THIS summer Dr Susan Crockford, one of the world’s leading experts on polar bears, lost her status as Adjunct Professor at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada (UVic), a position she had held for 15 years.
This action followed her expulsion from the roster of the university’s volunteer Speakers Bureau in May 2017. Until April 2017 the university and the anthropology department proudly promoted her work, including her critical polar bear research. It would appear that she has lost her position because of the global publicity surrounding her work on the latter.
Dr Crockford has shown that polar bear populations are stable and thriving, reaching levels not seen for decades. In sharp contrast to habitual doomsday predictions, their numbers are not plummeting as a result of shrinking Arctic sea ice. Quite the opposite.
This evidence and her views have put her into direct conflict with radical environmentalists and their political allies, who have been promoting the idea that polar bears are in imminent danger of extinction.
Dr Crockford believes that the university bowed to ‘outside pressure’ as a result of her research, saying: ‘There can be little doubt that the University of Victoria would rather stay on the right side of political extremists than protect academic freedom.’
Nobody has done more to sink the claim that climate change is endangering polar bears than Dr Crockford, and it seems she has paid for her honesty with her job.
It is a worryingly familiar story, with anyone questioning climate alarmism being removed from mainstream academic life.
If universities become places for intellectual conformity and censorship, they will eventually lose the support of the public. I do not believe that that day can be far off.
The GWPF has published a paper giving further details of the story. ‘The Defenestration of Dr Crockford’ can be downloaded here.
