Our current moment in history is not the first time that the de-platforming phenomenon has occurred.
Few in academia will profess ignorance of “no-platforming”. This expression of ideological zealotry seeks to restrict debate to orthodoxies with which its supporters sympathize. It restricts freedom of speech upon which, since the Enlightenment, democrats have relied to test ideas and challenge assumptions.
It is a new way of describing the old sin of censorship which, in the UK, has more often been deployed in the interests of reaction than progress. Neville Chamberlain, Britain’s Conservative prime minister between May 1937 and May 1940, deployed it systematically – and sometimes maliciously – in his efforts to appease Hitler.