The free speech debate has flared up yet again, in two very different ways.

Adelaide Writers’ Week, currently under way, has been engulfed in controversy over the participation of two Palestinian writers: Susan Abulhawa, the author of grossly offensive tweets about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and Mohammed El-Kurd, who criticises Israel in language viewed by many as antisemitic.

There have been calls for Adelaide Writers’ Week director Louise Adler to be removed.Credit:Eddie Jim

Meanwhile, in Sydney, two “socialist activist” students – who were part of a mob that last year broke up a meeting at the University of Sydney to hear former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull – were suspended for behaviour in breach of the university’s code of conduct.

Louise Adler, the former head of Melbourne University Publishing and director of Writers’ Week, has defended the participation of the Palestinian activists on freedom of speech grounds. Morry Schwartz, another publisher who funds a stable of relentlessly left-wing periodicals, called for her resignation. So far, Adler has stood her ground. She is right to do so.

Adler does not condone the language or endorse the opinions of the Palestinian writers. With Australia strongly supporting Ukraine against the Russian invasion, the organisers showed particularly poor judgment in inviting someone who abuses Zelensky. Nevertheless, invited they were; once they are on the bill, to remove them could only be seen as an act of censorship.

There is something more than a little unsettling about banning writers from a writers’ festival – and particularly alarming when the calls are led by a publisher. But, of course, Schwartz is one of Australia’s greatest champions of intellectual conformism: you will search in vain for diversity of opinion in his publications, unless they are gradations of difference between the left and the far left.

Deaglan Godwin and Maddie Clark have been suspended from Sydney University.Credit:Edwina Pickles

Freedom of speech used to be an article of faith for progressives. When it was denied, none were so emphatic in its defence. Within recent memory, those on the left made common cause with liberals to demand people’s right to read, see, hear and say whatever they wanted. It was conservatives who were in favour of censorship.

But in one of the strangest inversions in our lifetimes, it is now progressives who are the free speech sceptics. Anything that offends them is glibly labelled “hate speech”. Freedom of speech has ceased to be a progressive cause; it has become a conservative totem.