"Shut Up" They Explained

There are two great articles on the assault on free speech on campuses, Heather Mac Donald how American universities capitulate to the intolerant bullies from marxoid halfwits while Brendan O'Neill tackles Britain's authoritarian student body and their enablers in authority:

The ‘no platform’ policy of various student unions is forever being expanded to keep off campus pretty much anyone whose views don’t chime perfectly with the prevailing groupthink. Where once it was only far-right rabble-rousers who were no-platformed, now everyone from Zionists to feminists who hold the wrong opinions on transgender issues to ‘rape deniers’ (anyone who questions the idea that modern Britain is in the grip of a ‘rape culture’) has found themselves shunned from the uni-sphere. My Oxford experience suggests pro-life societies could be next. In September the students’ union at Dundee banned the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children from the freshers’ fair on the basis that its campaign material is ‘highly offensive’.

I realise the student activists are not typical students but an unrepresentative fringe of obsessives but why do the officials allow them to intimidate opponents? Perhaps they agree with them or maybe they are acting out of self interest- feeding the crocodile with a sacrificial victim in order to give themselves a quieter life.

Personally I have never felt the urge to "win" a debate by shutting down opposing views but I can see why the activists, Social Justice Warriors and the like do it- because it works.