Oxford Union: Irving and Griffin to appear

Well it looks like it is official. The members of the Oxford Union, one of the most prestigious debating societies in the world, have voted to invite these two men to appear at the Union on Monday night.

The vote was 2-1 in favor.

The Union's president keeps justifying the invitation in that they were not invited to share their views but to speak about free speech. The president of the Union told the BBC that

"They will be speaking in the context of a forum in which there will be other speakers to challenge and attack their views in a head to head manner."

The fallacy is that on issues of free speech I doubt whether there will be any difference of opinion.

In some perverse fashion I would rather they had been invited to express their views and then, rather than to debate them, to have them properly demolished by the students.

Truth be told, neither of these men deserve this platform. Maybe the students who invited them will go study with the professors at Columbia who thought a coveted platform at that university should be extended to Holocaust and homosexuality denier Ahmadinejad....