An Eton teacher who was sacked over a lecture attacking radical feminist orthodoxy has said controversy is essential in education and claimed he s received support from Tory ministers.
Will Knowland was removed from his role at the prestigious Berkshire school after posting a lecture on Youtube challenging so-called modern feminist views about toxic masculinity .
The lecture, in which the English teacher quoted an article saying women wanted to be overwhelmed by the sheer power of masculinity , was prepared for older pupils at the £42,500-a-year school.
But he was sacked after he repeatedly refused requests from the college s head master Simon Henderson to take the video down.
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‘Whatever your background,’ Margaret Thatcher told the
Sun’s readers in 1983, she was determined that ‘you have a chance to climb to the top’. So, too, Tony Blair in 2004 (‘I want to see social mobility a dominant factor of British life’), David Cameron in 2015 (‘Britain has the lowest social mobility in the developed world we cannot accept that’) and Theresa May in 2016 (‘I want Britain to be a place where advantage is based on merit not privilege’). Put another way, for the best part of four decades equality of outcome was largely on the back burner; equality of opportunity was, at least in theory, the name of the game, and social mobility became one of those motherhood-and-apple-pie causes, like corporate social responsibility in the business world, which it was almost rude not to sign up to and utter warm words about.
Students are launching a nationwide project to champion free speech in universities over fears that debate is being stifled in favour of woke culture.
It aims to address a free-speech crisis on campuses and encourage the young to embrace wide-ranging opinions without the fear of saying the wrong thing.
The news comes after a survey found more than a quarter of students censored their own views on politics or ethical matters, and 40 per cent believed their careers would be harmed if they expressed their true thoughts.
Students are launching a nationwide project to champion free speech in universities over fears that debate is being stifled in favour of woke culture. The new students Free Speech Champions project was founded by Leeds University graduate Inaya Folarin Iman (above), 24, after she said a debate she organised was censored and subjected to bureaucratic obstacles
Trans activists are hounding women out of public life spectator.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from spectator.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
I was proud to be given an OBE in the latest New Year Honours List. I was delighted for my profession, too – it’s rare for philosophers to get much attention. It might sound strange, then, to say I felt a pang of anxiety when I first heard the good news towards the end of last year, and again when it was made public on January 1. I knew there might be a price to pay for getting such a public honour. And thanks to the trans lobby and its increasingly aggressive behaviour, I was right.
The OBE came as a result of my campaign for academic freedom and, in particular, the freedom to examine the demands of influential trans pressure groups such as Stonewall.