Letter to The Times

Free speech tsar warns: Democracy is at stake

Emma Yeomans writes: ‘Democracy is at stake if universities do not protect freedom of expression, the government’s new free speech tsar says. Arif Ahmed, a professor of philosophy at Cambridge, has been appointed director for freedom of speech and academic freedom at the Office for Students, the higher education regulator.’

Arif Ahmed says: ‘We settle disputes by discussion, not censorship or violence. Today that idea is fading across our institutions. Universities must defend it by precept and example. Democracy itself is at stake.’

Arif Ahmed must turn his eyes to philosophers. Since my arrival at Oxford in 1980 I addressed philosophers with a request ‘Let us discuss Plato’. In vain.

From time to time, I emphasised my request with a protest at Balliol. Why at Balliol? In April 1980 Dr Kenny, the Master of Balliol, came to my unofficial philosophy seminar to give a talk on Aristotle’s Ethics. The Czech police interrupted the seminar before it properly started. ‘Anthony Kenny and his American-born wife had been the first to be driven to Bartolomějská [the Police Headquarters], were held until three in the morning and interrogated in separate rooms … The Kennys were delivered to the border-crossing with West Germany, and carrying their luggage, walked through the woods of Rozvadov in the frosty dawn of an April morning’ says Barbara Day in The Velvet Philosophers.

Subsequently, the Police intervened every time I intended to reopen my seminar.

Unable to reopen my seminar, I accepted the invitation to Balliol, which I was sent in 1979, but could not follow as long as my seminar was running. I had to give priority to my students, who were deprived of higher education simply because of the involvement of their parents in Prague Spring 1968, (an attempt ‘to give Socialism a Human Face’, as our attempt to combine socialism with basic human rights was then called).

I came to Oxford in late summer 1980. and wanted to reopen the discussion interrupted in Prague. To my surprise, all my requests for an open discussion on Plato were rejected. And so, from time to time, I emphasised my requests with ‘Protests at Balliol.’ In fact, not long ago I contemplated another protest at Balliol – for which see ‘One more protest at Balliol’ on my Blog (May 8, 2023)’: https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/194300280536685468/4123069851560566558

In the following two posts (‘Why now?’, May 10, and ‘To the Editors of Cherwell Magazine’, May 20) I consider my reasons for one more protest at Balliol, but on May 31 I put on my blog ‘No more protests at Balliol’, from which I quote the introductory lines:

‘It took me quite a time – forty-three years and thirty-six days, if I count it from Aril 12 1980, i.e. from the visit of Dr Kenny, the Master of Balliol, in my seminar - to realise, that when I addressed Oxford Dons with my 'Let us discuss Plato', I was asking an impossibility. What has helped me to see the light? A sombre re-evaluation of all my life spent with the Greeks, and Plato in particular, seen against the background of my relationship with Oxford. I just needed a nudge.’

 

Nothing would please me more than if Arif Ahmed found me wrong in my belief that philosophers at Cambridge and Oxford cannot discuss Plato with me.