When a Cambridge don of Indian heritage announced last week that she would no longer teach for a certain college in protest at “racist profiling and aggression” by the college porters, some onlookers – including yours truly – recoiled.

Among other things, the don was enraged and felt racially insulted that the porters had insisted on calling her “Madam”, as they do all women, rather than “Doctor”, as she’d demanded.

To certain friends and I, however, it seemed highly likely that the porters’ surliness was less racism and more a natural response to an obnoxious, arrogant and imperious member of the intellectual elite telling them what to do.

But these days, that sort of argument counts for nothing – worse, it could get you sacked, exiled, barred, no-platformed, bullied or worse. Those who cry repression and oppression – racism, sexism, transphobism – have become judge, jury and executioner.

We’ve seen countless times in the past year or so how anyone accused of an outrage against identity will immediately pay the price, from classicist Mary Beard accused of racism and mauled on Twitter as a result, to Germaine Greer, ceaselessly attacked for her unorthodox views on transsexual women and #MeToo.