Special Report on Professor Ricardo Duchesne

Free speech is under attack as never before at Universities. Most Canadians know about the experience of Lindsay Shepherd, the Communications graduate student at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario who was reduced to tears in a meeting with two bullying superiors, Professors Nathan Rambukkana and Herbert Pimlott, who told her she was "transphobic" and had created a toxic environment because she showed a 5-minute clip of Professor Jordan Peterson on a TV Ontario panel discussion about transgender pronouns. The two far-left professors, typical of their milieu and utterly confident in their moral right to dictate opinion--though strikingly inarticulate--told Lindsay that introducing a clip of Jordan Peterson "neutrally" was like showing a speech by Hitler without condemning Nazi ideology.

Jordan Peterson, it need hardly be said, is nothing like Hitler, yet the orthodoxy on university campuses today is so far to the Left that learned professors can make the comparison with a straight face. Many of them genuinely believe that anyone who dissents from their ideological program is equivalent to a Nazi and should be neutralized by any means necessary. Whether one objects to mass immigration, open borders, multiculturalism, Islamism, Indigenization, claims about rape culture, or unlimited abortion, the purveyors of approved thought at our universities are quick to label any heresy as unacceptable and even dangerous.

They will claim that the heretic creates an "unsafe" environment for "marginalized" students. They will link the dissenter's expressed views (or will fabricate views so linked) to heinous calls for mass extermination and cruelty. They see nothing wrong with a far-left professor openly indoctrinating his or her students in the classroom, but they are willing to pressure their administrators to fire anyone, no matter how exemplary his teaching and research record, merely for expressing fact-based arguments with which they disagree.

Emboldened by an increase in their numbers and by supine university administrators willing to march to their drum, these professors increasingly act as a mob to target, un-person, and professionally destroy colleagues they despise. In Canada, dissident professors like Frances Widdowson, Jeff Muehlbauer, and Rick Mehta have been attacked by colleagues and students for disagreeing with academic doctrine about Indigenous science, residential schools, and other hot-button issues. Jeff Muehlbauer was forced to resign his position at Brandon University as a result, while Rick Mehta was recently fired by Acadia U.

In the United States, Rachel Fulton Brown and Michael Rectenwald, to name only two of the most recent victims, have been mercilessly hounded for objecting to academic totalitarianism. Rectenwald was forced out of his position at New York University. Many others, more obscure, have been drummed out of their jobs or cowed into silence by the baying mob.

At the present time, the University of New Brunswick has opened an investigation into Professor Ricardo Duchesne, who has been accused of "white supremacism" for views he expressed in his books, blog site, and in interviews. Professor Duchesne argues against mass immigration, which he predicts will damage the foundational European character of Canada. Two dozen of his colleagues authored an open letter claiming that he is unfit to teach because of his alleged extremism. Hit pieces have appeared in The Huffington Post, CBC News, and Global. The university administration is encouraging students to come forward with complaints about him. In other words, they are beginning to create their narrative: that Duchesne makes learning difficult for Indigenous and minority students. It doesn't matter that it isn't true: they will repeat it until enough people believe it.

Canada was once a nation that prized freedom of expression, and expected that it was upheld on university campuses. That is no longer the case. Alas, a new generation of students is being taught that there must be no freedom for so-called hate speech. The boundaries of acceptable expression are becoming narrower and narrower.

Thanks to Janice Fiamengo

Read the full report here: