The Age of Offence

The politics of outrage, and the crisis of free speech on campus

IRA WELLS

"The unavoidable corollary is that, because offensive speech does not exist in the world, offence can only ever occur when another human claims to have been offended. And who could possibly validate the claim of offence other than the offence-taking party itself? In his London Review of Books essay “What Are We Allowed to Say?” the Yale scholar David Bromwich quotes Tariq Modood, the director of Bristol University’s Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship, who argues that “the group which feels hurt is the ultimate arbiter of whether a hurt has taken place.” The Ontario Human Rights Commission already provides this subjective understanding of offence taking with juridical force: “Discrimination happens,” the commission explains, “when a person experiences negative treatment or impact, intentional or not, because of their gender identity or gender expression [or other protected grounds].” The violation resides not in the intention of the offender, but in “experiences” and “impacts” perceptible only to the victim."