DAN HANNAN ON LESSONS FROM THE TIM HUNT DEFENESTRATION: Speak Up And Stop The Lynch Mob.

One of the women present, a lecturer called Connie St Louis, complained on Twitter about his “sexism”, triggering the usual lynch mob. By the time the professor had returned to London, his career lay about him in broken shards.

The scary thing here is not the Twitter reaction — we are familiar enough with the ugly psychology of mobs. What is truly depressing is the behavior of those directly involved. For it soon emerged that Mrs. St Louis had given only a partial account of events. You would not have gathered from her version that the professor was being ironic, making a little joke before the “now seriously” that led to his main point about female scientists playing an important role in Korea. Plenty of the women present were journalists but, as is the way when a lynch mob forms, they were reluctant to step into its path.

UCL behaved abominably, first ordering the professor to resign quietly to avoid being sacked, and then allowing its ultimatum to become known. It has since emerged that Sir Tim’s accuser had made some seriously false claims about her own qualifications, but no one has suggested that she lose her post. As another Nobel prize-winner, Sir Andre Geim, remarked: “No Vice Chancellor would take on an ethnic-minority militant feminist. Those are not humble Nobel laureates who can be forced to resign quietly.” . . .

It’s always easier to keep your head down. Write about these subjects, as I’m doing now, and you run the risk of being called a sexist or a racist or whatever. But surely we have to take a stand. The next time you see a mob gibbering and shrieking and demanding someone’s dismissal, don’t hunker down. Speak up. Someone has to, for Heaven’s sake.

As President Obama advises, punch back twice as hard. Make this sort of thing as personally unpleasant as possible for the administrators, the false-accusers, and everyone else in the lynch mob and this sort of thing will fade away.