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  • 7/4/2025
Professor Eric Kaufmann has hit out at "spineless" Cardiff University after being deplatformed for his views on Israel.Kaufmann hit out at the "utterly moronic" situation after being invited to a debate by the Cardiff Academic Freedom Association.FULL STORY HERE.
Transcript
00:00has been accused of no platforming an academic for his pro-Israel views.
00:06Professor Eric Kaufman has been invited to speak alongside fellow academics
00:11at a debate hosted last month by the Cardiff Academic Freedom Association at Cardiff University.
00:17But a coalition of left-wing groups organized a protest over his attendance,
00:21accusing him of being a genocide apologist.
00:25Professor Eric Kaufman joins me now.
00:27Professor, thank you so much for joining me.
00:31Tell me what happened. What is your story?
00:34Well, basically, there's a Cardiff Academic Freedom Association group of academics at Cardiff
00:43who have invited me along with a number of others to a debate.
00:47And regrettably, I couldn't go for personal reasons.
00:50Nothing to do with not wanting to go.
00:53I'm hoping we're going to be able to reschedule.
00:55But yeah, they basically, a number of radical groups sort of organized a protest,
01:01accusing me of being some kind of, you know, pro-Israel genocide apologist.
01:06I mean, it is just ridiculous, even on the face of it.
01:10I mean, if they had read any of my views or statements, then, you know, this is utterly moronic.
01:15But still, the problem is that the leadership at Cardiff University is really quite spineless.
01:23So what they've done is they basically refused to acknowledge the Cardiff Academic Freedom Association
01:30as a university society, which means that this was not an internal event.
01:35So they kept them away from the university, which then meant that they had to be like a private association
01:42and pay all of these costs that a private association that wants to rent university facilities would have to pay.
01:49So that's what allows them to jack up these security costs to try and prevent speakers they don't like from coming to campus.
01:56And the way they do that is simply by not recognizing for the second year in a row,
02:02the Cardiff Academic Freedom Association made up of Cardiff academics and students, I believe, as a university entity.
02:09So they play these games so that they can pretend that they're actually not against free speech.
02:14Forgive me, I didn't go to university, as most people would say is quite obvious.
02:19But I always thought the point of a university and the debating areas of university were to broaden horizons.
02:26So people engage in debate about what is going on in the world.
02:31And they obviously don't want to do that, though.
02:33No, I mean, really, they know which views are the correct ones.
02:38And therefore, they just want to make sure that people have the wrong views, are not exposing themselves to unsuspecting students, I guess.
02:48I mean, what this really gets to is that the dominant values are what they would call social justice.
02:52In other words, equal outcomes and emotional harm protection for so-called historically marginalized groups comes first.
03:00And because that clashes with freedom of speech, freedom of speech gets sacrificed.
03:05And that's kind of the value system.
03:07Now, it's worth saying that in England, something called the Higher Education Freedom of Speech Act,
03:13which came in and is being implemented by Labour and by the Office for Students, would mean that this kind of activity would be prohibited.
03:23But Wales falls outside the jurisdiction of the Higher Education Freedom of Speech Act.
03:30So the Cardiff Academic Freedom Association has no recourse to take their university to the ombudsman.
03:37And so that's kind of a failure of the act to apply to Wales, which is just too bad, because in England, they would be breaking the law.
03:45Exactly. That's a good point, actually.
03:47And Eric, but who decides on what is wrong speak and what is right speak?
03:52Well, they have what the way this works is they take a political position, which is actually quite radical, that says words are violence.
04:02They take that position and they try and say, well, no, this is just natural and normal.
04:06And we believe in free speech, but we don't believe in hate speech, which, of course, they then take the meaning of hate.
04:12They stretch it to include any views which might offend any member of the most sensitive member of a historically marginalized group.
04:20And so what by doing this, playing this game of hate speech, they are essentially against free speech, but they can pretend that they're in favor of it.
04:28In other words, they're in favor of the views they like and not for the views they don't like, which really isn't free speech.
04:34And what did you say that got them accusing you of being a genocide apologist?
04:39Well, this is what's remarkable.
04:40I'm still trying to get to the bottom of this, because actually on Israel, I'm actually pretty much in the middle.
04:46I mean, I would certainly say Israel's overreacting and committed atrocities.
04:52What's remarkable, though, is that, no, they will have heard second or third hand that I'm a bad guy.
04:57Therefore, you know, they should come out and protest.
05:00And what's interesting is because the energy of the movement has shifted away to some degree from race and sex towards or race and gender towards Israel-Palestine.
05:09This is where all the energy is.
05:11And so these radical movements, that's what they're going to mobilize around.
05:14They haven't read anything I've written.
05:16They're just kind of going on second, third, fourth hand reports.
05:19But it's enough in the face of a spineless administration.
05:23That's all it takes, really, to raise security costs to £1,600 and to shut down events.
05:29That's the game they're playing.
05:30So those who think woke is dead, cancel culture is dead, it's not.
05:33It's very much alive.
05:36Eric, just finally, just very quickly, given your experience, what you've been through,
05:39it must be particularly galling when you have groups like Bob Billen allowed to chant death to the IDF live on stage and on national TV.
05:47Yeah, I mean, obviously, that's much more extreme.
05:51I mean, I am a believer in free speech, so I think you should be allowed to do that unless you're inciting imminent violence.
05:58But, yeah, the double standard is pretty obvious.
06:01Values that align with the woke values, in other words, equal outcomes, emotional harm protection for historically marginalized race and gender and sexual identity groups,
06:10anything around that is prohibited.
06:12Anything around groups you don't like, like Jews, perhaps, or, you know, Israel, that's fine.
06:18So it's very much a double standard, you know.
06:21Brilliant.
06:21Thank you so much for joining us.
06:23That's our Professor Eric Kelfman, who has been cancelled for having a view that was wrong, who decides what's wrong.
06:30That's a different matter, isn't it?
06:31Thank you so much for joining us.

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