Do you like sushi? Stop touching my hair! Why are you frying a banana? These are just some of the phrases we’re not allowed to utter at Sheffield University anymore. They’re “micro-aggressions” (subtly racist remarks), apparently.

This Russell Group university is paying 20 students £9.34 an hour to be “race equality champions” and police their peers’ thoughts. They will teach classes that explain how to "lead healthy conversations" so we are not at risk of saying something that might offend. I began my politics degree at Sheffield hoping to find reasoned debate, and the embrace of opposing views. Instead, I entered an atmosphere rife with woke, intolerant, censorious anti-intellectualism.

Vice-chancellor Koen Lamberts and the students’ union leaders behind these “micro-aggressions” classes are too immersed in virtue-signalling to realise their absurdity. I’m not a racist, but because I’m white, on campus I’m told I must need education to counteract my allegedly innate racist tendencies. But of course, by this flawed logic I’m unable ever to encounter racism because only discrimination against BME people is deemed legitimate.

Offence is in the eye of the beholder, but Sheffield University sees it as a rule. It is as yet unclear how “micro-aggressors” will be identified or whether such allegations will warrant a disciplinary investigation, or indeed, which department will house the gulag.