Free-speech campaigner tells LBC about 'stifling culture of restricted debate on campus'
1 February 2021, 20:46
Free speech is still a big issue campaigner tells LBC
A free-speech campaigner has told LBC people are "fundamentally fed up of the stifling culture of restricted debate on campus."
Inaya Folarin Iman the founder of Free Speech Champions spoke to LBC's Iain Dale about the project.
With the subject of debates being cancelled and a risk to free speech Inaya told Iain the movement was started by people "fundamentally fed up of the stifling culture of restricted debate on campus."
She told LBC university was "supposed to be the very spaces we are exposed to a wide range of ideas," but increasingly that has been restricted.
She said that some educational institutions were not a climate for open enquiry.
The Daily Mail reported that the group aims to address a free-speech crisis on campuses and encourage the young to embrace wide-ranging opinions without the fear of saying the 'wrong' thing.
When Iain asked about the idea of "woke culture" and questioned if it might not just be another way of saying political correctness, Inaya cited several examples.
She said many times mainstream figures had been "no-platformed" by universities, citing Amber Rudd as one example.
Free speech champion explains why she set up campaign
She told LBC that people could sign up to become a 'Free Speech Champion' if they wished to join a "network" of free speech champions.
Explaining to Iain when she was in university at 2019 she attempted to set up a debate on free speech, but this was hampered by "institutional pressure."
