“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four. If that is granted, all else follows.”
1984, George Orwell.
The Cult of Consensus
The silence beneath the noise. The careful curation of words. The self-censorship to survive. Where academic institutions once resembled living bodies — animated by the circulation of bold ideas and free thought, forming the very heartbeat — they are now at risk of becoming intellectual sheep farms. The mass production of ideas, while meticulously avoiding anything too controversial, too uncomfortable, or too offensive. Students tiptoe across a minefield of ticking bombs where the “wrong” opinion may lead to social ostracism. Faculty members dodge particular subjects, wary that a single statement may end their careers. And the worst of all? The prioritisation of feelings over facts. The molding of a generation unequipped to handle the real world where opposition and disagreement are ever present. One may argue that intellectual curiosity has been stifled and the educational mission has been compromised. A campus without debate is a campus without progress. Welcome to cancel culture, or rather, campus inquisition.
The Faculty of Fear: Speak at Your Own Risk
The feasibility of being ostracised, rejected, and sanctioned has encouraged students and professors alike to bite their tongues in an attempt to hold back the expression of unpopular opinions. Silence seems to be rewarded instead of intellectual bravery. The outcome is that nuanced conversations are no longer catered for and have instead been slowly replaced by echo chambers of conformity. This has undermined the very purpose of what higher education has been striving to achieve since its inception. Cancel culture in universities represents a clear-cut departure from the foundational values of academic freedom and open inquiry. Its original purpose of civilised accountability to discipline genuinely harmful behavior has morphed into a machine for swift punishment without due process or fair proportionality.
Cancel culture has impacted faculty members who have engaged with and spoken about topics deemed “controversial” in nature. In one of the most prominent European cases in 2021, Kathleen Stock, a philosophy professor from the University of Sussex (UK) was accused of hate speech after expressing critical views on gender. An anonymous group of students launched a campaign calling for her dismissal. Stock was verbally harassed and intimidated, and despite receiving initial support from the university, the pressure and lack of institutional protection led to her resignation. In 2023, Eric Kaufmann, former head of Politics at Birbeck, University of London, resigned following a 20-year career. According to Kaufmann, he was subjected to a five-year campaign with the goal of dismissing him after expressing his views on ethnicity, national identity, religion, and ideology. Kaufmann had faced social media harassment, an open letter calling for his dismissal, hostile student course evaluations and letters, denunciation and social isolation by colleagues afraid to be “cancelled by association.” In addition, Kaufmann’s initially planned participation in a debate about the impact of rising ethnic diversity had also been objected to by a newly recruited colleague in his former department. According to a 2023 report by the Constructive Dialogue Institute which sampled 2,618 college students across the United States, 45% are afraid to express their opinions out of fear of offending their peers, 22% have actively called out, punished, or “cancelled” an individual or group, and 25% are regularly offended by the perspectives shared by classmates. The failure to question, challenge, or defend ideas atrophies the ability to think critically for yourself. Instead, someone else does the thinking for you. Learning becomes a tiring stagnation.
Education becomes a matter of meager performance, not a treasured process.
The Fragility Epidemic & The Backfire Effect
Whoever gets offended first wins. Prioritising comfort over factual accuracy is a modern outbreak. The possibility that an individual might feel offended by a word, concept, or historical fact is enough to suppress its discussion. Legitimate trigger warnings and safe spaces, initially introduced with admirable intentions to protect, have now been weaponized to avoid facing difficult truths. Education is not, and has never been, about comfort. Growth requires discomfort. Progress requires confrontation even with what is deemed offensive. Shielding students does not empower them — it either infantilises or radicalises them.
Ironically enough, the effort to suppress “problematic” speech often ends up amplifying it. Ideas that are shoved underground do not disappear into thin air. They fester, they morph, and sometimes they re-emerge in extreme forms. When individuals begin to feel that their legitimate perspectives are being systematically avoided or even silenced, they may seek out alternative platforms, often unmoderated and extremist,to express their views. It is not only counterproductive; it is frankly dangerous. It creates an environment where individuals are either too afraid to speak, or they speak recklessly in defiance of norms, rules and even laws.
Back to Square One
Academic institutions should focus on reclaiming their place as strongholds of intellectual challenge and true academic inquiry. This means building an environment where polite disagreement is not merely tolerated for the sake of representation, but prized. The value of protecting speech lies not in the equal merit of all ideas, but in safeguarding society’s ability to separate truth from falsehood. Instead of asking, “How does this make me feel?”, ask “Is this true?”, “Why does this differ from my perspective?”, or “What can I learn from this viewpoint?” Cancel culture echoes Orwellian control — its power lies not with iron fists, but through the subtle erosion of open dialogue, replaced by self-censorship and collective conformity. Once truth is no longer spoken for, power speaks for everyone.
Written by Valerie Schicke, Edited by Sarah Jiayi Drogies.
Photo Credit: Neo_Artemis (2022, June 7), on Pixabay.
