17 years ago, 19 Muslim men hijacked 4 American airliners at the same time and carried out the biggest massacre on American soil since Pearl Harbor. It was cowardly and sneaky and unprovoked, but at the end of the day, Pearl Harbor was an attack by one nation's military against America's military. On 9/11, it was a sneak attack too, on civilians.
00:18:23.780I was, I mean, I haven't been on campus in a long time.
00:18:28.240I mean, it's been 20 years since I've graduated.
00:18:31.960I was under the understanding that if you're a tenured professor, once you've reached a certain level of seniority, you get this magic status.
00:18:41.240It's like you put a wizard hat on you and it's called tenure.
00:18:44.360And I don't know exactly what it means other than you get paid more.
00:18:48.480And I thought they couldn't fire you if you had tenure.
00:18:52.280So it was designed to give you the freedom to really try out edgy ideas or whatever.
00:19:06.060So they said it was, it had nothing to do with what I had said, but the way I said it.
00:19:10.760So the manner that you express yourself and that you, you contradicted what was in our harassment and discrimination policy.
00:19:20.180But to give you just an idea of just how preposterous the policy is.
00:19:24.760So it was, I think it was late November, early, yeah, late November.
00:19:29.580So on Facebook, I just referred a student to a link on the research and studies, research and graduate studies website.
00:19:37.500And I said, go to this link and tell me how this in any way is a positive reflection on, you know, the Faculty of Arts or the School of Education.
00:19:46.940And so if you go, go to the website, it's about this master's thesis that's, that wins an award.
00:19:54.360And it's about this person's coming out experience, how he dealt with it through interpretive dance.
00:20:00.480So that was the idea I was critiquing was the idea that you have this thesis that reads like a diary entry and it's about interpretive dance.
00:20:10.340And if you actually read the statement, they actually say the reason it was award winning, award worthy was that the interpretive dance was the focus of the thesis and not just an add on.
00:20:22.020But somehow by making that link, I was minimizing the student's coming out experience.
00:20:28.600And so that could be perceived as homophobia.
00:20:31.500And so that's why I was asked to take down that link.
00:20:34.120See, I mean, you're, you're talking to me from the bowels of the university where, where this debate you're referring to is normal.
00:20:41.560But I, I mean, again, I thank God I haven't been in a classroom in two decades.
00:20:45.760The idea that someone could do a thesis on their own interpretive dance, on their own personal life, the idea that someone stands up in class and talks about their own rape, however horrific that may be, that, when I, that wasn't university.
00:21:02.420When I was, we went to learn something to get a degree.
00:21:04.700Hopefully it would be something useful in life.
00:21:07.760And even if it wasn't practical, it was some deeper classical understanding of literature or history or whatever.
00:21:14.140The world you're talking about where people do diary style interpretive dances about their own sexual life is, I wonder why anyone would even send their kids to school.
00:21:26.600And, and especially at the great cost there is, I don't even understand what's going on.
00:21:31.420Tell me again, what you're, you're a professor of philosophy.
00:21:51.480So we have the one investigation by Wayne McKay.
00:21:54.940So I found out about that on February 13th.
00:21:58.260So I had, don't actually have my own copies of the report.
00:22:00.860So that's what I find interesting is that even though these reports are the basis for my dismissal, I can't actually have my own copy unless I agree to conditions that are like a gag order where it literally says that I won't talk to any other person about them.
00:22:37.480Uh, when I looked at the report though, what I find interesting is you just have to look at the, let's say the table of contents and you look at who he interviewed.
00:22:44.820And so then there's going to be anonymous sources and non, along with, you know, people who signed their name to it.
00:22:50.760And I think that goes against what we normally think of as natural justice is that you get to know who your accuser is.
00:22:57.720Did you have a chance to challenge any, any of the facts that he included in his report?
00:23:03.880I mean, I challenged them, um, uh, on the substance, but, um, yeah, it was to no avail.
00:23:51.620So I didn't get the chance to actually respond to the contents of the report itself until it was actually used as a basis for disciplining me.
00:23:58.800And so then it was in the context of a discipline meeting.
00:24:03.560Um, did you, I mean, public sector unions are very strong and the teachers unions and professors unions, faculty associations, I think they're usually called, are very strong.
00:24:14.780Did, did they provide you, did your union to whom you've been paying dues, I'm sure, for many years, did they provide you with support?
00:24:22.440Did they have a lawyer for you or an advocate for you in this process?
00:24:25.940Uh, well, yes, um, I guess the, yeah, we do have a grievance officer and, um, through that you have a lawyer, but key, I guess key point is the lawyer represents the faculty association, not me.
00:24:40.760And so with the grievance officer, they work within the rules that are there, uh, you know, to help the member, but they don't actually challenge the rules.
00:24:48.840I think that's what, where the problem is.
00:24:50.440And so they say, well, it'll be best for your case, because if it's going to go to arbitration, you don't want to say anything that could hurt you in the media.
00:31:18.700Well, listen, I've liked Derek for years and I've dealt with him in his capacity at the Taxpayers Federation and then as an MLA, including a lead critic for the Wild Rose Party.
00:31:42.140And he acknowledged several times, without getting into the particulars of it, his mistakes that he's made over the years.
00:32:20.820I don't think that Albertans want more splittism.
00:32:25.400But I have to say, what I would leave that conversation, after thinking about it for a day now, is it'll be curious to see if it's more than just Derek Phil LeBran himself.
00:32:36.160But he says he has other names lined up.
00:32:37.940But I do think, in terms of your question, it would be better if Jason Kenney were the premier, but the opposition were on the right, pulling him back from the media instead of on the left.
00:32:52.760That would be a healthy change for Alberta.
00:32:54.200Well, look, I don't mind the fact that the two parties are united, the old progressive conservatives and the Wildrose Party.
00:33:15.740But I actually didn't think that there needed to be a unity.
00:33:20.020Remember that the Wildrose and the Conservative Party were fighting with the lion's share.
00:33:25.800They were both in like a 30 percent range, while the NDP was single digits, very, very low teens.
00:33:31.820It wasn't until Danielle Smith tried to euthanize the party and Jim Prentice ran as a socialist PC that people said, you guys make me sick and voted for the only other alternative, which was this innocuous enough looking Rachel Notley.
00:33:46.300So I think it was an accident of history, a freak incident that would not have been replicated.
00:33:51.820And even if the parties on the right did not unify, I really think the NDP is going back to their traditional single digit status in Alberta.
00:33:59.640And I think the risk of the unification, I mean, the obvious benefit of it was that it assures a strong majority UCP government next time.
00:34:11.520But the risk of it is that you keep within it all the red Tories who really aren't conservative.
00:34:16.860They're just part of a tribe and like to win.
00:34:19.920In a way, the old PC Party ought to have been crushed like the NDP Party.
00:34:25.340I think Wildrose probably could have done it on themselves.
00:34:27.880But as I said to Derek Fildebrandt yesterday, all of that is coulda, shoulda, woulda talk.