An Open Letter on the Hypatia Controversy

It's absurd that the article in question was removed for causing offense to some people. Rarely is any idea regarded as inoffensive by everyone. The article, not being hateful or otherwise malicious, did not warrant the outrageous treatment by Hypathia.

Intellectual freedom, no matter the topic, must always remain free.

DPhil Neuroscience, Oxford University

B.A. Pchychology (Minor in Women's Studies), Master in Educational Psychology & Counselling - McGill University

Hypatia was a wonderful journal once. So sad it has now become anti-feminist in its practice.

Associate Professor of Philosophy and Co-Director of the Cognitive Science Program, Marist College

University of Toronto

This open letter would be better if it was shorter and less didactic. The comment about "feminist politics" suggests the writer is not aware that there are many schools of feminism; I have to assume Mr. Vigo is referring to the identitarian feminism that ends up serving neoliberalism even when identitarians claim they oppose it. But despite my quibbles, the broad strokes of this petition are solid, so I'm signing it.

Let it be okay for academics to think, talk, and write

Please keep to true scholarly standards and not political pressure.

PhD student in Physics, Cardiff University

It is wonderful to see professors coming to the defense of Tuvel and free inquiry. Professors are invited to join HeterodoxAcademy.org to join a sustained effort to end the growing practice of using slurs in place of arguments.

The entire legacy of the Enlightenment is threatened by this attempt to enforce orthodoxy,

This incident is most unfortunate and another example of the insidious creep toward academic totalitarianism.

The free marketplace of ideas is far too important to be left to the totalitarians -- of any stripe.

Disgusting behaviour

The question of whether the article's argument can stand up to fair scrutiny is preempted when those arguments are banished beforehand, apparently for ideological heresy.

I'm not really equipped to evaluate the underlying arguments but I did read the letter of condemnation and the witch hunt article and can see that the original author really had been monstrously misrepresented and defamed. And that their analysis was shown to be in the service of an ideology - in a non-academic, cultish way.

Emotions and ideology cannot be allowed to continue to override logic, critical thinking and free speech.

If freedom of thought and expression cannot be supported within universities, and - worse - if academics themselves take it upon themselves to silence opinions that challenge their own, then we've reached a shameful state of affairs.