Two weeks ago, as a part of a social event for our current undergraduate and graduate students in the department of Chemical & Physical Sciences (CPS) at the University of Toronto Mississauga, I, for my part, had offered to run an activity popularised in recent times by American academic, Peter Boghossian: Spectrum Street Epistemology. In this surprisingly addictive game, participants respond to a series of claims—of which they have no prior knowledge—as they are presented on a screen, and, following a brief countdown by the host, react by walking to lines inscribed on the floor that calibrate a spectrum of agreement, through neutrality, to disagreement—otherwise termed a Likert scale.
Being not wholly of the woke persuasion, I had convinced myself—perilously, as I have come to realise—that this game would make for an entertaining interlude for young minds attending Canada’s top university. After all, when I was at college, couched in the heady intellectual environs of Oxford, we undergraduates actively sought out political debate within the quadrangles, struck radical postures, and cultivated our skills in argumentation, satiating a collective and deeply felt instinct for “finding ourselves.” We aspired to curry favour in a strange alien world of adulthood, to seek affirmation, to identify our soulmates, and to discover ourselves, and others, in the realm of the mind. This sounds absurdly nostalgic today, in a world where debate is actively suppressed on any number of important topics, the breadth of which is endlessly expanding.
But I received complaints; and I was promptly summoned to the office of my departmental Chair.
So, what exactly were these allegedly traumatising claims that I had weaponised to assault the psyches of these unsuspecting students? I had endeavoured to couch them in such a way as to minimise offence, to select only topics falling within the Overton window: that rather nebulous zone where public debate happens, fencing off the untenable political extremes that are broadly agreed to be off-limits. “Jews should be gassed” would be a claim outside the Overton window, for instance, as doubtless Claudine Gay, Harvard University’s ex-president, and her compatriots now—but only now—comprehend. In my rendition, we began with “vegetarians are morally superior to omnivores” which passed the rather arbitrary ‘social acceptability’ test that my Chair has been applying. Later, came the claim, “Professor Jordan Peterson requires media training.” Topical, certainly; but wholly unacceptable to the department’s entirely predictable political mood-swings. This type of claim is ‘stressful to our students.’ As such, it is wholly ‘inappropriate,’ I was told in the meeting, and requires surgical excision. Now I’m worried, because these are merely the warm-up claims.
And so the evening unfolded. “Western science is hampered by a political bias.” One female student stood on the ‘Strongly agree’ line, and I asked her why she had chosen that stance. “Speaking as a Muslim woman of colour, I know that to be true,” she announced over the microphone, followed by words to the effect that all science was a hopelessly White patriarchial Eurocentric endeavour, wholly committed to oppressing other ways of knowing. I’m surprised, because she is a student in the department working towards a graduate degree, but it is the host’s role to remain neutral and not express an opinion, or react in any way that might express their own biases. If her statement reflects her true attitudes, many might express genuine concern for her own sake that she may have accidentally elected the wrong discipline for advanced study.
Next, we have “There are other ways of doing science beyond the Western tradition,” which led to both advocacy and dissent. When I crossed paths with a distinguished scientist and former Biology Chair the day following the event, he invaded my personal space, lowered his voice, and shared with me with the naïve incredulity characteristic of the marooned academic scientist, “I attended an event with other scientists where we were told that we ‘wouldn’t understand’ unless we embraced the reality that ‘water is alive.’” He paused. “I mean, it’s H2O!” This is the entry-point in the science curriculum for the Indigenous science that has become suddenly an equal and valid cornerstone of scientific enquiry, according to the Canadian federal government.
Now we arrive at it. The claim that dares not speak its name; four simple words: “Men can become women.” All hell breaks loose—at least in the context of my Chair’s ongoing, unshakeable narrative. This is a traumatic statement, unworthy of a social event; students are not suitably prepared; they are vulnerable to manic episodes, and this sort of thing requires trigger warnings and safe spaces and—let’s not delude ourselves—time for unforewarned opponents to raise a cogent defence. I have broken the boundaries of acceptable behaviour as a Faculty member, I have sought to ruin the department. This is pernicious transphobia unmasked.
“We can sit here are pretend, but you and I both know that you overstepped the boundaries.” These are the words of the Chair of CPS, Prof. Lindsay Schoenbohm, who with this utterance appears to have evolved spectacular mindreading talents in the manner of the X-Men comic strip. Or should that be X-Women? Or both, or neither. The X-People? The strategy she has adopted with this phrasing, though, is a useful one in the circumstances of this meeting, because it completely obviates any need for justification. My fate is sealed, the judgement passed, the evidence incontestable.
For those looking for evidence of the clownish insanity that passes for political correctness on Canadian campuses, you need look no further than this one incident, because it is emblematic of the widespread and pervasive authoritarian overreach that now plagues anyone committed to the pursuit of free enquiry in our institutions of “higher” education. Naturally, being a compassionate soul, I am sympathetic to the ‘fix’ my Chair has found herself in, caught in an intolerable pincer manoeuvre between social justice ideology and common sense. If I were Chair, though, I would fret less over a Faculty member encouraging topical, if less-than-anodyne debate, and concern myself with the optics of the other activities that were carrying on in the same room while the Street Epistemology bombshells were falling. There were jigsaws arrayed on one table, a professor playing a variant of Snap with students at another; and on a third—no word of a lie—colouring sheets and crayons. Aliens arriving from Vega would be forgiven for mischaracterising the event as daycare for human twentysomethings.
It should no longer surprise Canadians that their tax dollars are supporting this mass infantilisation of the next generation at their universities. This is what university life in Canada has become. We can no longer brook spirited debate, and most definitely not in a social context, because it is too stress-inducing. I am genuinely unnerved that my innovation has subjected the students, the Faculty and the whole department to this terrible ordeal. What sorts of claims should I stick to in future? I look to my Chair for wisdom. Without a hint of irony, I am given a suitable example: “Pineapple belongs on pizza.”
Two biological females were in strong agreement: gender is a social construct, etc. A number of biological males disagreed.
Every time I see one of these stories it reinforces my conviction that abandoning academia was the right thing to do. I miss research dearly. I miss having a regular income. I miss the pretense of status.
But the academic institutions seem determined to descend to the stygian depths of intellectual irrelevance, and I do not remotely miss the pain that comes from biting my tongue, the headaches induced by humoring the fashionable delusions of my colleagues, or the sheer boredom of interminable conversations about privilege, discrimination, indigenization, and so on with the timid mediocrities that infest the modern academy.