The Case against No-Platforming

Abstract

Within robust liberal democracies, it is right that procedures should be in place to protect students and staff from acts of individualised stalking, harassment, or threats. The more difficult disputes arise around the general expression of provocative viewpoints to general audiences. Campus protests waged against controversial events must certainly be protected insofar as they do not obstruct the events themselves or impede staff or students in their ordinary course of business. However, far from being merely another form of protest, aimed at contributing to debate, no-platforming is the opposite, as one campus faction seeks the coerced silencing of another solely on viewpoint-selective grounds. Ethical as well as quality-control criteria must certainly be acknowledged as germane to academic enquiry, but these criteria remain plural, fragmented, and subject to disagreement. Justifying censorship on grounds of putatively transcendental ethical or methodological standards, as some defenders of no-platforming have proposed, serves only to mask the forced imposition of overtly moral and political choices that should instead be candidly debated.