before he resigned, a letter was drafted and signed by almost 200 faculty and students who gave voice to this ‘profound outrage’. Their letter also made a number of demands, such as that the college should sever all ties with Marrus and that an apology should be provided by the college and its ‘master’. In response, an apology was subsequently provided, and the college went on to drop the title of ‘master’. A series of steps were also taken to address the ‘systemic racism’ that was said to be prevalent at the college and university. Marrus’s name, along with a brief description of this episode, is now permanently posted on the website Rate My Racist Professor. The relevant website says that its mission ‘is to expose and raise awareness of incidences of racism, bigotry, intolerance and abuse of position within the academic community in North America’. Marrus is assigned a ‘racism score’ of 2.3 (on a 1 to 5 scale, based on a survey provided). This ‘score’, one assumes, is supposed to confer both scientific credibility and democratic legitimacy to the final verdict being pronounced on Marrus and those listed along with him. What sense can be made of this, or lessons drawn from it, as concerns cruel moralism? Let’s begin by emphasising that the standards of antiracism are completely legitimate and credible, and that Marrus’s remark (‘joke’) clearly failed these standards. Let’s also agree that those who took this view, including the signatories of the letter expressing ‘profound outrage’, were entirely sincere in their commitment to these standards and their insistence that they be properly respected and followed. Finally, let’s also note that not only did Marrus accept all this himself, he tried to apologise directly to the student concerned, who refused to accept his apology. For all these reasons, it is evident that such a case plainly doesn’t fit the impure (‘show trial’) model of cruel moralism. There are no illegitimate or corrupt moral or political standards at play here. Nor is the condemned party innocent of the charges made against him. How, then can he be a victim of cruel moralism? What matters for identifying cases of pure cruel moralism is the motivation of those who set upon the guilty party. Evidence that their motivation is suspect is provided by the amplified and intense ‘outrage’ that was provoked – producing ‘boiling’ tensions around the campus and a ‘firestorm’ of controversy well beyond it. What fuel would be left in the moral tank of those who signed the letter expressing ‘profound outrage’ at Marrus’s remark when faced with the likes of Heinrich Himmler or racists of that kind and calibre? While no one should deny that there are many cases of racism (in Toronto and elsewhere) that merit ‘profound outrage’, the case of Marrus is not one of them. The excesses and extremes of cruel moralism depend on confusing and conflating cases of these kinds. What encourages all this is not necessarily moral vanity – although that too might play a role here – but rather the plain and familiar pleasure of becoming intoxicated by a sense of one’s moral superiority in these circumstances. It might be useful to contrast the case of Marrus with some other high-profile cases of moralism that have also occurred on university campuses in recent years. One notorious case involves the moral hounding of a Yale University faculty member in 2015 because she had the temerity to suggest that, perhaps, it was not within the right of the university to police what costumes its students could wear for the purpose of Halloween. Students – attending an elite institution that is a bastion of privilege where many, if not most, come from wealthy, advantaged backgrounds of every kind – pounced on this case. They too expressed outrage and demanded that the professor concerned should resign, on the ground that she was failing to create a ‘safe space’ for those in the university community.