Susan Crockford, a world-renowned zoologist with more than 35 years of experience, lost her position at the University of Victoria (UVic) in British Columbia, Canada, for what she believes was her politically incorrect research that polar bears are thriving despite climate change.
Crockford, who has been an adjunct assistant professor for 15 years, said that the university rejected her renewal application for this year without any explanation and accuses the university officials of ceding to “outside pressure” due to her research on polar bears showing that they are thriving despite shrinking Arctic sea ice, which flies in the face of environmental activists’ claims.
“When push came to shove, UVic threw me under the bus rather than stand up for my academic freedom,” Crockford said.
Crockford wrote on her Polar Bear Science blog that for her first 13 years at the university: “the university and the Anthropology department proudly promoted” her work, including her research on polar bears. But in 2017, the backlash by environmental activists began and she was expelled from the university’s Speakers Bureau due to complaints about her “lack of balance.”
“The speakers’ bureau incident made it clear the administration had no intention of protecting my academic freedom against complaints from outside the university,” Ms. Crockford told The Washington Times. The backlash eventually led to her losing her position as a professor at the university as well.
Following the university’s failure to renew her position, an op-ed appeared in the National Post of Toronto entitled: Was this zoologist punished for telling school kids politically incorrect facts about polar bears? The article decried the atmosphere of fear and lack of academic open debate in universities. The article describes how Crockford was let go “without reason or explanation” by an internal committee that made its decision behind closed doors and has refused to answer questions about the internal process which led to the decision.
Crockford accounted that during her time as a lecturer to elementary school students, she was “astonished to learn that every single teacher believed that only a few hundred to a few thousand polar bears were left,” and as a scientist, she felt it was her duty to clarify the truth.
“I talk to groups about the adaptive features of polar bears that allow them to survive changes in their Arctic habitat,” Crockford said, adding that the actual estimate of the polar bear population is 22,000 to 31,000 and may be much higher (according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s 2015 Red List of Threatened Species).
Crockford’s research has been corroborated by a 2018 report by the Nunavut government, which says that the polar bear population in the Canadian Arctic has grown so large that they are threatening the native Inuit communities in the area.
Environmental activists have bitterly contested the government report, saying that although Inuit communities do seem to be threatened by polar bears, it is because climate change has pushed the animals closer to human settlements, ignoring the reports of the Inuit communities, which is based on their experience of living in the region for thousands of years.
Crockford has written five books about polar bears, including The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened and Polar Bear Facts and Myths, which has been translated into four languages.
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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8 Responses
in the name of their misguided beliefs some well meaning Mashugana will start killing them so they may force the world to their side
The way science works is that a politically correct decision is reached, and anyone producing conflicting data is shunned. Notice how they consensus of scientists was that there was such a things as a superior white (i.e. aryan) race, and conflicting evidence was rejected, and this was the basis of public policy in many countries ( denial of civil rights to non-whites in the British Empire, forced sterilation and racial discrimination in the US, not to mention th holocaust); the scientific consensus changed not due to research, but due to change politics.
if you are not politically correct, well, you loose your job. So shut up, say what they want you to say and get your paycheck…..
or
be a genuine person and speak up against the mass stupidity and live outside on the streets…..
Haha, the religion of insane political correctness and progressive insanity strikes again.
The ignorance that many frum people display to the world on this topic is an embarrassing chilul hashem.
1. She’s not a climate scientist.
2. She didn’t study polar bears, but rather published studies that touch on polar bears. Even IF she studied polar bears and found they’re not in decline, that in no way disproves decades of data on temperatures averages from thousands of locations around the globe PLUS decades of data on the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, and all the other overwhelming evidence.
3. She’s an adjunct professor, not tenured. No adjunct expects to have their employment renewed year after year for eternity. Maybe if she didn’t spend all her time blogging about an area that’s not her expertise they’d give her a 2nd look.
4. She is funded by the Heartland Institute, a think tank funded by the energy industry to dispute climate science – which hurts their bottom line.
@menachemgolds. ok educated guy, i’m not sure why its a chillul Hashem not to be educated on climate change, but there are many good 5 minute videos on why climate change isnt an issue. check out preagerU or jordan peterson, who actually worked for the UN on that issue, and many other clips that are out there. I agree that 5 mnute videos do not suffice as education but its more than a 2 minute news report or a biased ny times article. If you dont like that… then educate us.
> menachemgolds
Let’s start with item 4. Her alleged connection with the Heartland Institute was to the tune of $750 per month for work on researching and presenting to them published works (meaning other people’s work, not her own) that were ignored (that is, not represented) by the so-called International Conference on Climate Change. Sort of gave her the opportunity to actually read a WIDE range of opinions and studies on the topic instead of the narrow one-sided reading list usually presented. The money barely covers the cost of printing up the material and presenting it.
Item 3 does not answer why they gave no reason or justification. This is Canada and we (I am in Canada) seriously expect better manners than that. For less someone might actually be brought before a Human Rights Commission. And it is actually an asset to expand one’s field, rather than a detriment. In fact, that is one of the goals of universities – apply a “methodology” used in one discipline to see how it does, or what it does, in another discipline. As example, that is how Daniel Shechtman, “initially lambasted for ‘bringing disgrace’ on his research group”, won a Nobel Prize for his championing “quasicrystals”, which “experts” (including then-Nobel prize winners) declared a physical and scientific impossibility.
Item 2 seems to deliberately mix two different items so as to deliberately obscure the topics. Her opinions on climate change has nothing to do with Polar bears. Her opinion on Polar bears has nothing to do with her opinion on climate change. Her opinion on Polar bears is that *despite* melting ice the Polar bear population is in the increase, not decrease, and that the studies that claim a decrease was flawed for many reasons (including, for example, the study that cherry-picks a very narrow time range in a very limited geographic area).
Item 1 is not relevant, because she is not predicting climate, so why should she have to be climate scientist? But such things as experimental methods and data analysis are standards across all sciences and any scientist worth being called a scientist can detect a violation of those rules no matter what discipline it is.
And item 0, which you do not mention, is that she is hardly the only one to suffer for this. A plethora of scientists and related workers have been “fired” over the past many years for daring to question the politically correct *interpretation* of climate change. That scared those who need to keep their jobs into falling into line.