Disinvitation Chronicles: The Disgrace of Concordia University

I have thought from time to time of walking through Sproul Plaza at Berkeley with Harvey Mansfleld’s book Manliness tucked conspicuously under my arm, just to see what might happen. Because Manliness is an ode to “toxic masculinity” don’t you just know.

I think I have a clue how it might go, because Mansfield has been disinvited from giving the commencement address at Concordia University in Montreal, as he explains in the Wall Street Journal this morning:

Recently I was disinvited from giving a commencement address at the small Liberal Arts College within Concordia University in Montreal. My speech was to be on the study of great books, to which that college is devoted. The invitation was a surprise, and the rejection less of one, because I am a white male conservative professor. . .

What had taken place, I learned but not from [the administration], was a faculty meeting prompted by a letter from 12 alumni that demanded a reversal of the committee’s invitation because my “scholarly and public corpus . . . heavily traffics in damaging and discredited philosophies of gender and culture.” Promoting “the primacy of masculinity,” apparently a reference to my book “Manliness,” attracted their ire. Though I was to speak on great books, not gender, this “trafficking”—as if in harmful drugs—disqualified me without any need to specify further. Such sloppy, inaccurate accusation was enough to move a covey of professors to flutter in alarm.

So you can scratch Concordia University off your list of places to consider sending your kids to college.

This Wednesday I’ll be turning up for the William F. Buckley Jr. Program at Yale’s annual “Disinvitation Dinner” in New York, which this year will honor Henry Kissinger, who has the distinction of being disinvited from entire countries, not just colleges. The topic is freshly relevant given the treatment of Mansfield. I hope he is able to come. (I imagine tickets are still available if you’re in the New York area and have Wednesday evening free. Try the link.)

Postscript: Concordia isn’t the only cowardly and disgraceful institution in Canada apparently. From our pals at Wattsupwiththat, the story of of Allan M.R. MacRae:

On December 6, 2018 I was informed in a letter from the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta (APEGA) that I was “the 2019 Summit Award recipient of the Centennial Leadership Award. This is APEGA’s most prestigious award and is given to members of APEGA in recognition of continued leadership in the profession and in the community, attaining the highest distinction relating to engineering or geoscience.” That award has now been withdrawn by the Executive and the unanimous vote of APEGA Council, because of posts I wrote on wattsupwiththat.com. . .

For the record, I have two engineering degrees related to the earth sciences, have worked on six continents, and have diligently studied the subject fields since 1985. In the late 1960s I was a member of an environmental group at Queens University, Kingston, Ontario, which predated Greenpeace. We focused on real air, water and soil pollution, which was largely cleaned up by the 1980’s and 1990’s.

APEGA objected to my following posts, which were written as my personal opinions:

“In the 20th Century, socialists Stalin, Hitler and Mao caused the deaths of over 200 million people, mostly their own citizens. Lesser killers like Pol Pot and the many tin-pot dictators of South America and Africa killed and destroyed the lives of many more.

Modern Green Death probably started with the 1972-2002 effective ban of DDT, which caused global deaths from malaria to increase from about 1 million to almost two million per year. Most of these deaths were children under five in sub-Saharan Africa – just babies for Christ’s sake!”
– February 1, 2019

APEGA refused to discuss the evidence, and baselessly claimed the moral high ground.

Such opinions are doubleplusungoodspeak, and must be suppressed! Read the whole WUWT post; MacRae mounts a powerful case for his contentions.

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