If there is one thing I hate more than anything, it is censorship.

A few years ago, I was the Editor of my school newspaper. My team and I prided ourselves on producing a publication that was interesting, relevant and, often, very funny. We published satires on the school’s leadership and lambasted the baking skills of teachers in cooking column Cake Corner. Theo Demolder, an ex-Editor and somebody who works with me today at Varsity, mocked our headteacher’s many public blunders by pretending to be him in a fortnightly entry.

We pushed the boundaries; we were not afraid to offend on principle. That year, the newspaper was a roaring success. And at every stage of the process we had the full backing of the school’s leadership, because it recognised that a right to free speech and satire is the lifeblood of any educational institution.

Yet when I left my position as Editor, some things changed. Certain figures gained a stronger influence at court, and before I knew it the ban hammer began to descend.

A piece I’d written for the yearly Rag Mag – a little booklet sold for charity that was supposed to push boundaries – never found its way into print. In it, I laughed at the molly-coddlery of the school nurse and the nonsensical anti-drugs stance of various ‘professional’ visitors to the sixth form centre. Apparently my words might have offended the school nurse – which, of course, was sort of the whole point. At no point was I racist or sexist; at no point did I incite violence. The piece was in reality a rather tame protest, but the new top brass decided that it had to die.

As time went on, I noticed a disturbing trend. Speeches and match reports I had written for assemblies had to avoid the over-zealous red pens of certain people if they were to remain relevant. Luckily, the heads still had an ounce of sense about them and I was usually allowed to say my piece unfettered by censors.

It wasn’t just me who was affected. One of my friends made an absurd joke about cocaine in a lesson. Cue an investigation and a half-hour interrogation in the head of sixth form’s office.

Now I can understand this one a little more. The school was jumpy about that sort of thing because it could have faced legal issues if students really were snorting coke (as far as I know, they weren’t).

Yet as I thought about it, I realised that my school had begun to slide down a slippery slope: the powers that were did not know when to stop banning things. Much of their policy was no less than an unwarranted attack on free speech. It was to some extent a response to certain past incidents – there is no doubt about that – but it was unwarranted nonetheless.

And then I came to Cambridge, and I realised that exactly the same thing was happening here, albeit this time driven by students. What I thought would be an arena for fierce and free debate appeared in many ways like a nanny state, in which particular interest groups had decided upon the moral discourse for everybody else.

In my first year, for example, I looked forward to sparring at the Mill Lane Lecture Rooms with Nigel Farage, who was set to give a talk there. Enter the CUSU Women’s Campaign calling for a ban. We couldn’t possibly give a ‘platform’ to a ‘Nazi’, after all.

My blood boiled. I am no fan of Farage, but he is not a Nazi. The best way to take down people we might perceive as bigoted is through reasoned debate, not by banning them. In this instance Farage preferred to turn on his heels rather than face the mob, but the ban machine had begun to rev. I didn’t like it one bit.

Did Martin Luther King halt his march on Birmingham for fear of offending its white inhabitants? Did Edmund Burke centuries before him put down his quill before penning Reflections on the Revolution in France because he thought it might be perceived as xenophobic? No; these men recognised their right to make a case amongst folks who were mature and intelligent enough to hear them out. They didn’t tiptoe around the issues at hand, and if they had done I would bet good money that we wouldn’t be hearing much about them today.

The beliefs of those against the rational debate at Mill Lane are all around us. CUSU LGBT+ did its best to prevent Germaine Greer from speaking at the Union, forgetting that their interpretation of transgenderism is not necessarily an objective fact of life. I completely disagree with Greer’s comments on transgender women, but banning her would have been a hundred times more damaging than her words could ever be.

It is not just Cambridge that is affected. A recent study found that up to 90% of British universities are placing curbs on free speech, in a misguided and dangerous attempt to protect delicate petals from offence. The safe space revolution is well and truly upon us, and it stinks.

The time has come for us to take a long, hard look at ourselves, and re-evaluate our understanding of what a university is. It is not a ‘safe space’ in which we attempt to level the playing field for everyone regardless of the strength of their beliefs. Those who seek equality by banning, trimming and quashing only succeed in reducing it.

I hope that those who love free speech might now take a stand. I fear for the future if they do not.