Universities: freedom of speech and other issues

  Dr Owen Holland (OU) and the Cambridge English
        Faculty
    Dr Priyamvada Gopal's Rules of Etiquette
    Dr Lorna Finlayson, Philosopher Queen
     Dr Ian Patterson (CU) and 'unparalleled outrage' '
    Dr Jason Scott-Warren (CU) and 'Out! Out! Out!'
     Dr Andrew Zurcher (CU), selective  libertarian

This is the newest page on the site. It will be revised and extended. It includes material which has been moved to this page from my page Israel, Islamism, Palestinian ideology - all the people criticized below have anti-Israel pro-Palestinian views and support boycotts of Israel but their views on free speech are the focus of attention here.

Dr Owen Holland, the Cambridge English Faculty and Freedom of Speech at Cambridge

The material here is wide-ranging. It includes, for instance, critical material on the English Faculty of Cambridge University and attacks on freedom of speech at Cambridge University.

This section is followed by a section, Dr Priyamvada Gopal's Rules of Etiquette which includes material on free speech and sections on the views of other Cambridge academics.  Dr Gopal is a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge and a member of the English Faculty. Amongst other things, I discuss Dr Gopal's view of  the proper treatment of foreign dignatories, in particular the then President of Iran, and her view of the proper treatment  of David Willetts, at the time a Minister of the British Goverment. This wouldn't be a travesty of her views:

The President of Iran (who presided over stonings to death for adultery, executions for same-sex activity, executions for many other things, as well as punishments which are milder, at least by Iranian standards, including countless lashings): treat with due deference.

The Minister of a democracy: stop him speaking, shout him down.

My page on feminism includes a profile of another Cambridge academic, Dr Lorna Finlayson (she's sinced moved to Essex University.) The profile includes this

'On free speech, she has written,

' 'Not that people don’t in general talk enough about freedom of speech – it would be better if they talked about it a bit less.  But if people are going to talk about it, they may as well do it properly ... this is one very valuable outcome of forcing David Willetts off the platform: ' ... an act of destroying certain possibilities' [(the possibility of the government minister David Willetts speaking and the possibility that people who came to attend a talk given by David Willetts could actually listen to a talk by David Willetts]  'is always at the same time an act of creating further ones. One valuable thing that came out of the whole episode, to my mind, was that the idea of ‘freedom of speech’ got hauled out of its hiding place ... '

...

'After the disruption of David Willetts' speech, there were now new opportunities, not so much for 'uninformed' people to discuss free speech, but opportunities to listen to people who do it 'properly,' such as Dr Finlayson. If radical Islamists prevent a talk by a non-believer from taking place then this too is creating new possibilities. If 'advanced transgender advocates' prevent a talk by someone they see as less advanced from taking place, such as a feminist whose view of transgender people isn't the same as theirs, if they force feminists 'off the platform,' then this too would be viewed as creating new possibilities, although it's obviously not creating new possibilities for the person who is prevented from speaking.

...

'Dr Finlayson, philosopher, writes that 'in the immediate aftermath of the Willetts action, there was plenty of predictable, well-rehearsed, lazy, ‘free speech’- themed noise-making.'

'In the the immediate aftermath of the Willetts action, there were plenty of predictable, well-rehearsed, lazy,  noise-making attempted justifications of shouting down a minister of a democracy, such as 'LF on free speech.'

'She says of the invitation to David Willetts to speak, 'we regarded the event itself as an improper procedure.' She declares that it's improper so it must be improper. The dogmatic assumption, the unquestioned assumption of absolute rightness is completely obvious.  In 2013 she contributed to an event in Cambridge on various aspects of free speech. Her talk had the title, 'Free Speech as Liberal Fiction.' '

For the time being, Owen Holland teaches and researches in English Literature at Jesus College Oxford, after  studies at Cambridge. He's best known for leading the protest at Cambridge which shouted down the politician David Willetts.

This section includes material on

(1) Owen Holland, the postgraduate student and arbiter, who decided that his views were so important that he had a duty to  protect Cambridge and the wider world from views not nearly so important as his own, such as the views of David Willetts, Minister of a democracy, who had been invited to speak at Cambridge but wasn't allowed to speak -  Owen Holland and his supporters had decided this should be so.

(2) Owen Holland the 'poet' whose grotesque and rambling 'poem' wasn't received with a stern Cambridge warning against incompetent and slovenly use of language. An exception is Dr Andrew Zurcher of Queens College, who supported the protest, with slight reservations. In the case of the text itself, his reservations weren't slight. He wrote

'The CDE protest text [the one declaimed by Owen Holland] was a shambles.'  It's to his credit that he calls it a 'text' and not a poem.' This member of the Cambridge English Faculty seems to have overlooked the fact that it was a Cambridge graduate in English Literature, Owen Holland' who was obviously oblivious of the multiple flaws of the text. Its hideous flaws suggest that it's possible to graduate in English literature from Cambridge University with a very striking insensitivity to words, a way with words which is so poor that it raises some troubling questions about the Faculty. Its hideous flaws suggest that it's possible to teach literature in the Faculty of English - to give just one example, Dr Gopal - without recognizing the hideous flaws. Even so, I've no general, far-reaching criticisms to make here of the Faculty or the University.

The extracts  from the 'protest text' and my comments on the 'protest text' will make it completely clear that I agree. It was a shambles. Below, I refer to it as a 'poem,' a text with no serious claims to be considered as poetry. I also refer to it as a 'pose-'poem.' '

Owen Holland studied  at St Catherine's College, Cambridge. He has a Cambridge MA degree in English and a Cambridge PhD, as well as an MA in Critical Theory from Sussex University. Of course, possession of a Cambridge degree in English Literature can't possibly guarantee that the graduate writes poetry which is better than mediocre, but it should guarantee that the graduate avoids elementary mistakes in the use of language.  Obviously, standards at Cambridge aren't  stratospherically high in every respect. A possessor of a Cambridge first degree in English can still produce a text - or a 'poem' - that is 'a shambles.'  An academic at Cambridge University, Dr Gopal for instance, can fail to see any problems with 'the poem.'

'Cambridge excellence' still survives, still flourishes, at the Cavendish laboratory, the engineering laboratories and many other places, including the Faculty of English but Cambridge excellence  coexists with Cambridge stupidity. Cambridge University is associated with immense scientific achievement, including the achievement of Newton. Cambridge University is also the place where Sandra Harding is a Visiting Professor - at the Centre for Gender Studies - for the Academic Year 2017 - 2018.

 https://www.gender.cam.ac.uk/academicvisitors/vpfolder/visiting-professor-academic-year-2017-18

Sandra Harding's 'The Science Question in Feminism' is the book that contains the deranged claim that Newton's Principia Mathematica is a 'rape manual' because, she alleges, 'science is a male rape of female nature.'  According to this view, then, the science laboratories at Cambridge are full of 'rapists' busy 'raping' 'female nature.'

It would be an exaggeration to claim that there's something rotten in the state of the English Faculty at Cambridge, but, even if 'parts of it are excellent,' even if the strengths of the Faculty outweigh the faults, or, it may be, far outweigh the faults, some flaws seem  substantial,  impossible to ignore.   (I write about 'outweighing' and the importance of the concept, as I see it, on my page Ethics: theory and practice.)

(3) Owen Holland as demonizer of Israel, Owen Holland the specialist - the specialist misuser of words, such as the word 'apartheid,' the specialist so absorbed in his condemnation of Israel that he seems to have omitted to carry out a responsible survey of the intractable problems of the Middle East and other issues relevant to his condemnation, such as apartheid in South Africa, and there are many of them. Like many another Oxford and Cambridge academic, and many another academic at many other universities, he seems someone with a degree of rigour, or the appearance of rigour, or spurious rigour in his own field (which includes study of William Morris) and a dilettante when he comments on matters outside his field. Academics who have made a deep study of matters such as the complex histories of Middle Eastern countries, military tactics and strategy, the ethical problems raised by military action, and many other fields with a vast and complex literature, don't in general comment on William Morris. If they did, they should make strenuous efforts to know enough about William Morris to comment on him.  People with an interest in specialisms far removed from  harsh and unforgiving fields like military action often see no reason why they shouldn't lay down the law, unequipped, unprepared, inadequate, vulnerable.

I think the university's duty of care to students is an  important consideration in the protest led by Owen Holland at Cambridge. The last section in this column, after the profiles of Cambridge academics, Manchester University: boycotting, BDS and 'apartheid' discusses the issue of duty of care to students. It begins with the physical dangers of some forms of protest, not applicable to this protest at Cambridge, unlike some other, non-physical dangers. I criticize academics who encourage students to take these unnecessary risks, from a position of safety. After the opening material on risk I return to the subject later at various places. I give links to other material on the site on risk and the management of risk. This is wide ranging. It includes extreme risks as well as mundane risks. It includes material on rock-climbing and mountaineering amongst other things. It includes material on the kind of risks which Owen Holland faced, perhaps without realizing it at the time. He probably didn't give nearly enough thought to some possible consequences.

Dr Jason Scott-Warren, fellow of Gonville and Caius College (who should have given thought to some possible consequences for students who took part in the protest, above all some possible consequences for Owen Holland):

'It wasn’t only students who were involved in this ‘protest'; several academics were involved too. I was one of them. I was told in advance ... about what was planned, and when it started I joined in with the chant that drowned Willetts out.'

The YouTube video which records the protest:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aco0zOFN8sA

'The chant that drowned Willetts out' begins at 11.45 in the video. Who were the other academics who were involved in the protest? Did none of them realize that this was a protest that had got out of hand? The should have realized that long before 'the chant that drowned out Willetts' which began at 11.45. They should have realized that there were likely to be repercussions for Owen Holland and risks for Cambridge's reputation. This was a deranged protest.

A viewing of the full video is likely to be a tedious experience but should be attempted if at all possible for a full appreciation of the deranged protest and the part played by Owen Holland - and not in a subsidiary role. He was the most prominent protester by far and it made perfect sense to impose sanctions on him. The evidence was clear-cut.  It would have been impossible to identify and unjust to impose sanctions on everyone involved. But identifying some at least of the other academics who were involved was feasible, surely.  Dr Jason Scott-Warren admitted that he took part. Sanctions on him and any other academics who can be proved to have taken part would have been justified, I think.  I don't discuss here the price that Owen Holland paid for his mock-heroic protest. I'll simply state that I think the original sanction, suspension from the University for seven terms, was much too harsh, but it was essential to deter future disruption of this kind.

This is a very short account of the protest, 

http://www.cbc.ca/newsblogs/yourcommunity/2012/03/poetic-justice-sought-for-suspended-cambridge-student.html

'Holland, an English literature student, stood up and shouted out the lines, which were amplified by several other protesters in a human megaphone style.' The extracts from the so-called  poem below are transcribed from the video, except for the opening lines. I haven't been able to find a text version of the rest.

'The Best of Private Eye 1974' has a hilarious piece 'The Unpublishable Diaries of Evelyn Baugh.' It includes Baugh at Oxford - not, in isolation, particularly hilarious:

'He was enchanted by the wit, the elegance, the insouciant sophistication of post-war Oxford. It was the time of the famous 'aesthetes', including the legendary Hon. Sid Beloff, who kept a peacock in his rooms at Christchurch, and once astonished a group of passing rowing men by chanting at them through a megaphone Verlaine's poem "Bonjour matelots".

I don't attempt humour or sarcasm here, but my page Poems has a section Humour and sarcasm.

I don't think that the not-quiet-so-legendary Owen Holland ever kept a peacock in his room at St Catherine's, but his protest at Cambridge was just as ridiculous as the action of the legendary Sid Beloff.

The protest was ridiculous but no laughing matter. His language was stale and stilted. He called a letter an 'epistle,' if he had made a joke - very unlikely - he might well have called it a 'jest.'

I've not been able to find a 'definitive' version of this minipiece or rather micropiece - opposites of a masterpiece, to varying degrees. The extracts below are transcribed from the video. In a few places the sound is unclear to some extent. In written form, the badness of the lines is even more striking, Owen Holland's limitations even more evident: a  severe disadvantage, I would have thought, in a Cambridge-educated man  who now has the job of teaching students of English literature at Jesus College, Oxford.

This is the opening of the long pose-'poem' shouted out by Owen Holland.

The future does not belong to you.
This is an epistle
which is addressed to you.
But it is written
for those who will come after us.
Why?
Because we do not respect your right
to occupy the platform.

The 'poem' has yet to reach full stupidity, but already, there's more than the promise of stupidity in abundance.

Consider 'it is written / for those who will come after us.' The 'poet' is actually claiming to have written a 'poem' which has lasting significance, or should have lasting significance! He's writing for generations still to come - or one generation at least.

This grandiose claim can be compared with claims to lasting significance based on the writer's justified pride in work well done, such as Thucydides' claim that his history of the Peloponnesian War is 'a possession for all time'  (κτῆμά τε ἐς αἰεὶ) in section 1:22  The Roman poet Horace (Q. Horatius Flaccus claimed 'I have raised a monument more permanent than bronze' (Exegi monumentum aere perennius), Carmina III, 30. And, of course, the poetry has lasted to this day.

Owen Holland addresses the minister:

... you come with a knife
concealed beneath your cloak

...

We have already seen
the fixed gaze of the hired assassin.

This inflated rubbish is Owen Holland as drama queen rather than Owen Holland as responsible critic. It has to be admitted that this is rubbish perpetrated by someone with the benefit of a Cambridge University English degree - people not so fortunate, humble builders, for example, are very unlikely to have the knowledge needed to perpetrate this particular form of stupidity. Even so, builders, have their own expertise and skills, setting an example for Owen Holland which he can't match in the field of poetic composition. Here, he's a jerry builder with words, a beginner and a bungler and a bodger. This is emphatically not' 'a possession for all time.'

The poet-poseur, or 'poet'-poseur quickly explains why he detests David Willetts so much, or some of the reasons, and why David Willetts shouldn't be allowed to speak, according to this particular arbiter:

You have professed your commitment
to the religion of choice
but you leave us with no choice.

The protestors had no choice - can he be serious? They had the choice of standing outside the venue before David Willetts was due to speak, handing out leaflets to people who had decided to attend the event. There was no compulsion to wreck the event, to strengthen the growing Cambridge reputation for intolerance.

Another objection, which would only be decisive to people like Owen Holland:

You are a man
who believes in the market
[rather than state control of the market]
and in the power of competition [and not state control]
to drive up quality.
But look to the world around you.
Your gods have failed.

He's probably unaware of the book 'The God that failed: six studies in communism' which includes pieces by Arthur Koestler, Andre Gide, Stephen Spender and others. Whatever gods failed in the case of  David Willetts, allegedly, they're not to be equated with the vengeful God of communism.

A  Wikipedia page 'The highest death tolls that have been documented in communist states occurred in the Soviet Union  under Joseph Stalin,  in the People's Republic of China  under Mao Zedong, and in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. The estimates of the number of non-combatants killed by these three regimes alone range from a low of 21 million to a high of 70 million.'

There follows, after more forgettable verbiage, a laboured comparison which has only one advantage: it injects just a little laboured but unintended humour into the diatribe. Dr Gopal is just one of the Cambridge academics who seem not to have realized that this isn't poetry:

So we are climbing into the driving seat
because your steering is uncomfortable to us
and your destination
is not of our choosing.

...

So let us begin
by activating the emergency brake.

This i quickly followed by a blatant contradiction. After insisting that 'we are climbing into the driving seat' he now insists

We have no desire
to be put into the driving seat.
There are chairs enough in our libraries.

He seems to overlook the obvious point that chairs have different functions. A chair in a library can provide support but can't perform the functions of a car seat. More on libraries:

Would that there were more libraries,
because these are the only seats of learning
that we would wish to know.

Other 'seats of learning' are ignored. Professorial chairs are ignored. Laboratories and lecture theatres are ignored. It seems that he never bothered to revise these lines, but I can find no evidence that he revised any of the lines in the 'poem.'

Libraries do give rise to some obvious difficulties for Owen Holland. This is a view of the library of Jesus College, or some of it:

The Bodleian Library is much larger, of course - the second largest in the country, and a National deposit library, entitled to request one copy of every book published in the United Kingdom within a year of publication. Owen Holland's views of the spoken word are clear enough - if he disagrees  sufficiently strongly and is able to put a stop to it, then he does put a stop to it, at least he did in this case.   What is his view of the written word, such as the books in libraries? A library such as the Bodleian is very comprehensive. It contains books which give the arguments for and the arguments against, for example the arguments for a particular policy in higher education and the arguments against. Does Owen Holland question this? Would he throw out books which promote conservative policy in higher education, for instance? I take it that he and his supporters wouldn't engage in anything as crude as book burning? The  plaque which marks the place where Nazis burned books in Frankfurt is a harrowing record of the event.

From my page on bullfighting:

I've never at any time attempted to suppress pro-bullfighting views, Anti-bullfighting activists who do try to suppress pro-bullfighting views are very much mistaken - not mistaken about bullfighting,  but very much mistaken in opposing the free flow of ideas.

All attempts to suppress pro-bullfighting books or other printed materials, to suppress pro-bullfighting films or internet materials, to suppress pro-bullfighting talks and lectures, are deeply misguided. In 'the marketplace of ideas,' I regard anti-bullfighting arguments as decisively, overwhelmingly superior to pro-bullfighting arguments. The anti-bullfighting case needs no censorship of pro-bullfighting views.

The principle that there should be a free flow of ideas, information and evidence is a principle under attack. It's essential to defend it. I know of one organization which called upon a bookseller to remove a pro-bullfighting book from sale and was successful. This was a bad mistake on the part of the organization and the bookseller. There are many threats to freedom of expression, threats which may be veiled or violent.  They come from believers in  political correctness, Islamists and others. A bookshop or library should be under no pressure to deny shelf-space to books which criticize political correctness, Islam and bullfighting and books which support political correctness, Islam and bullfighting, and similarly for other issues. Before I could read Alexander Fiske-Harrison's Into the Arena it was necessary for me to buy a copy or borrow a copy from a library. I bought a copy. The idea that I should be expected to criticize Alexander Fiske-Harrison's defence of bullfighting on the basis of a few things I'd heard, without having read the book, is repugnant.

It's overwhelmingly likely that Cambridge University Library will continue to be a very comprehensive repository of print materials which aren't censored but publishing can't possibly be as comprehensive as librarianship. Even so, some of the output of the magnificent and shockingly bad Cambridge University Press goes well beyond mediocrity, some of its biases are blatant: I think that the term 'political correctness' is in need of replacement, but whatever replaces it, Cambridge University Press is likely to treat the questioning of political correctness as 'not suitable' for its list. . It will continue to publish philosophers' debates on the reality of the external world, on solipsism, and of course other epistemological topics, but it isn't very likely to publish academic doubts on this particular reality. Columbia University Press has published a very good book edited by Daphne Patai and Will H. Corral, 'Theory's Empire: An Anthology of Dissent.'

The site examines in detail one of its less successful attempts, The Cambridge Companion to Seamus Heaney. See, for example, Fran Brearton: Bowdlerizing and Breartonizing and Guinn Batten and the drowned sheep. For a discussion of academic over-loading, there's the section Allusions: The Greek Donkey.

The range of human sufferings, the range of human cruelties, the range of human imperfections are ignored in Owen Holland's monomaniac pursuit of David Willetts. Contrary to what Owen Holland may believe, David Willetts isn't one of the worst men who has ever lived and the views of David Willetts on such matters as higher education, choice and the economy aren't amongst the most shocking views ever to have been put forward. If the benefits of a Cambridge education don't include an understanding of such elementary points as these then so much the worse for a Cambridge education, at least in the Faculty of English.

The next line is one of the worst in the entire diatribe. I've used capital letters for emphasis.

WE DO NOT WISH TO RAPE OUR TEACHERS.

If Dr Gopal considers this line a poetic line, then I have to disagree.

On the misuse of the word 'rape,' compare and contrast Sandra Harding, a Visiting Professor at Cambridge University, who claimed that Newton's 'Principia Mathematica' is a rape manual, because 'science is male rape of female nature.' On the face of it, this would seem to be an implicit claim that the students and academics at the Cavendish Laboratories and other laboratories at the university are involved in rape. More about Sandra Harding on my page on feminism, which also includes a profile of Professor Rae Langton, a philosopher associated with another outlandish claim.

The past of Cambridge University, like the present, is illustrious as well as embarrassingly bad. In science, there's the towering scientific and mathematical achievement of Newton, as well as the not nearly so impressive achievement of Richard Watson. Michael Grant, who was a fellow of Trinity College for a time, writes in his book 'Cambridge:' 'Richard Watson, on appointment to the Chair of Chemistry (1764) declared he had never read a syllable on the subject, or seen a single chemical experiment ...'

Tony Pinkney of Lancaster University wrote,

'Clearly Owen’s spirited protest ... comes from his Morrisian values, and Cambridge’s brutal reprisal against him is by the same token an attack on academic work on Morris and utopia.'

This is laughable, or would be laughable if it wasn't so depressing - moronic protest construed as spirited protest, Morrisian values given an importance which is grossly exaggerrated. Did Morrisian values underlie the tedious and inept lines of this interminable poem, or the line 'We do not wish to rape our teachers?' This is yet another academic who would react very very badly, I think, if one day students at one of his lectures started shouting, 'Pinkney! Pinkney! Pinkney! Out! Out! Out!' Whether 'Morrisian values' inspired their protest or not.

Owen Holland makes a rousing call to arms, not by any stretch of the imagination by poetic means, although there are propagandist Soviet 'poets' who have written lines  just as bad as these:

... we will stand with our teachers
on their picket lines.

More pose-'poetry' follows, not routine at all, much worse than routine. He refers to

Your methodistic framework of excellence
your chummy invitation
to hop on board
and serve the needs of the economy ...

Poetic excellence is completely absent from the line 'Your methodistic framework of excellence' but Dr Gopal would disagree, I think.

If the economy is irrelevant to Dr Owen Holland, if the needs of the economy are completely irrelevant, if he ignores the fact that so many benefits, in health, education and other spheres, are dependent upon economic health, then I only hope that only a small minority of  other graduates from the Faculty share these views.

But he insists that

... we are schooled
in a different kind of pedagogy.

It can be assumed that people who studied in the Cambridge Faculty of English and emerged unscathed, with a BA and possibly a PhD degree know the meaning of a word like 'pedagogy.' It can't be assumed that they have even low-level skills in some of the uses of words.

This prime piece of pretentiousness is followed quite quickly by

We understand that you do not like
to be told that you are wrong
so we also understand
that you do not want us to think
too rigorously
or creatively.

Owen Holland's capacity for rigorous or creative thought is difficult to detect.

 The muscularity and vigour available in English are completely missing from the next prissy lines (not forgetting all the other lines.)

It is inappropriate
to lay out to you
the terms of your own wrongness.

Here, and in other places, the protest text makes assumptions about some imperfections of humanity: David Willetts is the villain and the protestors are virtuous, very, very virtuous, Owen Holland included.

Another view of the imperfections of humanity, to be found in Kant's "'Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made,' Isaiah Berlin's loose translation of 'Aus so krummem Holze, als woraus der Mensch gemacht ist, kann nichts ganz Gerades gezimmert,' from 'Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher,' Absicht, 6. Satz (1784).)

A contrast of great interest, I think, from Friedrich Hölderlin's 'Lebenslauf' (1800):

Herrscht im schiefesten Orkus
Nicht ein Grades, ein Recht noch auch?

Where Orkus ('Orcus') is the  underworld of Roman mythology.

In my translation,

Does there not reign even in most crooked Orcus
a Straightness, a Law too?

This, in part, as a very short reminder of wonderful, concentrated poetry after so much examination of diffuse dross, with dross still to be examined - but I've already made it clear that this dross shouldn't be regarded as poetry, even the modest poetic achievement which Gerard Manley Hopkins called 'Parnassian.'

Owen Holland is making an effort to begin an academic career. He's a 'Career Development Fellow' at Jesus College. These Fellows are given help in obtaining their first academic post. Not long before he became a Career Development Fellow, the idea of a career was far from his mind, as the 'poem' makes clear. He asks of David Willetts,

But has it not occurred to you
that the notion of scholarship
far from leading to a profession
may in fact preclude it?

Unless, of course, this was just for show - the young idealist stressing his refusal to conform to worldly ways.

For the time being, Jesus College is stuck with a fellow paid to teach English literature with so little feeling for words that he can perpetrate 'may in fact preclude it' as a line in what has been widely regarded as a poem.

Possessions, like professions, are unimportant to him - or were at the time he denounced David Willetts and attacked other targets with his feeble blunderbuss.

We none of us believe
that any of our possessions are our own.

What - did he read those words after he'd written them to check if they would  make him appear ridiculous when he declaimed them in public? Thieves couldn't steal everything he owns or everything that the other protestors own, so reporting the theft to the police would be no use - since these people own nothing! According to Owen Holland.

Soon, the easily led were chanting this (the 'both' is superfluous here):

We are both measurably younger
and immeasurably older
than you.

A little later, this incompetent dramatist, or rather this incompetent over-dramatizer gives us this:

You can threaten to shoot at us
with rubber bullets.
You can arrest us.
You can imprison us.

Followed very quickly by this (again, capital letters supplied)

BUT YOU CANNOT RAPE US.

And the supporters repeat it

BUT YOU CANNOT RAPE US.

He takes the trouble to explain why David Willetts can't possibly rape these protestors:

Because we are more resolute
more numerous
and more determined than you.

The fact that the protestors are more numerous than David Willetts is a statement of the obvious, but this gves the clear impression that Owen Holland believes that people who are outnumbered are very likely to be in the wrong.

If Owen Holland believes that he's more resolute and more determined than me - he can't claim to be 'more numerous' than me, of course - then he may or may not decide to prove it, to his on satisfaction at least, by answering the criticisms here. I've drawn his attention to the section. I may or may not receive some sort of response from this resolute and determined Cambridge-educated man, a response which may or may not include arguments and evidence.

At last,  he comes to the climax:

The nub of the issue is this:

What can he be referring to? What is the decisive point? He gives the answer immediately:

You do not have confidence in yourself.

And the chanters repeat it.

At 11.45 in the YouTube video, a youth takes over. He could easily have been identified, surely, and perhaps was identified. He should have been sanctioned too. He shouts

'Willetts! Willetts! Willetts!'

And the response is,

'Out! Out! Out!'

The aggression of the audience is obvious but Owen Holland isn't at all fastidious. He doesn't sit in silence. He can be seen joining in before he turns his back to the camera. Gonville and Caius' Jason Scott-Warren isn't too fastidious either. By his own admission, he shouted with the rest.

George Orwell on elation and heavy drinking in a Paris bistro at half-past one in the morning. ('Down and Out in Paris and London.')

'We perceived that we were not splendid inhabitants of a splendid world, but a crew of underpaid workmen grown squalidly and dismally drunk.'

After the spurious exhilaration of listening to the not-so-potent words of Owen Holland, after the false thrill of shouting out 'Out! Out! Out' the protestors, Owen Holland included, may well have felt after the protest that they weren't, after all, 'splendid inhabitants of a splendid world.'

When it appointed Owen Holland to the post of Career Development Fellow in English Literature, Jesus College surely blundered - to be more exact, more fair-minded, whoever was responsible for appointing him made a mistake.

From the Website of Jesus College, on the  English course:

https://www.jesus.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2017-05/English%20and%20Modern%20Languages.pdf

'The English course is extremely demanding ... Our students think in original and imaginative ways, and are willing to pursue ideas, themes, and approaches to texts independently.'

And, ' you need to be able to read widely but also in close detail; to understand the sweep of historical change while also being able to meditate on the nuances of a single word.'

Can Owen Holland meditate on the nuances of a single word, such as the word 'epistles' in the poem he declaimed? Why not 'letters' rather than the obsolescent word 'epistles?' (Gerard Manley Hopkins: 'The poetical language of an age should be the current language heightened, to any degree heightened and unlike itself, but not...an obsolete one.' (Letter - not 'epistle' - to Robert Bridges, 14 August, 1879.)

Of course, harshness takes very different forms and to very different degrees, but I think that the academic world is a harsh place in many ways. Becoming an academic isn't always difficult but very often it is, and of course there are many, many people who fail to find an academic post. Being an academic involves harshness - academics play a part in failing students, or awarding degrees which are bitterly disappointing to students, who expected a much better degree, possible outcomes whenever they mark examanition scripts. I've absolutely no power, of course, to give Owen Holland his first real academic post, or to refuse him. All I've done is to write and publish some harsh criticisms of him, with arguments and evidence (I'm aware that providing arguments and evidence isn't the fashion in some places.) 

I oppose unrestrained warfare and I oppose unrestrained polemics as well. I removed a profile from this page - not the profile of an academic - when I found that the person I'd written about had serious health issues. I wish Owen Holland well. I think that Cambridge University and many other universities need to take their duty of care to students very seriously. I share the view that students shouldn't be protected from the 'risks' of being exposed to certain opinions, that 'safe spaces,' spaces where students are protected from these opinions, are unnecessary, but I think that there are other risks which universities do need to take into account and where sympathetic action is sometimes needed.

Oxford University gives a comprehensive list of Owen Holland's Journal Articles and Chapters in Books, including these (I've no idea if he's a Marxist or not but it wouldn't surprise me in the least if he was.)

• ‘Morris and Marxist Theory’, in The Ashgate Research Companion to William Morris, ed. Florence Boos (forthcoming)
• ‘From the Place Vendôme to Trafalgar Square: Imperialism and Counter-hegemony in the 1880s Romance Revival’, Key Words: A Journal of Cultural Materialism, 14 (2016), 98-115

His internet writing isn't listed, of course, but internet materials can be very, very revealing. They certainly are in his case. He's the author of an article published on the site 'Lebanese Campaign for the Boycott of Zionism'

'Richard Goldstone published a significant letter in the New York Times, 'Israel and the Apartheid Slander' on the claim that Israel is an 'apartheid state.' (November 1, 2011.) Extracts:

'The Palestinian Authority’s request for full United Nations membership has put hope for any two-state solution under increasing pressure. The need for reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians has never been greater. So it is important to separate legitimate criticism of Israel from assaults that aim to isolate, demonize and delegitimize it.

One particularly pernicious and enduring canard that is surfacing again is that Israel pursues “apartheid” policies. In Cape Town starting on Saturday, a London-based nongovernmental organization called the Russell Tribunal on Palestine will hold a “hearing” on whether Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid. It is not a “tribunal.” The “evidence” is going to be one-sided and the members of the “jury” are critics whose harsh views of Israel are well known.

While “apartheid” can have broader meaning, its use is meant to evoke the situation in pre-1994 South Africa. It is an unfair and inaccurate slander against Israel, calculated to retard rather than advance peace negotiations.
...

'In assessing the accusation that Israel pursues apartheid policies, which are by definition primarily about race or ethnicity, it is important first to distinguish between the situations in Israel, where Arabs are citizens, and in West Bank areas that remain under Israeli control in the absence of a peace agreement.

'In Israel, there is no apartheid. Nothing there comes close to the definition of apartheid under the 1998 Rome Statute: “Inhumane acts ... committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.”Israeli Arabs — 20 percent of Israel’s population — vote, have political parties and representatives in the Knesset and occupy positions of acclaim, including on its Supreme Court. Arab patients lie alongside Jewish patients in Israeli hospitals, receiving identical treatment.

...

'The situation in the West Bank is more complex. But here too there is no intent to maintain “an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group.” ... until there is a two-state peace, or at least as long as Israel’s citizens remain under threat of attacks from the West Bank and Gaza, Israel will see roadblocks and similar measures as necessary for self-defense, even as Palestinians feel oppressed. As things stand, attacks from one side are met by counterattacks from the other. And the deep disputes, claims and counterclaims are only hardened when the offensive analogy of “apartheid” is invoked.

Those seeking to promote the myth of Israeli apartheid often point to clashes between heavily armed Israeli soldiers and stone-throwing Palestinians in the West Bank, or the building of what they call an “apartheid wall” and disparate treatment on West Bank roads. While such images may appear to invite a superficial comparison, it is disingenuous to use them to distort the reality. The security barrier was built to stop unrelenting terrorist attacks; while it has inflicted great hardship in places, the Israeli Supreme Court has ordered the state in many cases to reroute it to minimize unreasonable hardship. Road restrictions get more intrusive after violent attacks and are ameliorated when the threat is reduced.'

...

'Jewish-Arab relations in Israel and the West Bank cannot be simplified to a narrative of Jewish discrimination. There is hostility and suspicion on both sides. Israel, unique among democracies, has been in a state of war with many of its neighbors who refuse to accept its existence ... '

In his Lebanese article, Owen Holland writes, ''Small wonder ... that the Falls Road Murals in Belfast paint pictures of solidarity with Palestinian suffering.' He provides a link to images of some murals, including one which shows Bobby Sands. This is another Belfast mural showing the hunger striker.