Fired Over a Book Review: What the Collin May Case Reveals About Academic Freedom

July 21, 2025

In recent years, the term “cancel culture” has been thrown around so frequently that it risks losing its meaning. But for individuals like Collin May, it’s not a buzzword; it’s real life. After facing a coordinated public backlash tied to an old academic book review, Collin didn’t just lose his job— he faced reputational ruin and personal upheaval.

At AHA Foundation, we recently published a statement in support of Collins’ case. We believe his experience reveals something deeper than a single controversy: how vague accusations like “Islamophobia” are increasingly used to shut down difficult conversations, how institutions fail to protect the principles they claim to uphold, and what it takes to push back.

In this interview, Collin shares how he went from being a target of cancellation to becoming a vocal defender of academic freedom. He offers insight into the psychology of public silencing, the institutional incentives behind moral cowardice, and what a serious response to cancel culture must look like if we’re to preserve free inquiry in the West.

AHA Foundation: In 2022, you were forced to step down as Chief of the Alberta Human Rights Commission following controversy over a 2009 academic book review. Can you walk us through what happened and how those events led to your current defamation case?

Collin May: I’m a lawyer, writer, and academic in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. In 2019, I was appointed as a Commissioner of the Alberta Human Rights Commission (AHRC). In May 2022, I was made Chief of the AHRC. Not long after, I came under attack from a small but determined cabal of far-left politicians and bloggers aligned with the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM). The reason for this hostile volley of invective was that I had published a book review 13 years earlier on a book discussing Islamic imperialism. Following the author, I noted his view that Islam is one of the most militaristic major religions, a fact reflected in the constant efforts to rebuild the caliphate since it was eliminated by Atatürk in 1924. I should mention that this particular review was one among many I have written over the years and that, at the time of its publication, no one raised a single objection.

In early July 2022, one of the bloggers, along with the NCCM, contacted the Office of the Premier of Alberta complaining about my appointment as Chief. I’ve since learned that the individual in the Premier’s Office tasked with reading and commenting on my review stated that it was in no way offensive though it was highly academic and quite esoteric. Despite being acquitted of any slight to Islam, the Premier’s Office made me meet with representatives of the NCCM. Had I known that the NCCM’s former name before rebranding was CAIR-Canada, I would have declined to meet with them.

We met twice by Zoom and they insisted that I make an apology. I refused on the basis that this was a legitimate academic review and that I had no reason to apologize. I did make a statement confirming my commitment to learn more about the religion, despite the fact that I had already done significant studies in Islam at Harvard in the 1990s. This did little to assuage the NCCM who put out a press release stating that they were not willing to forgive me at this time. Instead, I would be required to jump through a series of hoops, essentially begging for the forgiveness of the Muslim community as represented by the NCCM.

“Without allowing me to seek legal counsel, without an independent investigation and without any critical review of the NCCM’s letter, the Alberta government fired me. A few weeks later, I filed a wrongful dismissal lawsuit against the government. That lawsuit continues to this day against a conservative government that likes to tout its anti-woke and anti-cancel culture credentials, but refuses to settle my claim.”

Over the next few months, I met with a Muslim member of the Alberta government cabinet. I also met with two Muslim Commissioners from the AHRC. One Commissioner told me that the community would reject me as I was an openly gay man (the CEO of the NCCM had previously compared homosexuality to adultery and has also called for the erasure of the false nation-state boundaries of the West). The other outright told me not to meet with those members of the community proposed by the NCCM.

To protect my rights and push back against the far-left activists, I served the bloggers and a media outlet with Notices of Defamation. These are required by statute to be served on journalists and quasi-journalists within three months of the publication of their articles. I obtained the approval of the Deputy Minister of Justice to serve the Notices, and I informed the NCCM that I was doing so.

In early September 2022, I confirmed with the NCCM that I was willing to meet with members of the Muslim community despite the warnings from the two Commissioners. Still, that was not good enough. A few days later, the NCCM told me they would no longer attempt to facilitate meetings with the Muslim community. Then, two weeks on, the NCCM circulated a letter to the media calling on the Alberta Justice Minister to fire me due to my alleged failure to meet with the community and because I had served Notices of Defamation on the leftist bloggers.

Without allowing me to seek legal counsel, without an independent investigation and without any critical review of the NCCM’s letter, the Alberta government fired me. A few weeks later, I filed a wrongful dismissal lawsuit against the government. That lawsuit continues to this day against a conservative government that likes to tout its anti-woke and anti-cancel culture credentials, but refuses to settle my claim.

In July 2024, I filed a second lawsuit, this time for defamation. I named the NCCM, along with the leftist bloggers as defendants. Luckily for me, the Lawfare Project, an organization based in New York City that defends members of the Jewish community against legal attacks, came to my rescue. They are funding my defamation lawsuit.

Since I was fired, my partner and I lost our home, we’ve both suffered physical illness, and my legal career has largely been destroyed. However, as time has gone on, I’ve also found supporters. In addition to the Lawfare Project, I’ve begun working with the CLARITy Coalition. I’ve been supported by the Middle East Forum based in Philadelphia and the National Association of Scholars in the U.S. Increasingly, organizations supporting free speech have rallied to my cause, as have Muslims who oppose Islamist political activism. My experience has even been made into a case study by a British law professor now working on a book on “Islamophobia” and free speech.

“Since that time, the term [Islamophobia] has gained acceptance in Canada and the West generally. The problem is that it still carries with it the repressive and deceptive implications of its origins. Increasingly, it is used in the broadest way possible to silence any discussion, let alone criticism of Islam or its doctrines, history, and political expression.”

AHA Foundation: In your view, how has the term “Islamophobia” been weaponized in Canada and beyond? What are the risks of using it to shut down legitimate academic, journalistic, or historical inquiry?

Collin May: Let me go back a bit to when I worked for the United Nations and the International Red Cross in Switzerland. I was there from 1997 to 2022. At the time, the term “Islamophobia” was just coming into use in the West. It was clearly understood among the people I worked with in Geneva that “Islamophobia” was used as a catch-all response by Middle Eastern nations whenever they were criticized for their human rights records. If anyone, from internal dissidents and minorities to international organizations, called out the undemocratic Muslim-majority governments for their repressive actions, they would immediately accuse their critics of hating Islam, of racism, of Orientalism. “Islamophobia” was the umbrella term, originally deployed by the Muslim Brotherhood and the Iranian regime, to encompass the panoply of false allegations used by these governments to silence their critics and cast themselves as the victims.

Since that time, the term has gained acceptance in Canada and the West generally. The problem is that it still carries with it the repressive and deceptive implications of its origins. Increasingly, it is used in the broadest way possible to silence any discussion, let alone criticism of Islam or its doctrines, history, and political expression. The term lacks any substantive definition because it is intended as a muzzling rebuttal to all discourse about Islam.

The great danger of this weaponized term is that it prevents us from thinking responsibly about Islam’s history, its beliefs, and the current political situation in many Muslim-majority countries. For example, if academics and journalists are unable to dispassionately discuss Islam’s strong connection to territory, we will never be able to appreciate one of the important elements of the ongoing dispute between Israel and the Palestinians. And, if we cannot recognize the obvious similarities between the caliphate and the imperial political form, we will be blind to the inspiration for much of the ideology that drives Iran’s imperial ambitions. The ultimate result of this self-imposed ignorance is more violence and bloodshed in the Middle East, and as we’re seeing in Gaza, the blood being spilled is often that of Muslims themselves.

“When I was cancelled, a small coterie of highly partisan academics threw those same academic standards on the trash heap to attack me in a surprisingly personal way. A professor emeritus from the University of Calgary, specializing in oil and gas law, not human rights, launched an unhinged critique against both my legal and academic credentials.”

AHA Foundation: Academic freedom is central to your case. Why do you think this freedom is increasingly under threat today, and what impact does that have on scholars, journalists, and public servants?

Collin May: Academic freedom is a fairly recent idea with a broadly liberal foundation. It was developed to ensure that scholars are able to publish controversial work without fear of reprisal. Of central importance is that it implies certain standards of documentation, research, review, and rigour. What we’re seeing today is the abandonment of those standards for an activist stance that has a social impact beyond the academy.

When I was cancelled, a small coterie of highly partisan academics threw those same academic standards on the trash heap to attack me in a surprisingly personal way. A professor emeritus from the University of Calgary, specializing in oil and gas law, not human rights, launched an unhinged critique against both my legal and academic credentials. Without the slightest reference to my prior work with the AHRC and ignoring my academic training in the history and philosophy of rights at Harvard and the Ecole des hautes etudes in Paris, this self-appointed arbiter of legal competence went so far as to state that I was uniquely unqualified in the entirety of the western world for the job I was about to take on.

More concerning from a human rights perspective was a pair of Alberta professors who, upon learning I was the first openly gay man appointed Chief, stated, without the slightest historical or social understanding, that “you can be gay and Islamophobic,” and “you can also be gay and intemperate and not suited for an adjudicatory role.” Again, they betrayed any academic rigour by repeating clearly homophobic tropes that ignore the plight of the gay community in Muslim-majority countries. Not to mention that they were entirely ignorant of the fact that my partner and I had, only a few years earlier, organized an effort to remove an HIV-positive gay Muslim man, under threat of death from his extended family in Jordan, to safety and asylum in Canada.

Academic freedom matters because it protects scholarly research and writing while enforcing standards of research and critique. It’s under threat today because ideologies that reinforce partisanship over scholarly independence are becoming more common in our universities. This silences serious academic work, but it also undermines the broader social function of universities, turning them into echo chambers for whatever current trend is ascendant.

“Academic freedom matters because it protects scholarly research and writing while enforcing standards of research and critique. It’s under threat today because ideologies that reinforce partisanship over scholarly independence are becoming more common in our universities. This silences serious academic work, but it also undermines the broader social function of universities, turning them into echo chambers for whatever current trend is ascendant.”

AHA Foundation: The Lawfare Project described your case as a critical pushback against intimidation and the misuse of legal tools to silence dissent. What precedent do you hope this lawsuit sets, not only in Canada but also internationally?

Collin May: I’d say there are two precedents I’d like to set. While my case certainly involved intimidation from opposition politicians, bloggers, and the National Council of Canadian Muslims, they didn’t resort to misusing legal tools because they didn’t need to. Instead, they simply shouted loudly that my writing was offensive and hurtful while mobilizing a mob mentality to criticize me. This was enough to cause the conservative government of Premier Jason Kenney to cave and fire me.

The Alberta government meekly accepted the mob’s misrepresentation of my writing without any critical or independent inquiry. It didn’t seek out the views of other Muslims, nor did it pay any attention to a statement from an academic defending my work. In employment law language, I was denied procedural fairness and due process. I’d like to see a precedent set that when the mob comes to cancel a public servant, the government involved must engage in a fair and independent process to address the allegations, rather than allowing a gaggle of partisans to destroy someone’s career.

More broadly, the second precedent I hope to create is that there are real legal consequences for defaming those engaged in scholarly work and discussion. Those who mobilize hatred and misinformation to undermine academic freedom and free expression need to understand that, in liberal democracies, they will be held to account for their behaviour. Academic freedom and free expression are part of the fundamental infrastructure of western civilization, and they need to be protected.

AHA Foundation: Your academic research has explored cancel culture and the psychological toll of reputational attacks. How has your personal experience deepened your understanding of those dynamics?

Collin May: My experience has been fundamental to my understanding of how a cancellation event works, as well as the long-term impacts of cancel culture and how we need to combat them.

I’ve observed that people who are targeted for cancellation often respond in ways similar to individuals who give false confessions in criminal cases. Like those wrongly accused of a crime, they tend to act in good faith—offering apologies or concessions even when they’ve done nothing wrong—simply to end the pressure or make the controversy go away. I’ve found that they generally take place within a certain class – the professional managerial class. I’ve also found that cancellers are primarily motivated by a need to virtue signal to their own activist in-group; rarely are cancellers motivated by a concern for the would-be oppressed they claim to champion.

As for cancellation targets, I found that they often exhibit behaviors similar to those who provide false confessions in the criminal context. As with those wrongly accused of crimes, cancellation targets generally act in good faith and provide an apology even when they’ve done nothing to apologize for. I didn’t apologize in my situation, but I did make a public statement believing that it would be taken at face value. It was not.

But my experience has also led me to think more about how to deal with cancellation in the long term. My own response to being cancelled has been to study cancel culture from a scholarly perspective, but also to work with others, especially civil society groups, to form networks that support cancellation targets. For me, this has meant working with diverse groups from reformist Muslims and free speech activists to Jewish organizations and academic associations to defend academic freedom and free expression as core values of Western civilization.

“…it demonstrates that there are diverse voices within the Muslim community. That those voices often come from women and other traditionally marginalized groups, shows that there are individuals within the Muslim community who want to move beyond the stereotypes they face both in Muslim-majority countries and in the West.”

AHA Foundation: Your case has received support from organizations such as Muslims Facing Tomorrow and Secure Canada’s International Counter-Voice Initiative, led, respectively, by Raheel Raza and Dalia al-Aqidi, both members of the CLARITy Coalition. What does their support mean to you, and what does it signal about the diversity of voices pushing back against the misuse of “Islamophobia” claims?

Collin May: Personally, it’s hard to express how much it’s meant to me to have the support of people like Raheel and Dalia. These are remarkable and brave women who are tireless champions for freedom and openness within the Muslim tradition. Given that I first studied medieval Islam, and especially the Mu’tazilite tradition, with the intention of better understanding the contributions and impact of Arab philosophers on the West, it is heartening to know that I can engage with contemporary Muslims who appreciate and respect my genuine interest in their culture.

From a broader political and social perspective, it demonstrates that there are diverse voices within the Muslim community. That those voices often come from women and other traditionally marginalized groups, shows that there are individuals within the Muslim community who want to move beyond the stereotypes they face both in Muslim-majority countries and in the West. It also tells me that there is hope for real engagement between reformist Muslims and the West despite the constant fear of being painted with the false brush of “Islamophobia.” 

AHA Foundation: Both the National Association of Scholars and Muslims Facing Tomorrow have called for your reinstatement. Do you see a potential path back to public service, or is your focus now more on accountability and setting legal precedent?

Collin May: While I’d be happy to return to the position of Chief of the AHRC, under the right conditions, I doubt that the current Alberta government or the current Alberta Justice Minister has the courage or the conviction to stand up to those who got me fired. In fact, at the recent Eid al-adha celebrations at the Alberta Legislature, one of the invited speakers was an individual named as a defendant in my defamation lawsuit. So, at this point, my main focus is on accountability and setting precedents to protect academic freedom and free expression.

AHA Foundation: You’ve said that the focus for allies like AHA Foundation should be on defending academic freedom, rather than personal reinstatement. Why is that distinction important, and what role can institutions play in preventing abuses like the one you experienced?

Collin May: While clearing my own name is personally important, my experience has taught me that we need to actively build organizations, like the AHA Foundation, both to advocate on behalf of cancellation targets generally and to provide institutions with resources and information to push back against cancel culture.

On the one hand, we need to create and build networks of organizations that provide cancellation targets with the resources and the support to fight back. That includes financial resources to pursue legal remedies, as well as the emotional and social support to ensure that victims know they are not alone in their fight.

On the other hand, these organizations must also make it clear to institutions, from corporations and employers to not-for-profits and government, that institutional betrayal of cancellation targets will not be tolerated. In short, we need to build networks that support a culture of free expression and academic freedom, letting institutions know that they will be held to account when they fail to uphold these essential principles.

“Don’t compromise your integrity. Here I mean a couple of things. On the one hand, maintain your professional integrity, your professional standards, and don’t engage with those who prefer to misrepresent your work. On the other, don’t give in to the overwhelming temptation to apologize or make a statement trying to assuage the cancellers. It won’t work, and it just undermines your own credibility.”

AHA Foundation: As a CLARITy Coalition member, how does your case reflect the broader trends and concerns the coalition is working to address across Western democracies?

Collin May: The CLARITy Coalition is a diverse group of individuals including reformist and ex-Muslims, members of various other religious communities including Jews, Hindus, and Christians, as well as atheists and humanists. I see it as reflecting two of the key elements of my own case.

First, CLARITy supports the principles of free speech, liberal democracy, and secular rule of law. In this regard, it aligns with the goals of my lawsuit: to set precedents that protect academic freedom and free expression.

Second, it seeks to counter the toxic effect of Islamist activism and terrorism in the West, as well as serving as an alternative voice for Muslims who share Western values. On this point, it represents a forum for those who want to bridge the differences between the West and the Muslim world. In fact, while we tend to think of the West as separate from the Middle East, given my own focus on how medieval Muslim thinkers adapted Greek philosophy to their specific religious context, I tend to see the Muslim Middle East as a part, though a distinct part, of Western and Mediterranean civilization. CLARITy Coalition happily allows me to explore and express this understanding with like-minded individuals.

AHA Foundation: What advice would you give to academics, civil servants, or others who find themselves targeted for engaging with difficult or politically charged issues?

Collin May: I’d offer a few bits of advice. First: Don’t compromise your integrity. Here I mean a couple of things. On the one hand, maintain your professional integrity, your professional standards, and don’t engage with those who prefer to misrepresent your work. On the other, don’t give in to the overwhelming temptation to apologize or make a statement trying to assuage the cancellers. It won’t work, and it just undermines your own credibility.

Second: Immediately seek out those organizations that defend free expression. Cancellation events are overwhelming and relentless, and they tear at your self-confidence. Cancellers seek to isolate the target and will engage in repeated attacks until they achieve their goals. It’s important to have the support of organizations that are familiar with how cancel culture works and that know how to fight back. Similarly, institutions such as governments and employers cannot be relied on to defend you. Targets need the assistance of groups specifically built around combating cancel culture.

“…I hope to set precedents that ensure procedural fairness for those targeted while holding those who engage in the toxic enterprise of cancellation to account. One of the common reactions to the chilling effect of cancel culture is that potential targets, from academics to authors, self-censor for fear of being targeted. I want to flip that dynamic.”

AHA Foundation: Looking ahead, what are your goals – both personal and legal – as your defamation case moves forward?

Collin May: Personally, I want to hold those who participated in my cancellation to account, but I also want to understand who all the players were and what they did behind the scenes. Cancellation events often involve groups of activists ranging from those who commence the cancellation through a calling-out mechanism, to those who perpetuate it by a piling-on technique. These groups are often affiliated or engage in a conspiratorial effort to gang up on the target. I’d like to know how these groups coordinated in my case in order to better understand the cancellation dynamic.

Beyond that, I want to continue to use my experience to research and write about the cancel culture phenomenon, including its potential future. I recently signed a book deal that will allow me to collect my academic essays on the dynamics of the cancellation event, as well as dive into where I think cancellations are headed. Unfortunately, I believe we’re seeing a movement of cancel culture from the social plane to a more institutional level, to what I call “incarceration culture,” in which government and administrative bodies actively take on the role of the canceller. This is a trend I plan to study and expose.

Finally, in terms of my legal goals, as I’ve said, I hope to set precedents that ensure procedural fairness for those targeted while holding those who engage in the toxic enterprise of cancellation to account. One of the common reactions to the chilling effect of cancel culture is that potential targets, from academics to authors, self-censor for fear of being targeted. I want to flip that dynamic. The only ones self-censoring should be the cancellers and those institutions that support them, knowing that they will be held responsible for their efforts to impede academic freedom and freedom of expression.