George Jonas Freedom Award dinner is hosted by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF). This award is for the annual recognition of a Canadian who has contributed to advancing and preserving freedom in our country.
Calgary – Thursday September 28
Vancouver – Thursday November 23
2023 Award Recipient – Dr. Jordan B. Peterson
The George Jonas Freedom Award recipient for 2023 is Dr. Jordan B. Peterson who accepted the award in Toronto on June 15th. Dr. Peterson is a firm advocate for personal responsibility, which is one of the pillars of the free society and is also committed to defending free expression. He has consistently displayed courage in the face of adversity, and perseverance in the face of ongoing unjustified attacks against his character and reputation. In 2016, he famously stood up to intimidation and “forced speech” when pressured to use newly invented personal pronouns. In January 2023, he shared that the College of Psychologists of Ontario (CPO) “demanded that [he] submit to mandatory social-media communication retraining,” or else face a disciplinary hearing, and that the CPO threatened his professional license because of his commitment to free speech.
As Dr. Peterson is unable to attend the Calgary dinner in person, we are honoured to have Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and Rav Arora as our guest speakers for the evening, both of whom have been featured on The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast. Dr. Bhattacharya is a professor of health policy at Stanford University School of Medicine with an MD, a Ph.D. in economics, and decades of experience writing on infectious disease epidemiology. Dr. Bhattacharya is one of the founding contributors to The Great Barrington Declaration and participated in the Justice Centre’s remote GJFA event in 2021. Rav Arora is a college student in Vancouver with an unpremeditated career in alternative independent journalism. His cutting-edge articles and his exceptionally rigorous standard of journalism have led to his writings appearing in The New York Post, The Globe and Mail, Quilette and Foreign Policy Magazine and have led to appearances on many popular podcasts.
Despite the wealth of differences in their backgrounds and experience, Dr. Bhattacharya and Rav Arora converge on foundational scientific and ethical principles like evidence-based medicine, informed consent and the necessity of scientific debate as the bedrock on which the public can have confidence that science and public health work for the benefit of the people. Dr. Bhattacharya and Mr. Arora have joined forces to launch The Illusion of Consensus series to bring recently censored and cancelled ideas to light. “If there is consensus, science challenges it with new hypotheses, experiments, logic and critical thinking. Ironically, science advances because it believes it has never arrived; consensus is the hallmark of dead science.”
Visit the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) for more details and ticket information.
Please email dinners@jccf.ca for any questions.
