A Free Speech Tsar is Born

This week we celebrate the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023, which has now received Royal Assent. This new piece of law, brought in following a considerable amount of lobbying by the FSU, will strengthen the statutory protection available to academics and students exercising their free speech rights at university.  At a more micro level, the FSU’s new Mactaggart Programme is already enabling individual groups to fight back against the multiple flavours of ‘pocket veto’ that are deployed both by protesters and university authorities (such as handing on the bill for event security). Salman Rushdie enters the chat with his damning verdict on modern censorship and we discuss how authoritative voices like his underline the fact that cancel culture is a serious problem.  Finally, we ponder a case with echoes of the FSU’s own PayPal troubles last year. Yet another financial institution, this time Tide bank, appears to have shut down its services to TRIGGERnometry, a free speech platform that invites on speakers from across the political spectrum.