One of Laurentian University’s best-known professors — who often battled the school’s administration — has died. Michael Persinger, perhaps best known for his so-called ‘God Helmet,’ was 73. Laurentian University announced his death on social media. Persinger, who was born in the United States, had been a neuroscience professor at Laurentian since 1971. The God Helmet — an apparatus designed to create religious experiences by stimulating the temporal lobes — drew international attention and he was often asked to share his findings with science shows around the world. Michael Persinger conducted experiments that fit a set of magnets to a helmet-like device. Four in five people, he said, report a ‘mystical experience, the feeling that there is a sentient being or entity standing behind or near’ them. However, he also had his share of run-ins in Laurentian’s administrators over a number of issues, including animal testing. In 2016, he was removed from the classroom over the use of profane language. Persinger recalled then had been called to the provost’s office and told he was no longer allowed to teach the remainder of a year-long first-year psychology class. At the start of this school year, Persinger had handed his first-year psychology students a form warning them he might use profanities and other potentially offensive language during his lectures. He listed some examples: the F-word. A homophobic slur. A slang word for female genitalia. If any of those words made them feel uncomfortable, now was their chance to bow out, he told them. Laurentian officials saw things differently. Persinger said he was told the form he had asked students to sign interfered with the school’s respectful-workplace policy and human rights code. Laurentian also said requiring students to sign a document as a condition for taking the course was a problem. Only the university can set prerequisites like that, administrators said. Persinger was upset. “I was perplexed, surprised. We’ve spent so much time talking about developing skills of assessment, critical thinking, being ready for the 21st century, dealing with complex issues of social agendas,” Persinger said in an interview at the time. “One of the first things I say in the first lecture is, one of the purposes of this course is to free you from being a victim of your own language. … I tell all my classes: You can ask any question you want, no matter how politically incorrect. You can use the words you want, no matter how inappropriate. We will then evaluate it step by step.” In response, the university’s faculty association filed an internal grievance on Persinger’s behalf, saying the school’s actions violate academic freedom and have the potential to “chill” campus speech. Students also rallied on his behalf, even launching a petition to get him back in class. When Persinger was announced in 2007 as Ontario’s best lecturer in a contest sponsored by TV Ontario, a university press release quoted a student who praised his teaching style. “No one has ever suffered from the common ‘boredom syndrome’ (in his lectures),” the student said. “He manages to captivate everyone’s attention and at the end of a lecture, I am even more enthused about the subject matter.”