When considering speech that could ‘harm’, there is a gender disparity here, with women being particularly pro-emotional safety and therefore censorious – important when the majority of social work students are women. This censorious tendency appears to be based on an underpinning assumption that offending ideas cause actual ‘harm’. This assumption is a contested idea rather than a fact and much has been written, for example, about the deleterious impact that protecting students from ideas they might find uncomfortable can have.
Free Speech Part 23
