Almost 200 speaker requests or events were rejected by English universities or other higher education institutions in 2020–2021, new figures show, raising fears of rising incidents of cancel culture.
“One person stopped from speaking is one too many,” said Prof. Dennis Hayes, president of Academics for Academics Freedom (AFAF) told The Epoch Times by email. One world-renowned artist who was cancelled by the mob said that she believed many “want an easy life so capitulate to their demands.”
The numbers, published by the Office for Students (OfS), show that out of 19,407 external speaker requests or events, 193 were rejected in 2020–2021, compared with 94 in 2019–2020, 141 in 2018–2019, and 53 in 2017–2018. Some 632 events went ahead subject to conditions….