Last year, Bryan W. Van Norden, professor of philosophy at Wuhan University, Yale-NUS College and Vassar College (and the author of “Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto”) authored an opinion piece for The New York Times titled “The Ignorant Do Not Have a Right to an Audience”.

You might be surprised – or then again you might not – that a tenured academic specialising in philosophy, that discipline which relies the most on debate and argument and where the answers are never final since it has no anchor in scientifically established facts, wants to silence other people, such as Ann Coulter, Jordan Peterson...