The 59-year-old marketing lecturer at the University of Guelph-Humber came across a post from an educator in Pakistan, who was using what Finlayson considered genocidal language about the conflict in Gaza, by calling for a Palestinian state “from the river to the sea.”

Incensed, Finlayson responded with a post that he admits was “hot-headed and unwise.”

Most reasonable people would probably consider the response to be slightly over-caffeinated but well within the bounds of fair comment.

But most reasonable people do not work as administrators at North American universities in an age when the illiberal left has deemed that anything that makes students or faculty feel “unsafe” must be rooted out and destroyed.

A student who saw the post, responded: “REPORT, REPORT, REPORT.” Another said he or she was “absolutely ashamed” by her professor’s comments, “filled with hate and Islamophobia.”

Finlayson has no right to work in academia in future, the student said, a position that appears to correspond with that of the Guelph-Humber administration, which called him in and told him he was suspended with pay, pending an investigation. Courses that he was scheduled to teach next semester are no longer being offered.