Javier Barraycoa y Hélène de Lauzun were in charge of exposing several of the cases of censorship and manipulation in European university programs through their personal experience and examples in several European universities.
Hélène de Lauzun has explained how when she started at Harvard University “I was amazed that the objective was not to generate thought, but rather that certain ideological conditions had to be satisfied. Every week we had an indoctrination session, in romance, literature and language. During those two hours and three hours we were told that the mastery of a language was a social marker and correcting the students was not good and if they corrected it it was a cultural dominance”.
When she came back to FranceI thought that I could teach as I liked to teach, I enjoyed it, but this has changed, it is no longer like that, the importation of American ideology and cancellation has been successful in France, also in other European Universities”, de Lauzun has also denounced how professors have to be constantly examined and given credits “if they meet the ideologies of diversity or multiculturalism, that gives you extra points for a position at Oxford, for example, we face censorship and manipulation at all levels in European Universities. This leads to students being able to complain to the administration and puts enormous pressure on the teaching staff.”
For his part, Javier Barraycoa explained how he was censored at the public University of Barcelona for publishing a book against Catalanism, “18 years after practicing I was cancelled”.
This nowadays is something common, “just yesterday there was a news story that an Irish professor had refused to use the trans pronoun, he had house arrest for this reason”, there has been an explosion of cancellations, “in the university of milan has suspended courses of russian personalities, concerts, for good, without rationality. Some could even say that it is out of passion or anger, but there are things that come out of understanding.
Yale University canceled a course on "introduction to modern art, the class was banned because some protested, it could not be held because the classes can make students uncomfortable because of their whiteness, masculinity and absurd straightness of the Western canon."
Another of the examples exposed by Barraycoa has been that of the University of Bologna "where The typical debates on topics such as whether you can choose gender have been suspended. It is a boycott and getting it banned is absurd because those who know how it works are trying to defend both theses. They don't even let it spark debate anymore."
In short, “it is about not breaking safe spaces, the University is a space where you cannot be emotionally wounded by ideology. A system where we are regulated by life, thought, power, the imposition of thought”.