Free speech on campus has once again become a point of contention. The universities minister, Sam Gyimah, has called for tough new guidelines to protect freedom of expression. His remarks come amid claims that books are being removed from libraries, and speakers banned from campuses – all because “generation snowflake” is too timid to hear discordant opinions.

The reality is, of course, quite different. Universities continue to be places where free speech thrives. Arguments about who should, and shouldn’t, be given a platform are hardly new. I studied at the University of Manchester during the 1980s miners’ strike. The then home secretary, Leon Brittan, was invited to speak at the students’ union – prompting a major demonstration. Brittan came in through the front entrance and spoke to a small group inside the hall. While by no means sympathetic to the speaker, I shared the view of the students’ union executive, which supported his right to speak.

To deny an entire generation the same fluidity we enjoyed is unfair. It is their right to draw different conclusions

On the front steps outside the building, things turned nasty. Policing was tough. Students and members of the public were arrested, and people were injured. I can’t remember anything the home secretary said, most of which was drowned out by hecklers. However, I can still visualise an event that symbolised tensions between free speech and the freedom to challenge and protest, freedom to listen or not, freedom to decide for myself. It was complex, messy and utterly exhilarating. This was a vivid and formative experience for my 20-year-old self, a precious gift that only a university could offer me.

Today a new generation is testing the same boundaries, agonising in the same way we did over difficult moral decisions, rebelling against the ingrained deference of their teenage years, just like us. Now, as then, this is labelled dangerous censorship. The perception is that we are witnessing a widespread “chilling” of free speech on university campuses.

Look closer and you will see that the evidence for this is vanishingly small. Not a single book has been removed from a major university library on the grounds of censorship, though some antisemitic ones have been moved to restricted shelves. Hundreds of events have taken place at my own university, Sussex, in the past year – not a single one was prevented. It is true that a small handful have needed to take into account our legal duties to preserve public order, or to avoid putting students at risk of radicalisation, or in harm’s way. But in each case measures such as requiring an independent chair, a balancing speaker or additional security were the solutions. If these changes cause a speaker to walk away from their own event, that is not censorship.

Far from chilling free speech, such measures allow more, not fewer, points of view to be heard. Sussex isn’t unusual here: our approach is similar to those at universities up and down the country. The notion that protest against speech is censorship, or that it is a new phenomenon, is entirely specious. Protest is free speech, and it always has been.

It is true that sometimes people get it wrong. My generation did; so did our predecessors; and current students do too. But as a vice-chancellor, and as a former student, I know that the process of nurturing global citizens is not simple. Debates about free speech, as much as controversial speakers, are part and parcel of the process of students’ political formation. Indeed, the immigration minister, Caroline Nokes, told me that her politicisation occurred at Sussex as a reaction against what she saw as a leftwing intolerance.

Gyimah is only the latest universities minister to address this issue. Any simplification of the rules will be welcomed by students’ unions, which sometimes feel hamstrung by the Charity Commission’s guidance. This must not, however, lead to an anything-goes approach. We wouldn’t allow speakers who incite racial hatred or terrorism. Universities and unions need to assess whether events can go ahead safely and within the law. This latter point is often lost: while rules can be simplified and bent, laws cannot.

There are three legal duties that come into play here: free speech, public order and the Prevent duty to counter radicalisation. It is these duties – and not so-called snowflake students – that drive intervention. Astonishingly, this obedience to the law not only seems to land students in hot water: it can also send universities tumbling down rankings. The online magazine Spiked has over the years given Sussex its lowest free-speech rating, when our so-called crimes have been not allowing transphobic material in our teaching and having (legally required) policies against bullying and harassment.

What this all adds up to is a creeping anti-youth narrative, a souring of attitudes towards the next generation. And I’m afraid that it is my generation leading the charge. In my student days, we all thought that our debates and ideas were the most original, forward-thinking and colourful in history. It’s too easy to forget that, while young people today live in an entirely different world, the causes they are fighting are every bit as important to them as ours were to us. The politics may be different but the process is the same.

Something happens to many of us as we hit middle age. Our beliefs, solidified at the point of political formation, become much harder to shift. To deny an entire generation the same fluidity we enjoyed is hugely unfair. It is their right to draw different conclusions on matters we may view as settled.

The intergenerational unkindness that has been allowed to permeate society must be brought to an end. We owe it to our younger selves to afford this generation the same freedom to discover, to challenge and to fail that we afforded ourselves.

• Adam Tickell is vice-chancellor of the University of Sussex

• This article was corrected on 7 May 2018. The original said that Leon Brittan entered Manchester’s student union through a back entrance.