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(Thanks to Paul Elbourne for the pointer.)
ADDENDUM: I'm opening comments, in case anyone has more information about the actual content of the banned publication.
Hardly a shock: the same kind of people last year shut down an abortion debate that had been slated to take place at Christ Church.
I have not seen this publication and know nothing about its content; it may be that I'd thoroughly approve of it. However, I am deeply suspicious of anyone setting out to "publicise ideas people are afraid to express". It suggests to me not so much not setting out to offend, as setting out both to offend and to delegitimise the offence they expect to cause. At best this rests on the assumption that nobody should be offended by anything – which makes me think of Romeo on Mercutio, "He jests at scars who never felt a wound". At worst it's provocateurism. I notice that one of the two people involved previously intervened in the 'free speech debate' by going around draped with an Israeli flag: http://versanews.co.uk/2015/09/30/no-offence-magazine-banned-by-ousu-over-fear-it-will-cause-offence/
Being draped in an Israeli flag, however irritating it might be, seems a pretty clear example of something that free speech ought to cover.
On her own account she wore it deliberately to see if it would provoke a reaction (having had a – favourable – reaction the first time she did so) and was accosted, and threatened, by one person. It shouldn't have happened – it sounds like a horrible experience – but it was an isolated reaction to a deliberate and ostentatious display of a contentious emblem. (Whether the flag of the state of Israel *should* be a contentious emblem is another discussion; let's just take it as read that it is one.)
Here's a summary of No Offence's content: http://versanews.co.uk/2015/10/01/no-offence-but-no-offence-is-piss-poor/ . As I expected, I strongly *dis*approve of it, but that is not a reason to ban it from being disseminated.
They produced a publication designed to cause offence (rape jokes, slash fiction etc), called it 'No Offence' and asked the Student Union to help distribute it, in the knowledge that the Student Union had a policy of not distributing or displaying offensive material. That's not promoting free speech, it's just trolling.
But that "policy of not distributing or displaying offensive material" is itself in conflict with free speech. If you want to draw attention to that fact, this is (demonstrably!) a reasonably effective way of proceeding. (Incidentally, so far as I've been able to discover, they're only "ask[ing] the Student Union to help distribute it" in the sense that they're asking to be allowed to distribute it themselves, from their stall in Freshers' Fair, in the same way other student societies do.
Oh, I know – just making the point that the SU takes partial responsibility for what's distributed at events it hosted, and on that basis has a policy of not allowing the distribution (under its auspices) of offensive material.
There are two very different claims which are being bundled together here. One is that banning offensive material results in the suppression of intrinsically valuable exercises of free speech, as when people protest that they are offended by the expression of different views; if the publication banned as 'offensive' contained *views* that people find objectionable, that would be one story. The other claim is that banning offensive material is always and everywhere the suppression of exercises of free speech, which are intrinsically valuable as such. This, I think, is the only claim that can be advanced by critics of OUSU, and I think it claims far too much – particularly when nothing has actually been suppressed. All that's happened is that OUSU has declined to assist the publishers in distributing a publication designed to give offence, having stated in advance that it would decline to assist the distribution of offensive publications.
I am not aware of anyone who thinks that exercises of free speech, as such, are intrinsically valuable. If they do, they are dead wrong. Having the freedom to speak, and having it protected, is instrumentally valuable in helping maintain a lively public culture and a protection against concentrations of political power. Whether any particular exercise of the freedom is valuable, intrinsically or instrumentally, is neither here nor there. This exercise of free speech strikes me as probably towards the less valuable end of the spectrum. It seems like typical juvenile posturing designed to shock and thereby to get attention for narcissistic gratification. But the whole point is that we shouldn't care whether it's juvenile, designed to shock, narcissistic, etc. We should still care about protecting it, because we should still care about the risk of concentrations of political power and of their dulling effects on the liveliness of public culture.
It's a separate issue whether OUSU is infringing freedom of speech in this case. I'm not totally sure. What I am sure of is that OUSU is being very stupid by (a) giving free publicity to a pair of immature shock-merchants (banned books and records have always sold like hotcakes) and (b) treating the freshers as vulnerable little daffodils. But those are separate issues from the issue of whether they are infringing freedom of speech. Whether they are infringing freedom of speech depends first and foremost on whether Freshers' Fair is a forum for OUSU to speak or a forum for the speech of others, be they affiliated with OUSU or not. If it is the latter – as it was when I last went – then we should start to worry about OUSU's concentration of political power, and the dulling effect it is likely to have on University culture (especially salient in view of how stupid they have just been in their use of that power).
PS This material is not offensive. It is upsetting. We should stop dressing the latter up as the former. Doing so is propaganda in favour of more censorship. There are arguments against offending people that are stronger than arguments against merely upsetting them. That is why every upset person likes to claim that they were offended (or better still 'deeply offended'). Not sure you should be at university if you are offended, as opposed to merely upset, by childish shock-comics like this.
John Gardner: you dissent from the formulation that "banning offensive material is always and everywhere the suppression of exercises of free speech, which are intrinsically valuable as such", but go on to say that bans on offensive material should be overridden by the need to uphold freedom of speech, as this requires every individual exercise of free speech to be protected irrespective of its merits. Isn't this the same position?
As to whether we should worry about OUSU's censorial tendencies having a dulling effect on the local culture, I'd say that's precisely what the No Offence stunt has failed to demonstrate. All the authors have done is prompt OUSU to remove a perfect example of the kind of material they had already said they would remove, and (it seems) an example without any redeeming merits. I don't know what grounds OUSU had for introducing this regulation in the first place, but I suspect it had to do with the perception that the Freshers' Fair *was* an OUSU event, at least to the extent that the buck ultimately stopped with them; it would be understandable if they wanted to avoid taking flak for material they had no role in producing and no wish to endorse.
I don't know how you're drawing the distinction between offence and upset; both would seem to be grounded in reactions of shock, affront and disgust. My sense is that there's a connection between offence and imbalances of power, which may be why offensiveness is so strongly associated with stand-up comedy, with its time-limited performance of a power imbalance. 'Upsetting' material might then be made 'offensive' by appearing to have official endorsement. But these are vague late-night thoughts!
Late addendum: call that a student union free speech issue? *This* is a student union free speech issue: http://www.free-speech-manchester.co.uk/blog/cancellation-of-our-upcoming-event/
"The University of Manchester Student’s Union informed us this afternoon that they are banning Julie Bindel from speaking in a panel discussion on feminism and censorship. The reason for banning her is given as “based on Bindel’s views and comments towards trans people, which we believe could incite hatred towards and exclusion of our trans students.”
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