Barbarians At the Campus Gate

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I already knew about unbelievable student barbarians gathering at certain Canadian campuses: Trying to silence Canadian Professor Jordan Peterson when he is invited to campus to speak, even though he denies being transphobic. 

Now, this week, I see it happening over in England, with students trying to get Professor Kathleen Stock fired. At least in Canada the students are all public, on video. (Except for social media, where cowards are anonymous)

But in England, I don’t even know if all, or most, or any are actually “students.” 

BBC web site, for October 8: “An anonymous campaign included posters accusing Professor Kathleen Stock of transphobia, a claim she rejects. … Posters put up near the University of Sussex campus and an accompanying social media campaign claimed the philosophy professor “makes trans students unsafe.”

As for student safety, my perspective is: Just as non-churchgoers know how to behave in church, so too do first-semester students, in the halls of academia, instinctively know how to safely inquire to seek the truth. Hence my contempt for the barbarians. My concern: If they won’t listen, discuss and think for a lesser issue, an issue without critical mass, such pronouns for transexuals, how could undergrads on their golden campus hope with any sanity to discuss things like war, race and energy? 

Unhappily, I can’t depend on their professors to be a check or balance. In the (50 minute) McMaster video, none of the other professors who were supposed to be there showed up, only Peterson. Furthermore, according to Professor Peterson, 200 colleagues signed a letter wanting his “rice bowl broken.”

I have a university degree. In my day, as ethical volunteers with the student newspaper, we attributed every fact we printed. No guessing. No errors. How, then, to explain what I read in the U of Calgary paper, the Gauntlet, from 2017: (I won’t name the reporter) “He (Peterson) drew ire from many across the country after saying he refused to use the preferred gender-neutral pronouns of some transgender and non-binary students.” Well. Had I been on campus when that issue of the Gauntlet was published I could have challenged the student journalist by asking (link) like William Blake:

What the semester?

What the year,

In what class was the fear?

What the person, what heart did beat,

In fear to ask that pronoun feat? 

When the writer could not answer I would scorn, “So much for journalism ethics! As with social media and village gossip, some of the biggest lies start with “they say.”” Like Mister Rogers I would inquire, “Can you spell factual error?”

Peterson, according to Youtube journalist interviews, can only answer a certain question from journalists hypothetically, saying he would indeed use a pronoun if the student was sincere, and that he has never encountered the issue in real life. 

The BBC: “Professor Stock, who recently published a book questioning the idea that gender identity is more “socially significant” than biological sex, completely rejects the claim that she or her work is transphobic.” Is she correct? How can students know without asking her? Without asking prof Peterson? 

As it happens, both Canada and England are within the British Commonwealth, with a common law tradition that an accused must be allowed to face their accusers. But some students think this courtesy should not be applied. 

It’s as if students are frightened, afraid that on campus the profs, grad students and undergrads might be contaminated, converted, or brainwashed if exposed to Stock or Peterson. Presumably those few righteous students of the one true ideology, those few who would be the self-appointed censors for the rest of us, would not themselves be affected, oh no, only we unwashed masses.

Branwen Jeffreys, BBC Education editor: “The (instagram) “mission statement” claimed to be from “an anonymous, unaffiliated group of queer, trans and non-binary students who will not allow our community to be slandered and harmed by someone who’s [sic] salary comes from our pockets.””

That “(sic)” supports my skepticism about “students.” 

Meanwhile, the free republic that threw off the yoke of King George III calls itself “the home of the brave.” The students there, on Youtube videos, are shown being able to academically discuss with Jordan Peterson.

It was John F. Kennedy, war hero and 35th president, who, during the cold war, said: 

“We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”

God save the queen.

…

…

Sean Crawford

During harvest

October

2021

Footnotes

Memory: In the 1970’s, along Vancouver’s Main Street, I watched a march by communists, of the Marxist-Leninist variety, (Albania and China) who hated the Stalinist-Khruchevist variety (Russia and Warsaw Pact) They strode along shouting something that sounded completely ludicrous in those innocent days: “Fascists and racists have no right to speak or organize!” This in the same decade that Solhenitsyn won the Nobel prize, and only a few years after the seven-game Canada-Soviet hockey series.

(Today, with Russia no longer communist, Canadians would no longer be avid to repeat the series that was front page news for every “game”)

Judy Blume, in 1987, shows a heroine’s brother having frequent nightmares about Marxist atomic bombs descending. (Just As Long As We’re Together)

We still have Marxists… (link) I say, “Let them go to the Ukrainian-student club!… Let them face the genocide!”… I say, “Ich bin ein Ukrainian!”

Update: This essay was a few months before Russia invaded Ukraine. How people can still believe in communism, marxism, leftism, and support Russia is beyond me. Before you say Russia has integrity, and can negotiate, and that both “sides,” Russia and everybody else west of Moscow, will tell lies an equal amount, I suggest you go to the library. Read about the gulags.