Universities should be able to no-platform speakers because lawmakers can no-platform

The argument

The argument proceeds by parity. No-platforming is routinely described as a peculiar excess of university campuses, as though the practice of declining to host a speaker had been invented by students. It was not. Legislatures do the same thing, and do it openly, as a judgment about whose views an institution is willing to lend its stage to. The example on which the argument turns is the refusal to let Donald Trump address the UK Parliament during a state visit, on the grounds of Parliament's opposition to racism and sexism. That was not a prosecution, a ban or a restriction on what Trump could say elsewhere. It was a decision by a body about the use of its own platform, and it was defended in exactly those terms. Addressing Parliament is a privilege Parliament extends, and Parliament may decline to extend it. If that is legitimate, the question is what distinguishes the university case. Both institutions have a platform that confers standing on whoever is given it. Both are entitled to a view about the ideas they amplify. Both leave the speaker entirely free to speak elsewhere, since refusing an invitation is not silencing. If anything, the parliamentary case is the harder one for the objectors to accept, because Parliament is the national legislature and a university is one institution among many. Proponents of this position therefore argue that the objection to campus no-platforming is not really a principle but a double standard. Those who accept that a legislature may decline to host a speaker whose views it rejects, while insisting that a university may not, are applying different rules to the same act. A university that refuses a platform to a speaker whose ideas it opposes is doing what lawmakers already do, and should be able to do it on the same basis.

Context

Parliament, like universities, has traditionally been a place where any and all proposals and ideas are discussed and debated. Not unlike universities, Parliament considers all sides of a debate. It then makes its judgement based on the merits of each argument. But Parliament is allowed to no-platform speakers.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Parliament rejecting a speaker is not the same as a university rejecting a speaker. Parliament does so as a political gesture. Bercow barred Trump from speaking as a gesture of protest that the House of Commons was opposed to his Muslim ban. Universities are not there to make political statements, they are there to further human comprehension and understanding. They are also there to educate students and inspire. These roles demand that universities engage with a wide range of ideas to ignite healthy debate, challenge students, and enhance human progress and understanding.

Rejecting the premises

Rejecting P1: Universities and Parliment have different roles and different functions.