A Gnu University professor of communications has declared that institutions of higher learning are "no longer a place for the free and healthy exchange of ideas" following an incident last Tuesday in which a sophomore asked him to stop using a racial slur that, by the student's count, he had used 380 times over the course of a single 75-minute lecture.

Professor Aldous Kine, 71, who has held the university's Founders' Chair in Public Discourse since 1998, made the remarks to reporters outside Whitmore Hall on Wednesday morning. He described the question — posed by second-year student Amy Okafor, who raised her hand and waited to be called on before speaking — as "exactly the kind of ideological pressure that is quietly strangling the life out of serious academic inquiry."

"I have been teaching at this institution for twenty-six years," Kine said. "In that time I have never once had a student challenge my methodology mid-lecture. That this is now considered acceptable tells you everything about where we are."

Okafor said she had asked whether the repeated use of the slur was "necessary to the lesson." She said Kine had paused, told her the question was "a perfect example of what's wrong," and then used the slur eleven more times before the session ended.

Kine disputed the count of 380, calling it "the kind of quantitative framing that substitutes data for understanding." His department chair, Professor Lillian Stroud, said in a written statement that the precise figure was "difficult to verify" but that Kine's lecture notes, which she had reviewed, "suggest the number may have been higher."

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KINE'S PUBLIC RESPONSE

The professor has since published an open letter, distributed to colleagues and submitted to this newspaper, arguing that the incident reflects a broader collapse of intellectual courage on university campuses. In it Kine describes a new environment where power takes issue with truth. When asked how a 20-year-old wields more power than someone with tenure and access to institutions like The News, Kine responded, 'Oh, see? Now you've become one of them! Jordan Peterson is right, it really is a mind virus'.

Graham Holt, whose columns in this publication have argued repeatedly that New Newmanton's public discourse has been "captured by a politics of grievance" and that good-faith critique is increasingly treated as an act of violence, praised Kine's letter in a post to his personal correspondence list as "the kind of thing that needed to be said, by someone with the standing to say it." Holt did not respond to a request for comment, which his editorial biography notes is his custom.

Greg Lukianof expressed open support for the letter, saying 'it's nice to see truth spoken to power for a change'.

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Kine is expected to teach his regular Thursday section. Enrollment in the course, Communications 202: The Ethics of Public Language, is 23 students. His upcoming book, 'The Race Situation' has already pre-sold 300,000 copies.