Once again, fear of offending people trumps the free exchange of ideas.

Harry’s Place reports.

Responses to Warwick SU barring Maryam Namazie

If you haven’t yet caught up with this story an excellent summary of Warwick Student Union’s disgraceful decision can be read on Student Rights. Briefly, Namazie had been invited to speak by Warwick’s Atheists Secularists and Humanists society on 28 October, but her invitation has now been blocked by the SU on the grounds that ‘she is highly inflammatory, and could incite hatred on campus’.

Although Warwick University is not a serial offender when it comes to extremist speakers, the SU’s position is clearly inconsistent. As Student Rights points out, Ken O’Keefe was given permission to speak earlier this year:

Even the most cursory online search reveals that O’Keefe is an anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist, who was condemned by a number of student Palestine Societies in 2012 after he claimed that “Israel and Mossad were directly involved in 9/11”.

In response to this criticism, he suggested he was being attacked for standing against “the Jewish supremacism that is of dire consequence to our world” and claimed:

“Israeli Mossad worked with high treason traitors in the US government to set explosives in the twin towers and building 7 on 9/11“.

He has claimed that “for all of its problems, Hamas has done a good job of getting rid of the collaborators” – with this report into the murder of Palestinian civilians by Hamas demonstrating what that means in practice.