In defence of Eton’s headmaster

My inbox is crowded with messages from Old Etonians attacking Simon Henderson, the headmaster of Eton. They are furious that he sacked a master, Will Knowland, for putting on YouTube his talk to boys about masculinity, and then refusing to take it down. As one complainant puts it: ‘Eton and Woke are both four-letter words, but they should have nothing in common beyond that.’ I agree, but the case is more complicated. In disciplinary questions, one must ask: ‘What else could the boss have done?’ Suppose I, when a newspaper editor, had told a staff journalist that he could not publish an article he had submitted, yet he went ahead and did so. I think I have would have been right to punish him severely, even if I had been wrong about the merits of his piece. It would have been direct disobedience, not a free-speech issue. Like an editor, a head should have control of what his staff publish (and, no, ‘personal’ disclaimers don’t necessarily do the trick).