Some radical thoughts for UNB Dean Macdonald and UNB VP Hauff to Consider Regarding the status of UNB Professor Ricardo Duchesne
Dear Dean Heidi MacDonald and VP Petra Hauff :
I am one of Professor Ricardo Duchesne’s student victims. I thought all was well until his tenth lecture when he claimed that the accomplishments of Western civilization represented the pinnacle of human endeavour. As a person of colour, I found this learned observation deeply hurtful. As a matter of fact, it irrevocably crippled my self-esteem to the point that I had to seek therapy. I was so traumatized that I avoided Chemistry class for fear that a professor might attribute a scientific breakthrough to the efforts of white European males like Louis Pasteur, Robert Boyle, Michael Faraday and other lightweights. I also skipped English literature because I thought that white ethnocentric novels written by people like Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, E. M. Forster, James Joyce, and Charles Dickens might be required reading. Physics classes were similarly unsafe, because white hegemonist course outlines indicated that dead white males like Newton, Einstein and Neils Bohr were to be credited with major discoveries.
Curiously, no mention was made of the stunning discoveries and insights that African shamans and North American aboriginals provided for humanity. It is obvious that UNB is rife with systemic discrimination, which Professor Duchesne so blatantly symbolizes.
It is high time that people realized that universities are not designed for the purpose of pursuing truth or acquiring knowledge, but to ensure that young adults are not exposed to ideas that make them feel uncomfortable. If they are sheltered from opinions that they choose to find offensive, then they can become ideal citizens for the hot house post national state that progressives aim to establish.
That is what taxpayers pay for, and that is the Canada they want to live in. Not a democracy, but one vast Diversity Awareness and Sensitivity Workshop. Professor Duchesne’s lectures and books clearly run afoul of this noble goal. The truth of the matter is that truth is offensive and facts are insensitive. Consequently, they have no place in any classroom in Canada.
Of course, if students were taught critical thinking skills, they would not be vulnerable to any set of falsehoods or propaganda. There would be no need to diminish the enormous research that Professor Duchesne conducts for his books, nor campaign for his dismissal. Students could be trusted to consider arguments on their own merits without casting aspersions on the professor who wages them.
Nonetheless it would be more cost efficient to simply broaden and enforce suffocating speech codes, ban heretical speech, de-platform politically incorrect guest lecturers and fire dissident professors. So by all means, bend to the lynch mob and can this guy. After all , academic freedom and tenure were only meant to protect the jobs of professors who will promote the state religion of multiculturalism.
Sincerely yours
S. N. O. Flake
