3 June, 2006

Eat this

The Register reports that a visiting fellow in evolutionary psychology at Newcastle University had his IT privileges withdrawn for publishing an essay on 'Why vegetarians should be force-fed with lard' (a patently non-literal title) in his personal, Uni-provided web space.

Apparently, if Nikolas Lloyd had been an official member of staff, the University would have defended his right to free speech (and initially did so), but as a visiting fellow, he didn't qualify for protection under section 43 of the Education (No 2) Act 1986, and senior University management surrendered to veggie complainants.

One side-effect is that the veggies have succeeded in exposing Lloyd's views to a far wider audience than they would otherwise have received. Now that he has uploaded the 'offending' site to his own domain, hosted elsewhere, I'm pleased to link to the essay.

And no, I have no interest whatsoever in presenting the counter-argument; it's not for me to offer a right of reply here to Lloyd's content elsewhere, and I wouldn't wish to. Contact him, not me. Comments on the issue itself are welcome here, as always, but mere veggie propaganda will be deleted without hesitation.