94% of British Universities Censor Free Speech

[grandvizier1006]

Can someone preferably in the UK tell me point-blank what sorts of phrases are considered hate-speech by the country's universities? What sort of punishment is given out for expressing these ideas? I'm an American so the very idea of "hate speech" is foreign to me.

 

[DaisyDay]

I'm an American so the very idea of "hate speech" is foreign to me.

That "so" doesn't follow the predicate of being an American. References to gassing Jews, for instance, are classic as are threats of rape and mutilation of people whose views you dislike.

 

[grandvizier1006]

That "so" doesn't follow the predicate of being an American. References to gassing Jews, for instance, are classic as are threats of rape and mutilation of people whose views you dislike.

I can understand that being hate speech, but what views and opinions, threats of criminal acts aside, count as hate speech in the UK?

 

[DaisyDay]

I can understand that being hate speech, but what views and opinions, threats of criminal acts aside, count as hate speech in the UK?

So, the very concept of hate speech isn't foreign to you, just the minutia of the particular laws of the UK?

 

[grandvizier1006]

So, the very concept of hate speech isn't foreign to you, just the minutia of the particular laws of the UK?

I just want to know what sort of phrases are considered hate speech in the UK.

 

[Goonie]

I just want to know what sort of phrases are considered hate speech in the UK.

I could not possibly comment.

 

[ThievingMagpie]

Oh fun get to indulge in some UK political history! Short answer, its unclear and usually left to the discression of the courts, this is because the legislation governing it gets extremely wound up in it's own language- mostly due to the need to please a number of disparate groups.

You can read about the legislation at this wiki link. Interestingly someone mentioned earlier on that the bible would be considered hate speech under UK law. A cursive reading suggests they'd be right, you don't have to look that far to find incitements to stoning and negative views on non-Christians and sexual minorities in the bible. This concerned a lot of people during consultation of the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 and so section 29J was added to attempt to clarify a number of free speech exceptions and later, due to an interesting pact of lobbying between Christian groups, free speech campaigners and comedians, the legislation was amended to remove the word "insulting." So the bible wouldn't be considered hate speech but ironically this piece of legislation, which was designed to protect groups like muslims, could have found the religious texts of those very groups to be incriminating.

I'm not aware of how the legislation has been applied to date but its probably easy to find online if you're interesting in reading up on it.

 

[HantsUK]

I would think that the following would count as hate speech. Examples from a programme this evening on ITV (trailer:

)

"you should be hanged"
"I hope you are **** raped" (to a female MP)
"remember what happened to Jo Cox..." (MP who was murdered)

 

[Jon Osterman]

It is hard to tell since the article doesn't link to the study (poor journalism indeed) but it seems like they are flagging very minor things as restriction of free speech. For example, the claim of London City "banning" some newspapers on campus is simply that the student shop on campus decided not to sell them, which is hardly a ban. I know for a fact that my UK university doesn't allow lecturers to, for example, say that women are bad at science, which I suspect triggers a cencorship claim even though this is an entirely reasonable "ban".