Dr. Crockford believes the University has chosen not to renew her adjunct position due to heightened social pressures and her strong assertion that polar bears are not only not facing a climate emergency but are actually thriving.
Susan Crockford, a zoologist and adjunct assistant professor at the University of Victoria, has essentially been fired after her renewal application was rejected with no explanation.
Dr. Crockford believes the university has chosen not to renew her adjunct position due to heightened social pressures and her strong assertion that polar bears are not only not facing a climate emergency but are actually thriving.
The children need to see this: no climate emergency for #polarbears means no climate emergency period https://t.co/FQmv5yeWzH
— Susan Crockford (@sjc_pbs)
“When push came to shove, UVic threw me under the bus rather than stand up for my academic freedom,” said Dr. Crockford, who is a renowned scientist in her area of study of polar bears.
She also chastised the university for their sudden shift in sentiment, citing that the University was only too proud to share her appearance on a 2007 PBS ‘Nature’ documentary not so long ago.
According to The Washington Times, Crockford’s lectures were shut down In May 2017, “after the speakers bureau received a complaint about her ‘lack of balance,'” which Crockford believes “poisoned support I might have expected from colleagues in the department.”
“The speakers’ bureau incident made it clear the administration had no intention of protecting my academic freedom against complaints from outside the university,” Dr. Crockford said in an email to The Washington Times.
The University of Victoria has denied that they did not renew her adjunct professorship due to her research refuting recent popular belief that polar bears are starving because of climate change. Dr. Crockford says starvation has always been an unfortunate reality in polar bear populations.
The university didn’t comment on whether it was due to her denial of polar bear’s going extinct due to climate change.
“There is no evidence to suggest that Dr. Crockford’s adjunct appointment was not renewed for ‘telling school kids politically incorrect facts about polar bears,’” said Ms. Parkin. “The University of Victoria, in both word and deed, supports academic freedom and free debate on academic issues.”
Since changing her stance on climate change, Crockford wrote the book The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened, citing the positive growth of the polar bear population from 22,000 to 31,000, despite climate activists saying they are nearing extinction.
Due to her resilient stance, Crockford has been labelled a climate denier and been lambasted in various articles.
“Professor after professor has been hounded, silenced, censured or fired for speaking out against the approved man-made climate crisis narrative,” says Marc Morano, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change. “The message to any climate dissenters in academia is once again reinforced: Stay silent with your skepticism or risk endangering your career.”
Fellow University of Victoria professor Cornelis van Kooten agrees with the assertion that politically correct waves in academia are harming academic freedom.
“Put it this way: religion, race, evolution, gender, indigenous peoples, nuclear power, polar bears, deforestation. … Any views on these topics that don’t fall in line with the ‘consensus’ are taboo,” said van Kooten in an email. “Think the extent to which free speech has been banned from campuses across much of the West in the name of political correctness.”
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