The idea of a university as a free space rather than a safe space is vanishing

I’ve always admired the liberal Muslims in the Quilliam Foundation. It is hard to take accusations of betrayal from your own community. Harder still to keep fighting when the thought feeling keeps nagging away that out there, somewhere, there are Islamists who might do you real harm.

But Quilliam keeps fighting. To mark the launch by students of the Right2Debate campaign, which seeks to make universities live up to their principles and respect the right to speak and dispute, they have collected accounts from atheists and secularists of the wretched state of higher education.

I should pause to explain that last sentence to the confused.

You might have assumed that universities would be the last institutions in the country to censor. University is meant to be the place that blows away the cobwebs between your ears. Students are freed for the first time in their lives from the pressure to conform imposed by family and neighbourhood.