The cruelty of campus cancel culture

Alexander Rogers was just 20 years old when he took his own life in January this year. A popular and talented Oxford student, he was described as a ‘vibrant presence’ in the Junior Common Room of Corpus Christi College. But at the inquest into his death this week, the public learnt that Alexander took his own life after being hastily condemned and shunned by his peers in what was described in court as a ‘pervasive cancel culture’.

Of course, suicide is complex and can rarely be reduced to any one cause. Still, the facts are these: two days after returning to university from the Christmas holidays, Alexander went to the pub with a group of friends, including a young woman referred to by the coroner, Mr Graham, as ‘B’. Later that evening, Alexander went to B’s room where they had sex. Over the following couple of days, B told several male friends that the encounter had made her feel uncomfortable. These disclosures prompted hostility towards Alexander, including a ‘physical altercation’ with a former boyfriend of B’s. Close friends then approached Alexander ‘to address the allegations’. They told him he had ‘messed up’ and they needed space from him. Alexander was said to have ‘appeared distraught’ afterwards.

Less than a week later, Alexander wrote a note indicating he intended to end his life and expressing his remorse for actions he described as ‘unintentional but unforgivable’. He then jumped from a bridge into the Thames. The coroner told the inquest that ‘Alexander was ostracised by his immediate peers because of their perception of what had taken place with B. As a consequence, he formed an intention… to take his life.’

Student suicides are thankfully rare. But a campus culture of judgement, condemnation and cancelling is not. A GP specialising in mental health told the inquest of a ‘concerning culture of social ostracism, certainly within an element of the student body’. She said it involved the ‘exclusion of students from social circles based on allegations of misconduct, often without due process or a fair hearing’. This describes what happened to Alexander – he was punished by his intolerant peers at the behest of one of their group.

University cancel culture regularly makes headlines. The phrase describes speakers being No Platformed, statues being removed or buildings renamed. It brings to mind books being slapped with trigger warnings and even lecturers, most notably gender-critical feminists, losing their jobs for holding views that are considered beyond the pale. It refers to a general sense that on campus people must watch what they say and routinely self-censor so as not to prompt outrage.

The inquest into the death of Rogers has now brought an even darker side of this culture to our attention; namely, the targeting and punishment of individual students. Maddy Mussen, a member of Gen Z who writes for the Standard, confirms this climate exists. ‘I know many friends – a few of them male, too – who have cut out men from their friendship groups for sexual-misconduct accusations’, she says.

But Mussen does not condemn Alexander’s friends for their response to his alleged misconduct. Women should be believed, she argues. Gen Z are simply ‘the first generation to enact a proper form of accountability for sexually inappropriate behaviour among friends’. The moral righteousness of such sentiments overlooks the utterly devastating impact that allegations alone can have on the life of a young man. They lead to public shaming and social ostracism and can prompt self-loathing, even if the accused never intentionally acted ‘inappropriately’.

With the inquest now complete, the coroner has pledged to write a ‘prevention of future deaths report’ to the Department for Education. He is rightly concerned that a culture in which students rush to judgement without knowledge of all the facts and shun those accused has become ‘normalised’ in the ‘higher-education sector as a whole’.

Yet, as welcome as this intervention is, we urgently need a broader, public discussion about where this culture of condemnation and ostracism emerged from and why it thrives within universities. We need to examine why students think that passing judgement without knowledge of all the facts is actually ‘a proper form of accountability’.

Sadly, it seems that a proportion of today’s young adults are an ugly product of schools and universities where tolerance, nuance and sensitivity have been dropped in favour of knee-jerk judgement, condemnation and public shaming. Students are taught to behave in this way by teachers and lecturers who view works of literature, art, music and the past itself as a resource to be tried, found guilty and cancelled to boost their own moral standing in the present. They are modelling the behaviour of academics who call for speakers to be No Platformed and join campaigns to have colleagues fired for holding views they dislike.

For Alexander Rogers, cancellation was not an academic exercise. His peer group were young teenagers when the #MeToo movement reached its peak in the late 2010s. Combined with campus cancel culture, accusations of sexually inappropriate behaviour from women now have the power to condemn and turn individuals into social pariahs.

The tragic death of Alexander Rogers will have brought unimaginable pain to his family. In response, it is not enough for institutions to put more mental-health support or safeguarding protocols in place. Through their words and actions, academics must demonstrate to students the importance of nuance, tolerance and not rushing to judgement.

Joanna Williams is a spiked columnist and author of How Woke Won. She is a visiting fellow at Mathias Corvinus Collegium in Hungary.