Cambridge is woke – that’s no bad thing
"what is missing from the debate is the fact that the right likes to cancel left-wing students just as much as left-wing students like to cancel the right"Ruby Jackson for Varsity
As an HSPS student, I have spent almost three years at Cambridge studying what my friends humorously like to refer to as “utter woke nonsense”. The phrase, falsely attributed to Sean Dyche, is a favourite of right-wing politicians. Nigel Farage likens it to a “virus,” while Kemi Badenoch has self-described her views as “anti-woke”.
Universities have come under fire for their apparent harbouring of woke sentiment (whatever that’s supposed to mean) in rhetoric which blames left-wing cancel culture for the denial of the free expression of both academics and students. Cambridge has been deeply embroiled in these debates, with defenders of both ‘race-realist’ philosophy fellow Nathan Cofnas and the Cambridge University Society of Women complaining that views which do not align with the left-wing mainstream are being unfairly persecuted.
The figures around student perceptions of free speech paint a very different picture. 80% of students feel they are free to express their views at university, while 70% agree that academics are free to express theirs. There is a pervasive sense among the self-victimised supporters of supposedly persecuted political beliefs that they are speaking for a silent majority of students forced to keep quiet by social pressure. Britain’s twentieth richest man, and Cambridge University Society of Women donor Alex Gerko, claimed, with no evidence to back him up, that a belief in “sex-based rights” was “a view shared by the majority of Cambridge students”. If a majority of Cambridge students really do share this view, why have none of them expressed it – why are the Women’s Society’s membership numbers failing to keep pace with the conspicuous flow of donations from outside sources?
“The Chancellor was absolutely right to make free speech his ‘number one priority’”
This is not to say that free speech at Cambridge is not under threat. Cancel culture is a very real thing, and there have been numerous examples of speakers facing protest or calls for de-platforming simply for expressing controversial opinions. The Chancellor was absolutely right to make free speech his “number one priority”.
However, what is missing from the debate is the fact that the right likes to cancel left-wing students just as much as left-wing students like to cancel the right. The criminalisation of pro-Palestine protests, which are one of the biggest examples of Cambridge students exercising their right to free speech in recent years, is advocated for by the very same voices claiming free expression at elite universities is under threat. The problem here is polarisation, rather than left-wing ideology.
The aim of anti-woke politics is to stop us talking about things its adherents do not like, and to protect its chosen torch-bearers from real debate. Moral panic over the teaching of ideas like Critical Race Theory or decolonial thought in universities is really just an attempt to silence. These are not purely ideological standpoints, but rather serious academic concepts backed up by valuable empirical research. Seeking to discredit them is the real threat to academic freedom here.
“The problem here is polarisation, rather than left-wing ideology”
Subjects like sociology – a discipline I have studied, and found incredibly valuable for developing my own critical thought – are at the receiving end of these anti-woke attacks. In Florida, the subject was eliminated as a core course in universities as it was deemed to have been “hijacked by left-wing activists,” in a case of blatant political interference in academic teaching that sets a dangerous precedent.
This all stinks of hypocrisy. The self-proclaimed defenders of free speech are, rather, its biggest threat. When Kemi Badenoch says she wants to end ‘rip-off’ degrees – targeting the arts and humanities, pillars of free and critical thought – a policy echoed by Reform UK, it’s hard to believe that handing higher education over to the anti-woke mob will reinvigorate freedom of speech on campus. The experience of America’s universities tells us where this kind of politics gets us, with the Trump administration freezing research funds for institutions that refuse to adhere to its political agenda.
At the heart of all of this is a grave misuse of the term woke, at least according to its original definition. The word originated in African American communities, and was later deployed by the Black Lives Matter movement to call for awareness of social injustice. Conceived of like this, wokeness is not anti- but rather pro-free speech: it demonstrates a keenness to think critically about taken-for-granted concepts and to expose the injustices lying beneath them – to, in essence, advance inherently challenging ideas.
Woke thinking is, to my eyes, just a form of critical thinking, and it is one of things I have to thank Cambridge the most for. Cambridge’s students and academics should be allowed to be woke. Trying to deny them this right is not only anti-intellectual, it is deeply sinister.
