The University of Illinois Chicago transgender professor who was slated to debate Daily Wire host Michael Knowles next Tuesday dropped out unexpectedly this week, the Daily Wire reported.
The professor, a man who goes by Deirdre McCloskey, was scheduled to debate Knowles at the University of Pittsburgh on “transgenderism and womanhood.”
According to sources, McCloskey said he didn’t want to provide a platform for Knowles to share his views since Knowles only wants to stir up “hatred and violence” toward those who “do not fit his extremely conservative Catholic beliefs.”
Last month transgender activists present a petition to the University of Pittsburgh demanding it cancels Michael Knowles’ appearance. When the school refused, the activists threatened to shut the debate down themselves.
For weeks, McCloskey made a big show of saying how unafraid he was to face Knowles in a debate.
In a tweet last month responding to the petition to cancel the April 18 debate, McCloskey said the people who signed the petition “should be ashamed.” He said they are correct in believing Knowles is a “fascist” and an “anti-Jesus Catholic,” but “we live in a free country.”
In late March, McCloskey told the university student paper Pitt News that he won’t have to prepare for his debate with Knowles, explaining that his life is the preparation.
But on Tuesday, in a thread on Twitter, Knowles quote-tweeted McCloskey’s March tweet and revealed that he just heard the professor “dropped out” of the debate.
He suggested that McCloskey must have learned that Knowles isn’t the “loose cannon” that dishonest liberal media portrays him as. He said maybe McCloskey learned that Knowles’ opposition to the trans movement doesn’t come from hate “but from love of the truth.”
Knowles added that McCloskey must have realized that his arguments wouldn’t hold up under scrutiny, so rather than “lose in front of CSPAN’s cameras,” the professor “chose to concede.
