The Oxford Union held a debate last week with the proposition, “This House believes woke culture has gone too far.” The student newspaper has a brief summary of the event.

Speaking on proposition was Founder of the Free Speech Union (FSU) and Associate Editor of the Spectator Toby Young.

Young argued that “Wanting to reduce prejudice and discrimination and improve outcomes for historically disadvanged groups is an admirable goal…the objection to woke culture is not the end but the means used to achieve it.”

In his speech Young cited examples of legitimate free speech crises around the world from the Uyghurs in China to women in Iran to Kathleen Stock who in his eyes “was essentially hounded off the Sussex University campus”.

Students who spoke in favour also argued that woke culture “prioritises performative display over real social justice” and “allows little room for nuance”

On the opposition, Yasmin Benoit, a model and asexual activist, reflected on how the term had evolved in recent years. “Woke has gone from something aspirational for Black people to a pejorative that is used to beat communities down for trying to be informed and helpful,” Benoit remarked. She argued that cultural evolution can only take place when we are accepting of ideas around social justice.

One of the odd things about this debate is that, for reasons that aren’t clear, author and mathematician James Lindsay was invited to the Oxford Union to speak against the resolution. If you’re familiar with Lindsay then you know he’s be a leading critic of wokeness for a number of years now. In 2018 he was part of the Sokal Squared hoax aimed at “grievance studies” journals (along with Helen Pluckrose and Peter Boghossian). He has his own site called New Discourses where he writes about wokeness at length. I’ve pointed back to one of his pieces from that site about why the woke won’t debate you many times. He’s also the author of a book about wokeness titled, “Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody.” All of that to say, asking him to the debate for the pro-woke side seems a bit odd. He wrote about how it happened at his own site.

Late last summer, I got an email from the Oxford Union formally inviting me to debate the proposition “This House Believes Woke Culture Has Gone Too Far.” Then, a month or so after I accepted, while on a flight across the country to Southern California, I happened to stumble upon the Oxford Union debate schedule page a few hours after it was posted only to discover that the house had placed me in the opposition to the proposition. That is, Oxford Union had deemed that I do not believe Woke culture has gone too far. I was to be up against Toby Young, Konstantin Kisin, and Charlie Kirk, which was a considerable shock. I had no idea who the people on my side were.

I was also pretty excited because it was an opportunity of a lifetime for me. I was going to get to take something like the Grievance Studies Affair to Oxford, live and in person, as myself.

After sitting on this news for a few weeks, assuming the Oxford Union would realize its mistake and cancel me, seeing as the proposition side of the debate was already full, the decisive need to make travel arrangements loomed, so I emailed the Oxford Union to point out their error. Of course, I also made it clear I was willing and able to accept the side of the debate to which I had been assigned. The Oxford Union replied fairly promptly, saying, “We did not know that Dr. Lindsay wanted to speak on the proposition side of the debate. However, at this point, the proposition side is full. Is there any chance Dr. Lindsay can speak on the opposition side?” Obviously, I eagerly insisted that I could and would…

When I arrived at the reception at the Union that evening, I met the people on both sides of the debate and was glad to see that everyone got along very well. Nobody seemed to be able to account for how I ended up on the wrong side of the debate, but nearly everyone involved deemed it suspicious and confusing. An interesting detail that surfaced was that apparently several appropriate professors were invited to be on the opposition (pro-Woke) side of the debate and all refused to participate in such a thing. Nevertheless, among those of us who did show up, the atmosphere through the reception and dinner was cordial and friendly.

Despite, being on the wrong side of the room, Lindsay made a solid effort to argue that wokeness has not gone far enough because wokeness can never go too far. This was simultaneously a pro-woke argument and also a terrifying look at the ideology itself, one which envisions the creation of a permanent revolution. Here’s Lindsay’s portion of the argument. Again, he does sound like a woke true believer at the start of this but as you’ll see that’s all in service of revealing the terrifying end goal of wokeism.

There’s a video circulating on Twitter today of one of the people who argued for the other side of the debate. Konstantin Kisin is a Russian-English comedian and podcast host who has been criticizing wokeness since at least 2018. Because he was the last speaker for the proposition (the anti-wokeness side) he didn’t spend much of his time rehearsing some of the common arguments against wokeness (which had already been made). Instead he made an extended argument about climate change and poverty which focused on a slightly different area of left-wing concern, climate justice. It’s a solid argument, especially the part about what a small factor the UK is in the amount of CO2 put into the atmosphere. “If Britain was to sink into the sea right now it would make absolutely no difference to the issue of climate change,” he said. As I’ve argued before, the issue is actually going to be decided in China and to a lesser degree in India. Here’s Kisin’s argument.

There is more to this debate. You can find videos of the other speakers at the Oxford Union’s YouTube site. In any case, this particular anti-woke resolution did pass by a vote of 89-60, so the good guys won this debate.