Cancel Culture
Imperial College London’s Cancel Campaign Against Its Own Founders
Imperial College London was founded in 1907. It is one of the top 20 universities in the world, and among the leading technical universities in Europe. Two individuals were central to its foundation. The first is 19th-century English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley, who became known as “Darwin’s Bulldog” due
Academic Ideologues Are Corrupting STEM. The Silent Liberal Majority Must Fight Back
Earlier this year, I (Anna) did something that my friends feared I would come to regret: I publicly spoke out against the intrusion of illiberal thought into science and education, with a letter entitled The Peril of Politicizing Science, published on June 10th in The Journal of Physical Chemistry. In
History Lessons from the Toronto Mob Targeting a 19th-Century Gay Icon
In 1793, Alexander Wood emigrated from Scotland to Upper Canada at the age of 21. Within seven years, he had become one of the most successful merchants in York (which eventually would grow into Toronto), a lieutenant in its militia, and a magistrate. He would eventually serve as an acting
Bruce Gilley vs Cancel Culture
Professor Bruce Gilley of Portland State University is a man not unfamiliar with controversy. In 2017, he wrote an article titled “The Case for Colonialism,” which argued that Western colonialism was “both objectively beneficial and subjectively legitimate in most of the places where it was found.” Soon after the article
The Denial of Cancel Culture
On August 3rd, Remi Adekoya, Tom Simpson and I released a 120-page Policy Exchange report on Academic Freedom in the UK. The report received bipartisan support. On the Left, Ruth Smeeth, an ex-Labour member of Parliament, wrote the foreword and Ruth Kelly, another former Labour MP, backed the report. Lord
The Floridian Inquisition
I’m an attorney representing a professor at the University of Central Florida who is being subjected by the university to what can only be called an inquisition after expressing opinions on Twitter that led to widespread calls for his firing. UCF is a public institution—an instrument of the
How to Fight the Enemies of Academic Freedom
According to a 2019 Cato Institute study, 75 percent of immigrants who are American citizens are very proud to be American compared to only 69 percent of native-born Americans. Based on my own experience, I expect the discrepancy to be much greater if you compare the sentiments of all immigrants
PODCAST 103: Evolutionary Biologist (and new Quillette Managing Editor) Colin Wright on the State of Academic Science, Gender, and His Latest Career M
Quillette Managing Editor Colin Wright explains why scientists no longer always feel free to speak up in the face of pseudoscience, and why he gave up his hunt for a job as a professor in the field of evolutionary biology for a career in journalism. Colin recently wrote about being
