📣🕯📖 Introducing the CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY FREE SPEECH SOCIETY When we arrived at Cambridge University last year, we expected to find a place built around the pursuit of truth: where ideas could be freely raised, tested, and challenged. Cambridge ought to be a bastion of critical thinking, but in practice, that principle has been eroded. Speakers are no-platformed or quietly uninvited. Students self-censor in supervisions and exams as well as social settings – not because they lack a view, but because they have learned that the wrong view carries social cost. Too often, ideas are not tested by argument and challenge, but are left to stagnate in closed-minded consensus. We think this is a serious failure of the University’s basic function and mission. It is against this backdrop that we are founding the Cambridge University Free Speech Society. We firmly hold the belief that the only reliable way to sort good ideas from bad ones is to let them compete in the open: to state them clearly, subject them to scrutiny, defend them under pressure, and revise or abandon them when they fail to hold up. The society will run across a few main formats: Speaker events with open Q&A – bringing in speakers with a range of views and perspectives from across the political and academic spectrum, and giving students and the public the chance to question and challenge them directly. Student debates – opportunities for members to argue positions, including ones they may not personally hold, and to sharpen their own thinking and public speaking skills in the process. The Symposium – a fortnightly reading group dedicated to understanding the ideas underpinning the present historical moment. Join us! If you think a university should be a place where you can think out loud, question received wisdom, argue your case, and disagree openly without being cast out for it, we’d love you to join us. All we ask of you is the willingness to contest ideas in good faith and the humility to be contested in return. Details of our first event to follow shortly! In the meantime, follow us here on X at @cufreespeechsoc, on Instagram at @cufreespeechsociety, and feel free to get in touch at committee@cufss.org or through our website cufss.org. We are deeply grateful to the Ian Mactaggart Programme for its support. Administered by the Free Speech Union, the Ian Mactaggart Programme was established to foster a culture of open debate, independent thinking and free expression among young people in the UK, especially students.