Speaking out

The education secretary calls for a “crack down” on campus antisemitism

“Freedom of speech has its limits,” education secretary Gillian Keegan announced yesterday in an article on universities for Conservative Home. This is pretty much what experts have been trying to tell the government since ministers started off down the road of the absolutist requirements of the Freedom of Speech (Higher Education) Bill.

The government was warned, repeatedly, that the inalienable right to free speech had to be balanced against duties to protect minority groups and to avoid undue offence. Ministers were told time and time again that additional laws governing free speech in universities would only make a complicated situation more difficult because the real world is not an Oxbridge debating chamber.