He ‘liked’ tweets critical of vaccines, transgender surgeries for minors
An accomplished molecular immunologist has been forced out of his position as the president of a university after students led a cancelation campaign against him for “liking” tweets about topics such as vaccines and transgender surgeries for minors.
Mark Tykocinski will stay on as a professor at Thomas Jefferson University but will no longer serve as president, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer, which originally worked with students to air their grievances. He also stepped down as the dean of the university’s medical college.
There would be nothing wrong with Tykocinski liking those tweets because they were his personal views, but in any case, he said he just “liked” them because he wanted to bookmark the content for later to learn more.
He told the Inquirer he liked tweets if he wanted to “learn more about the subject matter or the particular viewpoint.”
It is a good trait for a president to be interested in learning about different viewpoints and subject matter in general.
But specifically in this context, it is good for a president of a university with a medical and research focus to be interested in the different viewpoints people have about issues such as vaccination and the removal of healthy reproductive organs from minors.
Tykocinski is in his 70s and has had an accomplished career as a doctor and researcher. He will ultimately be fine.
But what is the long-term result of professors and students who lead a cancellation campaign against someone for being open to other viewpoints?
MORE: Professor made student ‘uncomfortable’ with open debate, gets fired
Shouldn’t medical students also be interested in why people are skeptical about vaccines?
Shouldn’t they want to investigate the problems with transgender surgeries (which are fundamentally flawed because they promote the lie that someone can change their sex)?
The student who led the cancel campaign requested “anonymity, fearing retribution,” according to the Inquirer. But he probably would get a professor job for promoting intolerance toward other viewpoints – that is what medical education has turned into anyways.
Intolerance shows up not just at Thomas Jefferson University, but at Indiana University’s medical school, where the OB/GYN director said that the state’s law against the destruction of innocent preborn babies would lead to a lower “quality” of medical students (i.e. pro-life medical students are not as smart or talented as pro-abortion ones).
The intolerance shows up in a paid expert witness for the LGBT lobby who thinks that only people who think like him are allowed to have views on political debates of the day, like should a 15-year-old girl be able to permanently sever her ability to reproduce or nurse her children in the future?
It can be seen in the pro-abortion medical students who staged a walkout of a general speech from a pro-life professor simply because she opposed abortions.
Dr. Tykocinski is but a small victim in the effects of cancel culture in medicine and higher ed.
The larger victim will be the millions of Americans who feel alienated and distrustful of healthcare professionals because of the unhealthy virus that is tearing through the academic-medical community and infecting the practice of medicine.
MORE: Penn professor ‘encouraged discussion,’ now faces investigation
IMAGE: Thomas Jefferson University
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