The announcement of the University of Crete begins with the kindest words available to our time: respect for dignity, inclusion , defense of human rights… Values, we are told, are non-negotiable.
If I held a Dollar or a Euro every time I heard these weighty concepts in public discourse, I would be a millionaire today. And yet, within a few lines, the entire tragic contradiction of the era unfolds: A public university, instead of defending a student’s right to speak freely, rushed to photograph her almost as a carrier of “hate rhetoric.”
Georgia Lyra , a sociology student in Rethymno , did not call for violence. She did not call for exclusions. She did not question anyone’s human value. She expressed something simple and self-evident : Her aversion to slogans that, in her judgment, desecrated sacred symbols. She reacted to the challenge that in other religions with strict codes and punitive measures would be simply unthinkable. She dared, in other words, to speak out, and that was enough to be stigmatized.
Herein lies the real concern . The university should be a place of clash of ideas , not a mechanism of ideological discipline . It should protect even the speech that disturbs the supposedly dominant narrative. When it does the opposite, it does not serve democracy, but serves the fear of dissent .
Because today, let’s put it bluntly, there are ” allowed ” and ” forbidden ” sensitivities. If a group of activists is offended, committees, announcements and public condemnations are immediately mobilized. However, if the faith , historical consciousness and value background of the social majority are offended, then the same event is baptized “progress” or “right to expression”. But democracy does not work selectively . There are not rights only for those who shout the loudest. There are also rights for those who see the public space transformed into a field of provocation and cultural deconstruction .
Perhaps that’s why so many people identified with her. The student wasn’t expressing a personal annoyance. She was expressing the fatigue of an entire society that sees common sense treated as a regression and any objection to extreme activism automatically labeled as intolerance .
We live, indeed, in an upside-down world . A world where insult is considered freedom, but reaction to insult is a thought crime . Where tolerance requires the many to remain silent, while the few are entitled to provoke without limits. Where universities that were once cradles of free spirit are in danger of becoming places of ideological conformity, cut and sewn to the measure of the times.
And the biggest problem isn’t that a student spoke up. It’s that so many are now afraid to publicly say they agree with her.
It is time to say this , before the situation becomes irreversible. We owe it to our children to speak up when we see public debate turning into a field of fear and imposition . To defend the right to free thought, to faith, to cultural identity and to common sense, without being stigmatized. Because a society that is afraid to defend its values in the name of a supposed progress , is a society that is gradually giving up on itself.
And when people remain silent for fear of being labeled, it’s not just freedom of speech that is at risk. It’s democracy itself that has unfortunately learned to operate with double standards, almost always to the detriment of those who truly respect the freedom of others.
MAXIMOS TH. KYPRIANOU
