The "no-platforming" campaign against Germaine Greer reflects a deeper sickness afflicting Western universities. While the stated aim is to reduce harm, the end result is enforced ignorance, writes Claire Lehmann.

Australian intellectual Germaine Greer is the latest person to fall victim to the "no-platform" movement. It is a movement plaguing Western universities, where students seek to silence a person intending to speak at an event or lecture.

Greer was announced to speak at Cardiff University about Women and Power in the 20th Century. In an interview with BBC's Newsnight, Greer said that she was going to critique the "triumphalist talk" used about the previous century and women's place in it.

But it appears this talk was not to be*. Students at Cardiff University have seemingly been deprived of their opportunity to hear one of the most significant female intellectuals of the last century.

Why?

The women's officer at Cardiff University Students' Union, Rachael Melhuish, decided that Greer's presence would be "harmful". In her petition calling for the event's cancellation, she claimed:

Greer has demonstrated time and time again her misogynistic views towards trans women, including continually misgendering trans women and denying the existence of transphobia altogether.... Universities should prioritise the voices of the most vulnerable on their campuses, not invite speakers who seek to further marginalise them. We urge Cardiff University to cancel this event.

The petition has now been co-signed by more than 2,000 people. And although Cardiff University has rejected it, Greer has indicated that she will not attend the event, calling the whole situation a "put-up job".

It is important to note that while Greer has answered questions on transgenderism during interviews and panel discussions, she has not published any comment about transgenderism for over 15 years. It is "not my issue", she says.

While Greer is indeed famous for being a feminist activist, she is also a serious scholar who specialises in early English literature. The last time she broached transsexualism was in her 1999/2000 book The Whole Woman, and her most recent book was about the restoration of rainforests.

In response to the embroilment, Cardiff University's vice-chancellor Professor Colin Riordan offered platitudes about how the institution did not tolerate "discriminatory comments of any kind" and how it "work(s) hard to provide a positive and welcoming space for LGBT+ people".

Meanwhile, there has been an alarming amount of vitriol and hatred expressed towards Greer on Twitter.

In her Newsnight interview with Kirsty Wark, Greer said that while she did not think that post-operative male-to-female transsexuals were "women", this was not a prohibition. If people wanted to pursue sex reassignment surgery, they should "carry on".

"It happens to be an opinion," she said, visibly exasperated.

This interview has made international headlines. Yet it was Wark who pressed Greer with questions about Caitlyn Jenner, to which Greer offered her provocative reply - that it was misogynistic for Glamour Magazine to name Caitlyn Jenner "Woman of the Year".

Not surprisingly, these comments have further inflamed the students wishing to censor her.

The new censorship movement does not appear to be slowing down. Students have been successful in lobbying their universities to disinvite a number of notable figures in recent years including Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Bill Maher and Christine Lagarde, amongst others. Various comedians, including Chris Rock and Jerry Seinfeld, have opined that college kids have lost their sense of humour.

It all reflects a deeper sickness afflicting Western universities.

In 1989, Kimberlé Crenshaw, an American scholar and anti-free speech advocate, coined the term "intersectional feminism". Intersectional feminism is about how people experience various forms of intersecting oppression, from racial oppression, to gender oppression, to other forms of marginalization. Intersectional feminism is vastly different from the kind of liberation feminism that Greer advocated in the seventies. It is the fashionable version of feminist activism that is present on university campuses today.

Within intersectionality, free speech is dangerous. It is something to be overcome, not utilised for political effect. To protect vulnerable groups such as women, people of colour, sexual assault victims or transgender individuals, freedom of expression must be curtailed, lest someone's speech cause emotional harm.

While the stated aim of this approach is to reduce harm, the end result is enforced ignorance. No-platforming does not change people's hearts and minds, it intimidates people into silence. It is an anti-Enlightenment movement.

Richard Dawkins, a long time critic of such regressive orthodoxy took to Twitter in support of Greer. He slammed the student petitioners, stating:

Loading

Greer should not have to suffer the lazy moralising of hyper-sensitive anti-intellectuals, and nor does she. Greer pulled out of the talk at Cardiff. She stated with classic Australian brusqueness that it would not have been particularly interesting or rewarding anyway. So "bugger it".

*Editor's note (October 28, 2015): Cardiff University has responded to the publication of this article and says the lecture by Germaine Greer is scheduled to go ahead on November 18.

Claire Lehmann is a Sydney-based freelance writer. You can follow her on Twitter @clairlemon.