Barbara Kay on Canadian academic Gad Saad, who sometimes lets his “inner honey badger” get out on social media:
Gad Saad 2010 JMSB Faculty Portrait
Saad, 57, is a professor of marketing at the John Molson School of Business at Montreal’s Concordia University. His domain is evolutionary psychology as applied to business — a niche field, to be sure. He’s written such papers as “Gender differences in information search strategies for a Christmas gift,” and “Menstrual cycle effects on prosocial orientation, gift giving and charitable giving,” which provide valuable information to guide marketing strategies.
You’d be hard pressed to find any academic in Canada who’s more deeply steeped in knowledge about the ineluctable differences between the sexes. (Speaking of “the sexes,” business schools may be the last places left in academia to use those words to designate men and women and acknowledge their differences. Perhaps because their students want to succeed in the real world.)
[…]
Since then, Saad has understood the absolute necessity for critical thinking and freedom of speech. In the present, unhealthy climate, feelings rule, while critical thinking’s value declines daily. Just as our immune systems are designed to cope with novel intruders or atrophy, if we live in an intellectual bubble — as university students do now, rarely confronting opposing views — our cognitive immune systems atrophy, Saad says.
The consequence is what Saad calls “ostrich parasitic syndrome” (OPS). This disorder, in his words, “causes a person to deny realities that are otherwise as clear as the existence of gravity.” Science, reason, infinite data, common sense — all are rejected.
Cognitively disarmed, OPS sufferers accept alternate realities: climate change is “related to terrorism” (Bill Nye, the “science guy”); it is “gross and racist” to suggest Islam is connected to Islamism (Ben Affleck); the Israeli military “dehumanizes” Palestinian women by choosing not to rape them (not a typo: this was the thrust of an award-winning thesis by a radically leftist Israeli sociologist); men can literally be women (nearly everyone says this now, for fear of being labelled transphobic).
It used to be that you could “stand off on the sidelines” when you called out postmodern BS. No longer. There’s no middle ground anymore. You call out the BS or you keep schtum. If you choose the former, as Saad’s writing and actions demonstrate, you need to cultivate your own inner honey badger. Nothing else works.
