Our Future Elite - Be Very, Very Afraid

Leading academics yesterday defended an eminent Oxford professor against a students' call for him to be sacked for his links to an immigration think-tank.

Oxford Student Action for Refugees has circulated a petition seeking the removal of Professor David Coleman, a leading expert in demographics, because of his connections with MigrationWatch.

The students believe that because MigrationWatch warns about the negative effects of present and future immigration, it is inherently racist.

But Professor Coleman condemned what he called a "shameful attack on academic independence and freedom of speech".

He questioned whether the students involved should be allowed to stay at the university themselves.

Among his defenders was Professor John Salt, director of the Migration Research Unit at University College London.

So, even talking about migration in a negative way, is racist now!

One of the students behind the petition, Kieran Hutchinson Dean, 19, said the aim was to invite debate.

He said: "We are not expecting the professor to be sacked straight away. But we ask that he refrains from using his academic status when promoting his own views.

"If he does not refrain he is representing the university as a whole and many of us do not agree with his views.

"Professor Coleman cofounded MigrationWatch which continues to spew out anti-immigration tirades that fuel the far-Right BNP.

"He gives MigrationWatch a credibility and credence it does not deserve."

Why does Migration Watch not deserve credence and credibility? Is it simply because they express opinions to the contrary of your own? Oh, and what are these tirades you are referring to? All I can see on Migration Watch's website is well presented arguments about the costs, both social and financial, of migration. The fact that the BNP, a legal political-party, may cite the arguments on their literature and websites, does not detract from the validity of the evidence presented.

What's most worrying is the sort of people involved in this disgraceful hounding. These are supposed to be the cream of the crop, the students who will go on to inhabit the upper-echelons of the legal, political and civil service worlds. And from what we can see here, they are, in fact, totalitarian scum, who wish for the public to be kept from data deemed 'too sensitive' for their consumption.

If you think that New Labour are bad, wait until the class of '07 come into fruition. Free speech and academic freedom will not just be on life support as they are now, but ashes scattered over this once great Island.

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