Dennis Hayes is the founder of Academics For Academic Freedom (AFAF). In 2009, AFAF launched the first ever International Academic Freedom Day on John Stuart Mill’s birth date, 20 May. AFAF has also launched a new web site: www.afaf.org.uk

No heated debate

Free speech is all about the audience, the listeners, who are there to engage in open debate. Another way of putting this is to say that free speech is about the public and the democratic right of people to make up their own minds rather than have their betters decide what is too offensive for our sensitive ears.

Too much thinking?

No play is an argument, and although one of the writers is a neuropsychologist, this play is an articulate attempt to persuade the audience of what Kathryn Ecclestone and I call the new foundational epistemology of the emotions.

Therapy culture revisited

Our view is that education is now the key to our future. This is not to revert to an archaic form of change through education but to recognise that, at the present moment, it is only by asserting subjects that we can develop subjectivity.

An Islamic Disneyland

Dennis Hayes reflects on a recent exhibition at Tate Britain, which said more about the West than the East.