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For the last month, I have been following the unbelievable story out of Wilfred Laurier University in Waterloo, where graduate student and teaching assistant Lindsay Shepherd faced a modern-day inquisition by her professors.

Her crime? She had the temerity to ask her students to hear both sides of a controversy before coming to their own conclusions. In this case, a discussion about gender-neutral pronouns.

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Many have framed the issue as one of free speech, but to me, it was an example of a university faculty gone mad, at war with common sense.

The Laurier professors reminded me of tin pot dictators who bully their citizens into submission. Unfortunately, they are not alone.

At Laurier, the university president and one of the offending professors submitted the requisite apologies in the face of public outrage, but those who shared the professors’ views were not giving up so easily.

So the predictable “What About?” gang of apologists went on the offensive, bringing up another university controversy where a student union official had been reprimanded for her comments regarding Canada’s 150th anniversary celebrations at Dalhousie University in Halifax.