A Cambridge University professor has boasted that she was promoted after tweeting “White Lives Don’t Matter” — a development following just days after a man who flew a banner saying they do matter over a football match in the wake a suspected terrorist attack was fired.
On June 22nd, Professor Priyamvada Gopal had tweeted “I’ll say it again. White Lives Don’t Matter. As white lives.”
The tweet prompted a considerable public backlash, with a petition for the University of Cambridge to fire her for the “racist and hateful” statement “in the best interest of all students and the community at large” having topped 15,000 signatures as of the time of publication.
However, the university stood behind Professor Gopal, claiming that it “defends the right of its academics to express their own lawful opinions which others might find controversial” — and indeed went on to portray the professor as the victim in the situation, adding that it “deplores in the strongest terms abuse and personal attacks”, branding them “totally unacceptable” and demanding they “must cease.”
Shortly afterwards Professor Gopal, who was briefly suspended by Twitter for her tweets, bragged to her followers that not only had the tech giant reinstated her, but that she was “delighted to share with you personally, that last night Cambridge promoted me to a full Professorship.”
She added, moreover, that “I stand by my tweets, now deleted by Twitter, not me,” offering no apology of any kind.
Right-leaning commentators such as Douglas Murray, author of The Strange Death of Europe, scorned Cambridge University’s claim that it “defends the right of its academics to express their own lawful opinions which others might find controversial” — with the university having previously cut ties with academics such as Dr Jordan Peterson and Dr Noah Carl after receiving a relatively small number of complaints from left-wing agitators.
“Nope. Nobody believes that,” tweeted Murray in response to the university’s claim to be a defender of controversial opinions.
“We remember the cases of Noah Carl and Jordan Peterson. Your institution dropped them in 2 secs once the mob came for them. But it’s interesting you’re standing up for someone who actually is a race-baiter this time,” he added.
Some critics of Professor Gopal and her university also questioned whether she was even expressing “lawful opinions”, given that while Britain pays lip service to free speech, people are in fact prosecuted for expressing or sharing offensive views and imagery with some regularity.
The Tories rejected a petition for a Free Speech Act as recently as January 2018, insisting that “freedom cannot be an excuse to cause harm or spread hatred” and “free speech is not absolute”.
The decision of Cambridge University and, seemingly, Cambridgeshire Constabulary, not to punish Professor Gopal — indeed, to promote her, if her tweet is to be taken at face value — has proved particularly controversial at the present time, coming as it does after Burnley Football Club fan Jake Hepple was visited by police and fired by his employer for flying a banner saying “White Lives Matter” over an Etihad Stadium match after three white people were stabbed to death in a suspected terror attack in Reading.
Mr Hepple’s girlfriend, too, was raked over the coals in the mainstream media and fired from her job after declining what her employer described as “Intensive Racial Sensitivity training”.
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