Article on professor played down serious issues around the right to call out someone with controversial views

I read with interest Ruth Dudley Edwards’ article last Tuesday headlined ‘Perhaps Professor Harvey is too sensitive for social media’ (November 15).

Whilst we are largely on the same side of the argument in respect of Professor Colin Harvey, I found her comment, also used in the headline, worthy of a response.

Though with honourable intentions, the comment, like parts of the article, down play some quite serious issues. Prof Harvey is, self evidently, a central player in a campaign to build momentum leading to a border poll, and hopefully for him and his supporters, on to a united Ireland.

It is far more likely that Ireland will be re-united by such a populist momentum than by conciliation and agreement with unionists.

Professor Harvey posts leading tweets, gets a reaction out of unionists, and then – I believe – sets himself up the victim. His personal sensitiveness has little to do with it.

His linking of the cause of Irish national unity to human rights is for me a worrying ethnicisation of something that should be sacred to all, not linked to any particular cause.

Surely a person supporting united Ireland should have the human rights of those who will find themselves in a minority in it, as central?

And he has support for this stance in worryingly high places. On March 24 a UN report concluded that ‘a smear campaign' on a NI human rights advocate (Prof Harvey) were a threat to academic freedom.

Though any genuine threats to him are to be utterly condemned no details of the evidence used to conclude this were provided for us all to assess.

And none will be, as the work of the UN ‘Panel of Experts,’ which is looking at such evidence, is confidential.

This feels like a subversion of people’s right to call out someone with controversial views, in the public interest.

This should worry not only unionists, but all lovers of freedom.

Alan Millar, Ballymoney