Author: Brad Cran

Lessons in Forgiveness, from a Bicycle Thief

Published by Brad Cran

In the summer of 1993, at the age of 21, I ran through the streets of downtown Victoria, British Columbia, half-naked, wearing only a pair of boxer shorts and wielding a blunt chunk of metal, which I intended to use to bludgeon the thief who had stolen my bicycle. It had been days since I discovered my bicycle missing from my apartment. When I called the shop where I’d bought it, the manager told me that he had only sold two of this model, and as misfortune would have it, the other one had been stolen just the week before. A few days later, my phone rang and it was the manager of the bike shop, who told me that the other owner had spotted my bicycle outside of a downtown pub. The pub happened to be a mere three blocks from my apartment, so I didn’t even bother getting dressed. On the way out the door, I grabbed my roommate’s hefty u-lock, the weapon I intended to use to give my bicycle thief a …

A Literary Inquisition: How Novelist Steven Galloway Was Smeared as a Rapist, Even as the Case Against Him Collapsed

Published by Brad Cran

On August 8, 2015, a day after the University of British Columbia announced the sudden resignation of its president, Arvind Gupta, UBC’s Jennifer Berdahl, professor in Leadership Studies in Gender and Diversity, published a blog post in which she opined that “Gupta lost the masculinity contest among the leadership at UBC, as most women and minorities do at institutions dominated by white men.” Berdahl held the Montalbano Professorship, a position financed with a $2 million (all figures Canadian) donation from Board Of Governors Chair John Montalbano, specifically focused on “the advancement of women and diversity in business leadership.” Montalbano called Berdahl directly and accused her of making him look like a hypocrite. He also told her that he had contacted her dean about the issue. Berdahl shot back with a second blog post that accused Montalbano of trying to silence her. “I have a right to academic freedom and expression,” she wrote, “free of intimidation and harassment.” On August 18, the UBC board of governors convened a meeting to deal with the controversy. As Montalbano …

The Academic Mob and Its Fatal Toll

Published by Brad Cran

“I get the queasiness of no due process. But . . . losing your job isn’t death or prison.” Dayna Tortorici (Twitter)  “If you compare dissent via social media to lynch mobs, then you don’t understand dissent, social media, or lynch mobs.” Jen Sookfong Lee (Twitter)   In 1992, the ethics committee of the Montreal Neurological Institute at McGill University accused neurology and neurosurgery professor Justine Sergent of failing to properly obtain their approval for her work using radioactive isotopes to study the brain function of pianists. Sergent claimed no wrongdoing other than, at most, a technical mistake of not re-requesting specific approval to study pianists reading sheet music when she had already received approval to use the same technology to study brain function in people reacting to images of human faces. The following year she was officially reprimanded for the alleged breach but filed an appeal in arbitration. Over the next two years, Sergent’s dispute with the ethics committee grew bitter and she claimed it was based on personal grievances and not on the …