So the news from Cambridge, which someone asked me to comment on, is beyond tedious. A government-ordered regulation suppressing protest (under the guise of free speech) has been pushed through with enthusiasm by a large number of traditionalist (mostly) men. The amusing thing is

that a viciously authoritarian and anti-democratic motion presented itself as coming from the 'left' (which is really, in a way, gratifying). The only problem is that it is well to the right of the University Council's own milder capitulation to government orders, agreed with

the student union. Those of who really care about free speech (and use it to good effect), including @CambridgeUCU vetoed both the university's motion & the amended anti-democratic one that now prevails. Please note that the latter was explicitly endoresed by the Tory minister

for universities (who would hardly claim to be 'left') who publicly called for Cambridge Regent House members to vote for it--interference in campus life & university autonomy at a disturbing level. As per usual, the standard white male Freeze Peach pundits on right & centre

threw their heavy weight behind the retrograde amendments in press. (Therefore neither the university's motion nor the call to reject stood a chance--this is how Freeze Peach works--they with the platforms & power call the shots). Anyway, I am not personally worried because...

those of who really value & practice free speech, democracy, the right to protest & academic freedom will continue to do so, your amended motion & slithering genuflection to naked Tory interference with freedom of expression at universities be DAMNED, Here's my big finger to you!

I have no problem in saying, from everything I have observed about the amended motion & how it got pushed through, that it found support from racists, cultural supremacists & TERFS. Because the main consequence is allowing these free rein on campus.

Most sobering aspect is not tha reactionary amendments have been pushed through. It is that when academics have self-government, a precious thing, they routinely use it to entrench the status quo or push through authoritarian government-pleasing rules, not independent thinking.

I've seen it time and time again at Cambridge. Self-government squandered on pleasing power. What's the bloody point really? We may as well have managerialism.

The final words on this debacle from Césaire: A reminder to 'hold as enemies – loftily, lucidly, consistently – not only sadistic governors and greedy bankers, not only prefects who torture and colonists who flog, not only corrupt, check-licking politicians &subservient judges'

'but likewise and for the same reason, venomous journalists, goitrous academics, wreathed in dollars and stupidity, ethnographers who go in for metaphysics, presumptuous Belgian theologians, chattering intellectuals born stinking out of the thigh of Nietzsche, the paternalists'

'the embracers, the corrupters, the back-slappers, the lovers of exoticism, the dividers, the agrarian sociologists, the hoodwinkers, the hoaxers, the hot-air artists, the humbugs, and in general, all those who, performing their functions in the sordid division of labor for...'

'the defense of Western bourgeois society, try in diverse ways and by infamous diversions to split up the forces of Progress – even if it means denying the very possibility of Progress – '