However University is
also supposed to be a place where one can grow, learn more about yourself and
above all else, be yourself and feel free. That is why members of the
University’s Jewish, and LGBT communities were outraged at the decision to
invite the man known to many as Brother Yusuf. For you see Mr Chambers and the
organisation he helped found the Islamic Education and Research Academy, has
both spoken out against Jews, and condemned homosexuality, calling for
homosexuals to be executed in order to keep society “pure.” He has also stated
that adulterers should be flogged. These punishments are most often used
against women, an opinion that enraged many female students.
The IERA, a dawah
organisation which seeks to educate people about Islam and its beliefs, also has
a rather sketchy past. It has been the subject of numerous protests and was
asked to leave a hotel in Toronto following an outcry over their anti-Semitic
and anti-homosexual beliefs, a fact that the Islamic Society executive would
have been able to discover with a simple five minute internet search.
In a statement released by the University
Student’s Union, it was claimed that it shouldn’t “be
the Union’s responsibility to ‘vet’ who students can and cannot hear speak on
an arbitrary basis,” though they admitted that they had to
balance this with their responsibility to ensure that hate speech should not occur
on campus.
At the same time the LGBT society issued a statement
saying that the LGBT community must “tread
carefully so as not to restrict anyone’s right to seeing a speaker that they
wish to see.” However it was also stated that this was not so much an issue
of free speech as safety and decency. The statement urged the LGBT students on
campus not to picket the event, but rather to attend with “a hostile question
in mind and to pounce at him intellectually and not practically.”
Regardless a picket – organised collaboratively by
female, Jewish and LGBT students on campus – did take place under the title of
York Against Hate. According to one source, there were ten to fifteen students
there are various times, some with placards and some who went in to the talk to
challenge Mr Chambers.
The University and the Union – who it seems, did not
follow proper procedure with regards to announcing upcoming events – chose to
hide behind the 1986 Education Act which requires the university to encourage
divergent views and debate. The exact wording is thus, that universities, polytechnics
and colleges shall,
·
“Take such steps as are reasonable to
ensure that freedom of speech within the law is secured for members, students
and employees of the establishment and for visiting speakers.
And that
·
“The use of any premises of the
establishment is not denied to any individual or body of persons on any ground connected
with
A: The beliefs or views of that
individual or of any member of that body; or
B: The policies or objectives of
that body.
While it would be possible to argue a violation of
the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act of 2008 with regards to the hate
speech amendment, this isn’t really a question of free speech. It also doesn’t
matter a jot that the university made it clear that they needed to be careful “the views ascribed to speakers are
genuinely theirs, rather than “guilt by association” and that these views are
pertinent to the context.” What matters is
that the University of York allowed a speaker to be invited who openly believes
that a portion of the university’s student body don’t deserve the same rights
as others and that they are in fact a second class of citizen.
Universities are supposed to be a place where a
person can feel safe to be themselves. A transitional period between childhood
and adulthood, between home and independence where students are free to
explore, learn and grow, where they are free to be whoever they want to be
without fear of reprisal or bullying, while knowing that the University – and the
Student Union – will have their back if they are made to feel that they cannot
be themselves or they are in some way wrong or abnormal. The University of York
and the YUSU has failed in this regard. It has let down its student body.
The process of publicising upcoming events at the
University of York clearly needs to be looked into as they obviously did not
work on this occasion. I would also hazard that an investigation into the
Islamic Society Executive and their vetting of speakers needs to take place as
this is the second time that the society has invited extremist speakers to
address them.
However I suspect that the second won’t happen,
which leads into a final point, that I want you to think about. If a society
had wished to invite a far right Christian speaker, such as a representative of
the Westboro Baptist Church or the Koran burning Pastor Terry Jones, the University
would not have upheld the invitation and it most certainly would not have received
the backing of the Student Union. So why did the Islamic Society’s invitation received
such full support?
I’ll leave you to think about that. Let’s just say
that there are different degrees of “free speech.”
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