Cambridge deserves better than Stephen Toope

Regular readers may be aware that in recent months I have been having a running-spat with a Canadian lawyer called Stephen Toope. I am rarely exercised by Canadian lawyers, but this particular one is the current Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, and he seems intent on running that crown jewel of an institution into the ground. 

Since taking over as Vice-Chancellor, Mr Toope has been responsible for a wide array of anti-free speech initiatives through which, as I recently remarked in the Daily Telegraph, he appears to want to transform Cambridge University into something like the Canadian bar association, but without the thrills, or the pay.

Anyhow – our spat came to a head after Cambridge last month published its new guidance for informers. 

The purpose of this new initiative was to allow students and faculty to anonymously inform on each other and report ‘micro-aggressions’. 

As I accurately wrote in the Telegraph, one of the examples of a micro-aggression offered by Cambridge’s website for informers was a member of the university raising an eyebrow while any member of a minority was speaking. In the wake of the negative publicity, Toope had the website for informers taken down, claiming that it had gone off early, that the dog had eaten it, or some such lame excuse.

Anyhow, to my great amusement, Mr Toope has finally found some friends at Cambridge, or at least some suckers-up willing to write a half-arsed defence of him. Thus this letter appeared in the letters pages of the paper at the weekend. Here is the text in full:

Sir – 

Douglas Murray has twice made unwarranted and highly personal attacks on the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, Professor Stephen J Toope (Comment, May 22 and June 8).

As heads of the University’s six academic schools, we are independent of the central administration, but we cannot stand by as Professor Toope is subject to such gross misrepresentation.