Stephen Law

Safe spaces?   Safe spaces are receiving a lot of discussion lately. Universities, for example, are encouraged to be, or to have, 'safe spaces' for students: places where students - particularly LGBT students - can feel safe from being persecuted, harassed, and so on.   However, 'safe spaces' are increasingly being a seen as a threat to free speech. For example, when Maryam Namazie, an ex-Muslim critic of Islam, spoke at Goldsmith's College University of London, her event was disrupted by some Muslim students who shouted 'Safe space!' - they believed that their University should protect them from such speech. Many, myself included, thought this was a ridiculous abuse of the concept of safe space.   So where does acceptable safe space end and unacceptable   threats to freedom of speech begin? Here are a few useful key distinctions. Continues over at CFI blogs.

How to start a prejudice - is six easy steps! Suppose you want to spread the prejudice that Xs are Ys - e.g. Jews are greedy and money-obsessed; women are terrible drivers, etc. What's a good method? STEP ONE: Find some Xs that are Ys. That probably won't be hard. Inevitably, some women are bad drivers and some Jews are money-obsessed. So you will easily be able to come up with a handful of true anecdotes.