Lecturer, 73, who was sacked for praising Jewish scientists and German engineers slams woke brigade

Jul 26, 2020 by

by Ian Gallagher, Mailonline:

As a young engineer, Stephen Lamonby was taken under the wing of an elderly colleague and given a piece of wisdom he has never forgotten – ‘Knowledge not passed on is knowledge wasted.’ Over the next half century, Mr Lamonby, now 73, designed Navy torpedoes, satellite-carrying rockets, oil rigs and special effects for Hollywood blockbusters including Saving Private Ryan and Gladiator.

Generous with his time, he was true to his mentor’s maxim, and when semi-retirement loomed he became a part-time lecturer in special effects and mechanical engineering at Solent University in Southampton.

[…]  He says he enjoyed a ‘fantastic relationship’ with his students. But these are changing times. The pensioner was navigating an unfamiliar world of safe spaces, trigger warnings, identity politics and sensitivity to such concepts as cultural appropriation and forbidden pronouns – a world in which gossamer-skinned undergraduates often require protection from opposing views.

Perhaps it was only a matter of time before Mr Lamonby fell foul of the strange rules, though few could have foreseen how his teaching career would end.

He was sacked for gross misconduct for remarking during a private conversation with his course leader, Dr Janet Bonar, that Jewish people are among the cleverest in the world. He had enthused about his heroes from the world of physics, all Jewish. Albert Einstein and American theoretical physicists Robert Oppenheimer and Richard Feynman. Then he casually asked Dr Bonar, a physicist herself: ‘Are you Jewish?’

At this, the American academic accused him of racism and stormed out of their meeting.

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