Culture wars are now sweeping our universities. From the eroded statue of Cecil Rhodes in Oxford to the attempted no-platforming of Germaine Greer at Cardiff, from the arguments over “safe spaces” to transgender rights and free speech for militant Islamists, the crackle of dissent and argument is everywhere. How very refreshing. As the recently appointed president of a Cambridge college, it fills me with warm nostalgia for my own youth in the 1970s.

Then, as now, it seemed above all a generational conflict. Back then it was the second wave of feminism, the first wave of gay rights and anti-racism. I well remember linking arms with my fellow students to stop the racist and anti-trade union Lady Birdwood from speaking at the Oxford Union. Today, those uttering her views on immigration would be on the wrong side of the law inciting racial hatred anyway. But there are plenty of other issues which are exciting today’s young people.

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It’s no surprise that each generation seeks cause for conflict with the generations a little earlier. Students should want to make 50- and 60-somethings bristle with offence. Sometimes it’s about comparatively trivial matters of style and music, from hair length to punk or tattoos; sometimes it’s about fundamental values.

The conflicts, it should be said, aren’t always in a liberal direction. The first Thatcherite students who turned their backs on the arts and headed for the City, freshly deregulated by Nigel Lawson, were thumbing their noses at their elders just as much as their elders had when they first painted Ziggy Stardust colours on their faces, and outraged their parents.

These generational conflicts are essential to social change. Indeed, they are how society changes. Whether this happens relatively smoothly or in an atmosphere of angst and recrimination depends on both sides. Mutual understanding is crucial, and for the older generation, that means learning about the new concerns of the young.

Some arguments remain the same, while some are new, so I would distinguish between the concurrent battles over gender and sexuality on the one hand, and the arguments over religion and free speech on the other. Again and again I meet people of my generation who are simply baffled by the apparently sudden emergence of transgender, or transitioning, or gender-neutral or even polymorphous queer issues. Where did all these people come from? Do we really have to drop gendered pronouns and move to the inelegant plural “they”, or even “ze”?

There’s something funny about this. These things are being said by the same people who are mourning the death of David Bowie; yet if the new gender-neutral politics has an obvious origin, it’s the final revenge of Ziggy, isn’t it?

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As someone brought up in the full flood of the rights revolution, I can’t see any argument in favour of making life even slightly harder for somebody who feels their gender is fluid. How can anyone brought up believing in the right of people to be who they are, only subject to the duty not to exploit others, believe anything else? If that means relabelling toilet doors, and thinking harder about pronouns … Well, it’s not exactly a huge price to pay, is it?

Not, that is, until we get the banning of speakers who cause offence, or who may cause offence, or who may perhaps mildly offend somebody present. This week the online magazine Spiked published the results of a survey suggesting that some curbs on freedom of expression are present at 90% of college and university campuses. These ranged from “safe space” policies, to the barring of a wide range of speakers. Nor is it just a matter of rightwingers being banned. There are plenty of Muslims and other students on campuses who now dare not express themselves freely, for fear of being scooped up under the government’s “Prevent” legislation.

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Anyone who thinks this is a very simple issue is wrong. Democratic societies have always placed some restrictions on free speech, where it’s calculated to create hatred and violence. As the head of a college, I would not want any speaker on site who advocated or expressed hatred towards any group of my students.

Yet my fear is that the creation of too many “safe spaces” is infantilising – a nice, warm area for snuggles, with no sharp edges. But the world, in my experience, is almost nothing but sharp edges, hard choices and clashes of views. In 99% of cases it’s better to have speakers you disagree with making their case openly, and then being confronted and argued down. What is free speech for, after all? Is it simply to encourage vigorous language, or to school debonair young men from expensive schools in the arts they might find useful across a Westminster dispatch box?

Clearly not: the whole point is that in a free flow of argument, good ideas drive out bad ones. If bad ideas are not openly expressed, heard and then challenged in universities, they will continue their subterranean progress through society until, perhaps, it becomes too late.

My Cambridge college, Lucy Cavendish, embraces women aged 21 and over from diverse backgrounds. I want us to produce eloquent, self-confident adults who, whatever their background, can confront and take on and defeat the barriers ahead of them. Muslim, gay, transgender, it doesn’t matter: the purpose of coming to university is to grow strong enough to fight your way through. That doesn’t happen when you are swaddled from the wider world around you.