Beware the modern-day heretic-hunters

One of the most sinister noises in the world is that of dumb officialdom groping around to find some reason for a verdict that has already been arrived at. A Canadian university has just given the world a particularly fine example of the genre.

Wilfrid Laurier is a university in Ontario, Canada with a surprisingly high employment rate among its graduates. Surprising because the university’s authorities would appear to be working hard to make their students utterly unemployable. Earlier this month, the university censured a 22-year old graduate teaching assistant called Lindsay Shepherd. Ms Shepherd’s crime had been to show a video of the Canadian Professor Jordan Peterson debating the issue of gender pronouns. This was in a class on ‘Canadian communication in context.’

As anyone who has read his work or watched videos of him lecturing will know, Jordan Peterson is a very good communicator. He may in fact be one of the only Canadians who is internationally known for an ability to communicate, as well as think. Nevertheless, he holds what are currently deemed the ‘wrong’ views on gender pronouns for Trans people (rules which were only invented a few minutes ago but have now become dogma). And so for the crime of showing a brief video of Peterson speaking, Shepherd was hauled before her superiors, including her supervising professor, one Nathan Rambukkana. Needless to say, and as the tape shows, Rambukkana is not a celebrated communicator.