BY JOHN K. WILSON

Satoshi Kanazawa, a psychologist at the London School of Economics, was having a quiet sabbatical, spending it as a visiting scholar at Northwestern University, until someone looked up his many controversial writings. Now a petition signed by more than 4,400 (and supported by the Daily Northwestern editorial board) is demanding “Ban Dr. Satoshi Kanazawa from conducting research at Northwestern.”

It’s extremely dangerous to announce that certain ideas must be banned by a university. Doing so does nothing to defeat hatred. To the contrary, the regime of censorship being demanded is likely to backfire and be used against marginalized scholars and students who express controversial views.

Critics correctly accuse Kanazawa of racist and sexist research. Kanazawa is most often attacked for writing an essay titled, “Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women,” for which he was fired by the publication and (in a disturbing violation of academic freedom) banned by the London School of Economics from publishing anything for a year except in a peer reviewed journal.

Actually, there’s nothing wrong with asking the question in his title, since it exposes the ongoing reality of racism. But Kanazawa’s racist answer (now retracted) was to ignore racist perceptions of black women completely and inexplicably claim that testosterone is somehow to blame.

Is Satoshi Kanazawa as terrible as his harshest critics have claimed? No, in fact, he is much, much worse. His racist and sexist views are appalling, as is the stupidity of much of his research and writing. But his hatred of women and African-Americans pales in comparison to the utter evil he advocated in a 2008 column. Kanazawa announced that in response to 9/11, he wished Ann Coulter were president so that the US could have committed the worst genocide in history: “drop 35 nuclear bombs throughout the Middle East, killing all of our actual and potential enemy combatants, and their wives and children.” Kanazawa whined about America’s failure to commit genocide: “we appear to have PC’ed hatred out of our lexicon and emotional repertoire.”

What should a university do with someone who is a racist and a misogynist, or even an advocate of mass murder? The answer is: We should protect their freedom.

The reason is not that Kanazawa deserves it. The reason is that we deserve it, and we endanger our own freedoms when we start to ban viewpoints because they are controversial.

It’s critical to understand what Kanazawa’s position, Visiting Scholar, really means: It’s a guest from another university. It’s a courtesy title that basically allows someone access to the library and not much more. No salary, no benefits, no teaching, no authority over anyone on campus. Kanazawa is a Reader (which means “a senior academic with a distinguished international reputation in research or scholarship”) at the London School of Economics. So he plainly meets the basic qualifications for a Visiting Scholar, which no one imagines should be the same standard as hiring a professor at Northwestern.

The Daily Northwestern declared in an editorial, “His stay not only reflects on his personal character, but also demonstrates that we condone racism and sexism as an institution.” Of course Northwestern condones racism and sexism. All free universities must do that. If a university actually purged every professor, student, or staff member who had ever expressed a racist or sexist idea, it would require mass dismissals and constant investigations of nearly everyone on campus. Should anyone who voted for a racist and sexist president such as Donald Trump be banned from Northwestern?

Moreover, the accusation of racism and sexism is something that easily can be (and has been) turned against progressives.

What if someone on campus is accused of sexism for “identifying white college males as a problem population”? Or accused of racism for saying “I hate white people”? What if someone is accused of anti-Semitism, which is now officially defined by the Trump Department of Education to include calling for a boycott of Israel? Should they be banned, too?

An article by Northwestern alums in Truthout claims, “The ‘scholarly research’ of Kanazawa’s ilk and the institutions that employ them, however, often manifest as thwarted access to jobs and opportunity, neglect in medical care, and lives often starved of physical and emotional safety.” A similarly misguided argument is made by the Daily Northwestern editorial board, “By its actions, Northwestern has shown it prioritizes a troubling image of academic freedom far above the safety and wellbeing of the marginalized students it’s tried to court.” But this attempt to portray academic freedom as endangering the safety and wellbeing of students is completely false. A person with racist ideas is not a threat to the safety and wellbeing of anyone, and the ideas expressed do not thwart access to jobs or medical care. What the editorial board calls “dangerous ideas” are only dangerous when someone like Donald Trump becomes president and implements them. The ideas themselves are not dangerous, or else we would need to purge Northwestern’s libraries of all books written by the vast number of racist authors. After all, a book written by a racist seems far more dangerous than allowing a racist scholar on campus, since a student might accidentally pick up the book and believe what it says. Why is a campaign to ban offensive researchers any different than a campaign to ban offensive books?

What’s truly dangerous to marginalized students is the belief that intellectual freedom should be abandoned and power handed to the administration with a mandate to ban controversial thinkers who might make the university look bad. What part of the term “marginalized” is not understood here? If you believe that Northwestern University is a corporation run by and for marginalized people, then perhaps you might trust them to ban the “right” people. But why anyone think that a ten billion-dollar company sustained by and serving the very rich is going to serve the interests of those who are marginalized?

Northwestern Provost Jonathan Holloway nobly refused to ban Kanazawa, and wrote: “I believe that personally held views, no matter how odious, cannot be a reason to undermine the vital principle of intellectual freedom that all academic institutions serve to protect.”

However, behind this outward defense of academic freedom is an announcement that anyone controversial like Kanazawa will be banned in the future. Holloway noted, “I have discovered that the system for vetting a visiting professor in Kanazawa’s host department was weak” and added: “the faculty in the host department unanimously passed a motion that modified their vetting policy to include a more stringent process in the future. I applaud this change, and I expect this same level of basic rigor to be applied in every department at the University.”

Essentially, Holloway is ordering all departments at Northwestern to do more vetting of visiting researchers. No standards are mentioned here (which is the worst kind of censorship), but it seems clear that anyone who has written anything offensive that can be found in a web search will now be banished from Northwestern. (If departments somehow fail to ban the bad people, Northwestern’s research unit retains the power to reject a visiting researcher designation for any reason.)

A local TV news story about this case reported, “A professor who insults black women and questions the intelligence of those who believe in God is a visiting Northwestern scholar.” It’s not hard to imagine Northwestern banning visiting students and professors who harshly criticize religion, for fear of being attacked in the local news again.

The irony here is that the campaign by campus progressives to get rid of Kanazawa will almost certainly fail in this individual case, but it will succeed in banning future visiting scholars who express controversial ideas. That’s a terrible outcome for academic freedom, and it’s also likely to target the marginalized students and scholars this protest is meant to protect.