{"id":1560,"date":"2016-12-07T06:40:59","date_gmt":"2016-12-07T11:40:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/?p=1560"},"modified":"2016-12-07T06:40:59","modified_gmt":"2016-12-07T11:40:59","slug":"1560","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/?p=1560","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<header>\n<div class=\"head_titles\">\n<h1 class=\"entry-title\" style=\"text-align: center;\" title=\"University campuses have always leaned a little left \u2013 we\u2019re now well past the point where the radicals have taken over\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong>The radicals have taken over: Academic extremism comes to Canada<\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\n<div class=\"entry-meta\">\n<p class=\"byline author vcard selectionShareable\"><a title=\"Go to Margaret Wente\u2019s author page\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/authors\/margaret-wente\">MARGARET WENTE<\/a><\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<p class=\"creditline source-org vcard selectionShareable\">The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"dateline\">\n<p class=\"selectionShareable\">Published <time datetime=\"2016-12-03T06:12:00EST\">Saturday, Dec. 03, 2016 6:00AM EST<\/time><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<div id=\"entry-content\" class=\"entry-content fontsmall simplesans\">\n<div class=\"social-sharebar\">\n<ul class=\"clearfix\">\n<li class=\"social-elements article-print-license\"><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"x140x460 clearfix\">\n<div class=\"column-1 gridcol\">\n<div id=\"tile1\" class=\"widget_ad tile\">\n<div id=\"tile-gpt-1\" data-google-query-id=\"CMne9oz_4dACFVSDaQodwIYFqg\">\n<div id=\"google_ads_iframe_\/58\/theglobeandmail.com\/commentary\/article_9__container__\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"column-2 gridcol\">\n<p class=\"selectionShareable\">I bet the poor guy never saw it coming.<\/p>\n<p class=\"selectionShareable\">Until recently, Henry Parada was director of the School of Social Work at Ryerson University, Toronto\u2019s big downtown commuter school. His career was going well and he got major research grants. Now he has stepped aside after a handful of students calling themselves the Black Liberation Collective <a title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/BLCRyerson\/\">accused him<\/a> of \u201ca violent act of anti-Blackness, misogyny and misogynoir.\u201d What was this act? It seems that he left a meeting where a black female speaker was giving a talk. No one knows why.<\/p>\n<p class=\"selectionShareable\">What happened next won\u2019t surprise anyone who has been tracking the steady rise of authoritarian illiberalism on the left. The Black Liberation Collective at Ryerson (which has perhaps the most diverse student body in the nation) issued an escalating series of rants demanding immediate action to address his crimes, along with institutional racism in general. Students disrupted faculty meetings. The administration has issued the standard non-response: Basically it values diversity and inclusion, and is looking into the matter.<\/p>\n<p class=\"selectionShareable\">But really, it doesn\u2019t matter what Prof. Parada did. He\u2019s a white man, and therefore guilty.<\/p>\n<p class=\"selectionShareable\">Here\u2019s a partial list of what\u2019s been happening on campus lately. At the University of Toronto, psychology professor Jordan Peterson is under attack \u2013 not least by his own administration \u2013 for refusing to use invented pronouns for transgender people. (Last year, Kenneth Zucker, a renowned U of T psychiatry professor, was fired from his position at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health because his <a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/news\/toronto\/gender-identity-debate-swirls-over-camh-psychologist-transgender-program\/article28758828\/\">treatment<\/a> of transgender kids was deemed not radical enough.)<\/p>\n<p class=\"selectionShareable\">At Queen\u2019s, a good-natured off-campus costume party blew up into a crisis over racism. Queen\u2019s principal Daniel Woolf denounced the event on his <a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/www.queensu.ca\/connect\/principal\/\">blog<\/a>as \u201cthe unacceptable misappropriation and stereotyping of numerous cultures,\u201d and solemnly vowed yet again to improve diversity and inclusion on campus. In other news from Queen\u2019s, the head of a student theatre group was forced to grovel after announcing a plan to cast a white female as the lead in Othello. \u201cThere is absolutely no excuse for making a casting decision that was oppressive and caused people of colour to feel as though they were invalid,\u201d she <a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/www.queensjournal.ca\/story\/2016-11-03\/arts\/queens-vagabond-suspends-production-of-othello\/\">apologized<\/a>. The production was cancelled.<\/p>\n<p class=\"selectionShareable\">At many campuses, students routinely try to shut down controversial speakers because they might make someone feel queasy. When Marie Henein, Jian Ghomeshi\u2019s defence lawyer, was invited to speak at Bishop\u2019s University early next year and have her lecture live-streamed to other schools, one women\u2019s studies major at St. Francis Xavier <a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/canada\/nova-scotia\/ghomeshi-lawyer-marie-henein-st-fx-university-bishops-1.3862967\">said<\/a> that Ms. Henein\u2019s talk was a \u201cdisservice to students who are victims of sexual violence.\u201d To his credit, Bishop\u2019s principal Michael Goldbloom <a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/montrealgazette.com\/opinion\/columnists\/opinion-why-bishops-looks-forward-to-welcoming-marie-henein\">wrote<\/a> a rebuttal \u2013 an unusual act of academic courage these days.<\/p>\n<p class=\"selectionShareable\">How did we get here? Here\u2019s a very short answer.<\/p>\n<p class=\"selectionShareable\">University campuses have always leaned a little left. But in the 1990s, as the previous generation of academics was replaced by baby boomers, they began to lean dramatically left. The humanities and social sciences were colonized by an unholy alliance of poststructuralists and Marxists \u2013 people who believe that Western civilization is a corrupt patriarchy that must be dismantled.<\/p>\n<p class=\"selectionShareable\">According to <a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/05\/08\/opinion\/sunday\/a-confession-of-liberal-intolerance.html?_r=0\">studies<\/a> of U.S. universities, 18 per cent of social-sciences professors say they\u2019re Marxists. Only 7 to 9 per cent identify as conservative. Leftism in the academy is a positive feedback loop \u2013 and we\u2019re now well past the point where the radicals have taken over. Those who don\u2019t agree just shut up. \u201cThere\u2019s no question there\u2019s an atmosphere of terror,\u201d one (older, white, male) professor told me.<\/p>\n<p class=\"selectionShareable\">According to classic Marxist ideology, people\u2019s degree of oppression is determined by their ancestry and class. Today\u2019s identity politics simply swaps in race and gender. But the anti-liberal thinking is the same. When your goal is revolution, dissent becomes intolerable, and you have a moral licence to shut down free speech. As the very liberal Jonathan Chait <a title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/nymag.com\/daily\/intelligencer\/2016\/03\/oh-good-were-arguing-whether-marxism-works.html\">wrote<\/a> in New York magazine: \u201cLiberalism believes in political rights for everybody, regardless of the content of their ideas. Marxists believe political rights belong only to those arguing on behalf of the oppressed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"selectionShareable\">Social sciences and humanities make up only part of universities, of course. Other disciplines \u2013 engineering, physics, B-schools \u2013 are relatively apolitical. So how is it that the radicals wound up running the show? Here\u2019s Jordan Peterson\u2019s answer: \u201cEngineers and scientists are interested in things. They say, you guys are all insane, just leave us the hell alone.\u201d And by the time they look up, the power positions have been taken over by the radicals.<\/p>\n<p class=\"selectionShareable\">Not so long ago, I thought this craziness would pass. Now I\u2019m not so sure. When institutions cave in to radicals, their demands will only escalate. As for Prof. Parada, his is a cautionary tale. He believed in the revolution. And it devoured him.<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"report-typo \" href=\"http:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/community\/digital-lab\/news\/article13869751\/?artId=33185073\"> <span class=\"report-typo-txt\">Report Typo\/Error<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The radicals have taken over: Academic extremism comes to Canada MARGARET WENTE The Globe and Mail Published Saturday, Dec. 03, 2016 6:00AM EST I bet the poor guy never saw it coming. Until recently, Henry Parada was director of the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/?p=1560\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[812,811,422],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1560"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1560"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1561,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1560\/revisions\/1561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}