SHEILA GUNN REID ｜ Professor David Haskell on COVID groupthink and the death of divergent views on campus
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Summary
Is free speech completely lost in academia, or has it been yet another fatality of COVID? Professor David Haskell joins me to talk about censorship, free speech, and what we all should do if we want to keep it alive.
Transcript
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Oh, hey Rebels, it's me, Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're listening to a free audio-only
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recording of my weekly Wednesday night show, The Gunn Show.
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However, this is the internet, so you can listen or watch whenever you feel like, whenever
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Tonight my guest is Professor David Haskell of Laurier University, and we are discussing
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the state of free speech on campus, especially for conservatives, and especially during the
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And now please enjoy this free, audio-only version of my show.
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Is free thought completely lost in academia, or has it been yet another fatality of COVID?
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I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gunn Show.
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Your only hope is to become organized and active.
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Be willing to sacrifice today for freedom tomorrow.
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Take the long view of the situation, not the short fix.
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Okay, so let's say that things suddenly change, and you can go back and complete your university
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Because what good is a university degree when in a year or two, the government says,
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you can't work, because you won't think or act according to their next mandate.
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Start protesting with signs that embarrass these tyrants.
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Get politically active with parties that stand up for freedom.
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And if you go back to school at some point, go into every meeting that is focused on social
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justice and ask the professors and students in attendance, where were you when I was expelled?
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Wilfred Laurier University professor David Haskell has been an outspoken critic of vaccine
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mandates, lockdowns, and the intolerance of divergent ideas in academia and on Canada's
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Now, a few days ago, Haskell spoke at an event held to support students who are resisting
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vaccine mandates for moral, medical, or ethical reasons.
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The event was held at Trinity Bible Chapel, which is, as some of you may know, a high-profile
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lockdown resistor church headed by Pastor Jacob Rayome in Waterloo, Ontario.
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And since he's a university professor, it was obviously meticulously researched and footnoted.
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But when he put it up on YouTube, it survived all of 180 seconds before it was taken down
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Well, I'm not one to just let big tech censorship happen.
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So, joining me tonight to talk about censorship, free speech, academia, and COVID, and what we
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all do next, is Professor David Haskell in an interview we recorded yesterday afternoon.
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Joining me now from his home is Professor David Haskell.
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Well, it's to my great embarrassment that I have not had you on the show sooner, considering
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your struggles with free speech, as I would say that you're someone behind the enemy lines
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at Wilfrid Laurier University, specifically because you are a self-identified Christian male
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Now, I wanted to have you on the show initially to talk about the letter that you wrote advocating
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Why don't you tell us, though, before we get into that, a little bit about yourself?
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Well, as you say, I'm teaching at a public university.
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When you look at the studies, that's probably about 6% of the professoriate, which is minimal
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And I'm also a little bit different because I actually speak up.
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And there are many conservatives on campus who don't speak up.
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And as a result, they have less and less of a chance to be able to say what they stand
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Um, and as we've seen, there's a purge going on and, and maybe this is going to light the
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fire under those who have been silent for so long.
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Yeah, I think a lot of people, uh, COVID has really been the point at which they are mugged
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by reality where, you know, they didn't speak up about the compelled speech of pronoun use
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or any of those things because it didn't directly affect them.
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But I think the tentacles of the octopus of COVID and all the restrictions that come with
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it and the restrictions on civil liberties for a lot of people, this is their come to
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Now you did write a letter, you and some of your other colleagues, you wrote a letter to
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Can you tell us a little bit about that, but also the reception from the university and,
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and maybe I guess some of the students too regarding that.
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Well, uh, this was way back in September when we wrote this, uh, the letter and, um, it
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was myself and some colleagues from Laurier, also a colleague from Waterloo.
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Um, and the idea was that we just wanted to show that from a legal perspective, from an
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ethical perspective and a scientific perspective, there were really good reasons to be against
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And we wanted to really remove the opportunity for our, our university to say, we didn't know
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their, their ability to deny, because we offered the legal arguments.
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We, we offered the scientific arguments, the ethical arguments.
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And yet the response from, from them was that essentially, well, the government says we can
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And now the interesting thing, Sheila, is that the government actually, at least in
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You don't have to implement this particular mandate in such a way that students are expelled
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And yet our universities across Ontario still chose to go the most punitive route, despite
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And for me, I really worry about the state of our civil institution, civil society going
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forward, but also businesses too, when we are ultimately purging the most moral amongst
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When I think about a business, the person who is governed by their conscience above all else
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and their ethics, that's the person I want running the show.
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And yet those are the people actively being shown the door by their employers in the public
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and the private sector because they resist the vaccine mandate.
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And it's happening for a whole host of reasons.
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These people are often painted as anti-vaxxers, but a lot of times they're just conscientious
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They're people who won't divulge their own vaccine status because they don't want to participate
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And we can even go further and say that they're pro-truth.
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And so you're talking about who's getting purged.
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There are people in my camp, fellow professors, who are fully vexed.
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But what they really are objecting to is this notion of compelled behavior.
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They're objecting to the erosion of freedom and rights.
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And so this is what we need to be concerned about.
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And to your point, the people who have stood up to this are people who are standing up for
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truth, but they're also being punished in terms of the student body.
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The students I've found who are standing up for this are those who have taken it upon
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themselves to not go with the standard narrative, but actually research.
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These are the kind of students you want at a university.
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Now, what has the reception been like to your letter from the faculty, your fellow faculty,
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Because the students can sometimes get a little bit prickly when their professors say and do
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things that offend their delicate sensibilities.
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The letter, which was written in September, has kind of gone under the mat.
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There's also the video that was just done of a speech that I gave.
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And that's the one that really has probably caught the more attention of others.
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Although I haven't had people from the university negatively comment.
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I'm getting a lot of good comments from those who have been affected by this mandate, and
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But you ask, what kind of atmosphere is on our universities?
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So one of the courses I teach is public speaking.
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And in that course, I get them as a final assignment to write a persuasive speech.
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And this year, I said, what I want you to do is to write a persuasive speech on why the
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vaccine mandates here on the university campus are a flawed idea or are maybe not a good thing.
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So I wanted them to take that position because it's the hard position.
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It's the hard position because it goes against the narrative.
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And if you really want to show your skills as a persuasive speech writer, you take the
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The students, not all of them, but a significant number of the students refused to look at the
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Not only that, they were able to appeal to my boss, the dean, and get him to challenge me
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Now, my issue here is, one, as a professor, I'm supposed to be the expert when it comes to
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But implicit in that was this idea that we shouldn't expose students to ideas they don't
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I'm talking about ideas based in empirical evidence and good moral reasoning and just
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saying to them, listen, I want you to go and explore the other side of this issue only insofar
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as you can find the good empirical evidence and the strong moral reasoning, which is a
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The main idea, or I'm sorry, the main impetus of a university, which used to be seek the truth,
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is now protect you from ideas that you might not like.
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Now, speaking of people being protected from ideas that they might not like, big tech is
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It's one of the things we struggle with a lot at Rebel News.
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A lot of times we just have to double up on our work and publish two versions of the same
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video, one accurate one and one self-censored YouTube one that directs people to go to Rumble
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You had a speech, and you'll tell us more about this, at Trinity Bible College.
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That's Pastor Jacob Rayom, who has held true to his conscience and rejected many of the
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lockdown restrictions on churches to great personal cost.
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You had a speech there that you hope to inspire courage amongst a group of students.
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And your video lasted three minutes on YouTube.
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Now, happily, it's up on Rumble, and I would encourage people.
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And thankfully, there are these other platforms.
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But I got it immediately, about three minutes after I posted it on YouTube, I got a notice
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that it had been taken down because I had violated the community standards.
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And in particular, it said that I had violated something like the scientific consensus.
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Now, the irony here, Sheila, is that I posted, I linked to the academic studies that were supporting
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So my position was there is valid reason to be against the vaccine mandate because we've
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now seen through numerous academic studies that the un-vaxxed and the vaxxed, they both
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So by having a vaccine mandate, scientifically, there's no validity.
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So I linked to those studies from the New England Journal of Medicine, British Medical Journal,
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These are the top medical journals in the world, and I linked to them.
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Similarly, I linked to the studies that show that the vaccine itself has now been shown
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to be a greater risk to young people than COVID itself.
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I linked to the studies, again, in the video description.
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But the fact that YouTube would not take these academic journals as part of the scientific
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conversation, there are only certain ideas that they will allow.
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So anyway, I was off YouTube in a matter of three minutes.
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Isn't it, though, counterintuitive to scientific thinking to decide that there is an absolute
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Science doesn't work if you say, well, that is, you know, the debates close.
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If that were the case, we'd still think that the world was flat.
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We'd still think that the, you know, well, we wouldn't have any of the advances that we
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And so we want that one voice, that one Galileo who says, wait a minute, wait a minute.
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We've got to talk about this sun-earth thing, right?
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We want those voices, those dissenting voices, because maybe they're correct.
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But now, on any number of topics, we don't get that.
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And as you move into a world, a society, where the facts don't align with what is promoted
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as truth, you're going to get in a lot of trouble.
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You know, eventually, you want the person who is doing the surgery on you to actually
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You want the person building your buildings, flying your planes, et cetera.
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You've written quite extensively on this in the past.
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And again, this whole idea that there are certain things that we are allowed to think and not
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For me, I think that the greatest advances in humanity and the well-being of man have come
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And yet, not only are we seeing governments telling us what we can and can't think,
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we also have the censorship of big tech, since social media is the new public square,
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limiting the free and liberal exchange of ideas.
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What does this mean for the future of mankind, I guess, now that I have you?
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We can say, well, what was it like before the Enlightenment?
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What was it like before we said, let's put aside our tribal differences and agree on a
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And the standard was empirical evidence and rational thought.
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And so when empirical evidence becomes the standard, it means that you will advance.
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Prejudice is as much as possible left to the side.
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But when it becomes the idea that my personal experience becomes the truth, well, then you'll
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never have consensus and you're back to tribalism.
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I really worry about that because the people at my university and universities across Canada
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So now empirical evidence is called white supremacy, right?
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And I hate white supremacy as I was taught what it was as a youth.
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White supremacy is a guy walking around with a hood and he's chanting KKK some different
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They're saying that anything that advances what would be Western values, Western culture,
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empirical evidence, it's now deemed white supremacy.
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They've created new definitions so that they can get rid of all the advances we've made in
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terms of moving beyond tribalism and accepting standard and objective measures.
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And the reason they do is they know that their arguments wouldn't hand, wouldn't stand up
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So let's get rid of this reliance on facts so that anything goes.
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And in particular, what they're trying to force, which is a very, very terrible, nonsensical,
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We hear all the time, my truth, my truth, my truth.
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There's experiences and a worldview through which you look at the world.
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And apparently it's just not a thing anymore when you deal with people from the left side
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But it's also seeping into people I thought were conservative are sort of adopting these
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And I think it's because, as you point out in your article in C2C Journal, that, you know,
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some 60% of conservative professors reported hostility towards their beliefs from faculty
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And so people who are not as strong, more of strong moral character, people who are not
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resilient to bullying, it's pretty easy to just say, fine, I'll do what you want me to
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Um, and, uh, I think that leaves fewer and fewer people on the battlefield of new ideas.
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And not only that, it's such flawed thinking because they don't leave you alone.
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It's, and let's say that you do manage to get them to leave you alone.
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If you've raised your children in the same values that you have, your children are doomed.
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COVID's been an eye opener because it's shown many people who weren't aware that the popular
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narrative from government, media, and academia often doesn't have any relation to the facts.
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And in my, in my earlier career as a researcher, I was, uh, heavily interested in, and published
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So I've mentioned numerous studies that have appeared in top journals that show that the
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unvaccinated and the vaccinated spread and catch COVID in near equal numbers or equal numbers,
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depending on, on the study, which shows that these vaccine mandates are useless.
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They're not scientifically valid, but I cannot find any reports or few reports on these studies.
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I, I can find them and I, I'm not a, a medical researcher, but I can find them.
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Where are the medical reporters at these national newspapers and these national television broadcasts?
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We have children, young men in particular, who are suffering vaccine injuries at levels
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never seen in the history of any vaccine in our country and try and find a news article
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So as someone who has studied media bias, there's never been such misinformation.
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There are close, close seconds, but COVID really it's taking the cake.
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But what we have to wonder is, so what's it going to be like at the next mandate?
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You know, that's a, an interesting point because we saw all these tried and true tested methods of shutting people up
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that really didn't apply to COVID, but they use them anyways.
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For example, criticism about the Chinese government's secrecy, about the origins of COVID.
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Well, that's white supremacy because you're being critical of China and normal people say, well, I'm, I'm being critical of the Chinese government.
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That's definitely not the same as the poor, long-suffering Chinese people.
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But it was, it was all the things that they've used to shut you up in the past.
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That's the worst thing ever to be called a racist.
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And then they tried it all again with COVID and it works.
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And, you know, they, they marginalize the dissenters.
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You're an, an anti-science, anti-vaxxer, the protests against the restrictions.
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Somehow it makes it into a CBC headline that those are also racist.
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It's interesting to see the, as you point out, the media bias, the marginalization of people who just say, I just want to be left alone.
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There are a lot of people who don't care anything about COVID.
00:24:10.500
And I bring it to the attention of your viewers, because this is something that we really, really need to be aware of.
00:24:16.880
I'm sure they are, but let's just put a fine point on it.
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When someone is accused of racism, be aware that that is probably used by their opponent because the opponent doesn't have an argument.
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So that's, we've got to be able to look at it and switch it around.
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We've got to say, okay, as soon as somebody says they're racist, they're white supremacist, know that that is actually code for, I don't have an argument.
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So we've got to keep, we've got to keep reinforcing that.
00:24:45.000
Also, the, the idea around COVID has really made it clear that they will always use an argument from public safety.
00:24:55.500
So anytime you hear a government official and academic media talking about safety, your best bet would be to think this is a lie.
00:25:08.560
But they'll couch it in safety, because the left have always been very good at changing the meaning of words and word manipulation.
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But, but in this regard, they have just, they've excelled.
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So I would, I'd caution your audience or I'd make your audience aware, whenever they hear the word, this is for safety, whether it's COVID or whether it's Trudeau saying to keep the internet safe, to keep people from harm.
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Then you immediately, your antenna picks up and you say, there's a lie coming.
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And so we've got to have this mechanism and teach our kids too.
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If you hear the word safety, know that a lie is coming.
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If you hear the word, this is white supremacy, know that it isn't.
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Know that they are about to lie to you and they don't have facts.
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So let's keep reinforcing that to our friends, our family, because if they can just have that, that mental jujitsu happen immediately, then it will really, it just kind of keeps you on top of the information that you're being asked to accept.
00:26:14.400
I think two of the most manipulated words of our time are harm and violence.
00:26:19.120
The left has really done a great job changing what those mean.
00:26:22.520
Harm now means things that I don't want to hear and violence also means words that I don't want to hear or things that I disagree with.
00:26:29.940
And so it's funny how we've sort of seen the shift happen that violence was actually a physical thing.
00:26:37.000
Now it's turned into an emotional thing, but because we still use that word to describe whatever's happening,
00:26:43.740
the left feels perfectly justified in reacting with physical violence against words they don't like, because it's all the same.
00:26:54.800
And those are the real world consequences of shifting the meanings or expanding the meanings of words.
00:27:02.480
And this brings back, this is a long time ago now in terms of media history, but it was 2017.
00:27:11.000
You may recall the Lindsay Shepard scandal that happened at Laurier.
00:27:16.420
So we had a grad student, Lindsay Shepard, and she showed a video that had previously been shown on public TV, right?
00:27:26.700
And it was Jordan Peterson, and he was talking about his concerns over pronouns and how they were being forced through the human rights tribunals and through the Canadian government.
00:27:37.900
People were being forced to use words that they didn't agree with their belief.
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She was a tutorial leader, and she showed it in her class.
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And then she was brought before a tribunal of people from my university, and she was told that she'd committed a hate crime.
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She was told that she'd done violence to the class.
00:27:57.400
And again, this is the way that the left will misconstrue and they'll use words in a way that they were never intended to be used.
00:28:07.180
But as an academic whose research area is often in the area of language, I looked at that, and it really did give me pause.
00:28:16.300
And I'll just commend this to your readers, sorry, your viewers, if they're interested.
00:28:20.480
I wrote a piece called Words Lose Their Meaning at Wilfrid Laurier.
00:28:25.740
And it's a really in-depth look, and it really just takes on what you were already talking about, how they've been able to change the meaning of harm to their purposes, and then it allows them, it gives them the ability to say, well, you harmed me, now I can harm you.
00:28:41.040
So if someone really wanted to go in-depth on that, fun little piece, it ran in Quillette, Words Lose Their Meaning, and it's exactly what you're talking about.
00:28:49.800
Now, I know I've kept you longer than I said I would, but I want to ask you one thing before I go.
00:28:55.560
As a mom whose children are approaching university, I've got one that sort of went a different way, did the trade route, good for him.
00:29:03.760
But, you know, as somebody with daughters who are now sort of headed towards university, what can we do as parents to affect change within the atmosphere of the university to make this not necessarily an easier goal for our children, but to maybe enable, I don't know what the right word is.
00:29:27.700
How do we make this a more tolerable experience for our children, I guess, as parents, or as, you know, by putting pressure on the school?
00:29:37.380
How do we make this better, I guess, is my question.
00:29:45.660
94, that's probably a low number, 94% of university professors are on the left or far left.
00:29:57.200
When you survey them and you ask them about conservatives, around 50% say that they see conservatives, especially conservative Christians, as,
00:30:10.560
I want to, this is a quote from a study that was done by Sam Reimer in Sociology for Religion,
00:30:16.100
but the quote is, they see them as enemies to be opposed.
00:30:21.320
And so I'm, I'm doing the paraphrase, but it's pretty close to that.
00:30:24.200
So that, and then you look, and a study done by Yul Inbar at Tilburg University,
00:30:31.040
looked at, again, these solidly left-leaning professors, and they were asked,
00:30:42.580
Would you sink a grant, that is to say, dismiss it, crash it, kill it, if you knew that it was from a conservative?
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Similarly, would you prevent a conservative from being hired?
00:30:57.740
Now, that was a quarter who said yes and knew they were being surveyed.
00:31:02.520
How many were thinking it but didn't want to admit it?
00:31:05.040
So if they're willing to do this to someone who is on, on level with them, equal, a colleague,
00:31:12.380
what would they do to your child who has no power?
00:31:19.600
What can be done is a new university system can be created.
00:31:23.960
And we could starve the programs that are most hostile to those who think differently.
00:31:30.720
And you can go and you can check out which of those programs they are.
00:31:37.080
My own children are in engineering and science, and my oldest has joined the military to get a trade.
00:31:46.940
So I'm just saying that the advice, how can you make it better?
00:31:53.580
I don't know if I'd phrase that question that way.
00:32:00.680
Maybe the system is lost, and we need a new one.
00:32:10.580
I mean, the statistics out there say there are not a lot of people willing to promote diversity of ideas at our universities anymore.
00:32:21.120
And the policies coming from our lead administrators, our top administrators, are moving in just the opposite direction.
00:32:28.220
Well, on that depressing note, Dr. Professor Haskell, I want to give you an opportunity to let people know where they can find you,
00:32:40.740
where they can see some of the speeches that you've done or read some of your work.
00:32:45.020
Because I find you very fascinating, and I'm just so surprised that you work in liberal arts.
00:32:50.740
But it's good to know that there are still some good ones out there.
00:33:07.000
The last video I did isn't up on it, but they could follow me there.
00:33:14.720
If they were to Google my name, I'd definitely have a reach in terms of my written work, whether it's Quillette, C2C Journal, or different national newspapers.
00:33:27.120
I've got a number of op-eds out there from the last five years that speak to these very issues.
00:33:35.520
I'm so sorry that it was so long for you to come on the show, but hopefully you'll agree to be on again very, very soon.
00:33:46.680
And as we see what isn't being said in the national media, we see the incredible need for what you're doing.
00:34:43.240
I'll see everybody back here in the same time, in the same place next week.
00:34:47.020
And of course, remember, don't let the government or big tech tell you that you've had too much to think.