The university has traded academic freedom for institutional virtue-signalling

From outside their gates, all institutions look monolithic. The Foreign Office, large multinationals, universities - all conjure up ideas of slow, endlessly resisted change. In fact all institutions are in flux. And never more so than today, when the whole underpinnings of our societies and morality are up for grabs.

In recent years the ideology known as “wokeness” has ridden through public and private institutions. Government departments are duty bound to pursue “diversity” as an objective in itself, which in practice means a pursuit of quotas that prioritise a person’s characteristics over their ability. Heads of major corporations and departments talk about “intersectionality” and other creations of the ideological far-Left as though they will enrich their companies, rather than impoverish them.

Even the most hallowed institutions have shown themselves eager to be seen courting this disastrously ill-thought through ideology. Anyone in any doubt over that fact need only look behind the hallowed gates of Cambridge University. In recent months it has taken a set of decisions which make one of our foremost seats of learning look not just woke but weak.

In March the university announced that it had withdrawn its invitation to the Cambridge academic Jordan Peterson to a visiting fellowship in the Faculty of Divinity. It is fair to say that the Cambridge University Divinity Faculty does not often attract a wide or international amount of attention. By contrast Professor Peterson is not just a respected academic but an academic phenomenon.