Learning My Lesson

A university is a place where ideas are meant to be freely explored, where independence of thought and the Western ideals of democratic liberty are enshrined. Yet at the same time as we congratulate ourselves on our freedom of expression, we have a situation in which a lecturer cannot speak her mind, universities bring in the police to deal with campus protests, and graduate students cannot write publicly about what is happening. Gagging orders may not even be necessary. In her 2015 Winter Lecture for the London Review of Books, Marina Warner shows how higher education in the UK has been betrayed. Also in this series: Tariq Ali: The New World Disorder; Mary Beard: The Public Voice of Women; Adam Phillips: Against Self-Criticism.