Above: the Catholic Church's Index of Banned Books, 1640
"A friend has assigned one of Norman Geras's essays (Our Morals: The Ethics of Revolution) for his undergraduate course, and as a consequence all the students have to fill in a special form, in accordance with the university's implementation of the Government's 'Prevent' policy.
"The essay is here, for those who want to see just what it is the university and the Government are worried about:
https://socialistregister.com/index.php/srv/article/view/5565/2463."
So reports Cambridge University academic Chris Brooke on https://t.co/qJ2CYJjSi0.
Geras was a left-wing academic, working at Manchester University from 1967 to 2003 (without anyone requiring that students signed a special form before attending his lectures!), and for a period a member of the "Mandelite" International Marxist Group. He wrote widely-read books on Rosa Luxemburg and on "Marx and Human Nature".
In later years he shifted politically, while still regarding himself as on the left, and was one of the people behind the Euston Manifesto.
Free speech and free inquiry in universities is under threat, occasionally and erratically from "ban everything we dislike" strands on the left, more consistently from university managements.
