ABSTRACT
This chapter uses three short cases studies of student protests in Malaysia, Sussex, England and Québec, Canada between 2012 and 2014 to open up some fundamental theoretical issues about the actual commitment of liberalism to freedom of expression. Given that, in each case, student dissent was subjected to repression and criminalisation of dissent by states and university authorities, the chapter proposes that liberalism needs to be better understood as having a commitment to security that persistently trumps freedom.
