Marni Soupcoff: Cancel culture reaches new heights with New York Times, Hollywood firings - "two of its high-profile journalists were resigning: veteran health and science writer Donald G. McNeil Jr. and audio producer Andy Mills. Both men had been the subject of previous controversies, yet their departures took place long afterwards, apparently the result of more recent internal and external pressure on management to hold them further to account than was initially felt necessary for the past transgressions. The loss of McNeil is especially troubling because he has done a stellar job of reporting on the COVID pandemic, foreseeing the lockdown and effects the virus would have on North America long before most of his peers. His sin occurred a couple of years ago. The reporter was serving as an expert guide for a group of high school students on a trip to Peru. One of the students asked him his opinion on whether a classmate should have been disciplined for using a racial slur. McNeil answered the student by asking for more information, repeating the racial slur as he did so. The Times conducted a review of the incident at the time and chose not to fire McNeil. But they started to change their minds on Jan. 28 of this year after a Daily Beast report made the episode public. At first, New York Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet emailed Times staff that McNeil’s remarks “were offensive” and McNeil “showed extremely poor judgment,” but “it did not appear to me that his intentions were harmful or malicious.” “I believe that in such cases,” Baquet’s message continued, “people should be told they are wrong and given another chance.” It was a position that did not last long amidst complaints from staffers... The CEO of PEN America, a non-profit dedicated to protecting free expression, commented: “For reporter Donald McNeil to end his long career, apparently as the result of a single word, risks sending a chilling message.” The departure of Andy Mills on the same day was somewhat cloudier. “Caliphate,” a podcast Mills produced, had withstood an embarrassing blow in December when the Times officially announced the award-winning program had failed to meet the newspaper’s “standards for accuracy.” But Mills maintained a prominent position in the New York Times podcast world despite the problems — which led to complaints that he was being treated better than the female journalist host of “Caliphate,” who had been reassigned. That is when allegations of inappropriate behaviour about seven years before at a past job were reinvigorated, and Twitter exploded with what Mills has characterized as “gross exaggerations and baseless claims.” The public shaming, some of it engaged in by Times staffers, was enough to cause his departure... Gina Carano was fired from The Mandalorian over a frowned upon Tweet, and it’s becoming hard to keep track of who is cancelling whom in the recent controversy over a Variety movie review of actor Carey Mulligan’s performance in Promising Young Woman. (Mulligan accused the reviewer of sexism for implying she was not attractive enough for her role, the reviewer expressed bewilderment and promised that as a gay man he was not evaluating women’s hotness, Variety issued an apology for the review, then the National Society of Film Critics condemned Variety for its shabby treatment of the reviewer and demanded Variety remove the apology.) Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald has written a disturbing post about how New York Times tech reporters have essentially become professional speech tattletales, with reporter Taylor Lorenz recently excoriating a Silicon Valley entrepreneur for using a slur in private group conversation — which he did not use. The circumstances of each of these incidents can be reasonably debated, and one need not come out on the same side every time, but the overwhelming trend of repressing free discussion is disturbing, and never more so than when exercised by an institution such as the New York Times, which is supposed to view free expression as its raison d’être."
Context only matters to bigots
Mobbing of medical resident reveals double standards for social justice - "[Zachary Kuehner]'s case interested me particularly because of a common theme that preoccupied those attacking him, whether they were fellow students, university administrators, media or third-party groups: namely, that a practising physician who voices heterodox political opinions—that is, opinions that do not dovetail with Critical Race Theory (CRT) and intersectionality—on Black Lives Matter or Islam or Indigenous issues is unfit to serve the medical needs of certain people, because he is a threat to their "cultural safety... CBC reporter Ryan Cooke published an article about the Call to Action, leading with the fact that Kuehner's Twitter bio now read "Resident doc, mutt owner, sometimes travel writer," but that it had up until days before also contained the word "Islamophobe." Indeed, having read the tea leaves contained in the Call to Action, and realizing that sarcasm cannot coexist in harmony with Wokeism, Kuehner had deleted the word... London, Ont. emergency room doctor Tarek Loubani published an article on Medium.com, "Dear Zachary Kuehner, if you're not a White Supremacist, you sure fooled us." Loubani's diatribe is unnuanced (he calls Kuehner an "asshole," for example), and refers to three op eds Kuehner wrote as seeming "like classic dog-whistle racism / white supremacy, complete with White Man's Burden undertones." To me they seemed objective, balanced, free of any racist undertones whatsoever, let alone of "white supremacy," and perfectly consistent with the standards of civil discourse one associates with the classic liberal polemical tradition. You be the judge: one, two and three. Personally, I would assess all of them as anti-racist in character. Loubani ignored readily available articles by Kuehner that are explicitly pro-diversity, such as Je Speak Inuktitut and Why I Love Canada: We're an ethnic hodgepodge because they so clearly rebut Loubani's "white supremacy" narrative. Loubani's name may ring a bell for many readers. That is because medicine is only one of his two passions. The other is political activism against Israel as part of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). The ISM supports Hamas (officially named a terrorist organization in Canada, the U.S. and by the European Court of Justice) and encourages activists to take "direct action" that often puts them in confrontation with the Israeli military during operations. ISM has been described as "embracing Palestinian militants, even suicide bombers, as freedom fighters." Loubani himself took a well-publicized part in one such direct action in Gaza during the 2018 Great March of Return where he was allegedly shot in the leg by an Israeli sniper and tended to by a "medic"- killed by the Israeli military—whose alleged martyrdom was plangently lamented to credulous media people by Loubani until the "medic" was exposed as a Hamas terrorist. My point in recalling Loubani's anti-Israel history is not only to discredit this "radical grandstander" (in journalist Margaret Wente's words) as a moral authority on anything, but to demonstrate the gross hypocrisy that informs the entire case against Zachary Kuehner... He stands in solidarity with a terrorist organization—Hamas—whose proudly bruited raison d'être is the eradication of the state of Israel and the ethnic cleansing of every Jew in their homeland. (In the words of the Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar: "Tear their hearts out.") How can any Canadian Jew feel safe in his hands—that is, according to criteria he has himself established, criteria that coincide with those expressed by the complainants at MUN, the NCCM and Dr. Cohen of CWIM... Apart from law, there is no profession in which the right to equal treatment is more sacrosanct than medicine. To uphold a belief system in which putative mental discomfort to a Muslim, Black or Indigenous student/patient trumps a physician's right to (civil) freedom of speech, but in which the putative discomfort of a Jewish or any white heterosexual male student/patient may be ignored should be anathema to the medical community."
Disabled non-binary transgender social justice warrior is CANCELLED by super woke internet mob - "A disabled trans activist and author was canceled by a super woke mob after their job at defense contractor Lockheed Martin was revealed by a Twitter user. Ana Mardoll, whose books have sold thousands, was first doxxed on July 30 as being employed at Lockheed's Fort Worth facility... 'I stay because I'm on an unusual part-time arrangement for medical reasons. It's hard to find a remove WFH job that will give me medical insurance but let me work 10-20 hours a week.'... In 2020, Lockheed won an award for disability inclusion."
No one is safe from the mob
To The Leftist Vultures At Media Matters: Kiss My Ass - "I have been successful in fighting against the left’s agenda, especially the trans agenda. Those who support the sexual mutilation of children know full well that I am a threat to them. We’re winning and they’re losing. And they know it. They cannot engage with our arguments, they cannot oppose us on the battlefield of ideas, so instead they look for another way. Now they’re convinced they’ve found their kill shot against me by using the same method they always use: digging up ancient history — doing the internet equivalent of rummaging through garbage cans — to find things done and said years ago which can be used to defame and, they hope, silence me today. Yes, my PR team over at Media Matters apparently wasn’t satisfied to promote just my current show, so they decided to go back 15 years to my time as a rock radio host on an obscure station in Delaware. They spent, it would seem, many tedious hours listening to segments and bits from my time as a shock jock in my early 20s. It could not have been easy to sit through. I commend their persistence. Now they’ve compiled their findings into an “expose” that promises to reveal my “sordid past.” Honestly, I never thought of myself as having a sordid past. I figured my life was far too boring for that. But it turns out that I am a more interesting person than I had previously thought. As for the vultures at Media Matters, and the Leftists who’ve picked up this hit piece and run with it, they are not very interesting. They are as pathetic and desperate as I’ve always known them to be. The Left isn’t interested in investigating children’s hospitals that literally castrate and butcher children. In fact, such investigations are an act of terrorism, they insist. But they will take the time to scour the internet for evidence that I made offensive remarks when I was 23 years-old. That, in their minds, is far more relevant to the public. A matter of much greater national urgency... In their hit piece, Media Matters presents evidence that I used racially insensitive humor, that I told inappropriate jokes, that I engaged in other offensive activities. All of that is, of course, true. They also accuse me of physically abusing our radio interns by tasing one of them as a joke. This is also true, and I submit, still funny. In fairness, I got tased too. In fact, I invented a game called taser trivia where, as the name suggests, you are asked trivia questions and if you get it wrong, you get tased. Media Matters didn’t post that video but they should. It’s quite shocking. That’s the sort of content you missed out on if you didn’t live in southern Delaware in the early 2000s... my enemies have thrown every last thing they can at me. The whole kitchen sink, and a few appliances to go with it. I am not the first to get this treatment and I certainly will not be the last. Their objective is nothing less than the wholesale destruction of my life and my career. That is the price they expect me to pay for opposing them effectively. They hope to force me to submit and apologize, at which point they will shoo me away with my tail between my legs, out of public view, out of the arena, off into obscurity. This is my punishment, the life sentence they expect me to serve, for trying to stop them from abusing and butchering children. And it’s not just me they are after. They want to send a message to you that if you stand up against them, this is what happens. They want to make me into another head on a spike, a warning to anyone else who might think about defying them. Well here is my official answer, for the record: kiss my ass. I do not apologize. In fact by all rights you sick freaks should be the ones apologizing for lying and defaming me, and doing it all because I’m trying to prevent you from sexually mutilating children. You child abusing psychopaths. I wouldn’t apologize to you soulless parasites if I had a gun to my head. Instead I will just tell you all to piss off. I apologize for nothing. I concede nothing. I will never surrender even a single inch of ground to a pitchfork mob full of degenerate idiots. The secret that they never say out loud is that nobody is truly canceled unless they consent to it and willingly play their assigned role. I do not consent and I will not play the game."
Anti-woke comic book defies cancel culture, earns $1.7M in four days - "Writer, content creator and musician Eric July is adding a new feather to his cap: comic book creator. July officially launched his first comic book “Isom #1” through publishing company Rippaverse on Monday — and it’s been a smashing success. July’s book has already brought in more than $1.7 million in pre-orders in just the first four days. Nearly 19,000 people have pre-ordered — but not everyone is happy about it. The release of “Isom #1” created somewhat of a stir on social media, particularly Reddit, where promotional videos for the comic book were banned from certain subreddits for “supporting comics from hate groups.” But July tells Fox News Digital his comic book company is no such thing. “A lot of it has to do with the fact that I am a person that they simply do not like”... July said a lot of entertainment today is out to “beat people over the head with stuff like social justice” and left-leaning agendas. “To see the industry go in the direction that it’s gone kind of lights a fire under you,” July said. “It’s not like it’s getting any better. These people are doubling down on everything that they’re doing no matter how often the fans reject it.” So, he created Rippaverse."
He's black too. So the woke trying to cancel him are embodying anti-blackness
Bean Dad Canceled After Letting 9-Year-Old Daughter Figure Out a Can Opener - "When the girl finally did puncture the can with the little wheely thing (really, how much do any of us really know about can openers?), she was triumphant, and dad was too. Then came the commenters... Pretty soon the haters grew so vocal—some calling his actions child abuse—that Bean Dad took down his whole thread (preserved here). Then came the memes, of course. And then came the digging up of his prior tweets, some of which were shockingly and indisputably racist and anti-Semitic."
The 1793 Project Unmasked - "Ironically, the same subset of people ostensibly exercised about emotional safety—the woke left—seem frequently inclined to level unsubstantiated accusations that inflict emotional harm. This makes it difficult to believe that these Twitter warriors' true aim is the promotion of psychological comfort. Did any of them consider Uhlig's mental health after the man was baselessly accused? Does anyone care about Roman, who probably did not expect her enemies to ransack her Myspace page for evidence of racism and then pillory her for a photo taken when she was 23? What about Shor, thrown to the wolves for making a reasonable objection to what one wing of the protesters was doing? That sounds like terror, not safety. Call it the 1793 Project."
Boeing communications chief resigns over commentary published in 1987 - "A top Boeing executive has resigned over an article he wrote more than three decades ago in which he advocated that women should not be permitted to serve in combat roles in the military. Niel Golightly, the senior vice president of communications, stepped down following an employee complaint about the article, published in 1987"
Everyone needs to know how what they write will be judged 3 decades in the future. The solution is to never publish anything
NY Times praises 'cancel culture' but skips its own racist history: Goodwin - "In a recent article about Mount Rushmore, The New York Times said of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt that “each of these titans of American history has a complicated legacy.” Reporters Bryan Pietsch and Jacey Fortin casually summarized the woke herd’s litany of grievances: Washington and Jefferson owned slaves, Lincoln was “reluctant and late” to issue the Emancipation Proclamation and Roosevelt “actively sought to Christianize and uproot Native Americans.” Rushmore’s sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, didn’t escape unscathed. “Borglum had been involved with another project: an enormous bas-relief at Stone Mountain in Georgia that memorialized Confederate leaders,” the reporters wrote. There was little in the story that was remarkable, and that was the point. The Times, as the chief media cheerleader for the chaos unfolding across the nation, routinely eviscerates America’s heroes, its culture and, through the paper’s 1619 Project, its founding. Four years after it abandoned its traditional standards of fairness to try to defeat Donald Trump, the paper is now fixated on rewriting the story of America. The drive-by attack on the Rushmore presidents was part of its cancel-culture agenda. Yet the Times has never applied to its own history the standards it uses to demonize others. If it did, reporters there would learn that the Ochs-Sulzberger family that has owned and run the paper for 125 years has a “complicated legacy” of its own. That legacy includes Confederates in the closet — men and at least one woman who supported the South and slavery during the Civil War. In fact, Times patriarch Adolph S. Ochs contributed money to the very Stone Mountain project and other Confederate memorials the Times now finds so objectionable. To be clear, I detest the Times’ determination to judge and revise history using criteria conceived 20 minutes ago. The paper’s Marxist-inspired activism and race-based fetish have taken it so far off course that it no longer functions as an actual newspaper. Having spent my formative journalistic years at the Gray Lady, I came away with immense respect for the editors’ commitment to fair and impartial news coverage. That commitment started with Ochs, who, from the day he took control of the Times in 1896, insisted on a strict separation of news and opinion, a tradition that lasted more than a century. It was those traditions — fairness and safeguards against reporters’ bias — that gave the paper its credibility and made it the flagship of American journalism. But those days are gone, with the standards eroded slowly at first and then abolished under current Executive Editor Dean Baquet. Every story these days is an editorial as the paper demands that every institution and individual conform to the Times’ views, or be denounced as racist, homophobic, Islamophobic and misogynistic. Because of the Times’ exceptional influence, its demagoguery is playing a major role in shredding the fabric of our country. At the very least, the paper ought to be honorable enough to apply its freshly minted standards to its own past. If it did, I believe the owners, editors, reporters and stockholders would be shocked by what they discover... with the exception of the last two top editors, all others were white men. Before Baquet, who is black, there was Jill Abramson, who was fired after three years. The paper’s last public editor, Liz Spayd, said she was struck by the “blinding whiteness” of the staff when she first entered the newsroom. The Times, like many other corporations of all kinds, has been sued by black employees charging racial discrimination. In any other company, and with so much wealth accumulated by one family, that record would be fair game for the paper’s journalists, especially given the Confederate connections. In that spirit, it’s time for the Times to clean out its closet and live by the standards of purity it demands of others. For a thorough, honest examination of its checkered past, the paper should assign a team of its top investigative reporters to the project. They would get total access to corporate leaders and documents and be free to interview their colleagues. Their marching orders would be to examine the Times in the same way they would examine any other institution, which means they are free to use anonymous quotes. In effect, the paper would be taking a big dose of its own medicine. Whatever the results, they should be published on the front page, under the motto that Adolph Ochs put there in 1897: “All the news that’s fit to print.” Then, hopefully humbled and cured of its supremacy delusion, the Times could get back to being a real newspaper and report the news instead of fomenting chaos and division."
Harry Potter 20th anniversary: why I never read Harry Potter as a kid
Liberals claim conservatives are just as into cancel culture as them, and Harry Potter is always cited as an example. But if telling other Christians not to read Harry Potter is "cancel culture", then Jews and Muslims are trying to cancel pork
Cambridge Union drops plans to ‘blacklist’ speakers after John Cleese pulls out - "Keir Bradwell, the president of the 200-year-old debating society, assured members that a blacklist would be created after Andrew Graham-Dixon, the art historian, offended some students by performing an Adolf Hitler impression to make a point during a debate last week. Monty Python star Cleese responded on Wednesday by announcing that he was “blacklisting” himself “before someone else does” by pulling out of his own Cambridge Union engagement. The controversial proposal for a ban on certain speakers was later scrapped... The historian, known for presenting documentaries on BBC4, was criticised by students for adopting a German accent to express, in character, the artistic views of Hitler. The speech, in a debate on the objective existence of “good taste”, was intended to illustrate that the Nazis had objectively bad taste due to their racist views. But it was criticised by some students and described as “absolutely unacceptable” and “utterly horrifying” by Zara Salaria, the equalities officer at the Union. Mr Bradwell faced criticism on campus that he did not curb the Hitler impersonation while presiding over the debate. He later tried to reassure his peers that Mr Graham-Dixon would not return to the union by proposing a blacklist, subsequently described as “Stalinist” by critics. Cleese, who impersonated Hitler in an episode of Monty Python and performed a goose step as Basil Fawlty, responded to the blacklist by pulling out of an event scheduled for Friday... It is understood there were concerns among some scheduled speakers that the Cambridge Union, long considered a bastion of free speech, had succumbed to censorship. But the speakers received assurances from the union that there would be no formal ban on guests being invited to speak. Mr Graham-Dixon, who has been contacted for comment, has previously defended his address to the union during the debate on the motion “this house believes there is no such thing as good taste”. He released a statement saying: “The intention of my speech was to underline the utterly evil nature of Hitler and his regime. He caricatured Jewish people and black people and homosexuals in all kinds of terrible ways and curated a huge art exhibition – called Degenerate Art – as propaganda for his poisonous views. “In my speech I caricatured him, briefly, paraphrasing HIS crass and insensitive statements about art and race. I’d hoped this was crystal clear to all present. My point was that evil ideas in the sphere of art can have untold and even atrocious consequences in the rest of life. “Those familiar with my work will know that I have always spoken out against racism or any form of discrimination.” Mr Graham-Dixon has also previously said: “Mr Bradwell’s implication that I am racist and anti-Semitic by placing me on his list is utterly rejected, and in the context surprising. The speech I gave was a strident attack on Hitler’s racism and anti-Semitism.”"
Melissa Chen on Twitter - "The media Leftists have now hit upon a new narrative: cancel culture doesn't exist. It doesn't exist because book burnings are not ACKSHUALLY book burnings. They're just "cultural change." But what if that "cultural change" involves book burnings, as most cultural revolutions do?"
"Ben is right about this one. There were a lot of "ACKSHUALLY no one banned or canceled Dr. Seuss books" in my replies. Here's the thing: if the last few months have shown you anything, it is that the slippery slope is indeed slippery AND that "cultural changes" can be just as"
The Firing of Australian Doctor for Social Media Posts Exemplifies the Political Takeover of Medicine - "Human Rights lawyer, John Steenhof, in his contribution to the 2021, Dr. Kevin Donnelly compilation, ‘Cancel Culture and the Left’s long March.’... Writing under the heading ‘Slouching Towards Groupthink,’ Steenhof described how “Doctors and other health professionals are increasingly being forced to align with a cultural-left agenda through creeping limits imposed by Codes of Conduct.” Any breach of the Code, Steenhof explained could “lead to Doctors being struck-off by the Medical Board.” This, he said, was compounded by the Medical Board’s move towards “leftist critical theory concepts about issues like cultural safety, white supremacy, and colonisation.”... As Human Rights lawyer, John Steenhof concluded, “Jereth is a good doctor. He does his job well. He treats his colleagues well. He treats his patients well.” But, Steenhof said, “none of that matters. Solely on the basis of his internet posts, this good doctor’s career has been ruined.” Cementing his point, Steenhof argued, this “happened not because Dr. Jereth did the wrong thing but because Dr. Jereth said the wrong thing – and all originating from an anonymous complaint from an activist. Another example of cancel culture by way of the legal system.” Noting how problematic the precedent actually is, Bill Muehlenberg observed: “Now if doctors say the “wrong” thing on private social media pages, the powers that be, can hound a doctor like this right out of business.”"
‘I see cancel culture every single day’ - "Writers, artists and comedians once delighted in pushing boundaries. Causing offence was seen as a necessary by-product of challenging art. But in today’s climate of wokeness, all that has changed. Artists are either too afraid to ruffle feathers, or are themselves trying to enforce the new woke diktats. Can the arts – and comedy in particular – survive this stifling climate?...
Dreyfus: The woke are the most puritanical, humourless bunch I have ever come across in my life. In fact, I wish Mary Whitehouse would come back. She was only ever upset when you said something about Jesus or used a bad word. Ultimately, she was harmless. These people today are much more insidious because they don’t just want to stop you from saying something that offends them – they think you have no right to exist. Look at Roy Chubby Brown, who had his gig cancelled recently. He could not even go out and perform. He was not allowed to exist. When people say cancel culture does not exist, I laugh, because you see it every single day. You might not find Roy Chubby Brown funny – I do not find him particularly funny – but there are people who do and they are being treated like children. Why shouldn’t they go and watch whoever they want to? It’s not like he is Joseph Goebbels. People are so puritanical. We are in the era of The Crucible again.
O’Neill: Absolutely. Look at the incident at the Old Vic, where Terry Gilliam was reportedly given the boot. Gilliam is a cinematic genius. He was going to direct Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods. Sondheim had given his blessing to the production. But apparently it had to be stopped. Not because of anything in the show, but simply because Gilliam had criticised the #MeToo movement and had made a joke about identifying as a black lesbian. He blasphemed and therefore had to be cast out. Isn’t this the resurrection of the blacklist?
Dreyfus: It’s McCarthyism. And to do it to Terry Gilliam shows that these people have no sense of history. If you know anything, you know that Monty Python was anarchic. They all said and did anarchic things. The whole debate over Life of Brian looks really calm and quiet in comparison to today. The adults are indulging the children. When the children complain, the adults accept it. That makes them as bad as the children. "
O’Neill: If Life of Brian came out today, wouldn’t it be the trans activists protesting outside the cinemas rather than the Christians, because of that hilarious scene where Stan wants to become Loretta?"
Matt Walsh says his best-selling 'Johnny the Walrus' book was removed from Amazon's LGBTQ section as well as Target's website: 'The canceling begins' - "As of Thursday, conservative commentator Matt Walsh's "Johnny the Walrus" — a children's book that skewers leftist gender ideology by way of a story about a boy who pretends to be a walrus — was ranked number 1 on Amazon's list of "Best Sellers in LGBTQ+ Books." But not any more. No, his book didn't slip in the rankings. Instead, Walsh pointed out Friday that Amazon removed "Johnny the Walrus" from the LGBTQ+ section entirely."
An Astronomer Cancels His Own Research—Because the Results Weren’t Popular - "eminent astronomer John Kormendy retracted an article intended for publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences from a preprint website. His article focused on statistical results relating to the evaluation of the “future impact” of astronomers’ research as a means to “inform decisions on resource allocation such as job hires and tenure decisions.” Online critics attacked Kormendy’s use of quantitative metrics, which may be seen as casting doubt on the application of diversity criteria in personnel decisions, at which point Kormendy felt the need to release an abject apology... Of course, statistical analyses of real-world human data are always subject to the possibility that systematic biases can inappropriately skew the claimed results. And I would never suggest that Kormendy’s work is beyond criticism. But the traditional scientific manner of engaging in such criticism is that other scientists present alternative proposals, and explore other data sets, to search for possible flaws in the original analysis. That is how science should be done. Those who claim in advance, without new analysis or data, that someone else’s research results are “harmful” or threatening, without challenging its accuracy, should consider another profession... It is hard to know what specifically induced this kind of Maoist mea culpa. But Kormendy (or someone with authority over him) presumably was swayed by the online tempest. And an unfortunate effect will be that anyone observing how this played out will be warned off making their own inquiries in this field, for fear that they will meet the same fate. This is one reason why scientific articles should never be retracted simply because they might cause offense. Truth can hurt, but too bad... Unfortunately for Kormendy, the “real world” is also a place in which claims of victimization and inequity now dominate many academic discussions, to such extent that attempting a modest contribution to better science can be attacked—and, in this case, literally expunged—by those who believe that a quantitative exploration of certain data sets can be harmful or threatening."
Ricky Gervais: I wanna live long enough to see the younger generation not be woke enough for the next one | The Post Millennial - "Comedian Ricky Gervais called out cancel culture in his hit podcast series Absolutely Mental... Gervais has been a longtime critic of social justice and cancel culture, and he has been particularly critical of attempts to get people fired over their opinion. "If it is choosing not to watch a comedian because you don't like them, that's everyone's right," he said. "But when people are trying to get someone fired because they don't like their opinion about something that's nothing to do with their job, that's what I call cancel culture and that's not cool. "You turning off your own TV isn't censorship. You trying to get other people to turn off their TV, because you don't like something they're watching, that's different."... Gervais continued, "Everyone's allowed to call you an a**ehole, everyone's allowed to stop watching your stuff, everyone's allowed to burn your DVDs, but you shouldn't have to go to court for saying a joke that someone didn't like. "And that's what we get dangerously close to. If you don't agree to someone's right to say something you don't agree with, you don't agree with freedom of speech," Gervais concluded."
Mount A suspends professor after investigation into complaints about blog - "The internal review was launched in February, after several students complained to the university's student union. Jonathan Ferguson, who was president of Mount Allison Students' Union at that time, said the union received multiple complaints about Azar's blog. The complaints were not about any one post specifically, he said, but rather about "what this professor was saying throughout her blog … denying systemic racism in New Brunswick or in Canada, talking about BIPOC students in unkind ways, labelling Black Lives Matter a radical group." During the controversy in February, Husoni Raymond, a St. Thomas University graduate who was mentioned in Azar's blog, tweeted: "Disappointing to see a professor who's still ignorant to what racism is and will be using her power within the institution to uphold racists ideologies. Racism IS in Canada. Racism IS in NB." Raymond was responding to a post by Azar in which she said, in part: "NB is NOT racist. Canada is NOT racist. We do not have 'systemic' racism or 'systemic' discrimination. We just have systemic naivety because we are a young country and because we want to save the world. "Oh, one quick question to Mr. Husoni Raymond: Upon your graduation from St. Thomas University, you have been named the 2020 recipient of the Tom McCann Memorial Trophy for your 'strong leadership and character' … If NB is as racist as you are claiming, would one of its prestigious universities be honouring you like that?"... Several of Azar's posts quote from Black Lives Matter's Facebook page, in one instance questioning its push to be included in New Brunswick school curriculum and in another instance referring to its rating of political parties on their stand on Black Lives Matter issues as "ill-disguised communist propaganda." "At the end of the day, it is unprofessional to comment on students' beliefs," Burke said. "We believe that students have a right to a safe learning environment and should feel safe" bringing up certain subjects in the classroom. But for Mark Mercer, head of the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship, the university's decision is a blow to academic freedom and to the vital tenet of free speech on campus... Mercer said universities are "signalling" their commitment to the goals of social justice movements by vigorously prosecuting allegations. But in so doing, he said, they will ultimately put a chill on the expression and discussion of ideas. That has already happened, Mercer said. "Many students and professors are now fearful not only of expressing the views they themselves hold, but even floating certain ideas to see what the criticisms are" because they're worried they'll be sanctioned, he said. "I don't think universities have done very well at creating safe spaces for discussion.""
If you criticise a student's views, that makes him feel "unsafe". Good luck teaching like this
