Extra Credit for Transphobia: Canada’s Risk of Anti-Intellectualism
Moral panic over ‘wokeism’ and ‘gender ideology’ fuels anti-intellectualism in Canada, which includes claims of media censorship over disinformation, public distrust towards experts, and the normalization of fascist tropes that puts education at risk.
Ranked the 50th state in education in the USA, Oklahoma recently implemented laws to fight 'wokeism,' such as requiring K-12 teachers to incorporate the Bible into their lesson plans and take 'The America-First Assessment', created by PragerU, to ensure that they won’t use 'woke indoctrination' in classrooms. This “anti-wokism” has also extended into post-secondary education in the Global North. In late November 2025, Samantha Fulnecky, an undergraduate student in psychology at the University of Oklahoma (OU), claimed that the PhD student graduate-assistant instructor, Mel Curth, was discriminating against her for citing the Bible. She took this fight to the university, and she won.
The assignment that Fulnecky made into a cause was to analyze an article about how bullying and rigid gender norms negatively impact adolescents' mental health. Students were expected to read the article and provide an analysis that cited other academic sources to support their arguments. Fulnecky chose a different approach, using the Bible alone to support her assertions.
Despite the flaws highlighted by Curth’s grading of Fulnecky’s essay, such as a lack of proper in-text citations for Biblical content, a lack of academic support for her arguments in favor of gender essentialism, and calling trans people 'demonic,' Fulnecky concluded that she did not pass the assignment because she was discriminated against for being a Christian. She appealed the grade to the university.
Even though Fulnecky admitted that she hadn’t fully read the article and had written the paper in approximately 30 minutes, she was awarded a 'Citation of Recognition' by the university because of her appeal. This ordeal also led to the University of Oklahoma removing Curth’s teaching duties. The events that occurred in response to Fulnecky’s appeal and especially Curth’s dismissal, happened during the holiday season, a period when universities respond slowly and offices are closed, making attempts to appeal more difficult bureaucratically. This unconventional timing also likely harmed Curth’s financial stability and long-term options in the academic world. This illustrates the very real risks that instructors face today; these pressures to become “anti-woke” are not just about job security but also about how they shape professors' navigation of classroom dynamics.
The assumption that most students are worried that professors will fail them due to 'political correctness' often overlooks the opposite; many instructors (some of whom I know personally) fear possible retaliation from students if they explicitly express their own political beliefs. It’s also worth noting that three highly established Yale scholars in fascist studies were able to move into Canada right after the US election in 2024. Compared with graduate students (who are often paid far less as TAs or part-time instructors, and hold less power), these scholars are able to do so because of their financial resources and social networks. Jason Stanley told the Guardian that Columbia University and other universities caving in under pressure from the Trump administration regarding funding and anti-DEI policies was a cue for him and his family to leave the US.
However, Canada is not merely influenced by right-wing politics from the United States. It has its own unique problems with the normalization of anti-intellectualism, which includes skepticism towards experts, evidence, and even education itself, where opinions are regarded as equally valid to facts. Through claims about ‘freedom of speech,’ Canada is given to its own moral panics, some of which frame LGBTQ+ persons as a threat to ‘common sense,’ thereby luring the public into supporting fascist politics.
The “Intellectual Dark Web” as a Transnational Network
These moves are often associated with 'Intellectual Dark Web,' (IDW) a term coined by Eric Weinstein and later popularized by Bari Weiss. Voices on the IDW frame criticism as ‘censorship’ and depict public figures like Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris as ‘controversial’ or ‘brave’ for resisting progressive movements like feminism and multiculturalism. This logic confuses being wrong with being questioned, allowing anti-intellectualism to thrive by treating accountability and evidence-based critique as merely “different opinions,” while ignoring the real harms of disinformation. This narrative has already taken hold in Canada through moral panics surrounding alleged “cultural Marxism.”
Far-right voices on the IDW rely on conspiracy theories about ‘cultural Marxism,’ which are used to provoke fear of supposed loss of free expression, often by scapegoating educators and marginalized groups as vague threats to the public. These misunderstandings ignore historical context and oversimplify the complex political systems that have developed in ‘communist’ countries like Cuba and the former Soviet Union. US-based media outlets like The Daily Wire and Canadian outlets like Rebel News play a key role in spreading these narratives in North America, portraying public education, liberal arts curriculum, and teachers as ideological threats rather than focusing on why and how progressive changes are made in education. 'Cultural Marxism' conspiracy theories appeal to people by exploiting fear while painting progressive movements as threats, often oversimplifying complex issues into black-and-white framing as 'good' vs 'bad.' Although anti-communism in Canada never reached the extreme levels of U.S. McCarthyism, it nonetheless influenced public attitudes and still shapes contemporary political discourse, especially through the subtle impact of the Lavender Scare from the U.S., which cast LGBTQ+ individuals as morally dangerous and a security threat to the nation. This same anxiety echoes this logic in the moral panic around public education.
That fusion of such ideology and moral danger did not fade after the Cold War ended. Instead, it has been rephrased in contemporary debates about “wokeness,” academic freedom, and public education. What changes is the language; what remains is the suspicion that exposure to certain ideas can corrupt individuals and threaten the ‘natural’ social order. These ideas are constantly evolving; they spread through news, policy, and online platforms, shaping conversations well beyond the United States.
Recent developments in the United States function as templates for countries to replicate and normalize. Notable examples include the dismantling of the Department of Education, and more particularly, the removal of a 60 Minutes segment on Trump’s immigration policy that later circulated online in Canada. The video features the inhumane detention of those presumed to be undocumented immigrants (many of whom lack criminal records) held in the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador, including reports of food deprivation, fatal assaults, and sexual violence. Its censorship shows how information that questions state authority is often presented as a threat rather than factual, leading audiences to doubt journalism, expertise, and evidence. This has also led to false information being reframed as ‘common sense’ or even ‘courageous,’ rather than simply being wrong. This tactic reveals a twist that becomes more visible within a powerful news media outlet.
Bari Weiss, who was later appointed as CBS editor-in-chief in October 2025 during the mass layoff of mostly BIPOC and LGBTQ+ staff, is responsible for the removal of the segment. She self-identifies as 'politically homeless,' describing herself as a lesbian Jewish liberal who has been excluded by other liberals for her contrasting views. Through projects like The Free Press, she highlights narratives that allege ‘wokeism,’ such as platforming ‘gender critical’ figures like JK Rowling and defending accounts like Libs of TikTok as free speech. Articles that mischaracterize marginalized people’s experiences (such as the non-consensual and misleading portrayal of a teen’s story involving a Missouri gender clinic), along with sensational headlines like ‘I Used to Hate Trump. Now I’m a MAGA Lefty’, reflect a wider effort to depict these narratives as mere opinions, ignoring the implications they have on the public. These narratives do more than spread misinformation; they foster suspicion toward knowledge-producing spaces and institutions, including the people affiliated with them as potential threats. As misinformation is reframed as legitimate critique, claims of media “censorship” are used to legitimize narratives that rely on a centrist fallacy and the withholding of critical information; education becomes an easy target. In Canada, this has taken shape through growing claims that schools and universities are spaces of ideological ‘indoctrination.’
Moral Panic and Anti-Intellectualism in Canadian Education
When young people enter college or university in Canada, right-wing voices often accuse representatives of higher education of “indoctrination.” Universities are often portrayed as danger zones for “radical” ideas, and places that supposedly convert students into entirely new identities. This framing by right wing voices suggests that students are being manipulated by knowledge that includes ‘wokeism’, in which these voices present themselves as new and controversial perspectives and a space to question, reconsider, or move beyond beliefs they previously held. Recent events show how quickly this kind of tension can escalate into dangerous outcomes. We already seeing this in Canada. Bioethicist Florence Ashley was placed on temporary leave for a social media post about Charlie Kirk in which they highlighted the need to acknowledge the negative impacts that Turning Point USA has brought onto the public. In 2023, a stabbing at the University of Waterloo occurred against three students and a gender studies professor, which was believed to be motivated by hate ideology.
The incidents surrounding higher education highlight how these dynamics unfold in practice and how they have already taken root within Canada’s education system. This broader anxiety about ideological “contamination” is not limited to universities; it is also shaping K–12 policy. Alberta’s Bill 8 undermines gender-based violence prevention programs in K-12 schools as 'child exploitation’ due to Christian-based beliefs about sexuality (i.e., procreation and the concept of purity or the history in the criminalization of LGBTQ+).
Queer educators are targeted by the moral panic surrounding “gender ideology,” which relies on disinformation about gender-affirming care, particularly weaponized regret narratives, and a distorted understanding of gender, sex, and sexuality. This is evident in the prejudice against LGBTQ+ people, which includes framing them as mentally ill, or predatory, with terms like 'grooming' often used to justify exclusions. Public figures like Billboard Chris, who asserts that trans persons should be 'automatically disqualified from holding position as teacher or professor,' this mindset supports the idea that educators like Curth should be listed in 'Professor Watchlist' for ‘wokeism,’ which the website has led several instructors to face harassment and death threats. This demonstrates how moral panic and anti-intellectualism unite as a fascist tactic to target educators and scholars.
What Can We Learn From This?
To gain a clearer understanding of how these dynamics are interpreted in academia, I reached out to Dr. Florence Ashley for their thoughts on events around OU and Fulnecky. Dr. Ashley, who is a jurist and author of Banning Transgender Conversion Practices (2022), provides a deeper insight into how this incident occurs, as they stated below:
I can’t say I have tons of thoughts beyond the obvious —We’ve been seeing a collective effort to target every professor perceived as hindering the far-right movement for discipline and termination. Because it’s primarily about sparking outrage and transforming universities into instruments of the far-right, there’s been little concern for truth or accuracy. Indeed, even when they fail to achieve their immediate goal—getting this or that teacher fired—they still succeed in raising the opportunity cost of being in academia for progressives as well as teaching universities that if they want to avoid controversy, they should only hire conservative professors and lecturers. The rhetorical apparatus they use as part of fueling these controversies is, in the classical sense, bullshit—it’s not so much false as utterly unconcerned with truth, because everything is viewed through a us-versus-them lens where the goal of sociopolitical life isn’t aligning reality to normative fact, but having ‘their team’ win. Hence the deep disinterest in the details of Fulnecky’s essay or the context of outrage, such as the fact that the essay was very poor from a theological perspective, she wrote it surely knowing that it would be graded by a trans instructor, which I have no doubt was a significant part of the reason she wrote it in an inflammatory manner.
The reality that everyone seemed to be avoiding like the plague was that she could have written an essay espousing substantially the same views but with rigorous support and without inflammatory language, and it would most likely have gotten an okay grade. But that doesn’t matter, because it wasn’t about the graduate teaching assistant’s behavior but rather her presence in the university being incompatible with the far-right’s sociopolitical vision.
What we’re seeing here isn’t just a dispute over an assignment, but instead a ‘us-vs-them’ politics at play. The far-right draws the public into this mindset by turning this into a team sport by using countermovements, such as so-called 'gender criticals’ to sell the idea that academic topics like critical race theory are just as questionable as pseudoscientific claims like ‘race realism.’
The irony lies in the fact that Fulnecky’s article, which was meant to be analyzed, highlights a critical point: cisheteronormativity damages mental health. It leads to increased depression and suicide rates among LGBTQ+ youth, especially those subjected to rebranded conversion therapies like 'gender exploratory therapy.’ Regardless of personal beliefs, university students are expected to engage earnestly with research and evidence. When this expectation is dismissed as ideological bias, it distorts the public’s understanding of how education functions.
Institutions make this distortion worse when they cater to political pressure instead of defending academic standards. From passive complicity to actively promoting disinformation, universities like OU end up fostering anti-intellectual attitudes rather than combating them. In doing so, they undermine the fundamental role of instructors, which is to teach students how to analyze, evaluate evidence, and meet the intellectual demands of the course. Fulnecky’s paper should have failed; certainly not because of her religion, but because it lacked the necessary understanding or analysis expected in a 400-level psychology course.
This is how anti-intellectualism continues on. Academic evaluation seems like ideological persecution. This encourages hostility and distrust toward educators through disinformation. This rhetoric hides the true nature of academic work, highlighting stereotypes of elite tenure-track professors while overlooking the job insecurity experienced by graduate assistants and part-time instructors who often work for low pay, with minimal benefits and protections.
Returning to the controversy surrounding Fulnecky and Curth, this is not merely about a disputed grade, nor about religion in the classroom. Instead, this is a reflection of a broader political project that seeks to transform education into a battlefield of authority and control. The moral panic about supposed ‘gender ideology’ and ‘wokeness’ as academic indoctrination encourages the public to view educators and scholars with suspicion rather than engaging with ideas and evidence.
The lesson for Canada is that the narratives found in fascism are already present, not hypothetical. As anti-intellectualism continues to worsen in public and private spheres, the question is whether or not educational spaces, institutions, and policies are willing to defend the purpose of education itself. Education is not meant to dictate what people think, but to develop the skills essential for evaluating claims and evidence and for critical thinking about complex social issues, which are crucial for informed democratic debate. Education should equip the public how to see through fallacies in conspiracy theories and question these supposed forms of ‘hidden’ knowledge. In this sense, having an educated society would also mean having a democratic reality.
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