to counsel those snowflake students and staff, trying to convince them that they shouldn’t be upset that Holocaust deniers are appearing on campus to freely spread their venom? Would they be “protected” from Holocaust-deniers by being warned about the content of their speech, so they could stay away and not be offended?
“Are there people that you wouldn’t want speaking at UCL? How absolute of a free speech person can you be — where’s the line you’d have to draw before you can say, ‘You’re not welcome at UCL?’” asked host Stig Abell on a Times Radio interview.
Michael Spence replied:
“At UCL, we would have anybody to speak who was invited by an academic or by a student, so long as the speech was lawful and there weren’t going to be public order problems that we couldn’t control or whatever. We’re deeply committed to the notion of free speech,” said Spence, UCL President and Provost.
Abell then queried whether that would hypothetically include a speaker engaged in Holocaust denial, which is not illegal in the United Kingdom. “Is there a point there, where the lawful point is one argument but there’s a layer beneath ‘lawful’ which is still potentially problematic?” he asked.
Spence would have anyone speak on campus whose “speech is lawful,” but he fails to note that he has the discretion to ban speech at UCL that may be “lawful” but still is certain to cause great anguish to many people, and to confuse and mislead many others, and to encourage still others in the antisemitic belief that the Holocaust has been invented or deliberately exaggerated by Jews to obtain sympathy for Israel.
“I think if a Holocaust denier were to be invited by an academic to speak at the University, then the University would obviously have a responsibility to make sure that its Jewish and other students and staff were looked after; that that event took place in in an environment in which other views were expressed; and all the rest of it,” Spence replied. “But yeah, our commitment to free speech is `deep.”…
Is Holocaust denial okay as long as “the event took place in an environment in which other views were expressed”? Doesn’t that put on the same level the Holocaust deniers and those who oppose them? Who would be expressing those “other views”? Would they be on the stage with the Holocaust deniers, so as to answer their malignant propositions? Doesn’t this put Holocaust deniers and truth-tellers on the same level? Or does President Spence mean that critical comments from members of the audience should be sufficient to meet the need that “other views [would be] expressed”?
Holocaust denial is not a trivial offense; it takes place in a contemporary context in which antisemitic acts are everywhere on the rise; where many Muslims in particular either deny the Holocaust or minimize it, claiming that Jews instrumentalize the “so-called Holocaust” to win sympathy for the “Zionist” entity. Mahmoud Abbas himself wrote a book in which he claimed that not six million, but at most a few hundred thousand, Jews were killed, and that Zionists benefitted from a collaboration with the Nazis, for the more difficult life became for European Jewry, the more of them would flee to “Palestine.” The Iranian media constantly engage in Holocaust denial, either denying outright that the Nazi murders of Jews occurred, or that the numbers have been greatly exaggerated by the Zionists. And Holocaust deniers, especially those who are Muslims, are also insistent that the “true” Holocaust is that which the “Zionist entity” has inflicted on the “Palestinians.”
Michael Spence seems oblivious to this surge in antisemitism and Holocaust denial. He says he’d have no objection to a Holocaust denier speaking on the UCL campus, failing to realize that such an appearance would lend academic legitimacy to these absurd, cruel, and murderous views. It is not enough to say that he would ensure that “that event took place in in an environment in which other views were expressed,” and all the rest of it.
What a travesty of free speech, what a humiliation to have to “make the argument” for what sensible people know should need no argument. Just imagine a solemn debate at UCL, on the question “Did the Holocaust Really Happen?” Only one side profits from such an absurdity, the side that has conferred upon it a meretricious legitimacy by the UCL administration, when it allows these Holocaust deniers both a literal platform and an audience on the UCL campus, where they work to undermine the stability of truth.
So far sixteen European states have outlawed Holocaust denial. These countries do not regard such legislation as having wrongfully diminished the right of free speech. Unfortunately, the UK is not among them. These countries recognize that Holocaust denial is a form of hate speech, a means for antisemites to trivialize Jewish suffering and to attack Jews — “Zionists” — as profiting from made-up or exaggerated stories about a so-called Holocaust.
The obvious hypothetical presents itself. Would Michael Spence care to comment on whether he would allow speakers on the UCL campus who wish to treat such topics as: “Did Muhammad exist?”; “Does Islam encourage pedophilia?”; “Is Richard Dawkins Right In Denouncing the Misogyny and Homophobia of Islam?”; ”Is Islam Inherently Violent?”; and others of that same critical ilk?
Spence doesn’t have to answer. Let’s not embarrass him. We already know what his answer would be.
First published in Jihad Watch.
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One Response
Well done Michael Spence. This is welcome news from my old college UCL. Trying to control free speech is the first act of the authoritarian. Trying to stop everyone from hearing all sides of an argument is coercive and the act of those who think they have the truth and are determined to make everyone accept what they believe by force if necessary. Free speech is essential to a university which should not be afraid to debate all ideas.