Laval University Professor Suspended for Questioning Covid Vaccines for Children

A professor at Laval University (Université Laval) in Quebec City has been suspended without pay for two months for questioning the benefits of COVID vaccines for children. Microbiology and immunology Professor Patrick Provost sent out an email soliciting a discussion on the issue and raising his concerns. He has now been disciplined for merely raising such issues by a university that has discarded any semblance of academic integrity and free speech.

According to The Suburban, the controversy began as a conference of Réinfo COVID, “a collective of nurses, physicians, scientists, and citizens seeking to generate debate about how the pandemic has been handled by the government.”Provost asked his colleagues “to share their views with the public” on these issues. Provost also wrote in a June Quebecor Media piece that the COVID-19 “was very real” but asked “was it as significant as reported?” He argued that there was evidence of only five individuals under age 40 dying of the disease and challenged the need for the Canadian government’s vaccine mandates and passports.

As with the university, Quebecor Media quickly yielded to a mob of critics and removed Provost’s remarks. Journal de Québec Editor-in-Chief Sébastien Ménard said that Provost’s points “were inaccurate or could mislead the public.” Notably, Ménard did not seem compelled to address the alleged inaccuracies in the comments or Provost’s basis for raising his concerns.

Ménard did not seem to entertain the possibility that the media can be a place for the exchange of such ideas, including a rigorous debate challenging Provost’s assertions. Instead, the solution, once again, was censorship.

Most of Provost’s colleagues have said nothing in defense of an academic being denied the very freedom that defines and sustains our profession. One exception is Douglas Farrow, a professor of theology and ethics at McGill University in Montreal, who denounced the suspension as “A Repressive Political Act” in a Substack article.

To its credit, the Université Laval faculty union has filed a grievance on...

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