Back in 2003 the University of Lethbridge declined to honour its guarantees of confidentiality, and so for the last 17 years I haven’t served on any University-related committee involving that guarantee. In 2016 academic freedom was placed under constructive suspension… Read More ›
Why My Colleagues Are Idiots
REQUIEM FOR THE UNIVERSITY
Universities are like any other institution. They evolve, they devolve. Sometimes they rise out of the ashes, and sometimes they go the way of the dodo bird. But they always morph. So though I’ve recently come to co-awfulise with my… Read More ›
ADMINSPEAK
Had we been able to complete the tower we’d have been up there to take Him on face to face. And so to prevent this – He’s a jealous god, remember – He broke us up into different languages, so… Read More ›
PREEMPTIVE INSURGENCY
I’ve made no secret elsewhere – but so far not on this blog – of what I take to be the driver of both our moral dispositions and our political arrangements. It is, as Thomas Hobbes argued, the wherewithal to… Read More ›
MOVING THE NEGATION SIGN
It’s one of the oldest tricks in the books, and university administrators have learned to play it with panache. Professor X says or writes something politically incorrect. The media asks for comment, and the dean or president answers, quite correctly,… Read More ›
HOW TO TEST YOURSELF FOR AUTISM
It would be so much easier, for all concerned, if we didn’t have to draw a distinction between sexual violence and just garden variety violence. But alas we have to. We have to because a judge would be hard pressed… Read More ›
HOW TO MAINTAIN ONE’S MORAL INNOCENCE NOW THAT SILENCE IS VIOLENCE
We wouldn’t have to go back too many generations to realise that every one of us is the product of rape. That every one of us is the product of incest. That every one of us is both the descendant… Read More ›
THREE WAYS TO DEFANG THE MOB
Now that the Woke have achieved ascendency in the current public discourse – and topped itself off by joining in with the ‘cancel culture’ – the time has come for those of us who’ve yet to convert to their new… Read More ›
WHEN AN AD BACULUM ISN’T A FALLACY
There’s an important distinction – one too many critical thinking instructors fail to make – between, on the one hand, what’s likely to be true, and, on the other, what one’d be well advised to believe. For example, that Jesus… Read More ›
THE INTELLECTUAL DARK WEB
There’s no official membership list, but there’s a fairly clear description of who’d be on it. In the light of that description, I’ve just found out, much to my delight, that I am myself a member of the Intellectual Dark… Read More ›