Academy Of Ideas

This is a recording from the Belfast Battle of Ideas, an event that took place in the Crescent Arts Centre in Belfast on the 26 March 2022 in partnership with Imagine! Belfast Festival and the Academy of Ideas. Snowflakes Or Revolutionaries? Free Speech On Campus From decolonising the curriculum to gender-identity codes of conduct, free-speech controversies are a frequent feature of campus life. But while students are often lampooned as ‘over-sensitive’ or ‘snowflakes’, many believe that these students should be viewed as a radical generation of changemakers, whether championing LGBT rights or promoting racial equality. With the UK government’s new Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill aiming to ensure that universities are ‘bastions of free thought and intellectual debate’, some say student concerns are being ignored and their social-justice priorities undermined. How should students view free speech? Is there a risk of creating an ‘anything goes’ campus culture that prolongs the toxic culture wars? Do s