IN the West, universities allow professors to teach ideas that conflict with mainstream views. But at one university in Canada, a professor appears to have pushed the administration's tolerance to the limit, and beyond. Last fall, the controversial University of Ottawa professor, Denis Rancourt, walked into his environmental physics class and told students that their grades had been decided: Everyone would get an A+. Rancourt reasoned that if students didn't worry about their grades, they would be freed to become “scientists, not automatons", according to the Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail. At the end of the semester, the university informed the professor that he was suspended. And earlier this month, the school began formal proceedings to have him fired. Rancourt has been called an “anarchist" by his critics. They claim that he uses class time to encourage political activism. But some of his students defend him. Sean Kelly, one of Rancourt's master's students, admitted that some of his classmates complained when he allowed discussions to wander off-topic. But he told The Globe and Mail: “He really pushes you to think more for yourself."