Sadly, the philosopher’s resignation from Sussex is a victory for the bullies and anti-intellectuals
How profoundly depressing to hear that the philosopher Kathleen Stock has effectively been hounded from her chair at Sussex University by the mob. However brilliant her career in the future – and there is no doubting that it will be – it’s hard to see her departure as anything other than a victory for the bullies and anti-intellectuals. (Stock’s only “crime” is that she refuses to deny the material reality of biological sex.) But as the child of an academic, I have experienced something else too, a painful sense of nostalgia for a time when argument wasn’t just tolerated in our universities, but actively embraced.
I keep thinking of those long ago Saturday mornings when my father used to drag me to his office at Sheffield University, a staging post on our regular journey into town to buy some books at W Hartley Seed and aniseed balls at the Castle Market.