Academic freedom, no-platforming, and appeals to "disciplinary competence'': A critical analysis of Simpson--Srinivasan's arguments
1 University College London
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Received: 8 Jul 2025 / Accepted: 6 Apr 2026 / Published: 10 May 2026
Abstract
I critically assess Simpson and Srinivasan's (2018) defense of some instances of no-platforming at universities. I raise, and then analyse, three questions: What does it mean for a once-controversial issue to be "settled''?
What should be done when two or more academic disciplines come to different judgments about the competence of a scholar or the admissibility of a set of ideas? Which fields of inquiry qualify as genuine academic disciplines? In all three cases I contend that epistemic criteria must be paramount, and sociological criteria secondary. I illustrate, with explicit examples, some of the ways in which purported judgments concerning "disciplinary competence'' or appeals to "settled science'' can be employed to disguise what is in fact the suppression of dissident views on nakedly ideological grounds.
Keywords: No-platforming; academic freedom; freedom of debate.
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CITE
Sokal, A. Academic freedom, no-platforming, and appeals to "disciplinary competence'': A critical analysis of Simpson--Srinivasan's arguments. Controversial Ideas 2026, 6, 12.
Sokal A. Academic freedom, no-platforming, and appeals to "disciplinary competence'': A critical analysis of Simpson--Srinivasan's arguments. Controversial Ideas. 2026; 6(1):12.
Sokal, Alan. 2026. "Academic freedom, no-platforming, and appeals to "disciplinary competence'': A critical analysis of Simpson--Srinivasan's arguments." Controversial Ideas 6, no. 1: 12.
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