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Niedzviecki resigned—apparently on his own initiative. If I had to speculate, I’d say this outcome was his intention all along. The piece had the air of someone exasperated with the political correctness, tokenism and hypersensitivity that now pervade academia and cultural organizations. But even if he were pushed out, the firing would be defensible. In general, the careers of editors-in-chief are brief and unpredictable. Like managers of sports teams, we can be fired for any reason, or for no reason at all. The end of his tenure at Write is not a form of “censorship,” as some have claimed. It’s just the way our business works. It’ll happen to me one day (perhaps all the sooner, thanks to this column).

Even if Niedzviecki were pushed out, the firing would be defensible. His firing wasn’t a form of censorship. It’s just the way our business works.

What I (and other Canadian writers and editors) am angry about is the effort by TWUC and its Equity Task Force (which released its own statement) to shame Niedzviecki, and to suggest that his liberal approach to speech is somehow outside the bounds of respectable discourse. TWUC’s over-the-top apology describes the “pain” that the article allegedly caused. It’s part of what may be described as the medicalization of the marketplace of ideas: It is no longer enough to say that you merely disagree with something. Rather, the author must be stigmatized as a sort of dangerous thought criminal. Indeed, the Equity Task Force situates Niedzviecki as an apologist for “cultural genocide,” and accuses him of peddling “a long-debunked false universalism.” The Task Force also claims that the publication of his article is a symptom of “structural racism,” or possibly even “brazen malice.”