Is the right under attack on university campuses?

For years now many right-wing students have complained that conservative opinions are being censored on university campuses, their protests shut down, and their voices silenced. Right-wing campaigners such as Will Witt and, as controversial as he is, Paul Joseph Watson, have often complained about censorship both in person and on social media, with their content being removed from social media platforms. But is this entirely true or a biased viewpoint to create a victim mentality?

First of all we need to take a look at a few conservative voices. Let’s take PragerU’s Will Witt first, who produces videos about conservative views and the danger of socialism in America, and often goes on university campuses to ask students about relevant political issues such as COVID-19, tuition fees, police brutality, and minority rights amongst other issues. However, his views have been censored on more than one occasion; on March 20th 2020, a student called the police after he came to her campus to discuss the dangers of socialism. PragerU also filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California to stop Google and YouTube from censoring their content, where Governor of California Pete Wilson Browne said, “This is speech discrimination plain and simple, censorship based entirely on unspecified ideological objection to the message or on the perceived identity and political viewpoint of the speaker” (PragerU). Here it is clear that conservative opinions are suffering from some sort of bias. But why is this? Especially when universities are supposed to be a hub for free thinking…

It is also important to note here that the majority of university students are left wing, with 56% of 18-24 year olds voting for the Labour Party in the 2019 general election and only 21% voting Conservative (YouGov). Therefore this has led many to the belief that campuses are ‘left-wing echo chambers’, due to the supposed left-wing bias on campuses, which has gotten so serious that websites such as Turning Point UK are encouraging pupils to report professors who are biased towards the left on their Education Watch.

But perhaps the reason for this censorship is the fact that people often find it difficult to accept they are wrong, which as shallow as that sounds, is the harsh reality of human nature. This goes for more or less all political sectors too (with the exception of centists maybe), so don’t get cocky! What seems to have happened on campuses is that due the large population of leftist students, they are not as loud as loud on campus as they may be on other platforms like social media - as you wouldn’t need to be if the general populace agrees with you - so opposing views need to be louder to get heard, so in this case conservatives, and when those conservatives are ‘louder’ about their views, many of the quiet leftists feel under attack almost, as they’re not used to being challenged, so many conservatives get shut down quickly due to the vast amount of people disagreeing with them.

Before you rush to my comment section to call me biased and other colourful words, I am primarily talking about university campuses here, not all institutions. For example in the House of Commons (especially after the 2019 election) it is the opposite, and left-wing views are being censored. What needs to be done is people need to learn to accept the views of others, and it needs to be taught and encouraged that debate is healthy, and there does not need to be a winner, but at least one person comes out more educated in a debate, if not both! Also, in the words of Margeret Thatcher, “If they attack you personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.”