ABSTRACT
Throughout the Anglo-American world, the cultural politics practised in higher education are undergoing a profound transformation. Universities have come under the infl uence of powerful paternalistic and intolerant trends. The values of experimentation, risk-taking and openness to new ideas, which infl uenced campuses in the 1960s and 1970s, have given way to a climate of moral regulation and conformism. On many of the fundamental ideals that are classically associated with a democratic sensibility – tolerance, freedom of speech, diversity of views – campuses have adopted practices that are less liberal than those that prevail in wider society.
