Christopher Dummitt: The radical takeover of a Canadian studies conference in Britain
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She celebrated Indigenous people's spiritual connection to the land before sneering as she talked about how the settlers came and commodified it. There were the expected jokes about Elon Musk, U.S. President Donald Trump and the patriarchy.
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But there didn't seem to be any awareness of the large body of academic literature that has linked the rise of democracies in the modern era with property rights and the claim they have given citizens to demand attention from the state. It could all be summed up as 'Indigenous peoples good, capitalism bad.'
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One academic seriously claimed that there was on ongoing racist state project in Canada to forcibly sterilize Indigenous women. This would, of course, be horrific. She didn't note, however, that the Indigenous fertility rate is higher than the Canadian average. So if there really is such a program, it's not only horrifically racist, it's also pretty inept.
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In private conversations in the hallways, more moderate academics would sheepishly shake their heads at some of the more egregious claims. When one keynote speaker talked about the future of Canadian studies being activism and more activism, some did whisper that perhaps this wasn't exactly the search for truth about their country that intellectuals ought to be engaged in. But no one openly voiced this criticism in the session itself.
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In a final session on the Canadian election, the room was filled with people with an ideological diversity that ranged from socialists on the one side all the way to left-leaning Liberals on the other. Someone fretted (and expected everyone to empathize with the concern) that despite what the polls were saying, the Conservatives might win the election. God forbid!
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The Trump era is exactly the time for the Canadian government to think about reinvigorating its links to the Commonwealth and other parts of the world. Canada needs to spread its wings and BACS, with all its eccentricity, could be part of that.
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But before this could happen, Canadian universities need to deal with their zany radical leftist problem, and create a culture that calls out the truly bizarre and outrageous claims being made by activists posing as scholars. They would never let radical right-leaning scholars get away with making the same kinds of claims.
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