Universities should be able to no-platform speakers because a platform grants legitimacy

The argument

Allowing universities to no-platform speakers and prevent their ideas from securing a platform to communicate would prevent those ideas being legitimised and reduce their public support. The argument turns on what a platform supplies beyond an audience. An invitation to speak at a university carries an implicit judgement that the speaker is a serious participant in debate — someone whose views are within the range of things reasonable people consider. That judgement is conferred by the setting rather than earned in the room, and it attaches whether the speaker is well received or badly received, because the endorsement lies in the invitation itself. One example of no-platforming being employed successfully was in the case of Milo Yiannopoulos. He was once one of the most prominent far-right voices in the United States. However, he lost access to major conservative platforms in 2017 and his movement lost all momentum. He was forced to declare bankruptcy and lost all influence. Proponents read this sequence as evidence for the mechanism rather than as a coincidence: his prominence did not survive the removal of the platforms that had carried it, which suggests the prominence was a product of access rather than of the arguments themselves. The general conclusion follows from that case. Without a platform, the idea falls on deaf ears and is reduced to the margins of society — not suppressed, since nothing prevents it being expressed elsewhere, but deprived of the institutional setting that would have given it standing. Universities should therefore be allowed to deny anybody a platform they so choose to, and to play their part in preventing dangerous and harmful ideas entering the mainstream psyche. On this view declining to invite a speaker is an editorial judgement of the kind universities make constantly, not an act of censorship.

Context

The public adopts and supports ideas that it sees as legitimate. Granting dangerous and harmful ideas a platform demonstrates that they are legitimate and recognised positions and opinions

Premises

Counter-arguments

Former Breitbart editor Yiannopoulos did not lose support for his ideas because he was no-platformed. He lost public support because he appeared to make comments endorsing paedophilia. In reality, this case demonstrates why it is so important that the public engages in debate over inflammatory ideas and rejects the ones considered most abhorrent to it, as it did in the case of Yiannopoulos. Only then can dangerous and harmful ideas be truly refuted and combatted. Without a public platform through which healthy debate can be engaged in, extreme ideas can go unchallenged in the corners of the web.

Rejecting the premises

P3: To stop dangerous views gaining traction, you must publicly refute them. Therefore, public debate is essential.