Britain’s National Union of Students has elected its first Black Muslim woman to the presidency – which you could be forgiven for thinking a triumph of tolerance and diversity.
But the ascendancy of Malia Bouattia – best known for refusing to condemn ISIS and railing against “Zionists” – is a death-throe from one of the least accepting organizations in the country.
Her triumph extends a trend towards intolerance and authoritarianism in the student movement which will now likely worsen.
Student delegates may have felt happy virtue-signaling from the safe space of the conference room.
But elsewhere the “tolerant” NUS has seen feminists standing together with the Islamist bullies and snub any speaker not up-to-date the latest social justice fads, as Germaine Greer and Peter Tatchell can testify.
The NUS – perhaps the only place on earth where all 71 Facebook gender identities converge – prides itself on diversity. But it is a faux diversity.
The student movement is diverse in everywhere that doesn’t matter and conformist in everything that does.
I’d go so far as to say the NUS has a diversity problem. There’s a total absence of diversity in opinion and ideas.
Virtually everyone in the movement subscribes to zealous identity politics and believes that words can be violent, all is relative, and free speech is a craze invented by European men.
University is a place of home and comfort, not where previously held ideas risk being tarnished by vigorous debate.
No wonder then that anti-Semitism is only not taken seriously, but the NUS is often guilty of perpetrating it.
Complaints from hundreds of Jewish students before Bouattia’s election went unheeded, and delegates yesterday applauded a motion against commemorating the Holocaust.
It’s fair game to call for BDS (Boycott, Disinvest, Sanction), as many do.
This ideological uniformity shouldn’t shock. Student politics are a reflection of our illiberal times and anyone to the right of Stalin sees little point in engaging.
The silent majority just want to get on with their degrees, have laddish banter, do whatever they want with their bodies, speak freely, and listen to songs like Robin Thicke’s widely-banned Blurred Lines.
They are increasingly becoming the only adults on campus.
Electing someone based on their faith or skin colour and celebrating it doesn’t show real diversity. Electing someone willing to stand up to the authoritarian tendencies at the NUS would.