Thursday, June 21, 2012

Solidarity for Owen Holland

At Cambridge, Owen Holland faces a seven-term ban for reading out a poem and disrupting a lecture:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/21/cambridge-university-suspension-poem-owen-holland?newsfeed=true

'Owen Holland has been sentenced to a suspension of seven terms by Cambridge University's court of discipline for reading a poem aloud. He was found guilty in March of "impeding freedom of speech" after a group of students disrupted a lecture by David Willetts, the minister for universities and science, in November last year.
The decision to pursue a peaceful protester is questionable; a sentence of seven terms – more than two years – is absurd. This is not simply a question of internal disciplinary procedures at a single university. This injustice sets a dangerous precedent. We should all be able to conduct reasonable protests against our government without the fear of unjust punishment at the hands of bodies keen to maintain good relations with that government. In this, Holland's case concerns all of us.'

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