Morgan Vs Markle – a victory for free speech

Piers Morgan’s victory for free speech is great in one way but not so marvellous in other ways. First, the great bit: Ofcom’s decision, announced on Wednesday, to clear him of any wrongdoing over his comments about the Duchess of Sussex is a triumph for common sense and (with apologies to the TV star) for the common man.

The former presenter of Good Morning Britain lost his job in March after debunking Meghan’s Oprah Winfrey interview, declaring on air that he did not believe a word the one-time actress had said. There were more than 50,000 complaints, including one from Meghan herself. Still, the broadcasting watchdog found in Morgan’s favour, saying that to block views because they were contentious would represent a “chilling restriction on freedom of expression”.

This clearly has far wider repercussions than just vindicating Morgan, making it less likely that others will be silenced simply for expressing an opinion that may offend.

Meghan’s personal appeal to Morgan’s bosses – to get him sacked because he didn’t believe “her truth” – was particularly pernicious. Imagine if the Ofcom ruling had gone the other way, handing the high and mighty power to close down any discussion of their foibles, whatever the public interest.

So, hooray for Morgan for socking it to the Sussexes, and bravo to the regulator for getting the ethics right on this occasion. What we don’t want to happen now, though, is for Morgan to be crowned the king of the cancel culture counter-attack. 

While his, often obnoxious voice brings balance to public debate, because we do need provocateurs, he tends to be associated with dodgy causes (he liked Donald Trump remember) as well as nobler ones. There would always be a danger that he would give free speech a bad name, rather as Hugh Grant did with press regulation in the days of Hacked Off. 

Fortunately, an equally bold cheerleader has emerged. Step forward Professor Louise Richardson, vice-chancellor of Oxford University and long-time warrior against wokeness.

On the same day that Ofcom let Morgan off the hook, Prof Richardson urged the university sector to embrace “ideological diversity” and enable “open debate on controversial topics” to flourish.

By way of example, she used her platform, at the Times Higher Education’s World Academic Summit, to make a rather gratuitous stab at Michael Gove, a living, breathing “controversial topic”, saying she was embarrassed her institution had once educated him.

The jibe (or was it a joke?) was beneath her, but her habit of speaking her mind bodes well for universities which, as she warned, will lose public support if they continue to be seen as “bastions of snowflakes”.

“Increasingly, people are seeing that they haven’t gone to university, and yet their taxes are paying for these utterly overprivileged students who want all kind of protections that they never had,” said Richardson. “We need to teach our students how to engage civilly in reasoned debate with people with whom you disagree because, unless we do that, we are going to lose the public argument.”

A professor suggesting that her young charges respect other perspectives is sensible enough, but in the current climate, Richardson is playing with fire. Similar remarks have got her into trouble in the past. In 2017, LGBT activists, students and academics protested when she said students should challenge attitudes they did not like. 

“I’ve had many conversations with students who say they don’t feel comfortable because their professor has expressed views against homosexuality,” she told that year’s Times Higher Education summit. “They don’t feel comfortable being in class with someone with those views. And I say, ‘I’m sorry, but my job isn’t to make you feel comfortable. Education is not about being comfortable. I’m interested in making you uncomfortable”.

And in 2016, Richardson upset the Rhodes Must Fall campaign, arguing that “cosseted students” would benefit from hearing different opinions. In fact, since she arrived at Oxford six years ago, she has refused to be cowed by cultural censors, in sharp contrast to some of her peers.

Over at Cambridge, her counterpart, Professor Stephen Toope, is especially susceptible to the craven demands of wokery. Last year, he set up a website with a list of “microaggressions” (such as raised eyebrows, for goodness sake), where staff and students could report “inappropriate” behaviour.

“Free speech is not something that seems to enthuse those presently running the university administration,” wrote Cambridge historian Robert Tombs in an article for Spiked.

In Edinburgh, the university authorities sided with a student lynch mob which tried (and ultimately failed) to oust the academic Dr Neil Thin after he opposed the renaming of the David Hume Tower and objected to a “Resisting Whiteness” event that he likened to segregation.

Meanwhile, the principal of Abertay University, Nigel Seaton, conducted a disciplinary investigation into a law student who had the temerity to define a woman based on her biology. The “freedom to disagree is being crushed by a form of bureaucratic Stalinism,” wrote journalist and former rector of Edinburgh University Iain Macwhirter.

In an age when feminism is a pejorative term, and the most liberal-minded authors are ostracised for stating the obvious. When radical pioneers (Germaine Greer, Peter Tatchell) become overnight pariahs, we need people who will stick their heads above the parapet for free speech.

Some of us can recall when Prof Richardson, as principal of St Andrews, was alone among university chiefs in standing up to Alex Salmond’s bullying.

During the 2014 referendum campaign, the then First Minister reportedly telephoned Richardson and, in a “loud and heated” conversation, demanded she tone down warnings she had made about the adverse impact of Scottish independence.

She didn’t and the rest is history.