The comments by Sheriff Cottam seem dangerously close to prescribing a view one “must” have about the pandemic and the folk heroes it has borne such as Captain Moore and healthcare workers.

If anything, “hate speech” rules are designed to be altruistic in appearance, claiming to secure the well-being of the down-trodden and ‘systematically oppressed’. But this is only to roll the Trojan Horse right through the gates of modern universities.

Hate speech, as Oxford University’s student’s union referred to, exists, but who is to define it? The more we fail to seriously consider these questions and the implications of restricting material, the more we erode our own fundamental rights.