Student apologises for that Mohammed cartoon

The Cambridge Evening News carries a report on the disciplinary action against the students who published that Mohammed cartoon at Clare College.

According to the CEN, a college spokesman said:

Because of the gravity of the situation and the diversity of views expressed about the best way of handling it, the Dean of Students set in train procedures for convening the Court of Discipline.

As events unfolded, however, a collective decision was taken to pursue instead a course of restorative justice and reconciliation.

The general and the guest editor were both formally reprimanded by the Dean of Students, and were also interviewed by the Master.

The guest editor was required to publish an apology, and also to meet any students who asked to see him as well as senior representatives of Cambridge religious communities.

Part of the apology read:

I understand that this edition has caused deep offence and hurt to very many people, both inside and outside Clare, through its derogatory references to individuals and also to various groups, including women, Jews, Christians and Muslims.

Perhaps he should have included Hindus, Mormons and Rastafarians too, just to make sure that he had apologised to anyone else who might decide to be offended.

The CEN also reports that:

The college is now arranging a meeting for next term to discuss the problem of maintaining free speech while avoiding offence. Guidelines for student publications are to be drawn up.

You can't maintain free speech and avoid offence, you idiots. If you start out by trying to avoid offence, you give free rein to all would-be censors. If you publish something they don't like, all they have to do is make a fuss and say it is offensive and you are then forced to withdraw it. People can decide to be offended by just about anything if it suits their purpose.  By avoiding offence you are, by definition, restricting free speech. That Britain's second oldest university is even considering issuing such guidelines is indicative of the slow death of free speech in our country. As Terence Blacker said last month:

If those in academic life are not allowed to think outside certain defined, socially acceptable parameters, then who is?

There is still no word on whether the police intend to prosecute the students but my guess is that, after local Muslim leaders declared themselves satisfied with the apology, the case will be quietly dropped.

Comments

[Lord Nazh]

Hear hear!

It's amazing how the 'tolerant' people don't realize that by caving to censorship, they are promoting the death of freedom.

[pommygranate]

Steve

I've realised why i beg to disagree on this issue.

Had the student written this article in his own magazine then we would all be defending his right to free speech to the hilt (the Cambridge statment is an oxymoron). However he didn't. He used the Cambridge University name.

He essentially wrote an article on their, not his, private property, knowing full well it would provoke an outcry.

I still maintain that he is lucky to be there.

[kingpin]

Pommygranate, the issue was published by the Union of Clare Students, a body independent of Clare College. It says this in it.

I agree Clare College would've been entitled to take measures against the student, had it been liable for what he printed. But it was not.

I agree it's hard to sympathise with someone who writes this kind of "satire". But it's very hard to justify formal disciplinary action - especially since the future rules on "avoiding offence" clearly weren't in place at the time.

[Rastaman]

Well said. Especially the part about not offending us Rastafarians. Anyone who offends Rastafarianism is immediately referred to the Rastafarian Fire Bombing Society for further "educational" action. Be warned. :)

Apparently this University considers itself in charge of students private off-campus lives. If the person in question had gone out and robbed a bank or run naked through the city streets or committed some other social crime, then the school should have the right to expel that person or apply some other restriction in the interests of protecting the other students, and faculty. But to tell someone what they can otherwise legally say, off campus, is totally wrong.

There may be more to this though. Do students there sign an acceptance agreement that they won't engage in conduct detrimental to the image and reputation of the school? Other organizations do this, maybe the school does. In this case, the school wouldn't have to be liable for students behavior to take action.

There's always another layer on the onion.

Rastaman
www.islamanazi.com

[brituncula]

That "I apologise to absolutely everyone" statement was a pretty good counter to the claim that the magazine was racist, though.

[pommygranate]

Kingpin

You are splitting hairs in the extreme. Clareification is Clare College's student magazine. He wrote his article on Clare College property.

[Rastaman]

Where the article was written may well prove to be the single most utterly unimportant non-issue of our time. Nay, even the Century.

Rastaman
www.islamanazi.com

[pommygranate]

Rasta

Then you know nothing of property rights, the single most essential aspect of our society.

What i say on my blog is my business and my right to say. Whether what i say here is censored or not is Steve's right not mine. I do not have the 'right' to freedom of speech on someone else's private property.

[Steve]

Pommy - you have just put forward a great argument for the nationalisation of public space which, as a free-market fetishist, was surely not your intention.

If property rights include the right to restrict free speech on your property (I would dispute that but let's run with it) all the Arab oil barons need to do is buy up our shopping malls and then ban the sale of any book or newspaper that criticises Islam.

Presumably, if a Muslim owned shopping mall in Denmark had forbidden all bookshops and news-stands from selling copies of Jyllands-Posten, that would be OK with you.

As for academic institutions, they operate under government charters and with some government funding. Part of the charter, at least implicitly, is that they are meant to be places where freedom of thought and expression is encouraged, not suppressed. Universities are not shopping malls and free speech is not a commodity.

[Andrew J]

For what it's worth, I agree with posters that Pommygranite's talking tosh. However, when I first read this story some weeks ago I was thinking it was talking of one of those universities that used to be polytechnics, and was rather surpised that it was the Cambridge University. That says a lot. That says that, if I was typical of thinking the real Cambridge University couldn't possibly sink to that dumbed-down depth of utter stupidity, there are a lot more thinking that, too, or something like it. And if that college is typical of the way academe is going on free speech then Gawd 'elp us!

[kingpin]

Pommygranate

It's not splitting hairs to say that a magazine that happens to be distributed in a college is not automatically the property of that college. Student unions are forcefully independent of their namesake institutions - they should be!

There's a separate question of whether enrolled students should have a right to freedom of speech when they are within the walls of their college. I would say categorically Yes. As Steve says, free speech is vital to any university.

[Edward]

The University, however, is legally obliged to maintain and defend free speech on its campus. I'm not convinced that the college would have had very firm footing on which to formally discipline the editor as a result.

That said, if the college funds it (as it appears to from the article) then the college is entitled to exercise editorial control over what goes in. I would hope that the editorial board of the magazine would tell the college to bog off, however, and carry on without its funding.

In the past the University, to its great credit, has worked very hard to help preserve free speech. This from the proctors' report a few years back:

"In April, a visit by Jean-Marie Le Pen to the Cambridge Union Society attracted a large counter-demonstration. To preserve freedom of speech and ensure compliance with the University's Code issued under Section 43 of the Education (No 2) Act, 1986, the Junior Proctor, the two Pro-Proctors, and eleven University Constables attended the event. Anti-Le Pen protestors invaded the Union site by force of numbers and made repeated efforts to enter the Union building itself. In addition to their own Constables, the Proctors required the support of a large contingent of Cambridgeshire Police Officers under the command of Superintendent John Raine to ensure that the debate was able to proceed. When the principal speaker departed, violent scuffles in Bridge Street resulted in several arrests and vehicles parked in the Union Society's car park were damaged. The event re-enforced the need for all members of the University to be aware of their disciplinary obligations in relation to demonstrations and in particular of the need to give adequate notice of speaker-meetings and protests to the Senior Proctor."
http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/reporter/2003-04/weekly/5962/9.html

[poimandres]

So what red-blooded, free thinker, is going to write the next guest article in that censored septic publication?
No-one.
Censoring works!
A pox on these dhimmi cretins.
Round twenty-seven to the barking islamics.

[pommygranate]

Steve

all the Arab oil barons need to do is buy up our shopping malls and then ban the sale of any book or newspaper that criticises Islam.

That's correct. Take the reverse example. Carrefour in Dubai stopped selling Danish products in protest at the cartoons published in the JP. That is their right. A private company can sell whatever it chooses to sell.

If you don't like their policies, you are free to do your shopping elsewhere. That's how a democracy and a free market works.

Imagine the govt passed a law mandating every grocer had to sell Danish products as a 'demonstration of our commitment to free speech'.

It would be an intolerable intrusion into the private property of the grocer.

[Rastaman]

Awww Christ Pommy. It's just like I said before. You're so deep into your own precious ego that your denials are spontaneous. You don't even think before you type. Admitting error is completely unthinkable to you and having the truth put plainly before you, you will still argue your vapid points to the bitter end. Take a break.

Or is this another "joke"?

Rastaman the Disgusted
www.islamanazi.com

[kingpin]

I think Steve's point was that what goes in a private shopping mall should not go for an illustrious institution of the state.

[Steve]

Kingpin - yes that was pretty much it. But also that freedom is not just a commodity and property rights are not absolute.

Property rights do not trump people's rights to free speech. If you think through the implications of allowing property owners to impose restrictions on free speech (which seems to be what Pommy is suggesting) the implications are horrendous.

Tenants, both council and private, could be prevented from using their houses as bases for election campaigns. Privately owned town centres would be out of bounds for any form of political expression.

Property rights have always been limited by public obligations. In the case of a university, to get back to the original argument, one of those obligations is to allow freedom of thought. The idea that university authorities can censor inconvenient ideas just because they own the buildings is abhorrent.

[Rastaman]

"The idea that university authorities can censor inconvenient ideas just because they own the buildings is abhorrent."

Exactly.

Rastaman
www.islamanazi.com

[pommygranate]

Steve

Property rights do not trump people's rights to free speech

Interesting topic for debate!

[pommygranate]

Oliver Kamm makes the same point i have been (unsuccessfuly) trying to make.

[Rastaman]

Pommy, no. It's not debatable. There is a distinction between Private and Public property. You can be expelled from private property for any reason by the owner.

You can say what you like in public places as long as you don't incite violence or otherwise violate the rights of others. Freedom of speech doesn't allow for screaming "FIRE" in crowded theaters.

Homes are private property. Hotels, theaters, markets, schools are all public places whether privately owned or not. You can be thrown out of a theater for talking loudly during the movie but that's because you'd be violating the rights of other patrons.

It's all common sense. Common sense is not debatable.

Steve is absolutely correct. You are not. If you still want to persue this, maybe you should take it up with someone else. This is a bore.

Rastaman
www.islamanazi.com

[Steve]

Pommy - as you say, the issue of property rights v free speech, or freedom generally for that matter, is an interesting on and something I have been meaning to write about for a while.

To do it justice would require quite a long post and I don't have time to write it at the moment.

[Rastaman]

You have a kind heart, Steve.

Rastaman

[Steve]

Not that kind, Rasta. You should ask my family and friends!

I do think this is an important issue and i will return to it when I have time.

[Marcin Tustin]

Reading the description of a student being reprimanded by the college hierarchy for publishing something - whether legal or not - made my blood boil. Who do these people think they are, and why do they feel they have to try to propagate the ideology of the state? Truly, civil society is dead in Britain. If the Labour party do not emulate Putin in ending democracy in this country, it will only be out of honour, idealism, or timidity, not lack of opportunity.