{"id":286707,"date":"2025-10-13T18:05:01","date_gmt":"2025-10-13T17:05:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsisc.com\/videos\/defend-free-speech-or-descend-into-a-political-abyss-says-freedom-of-speech-tsar-bbc-news\/"},"modified":"2025-10-13T18:05:01","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T17:05:01","slug":"defend-free-speech-or-descend-into-a-political-abyss-says-freedom-of-speech-tsar-bbc-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsisc.com\/videos\/defend-free-speech-or-descend-into-a-political-abyss-says-freedom-of-speech-tsar-bbc-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Defend free speech or descend into a political abyss, says freedom of speech tsar | BBC News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i2.ytimg.com\/vi\/I7WeSvgSuYw\/hqdefault.jpg\" alt=\"Defend free speech or descend into a political abyss, says freedom of speech tsar | BBC News\"><br \/> <iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/I7WeSvgSuYw\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p>Arif Ahmed has been dubbed the \u201cFree Speech Tsar\u201d and is responsible for enforcing new rules to protect free speech on university and college campuses in England.<\/p>\n<p>In an interview with Nick Robinson for BBC Radio 4\u2019s Political Thinking podcast, he warned of falling into an \u201cabyss\u201d of political violence if we didn\u2019t settle our differences through speech. <\/p>\n<p>As Director of Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom at the Office for Students, Ahmed threatened universities with fines and cutting off public funding if they fail to protect students and academics from intimidation.<\/p>\n<p>You can watch the interview on BBC iPlayer or listen to an extended version on BBC Sounds. <\/p>\n<p>Subscribe here: http:\/\/bit.ly\/1rbfUog<\/p>\n<p>For more news, analysis and features visit: www.bbc.com\/news <\/p>\n<p>#Universities #BBCNews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Arif Ahmed has been dubbed the \u201cFree Speech Tsar\u201d and is responsible for enforcing new rules to protect free speech on university and college campuses in England. In an interview with Nick Robinson for BBC Radio 4\u2019s Political Thinking podcast, he warned of falling into an \u201cabyss\u201d of political violence if we didn\u2019t settle our [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":286708,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[128810],"tags":[134188,147595,128827],"actors":[],"class_list":["post-286707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bbc-news","tag-ahmed","tag-arif","tag-been"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Defend free speech or descend into a political abyss, says freedom of speech tsar | BBC News | News ISC Videos<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Watch Defend free speech or descend into a political abyss, says freedom of speech tsar | BBC News for free, here on News ISC. 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