Freedom of enquiry in academia is dead, murdered by Professor Plum in the library with the lead piping of identity politics.

It’s been said repeatedly by an ever-swelling band of brothers (and sisters) in arms across the landscape of our Western universities. In an era littered with professorial cancellations, campus disinvitations and institutional censorship, the truth is now objective and undeniable.

The lot of a modern-day professor is either an unhappy one, or a delusional one. Once the aspirational pinnacle of job security, professors were once regarded as largely unfireable, protected as if by an impenetrable armour: the concept and, until quite recently—Profs. Amy Wax and Frances Widdowson please step forward as witnesses—the reality of that very special protection we call tenure. In the annals of the universities’ public statements and inscribed in the pages of its statute books, the role of tenure exists to provide a safeguard for freedom of expression, to allow for critical voices to be raised, even when the opinions so advanced might by many observers seem objectionable, and the curtailing of which is a form of censorship that is antithetical to innovation and intellectual advance. But today, professors drawing a salary from a modern university are ensnared in a conspiracy of enforced silence that makes a mockery of the hallowed and deeply held beliefs of our illustrious academic predecessors.

The Silence by Joseph Ducreux (1790). Image courtesy of Obelisk.

It is a hard reality to face. Being of the nerdish persuasion, and a life-long devotee of fantasy novels and role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons, I am reminded of a passage from one of the greatest books, to my mind, that was ever committed to paper: The Silmarillion. In it, author J.R.R. Tolkien—himself a dyed-in-the-wool academic from a long gone era—describes a scene where Maedhros, eldest son of Fëanor, that great Loremaster and crafter of the eponymous Silmarils, himself the eldest son of Finwë, First King of the Noldorin elves, was captured by Melkor and subjected to great and terrible torment. Tolkien describes how Maedhros is shackled at the wrist to a mountainside by an impervious bracelet in what many scholars have compared to an inverted refashioning of the tale of Prometheus.

Maedhros’ Rescue from Thangorodrim by Ted Nasmith (1998). Image courtesy of Ted Nasmith.

In the subsequent no less dramatic rescue, Maedhros is freed by his cousin Fingon, borne aloft by a great eagle, who releases him from the cruel torment of the shackle by severing his hand at the wrist. The scene was so visceral, the decision so brutal and unavoidable, that it burned itself into my memory. And never has it left me, nor did I ever believe I might be forced to make a similar decision myself, if only in a metaphorical rather than a physical sense.

For those readers who have been sufficiently and obdurately committed to Tolkien, such that, like me, they have endured the travesty of that great author’s work that last year returned to Amazon Prime, The Rings of Power, many will have noted a parallel scene in the finale of Season Two. In a pathetic attempt to retell the toils of Maedhros, showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay have Celebrimbor, fashioner of the Rings of Power, confined to his workshop by an effete rendition of Melkor’s servant, Sauron, played gleefully by Charlie Vickers; and this time he is chained to his desk. How unintentionally hilarious. Celebrimbor, grandson of Fëanor, soon effects his own escape by resorting to a device vaguely resembling a Second-Age Elven bolt cutter, and uses it to sever his own thumb, presumably because the manacle was as similarly unbreakable as Maedhros’ restraint.

The scene is artless and risible, and Celebrimbor clenches his teeth in rep-theatre-staged anguish, much like the audience who are by this time biting their collective lip with embarrassment. This is not Tolkien, but rather some crass — and I would say cheap, but the series has cost in excess of a billion dollars — attempt at reimagining Middle-Earth. For most, as the catastrophic viewing figures attest, it is a bitter pill to swallow. Provocative and well-heeled YouTubers like The Critical Drinker and Nerdrotic circle like birds of prey and feast upon the vittles. It is no surprise, and the show has been an unmitigated disaster for the simple reason that it supplants Tolkien’s timeless tale of loss and sacrifice with vacuous modern tropes, such as identity politics and Postmodern mores.

How is this relevant? What makes Tolkien’s stories so masterful in their potency, so majestic that his written work towers over recent attempts to adapt it for ‘modern audiences,’ is their inherent authenticity and the absolute rejection of allegory, something the author notably despised. Instead, it is for the reader to find their own applicability. Yet this admirable notion of genuineness and unyielding truth has long been lost in the welter of today’s industrial academic complex. Merit and achievement based on objective standards have been allowed to slide, tempered by an ever pressing need to expand and indoctrinate an even greater segment of modern Western society, while simultaneously maximising profits. The present iteration, the façade presented by the University of Toronto and by almost all other Canadian bastions of higher education, is one that leans heavily on the brilliance of the past for its superficial gleam, upon a reputation built by greater minds, but also one that has been infected by a modern-day virus that corrupts and subverts. Today’s tertiary education is a pale shadow of its former self, and people can instinctively sense the change.

In my own department, the Institute for Management & Innovation (IMI)—an entity that continues to undermine its own existence in so many new and imaginative ways—my efforts in the media (my nine-and-counting articles in Canada’s National Post, for instance) are wordlessly ignored. They never once have made the departmental newsletter that purports to recognise the contributions of its faculty members, whether in research or in the media. This, despite my alerting IMI’s dedicated communications team to their existence. Yet I am inevitably censured for holding the incorrect views.

Unsurprisingly, I have taken to my laptop to stridently accuse the higher-ups of political bias and academic discrimination—something that my faculty association claims I am protected against in their memorandum of agreement with the university—but to no avail. The response was predictably curt and unforthcoming: “Thank you for sharing your perspective. I respectfully disagree with your characterization of the situation.” This, followed by a link to the University of Toronto’s protocol on communications, which ironically declares in its opening statement that “the most crucial of all human rights are the rights of freedom of speech, academic freedom, and freedom of research.”

Presumably, were I to contest this decision refusing to recognise my published work, they would rely on the provision in the University’s policy which insists that “published content should not be … offensive … or aim to sensationalise.” Offensive to whom, precisely? And who, might I ask, gets to adjudicate? The chair of the department, naturally. Thus, by extrapolation, any content sufficiently critical of the prevailing orthodoxy—read IMI’s mission and goals—or deemed in any way heretical shall be summarily disregarded. Frankly, I’m just pleased that the department considers my articles as ‘sensational’ as they clearly must—that being a badge of honour among untutored reprobates like myself, whose ranks continue to grow.

One of my colleagues shared with me recently that in a meeting with the very same powers-that-be to discuss their future teaching assignments, they were informed that a top priority for the department was for faculty to “adhere to policy.” I would sharply suggest that anyone pronouncing this phrase should pause to reevaluate the meaning of the words on the office door. We are a cadre of a couple of dozen academic minds whose purpose is to address the world’s great unanswered questions and solve “peoplekind’s” wicked problems. Or so they say. Yet the second ‘I’ in the titular acronym is supposed to represent innovation, which according to McKinsey & Company is the “systematic practice of developing and marketing breakthrough products and services for adoption by customers.” Would that were true.

Can anyone perhaps point to the innovations, the doubtless very many startling breakthroughs in collective human knowledge and achievement that have been brought about by the slavish observance of a hierarchy of bureaucratic rules and regulations? By the unwavering adherence to policy? No, because I would venture there are precious few, if any; and for the simple reason that in order for innovation to thrive, boundaries have to be tested, and sometimes transgressed, so that new and better ways to do almost anything can be uncovered.

In essence, then, my institution is set up to fail because it stumbles to grasp its own raison d’être. It is as shameful as it is comedic, checking all the boxes that the average citizen has come to expect from us academics. A consummate waste of taxpayers’ dollars, and I would imagine that a correction is inevitable.

I have joked before about the administrative bloat at IMI, where faculty members are outnumbered two-to-one by the staff, but the annual bottom line, which I estimate to run to in excess of $3.5 to cover salaries and benefits for the administrative team, is eyewatering.

I would not wish to sow the seeds of malcontent but bearing in mind the swingeing budgetary cuts that have lately been sweeping the campus, I would find myself clinging for dear life to the institutional mast on this storm-wracked ocean in 2025. Examples of the austerity now visited upon professional graduate programmes operated under IMI’s mainsail include, from my vantage point, the widespread axing of hospitality and networking, despite the five-figure tuition fees stumped up by our students; and the progressive cancellation of graduate-level elective courses with small class-sizes, regardless of their pedagogical value. One of my own courses, GAMBiT, a hugely well-received elective course offered across several disciplines at the university was until very recently lying precariously on the chopping block.

So here we have it, then. An organisation saddled with financial difficulties, but charging its clients heavily and trimming back its offerings. In a very recent twist of fate, the Director just announced that the institute will be pausing admission into its most lucrative programme, the Master of Management & Professional Accounting, so as to perform a hard reset of its curriculum and realign it more closely with the accounting profession. I can only presume that this expensive eleventh-hour academic manoeuvre merely exemplifies the careful pre-emptive planning that permeates IMI, and of the close attention paid by our world-leading faculty members to industry trends. What other explanation could there be?

To return to my original thought, I would urge those in charge to look carefully at the status quo and the trajectory of their programmes. There is a burning need to reinstate the primacy of merit. There must be a return to truth, objective truth: a pragmatic and empirical practice that privileges evidence over belief. There must be a return to open and fair-minded discourse, to the broad admission that some opinions and perspectives may clash with our own and may even offend our sensibilities. In fact, if there is no confrontation, and merely a culture of acquiescence and orthodoxy, then the cut-and-thrust of robust debate is blunted, the mind is disengaged and unchallenged, and a soporific malaise numbs all critical thought.

This is modern university life, and I shall fondly and facetiously compare it to another favourite past-time of mine in former years: Waddingtons’ Cluedo—otherwise known as Clue in North America. That, too, was a game of murderous identity politics. The goal? To discover precisely who it was among the six suspects that spattered the brains of Dr. Black across the parquet floor of Tudor Mansion. Ironically, the inventor of Cluedo, Anthony Pratt, like myself, was born in the Midlands and dreamed of becoming a chemist one day.

Headstone of Anthony Pratt, the inventor of Cluedo. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

As soon becomes apparent, the English country house—much like the university campus—is a place of diabolical intrigue, a place where members of the societal elite brush shoulders and advance their private agendas, all the while denying any involvement in the hideous and obscene crime at hand.

That crime is murder. Behold, somewhere among the lofty wood-panelled chambers a body is to be found. That corpse belongs to freedom of expression; and it has been found stone dead, murdered by Professor Plum in the library with the lead piping.

Would he had used the Dreyse M1907 semi-automatic pistol instead.

An A.I. rendition of Professor Plum. Image courtesy of Night Café.