# Mona Siddiqui

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/thought-for-the-day-385283/mona-siddiqui
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/thought-for-the-day-385283/mona-siddiqui.md
Podcast: [Thought for the Day](https://stenobird.com/podcast/thought-for-the-day-385283)
Published: 2026-04-23T12:20:00+00:00
Episode link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ng3t3r
Audio file: http://open.live.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/6/redir/version/2.0/mediaset/audio-nondrm-download-rss/proto/http/vpid/p0ng3p8n.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/thought-for-the-day-385283/episodes/mona-siddiqui
Duration seconds: 184

## Resource

During my many years of teaching undergraduates I always invited my honours students to give an oral presentation on a chosen topic. In a particular course that explored a variety of social and ethical questions, a young female student asked if she could do her presentation on abortion. She said, I come from a Christian family and don’t believe that abortion is moral.’ I told her she had every right to argue and defend her position as long as she was prepared to be challenged by her peers - including other Christian students who might well hold very different views – I remember the discussion after her presentations as one of the most respectful but intellectually robust – the best of what a university should be. We want universities to be places where knowledge and freedom of thought is prized and nurtured. Perhaps this is the goal of the new freedom of speech complaints system which comes into force in England's universities in the next academic year. The system will allow academics and other staff to take their complaints directly to the Office for Students if they feel their freedom of speech or academic research has been stifled. And if they fail to protect speech, universities could face fines of up to half a million pounds. But I wonder whether this kind of state intervention might have the unintended consequence of politicising not only free speech but learning itself. Regulations and penalties can force compliance but can’t guarantee a commitment to critical thinking. Rather than becoming places of greater freedom, universities might become even more risk averse, curating and managing what can be said and heard in invisible and insidious ways. If that shift happens, something deeper is lost. Learning becomes narrower. Thinking becomes strategic. And the univer…

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## Transcript

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