Even in Stalin’s Russia, the rush to judgment was less ruthless and immediate than in today’s British universities, writes Prof Frank Furedi for the Mail. He continues:
In the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe under Communism, there was at least some kind of procedure, a show trial process to be followed, before sentence was pronounced.
Those under suspicion could hope for the benefit of a little doubt when their lives were on the brink of ruination.
No such benefit exists in our own academic culture now. For undergraduates in Woke Britain, to be accused is to be instantly guilty. And to be guilty means social oblivion, ostracism… cancellation.
The tragic and needless death of 20-year-old Alexander Rogers this year is bitter proof of this. Alexander was a third-year undergraduate at Corpus Christi College at Oxford, studying materials science at one of the world’s most prestigious institutions.
An inquest last week heard he died by suicide in January from a traumatic head injury after he threw himself from a bridge into the Thames. Students reported that he had been distraught the previous day following an allegation by a young woman.
This accusation was simply that the woman felt ‘discomfort’ over a sexual encounter. Whether this ‘discomfort’ was regret and embarrassment, or something else, the inquest wasn’t told. There was no suggestion of any misdemeanour.
Yet Alexander’s peers took it upon themselves to act as his judge and jury. They told him he had ‘messed up’ and that they needed to dissociate themselves from him. The following day he killed himself.
The coroner, Nicholas Graham, found that the college was dogged by ‘a form of cancel culture, involving the exclusion of students from social circles based on allegations of misconduct, often without due process or a fair hearing’.
Though these persecutions are couched in the jargon of ‘kindness’ and ‘social justice’, there is nothing kind or just about them, and the young people brandishing their moral pitchforks have no idea of the toxic consequences of their behaviour.
In most cases, thankfully, those consequences are not fatal. But as an academic, I frequently hear stories that shock me, even though I grew up on the Communist side of the post-war Iron Curtain.
One young woman, for instance, who attended an Oxbridge party was accused of ‘cultural appropriation’ for wearing a Japanese kimono. Her punishment was to be shunned by everyone she knew for weeks.
The same fate was suffered by a student who brought back a Tibetan prayer mat from gap-year travels in the Himalayas. This souvenir was proudly displayed on a wall in the halls of residence, until another student condemned it as ‘imperialist appropriation’. Result: Cancellation for its owner.
Some of the offences that lead to cancellation are so petty they’d be laughable, if it weren’t for the fact that the punishment is anything but comical. A student found himself frozen out by his peers after trying to organise a barbecue on a Meat-Free Monday. Another, who identified as a witch, attempted to have her whole college cancelled for hosting a party on the summer solstice: This, she said, was a gross offence to her pagan religion.
Others are simply nightmarish. One young man entered into a ‘situationship’ – Generation Z’s term for a no-strings-attached sexual relationship. When it ended, he was accused of ’emotional manipulation’ by the woman and universally shunned without hope of appeal.
After a year away from Oxbridge, studying in Europe, he returned to find the charges had been completely forgotten. The students had moved on to other dramas.
This is typical of a phenomenon that sociologists call ‘virtue hoarding’. It’s not enough to flaunt your political correctness once or twice: Virtue has to be signalled constantly. That means a succession of fresh victims for cancellation.
Not so long ago, one signifier of virtue was to be a staunch and loyal friend no matter what. There was a nobility in maintaining friendship with a member of your social circle who was facing the condemnation of the world, even when they were found guilty. To back away was seen as shallow, even cowardly.
The opposite is now true. Never in our lifetimes has conformism been so institutionalised. It has become a kind of religion.
This attitude begins in schools and is intensified during university. But because college years are the time when most young people are introduced to the twin perils of sex and drinking, some will inevitably fall foul of the conformist edicts.
To reverse this is very difficult. We need a return to the values of free thought and individual rights, but this will not happen without a major cultural shift. One step in the right direction would be for schools to teach children the importance of taking freedom seriously, and for the curriculum to emphasise the need for tolerance.
But while social media preaches the opposite, that every accusation is a guilty verdict, we will continue to see tragic consequences.
Worth reading in full.
