2.14 James Oliver: Re-Platforming Speakers

With free speech increasingly under threat on our university campuses, it is encouraging to note the start of a resistance movement amongst the student populations. James Oliver is a Ph.D. student who co-founded a Free Speech Society at the University of Buckingham in 2019 after learning that conservative writer Peter Hitchens had been "no platformed" at the University of Portsmouth by that university's student union. Given Mr. Hitchens' long commitment to free speech and academic freedom, Mr. Oliver thought the time had come to take a stand in defence of universities' age-old position as the pre-eminent forum for exposure to all manner of ideas and opinions. Peter Hitchens was the keynote speaker at their inaugural event.