Lindsay Shepherd on the battle against campus cancel culture
Episode Stats
Summary
Our guest today has a fascinating story to tell, one of how she went from being an unknown graduate student at an Ontario university to the viral subject of international controversy. All for playing a five-minute clip from a mainstream Canadian news program during a class discussion. It s the story of academia gone wild, of one woman s refusal to be pushed around by it, and the story of Lindsay Shepard, author of the new book, Diversity and Exclusion: Confronting the Campus Free Speech Crisis.
Transcript
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Our guest today has a fascinating story to tell, one of how she went from being an unknown
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graduate student at an Ontario university to the viral subject of international controversy,
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all for playing a five-minute clip from a mainstream Canadian news program during a
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class discussion. It's the story of academia gone wild, of one woman's refusal to be pushed
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around by it. It's the story of Lindsay Shepard, author of the new book, Diversity and Exclusion,
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Confronting the Campus Free Speech Crisis. Hey, Lindsay, welcome to the show.
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Yeah, thanks for stopping by. Congratulations on the book and looking forward to having this
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conversation with you about all of these issues. And I want to start, I want to go back to the
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beginning and talk about before this big event happened to you that really changed everything.
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Tell us, you were at Wilfrid Laurier University, you were a grad student. What were you studying?
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Um, I was doing my MA in cultural analysis and social theory.
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Um, so yeah, when people ask what that is, I generally just say it's, it's like the worship
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of Michel Foucault. There's not much else to it. Um, I thought when I was enrolling in the program,
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that this would be a very philosophical program. Um, you know, it would be a combination of sociology,
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um, philosophy, maybe some political science, but it ended up just being these, these obscure
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theories, not that Michel Foucault is obscure because he's the most cited scholar in the
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humanities. Um, but just this, it was the study of postmodernism and just these, these theories
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that seem to me very unsubstantive. And what does this mean? The worship of Michel Foucault? I mean,
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just take us back to basics. What, what are the issues that are being discussed? What are the sort of,
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Um, I mean, to be honest, there's not much to it. Uh, it's a very, it was a very easy grad
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program. Um, all you had to do in your papers was cite the right scholars. So, you know, Foucault,
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he's, he's someone who says, who theorizes about power, um, and about this, this thing called
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biopolitics. It's honestly, it's not worth getting into because it's just so unimportant.
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Mm-hmm. So what did you think you were getting into when you enrolled in this master's then?
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I, I mean, I thought it would be the study of societies and the world and, um, getting into
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the pressing issues of the day and just talking more philosophically about, about society and life.
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Um, but it ended up being these, just the, the celebration of theorists from the, you know,
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60s, 70s, 80s, uh, as well as Marx. I shouldn't leave out Marx. So really, I should say just to
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summarize the gist of my program was, um, colonialism was bad. Patriarchy is bad and Marx is good and Foucault
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is good. That's all you needed to excel in the program was that.
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And Lindsay, when you decided to enroll in the program, what was your initial thinking? Like,
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I guess you weren't prepared for what it became. Were you going into this because, um, you wanted
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to enter academia and, uh, you know, as a professor going to your PhD, did you think that this was a
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pathway for some sort of employment? I mean, what, what was the plan?
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Yeah. So I, I'm a big fan of academia. I think it's a great institution. And I, I just wanted to go to
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grad school because I loved learning and I loved reading and writing. And I didn't really go in,
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I didn't enter academia for careerist reasons. I, I wasn't thinking, oh, an MA is going to really look
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good on my resume. I didn't care about that. I just, I just wanted to learn more. Um, that,
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that was my primary reason. I did think, you know, academia could be in the future for me,
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you know, pursuing a PhD and then applying for, for jobs, uh, within the university. But, uh,
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yeah, I, I, that wasn't my primary motivation, I would say, but I, I did think, you know, I think
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I'm the right kind of person to go into this field because I saw myself as someone who's just open to
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discussion, open to learning new things. Uh, I didn't have any kind of heavy ideological agenda.
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And so I saw myself as someone who, who would do well in academia. Of course, I learned that
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Were you politically minded when you entered this program and in any degree on the spectrum?
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Um, I defined myself as a leftist at the time, but looking back, I would say I was a default leftist.
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So, you know, that, that was just the default of, you know, you could say people my age, um, you know,
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being right wing would be highly undesirable. So no one defined themselves as that, uh, as young
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And Lindsay, tell us what was the Wilfrid Laurier campus experience like? What, what, what was it
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When I first got to the university, uh, I was really excited because I saw Wilfrid Laurier as,
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you know, maybe not the most highly ranked institution, but it seemed like an underdog
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of a place. And I thought I, it would, you know, be a good experience for me. Um, but when I
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first started doing the orientation sessions, you know, my first day on campus, I quickly realized
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that my cohort in my master's program, cultural analysis and social theory, um, they were very
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consumed by identity issues. And it was kind of very surprising to me. I had entered graduate
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school thinking, this is kind of where the collective of the most open minds comes and
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they're, they're willing to talk about anything. They're willing to dive a little deeper into
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the issues of the day. But what I met was just kind of people who were interested in, you
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know, representations of, of queerness in the media, uh, representations of, of homosexuality
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in the media, uh, representations of hijab in the media. So that kind of stuff.
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Sorry. And you mean, that was what people were talking about sort of socially hanging out at
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social events, or that was sort of the thrust of grad seminar conversations. Where was this,
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That was their research interests. So what they would ultimately end up writing their
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papers on. Also fat phobia was another one representations of fatness in the media, that
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kind of stuff. Um, as well as yes, seminar topics and, uh, and everyday discussion. So all of the
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Now, obviously people are going to take some very niche and specific interests in their doctoral
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dissertations. And I think it should be expected that the topics you mentioned will crop up once
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in a while. Are you saying that these were, uh, occasional interests or this was sort of the,
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the meat and potatoes of what was going on there in the curriculum?
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This was the meat and potatoes. So, I mean, I, I was in a small program. I think there was only 13
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or 14 students. And when I first got to, you know, the orientation session for my first day
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in that program, uh, yes, almost every single student introduced themselves as having those
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research interests. And that's where I kind of got the first signifier that, you know, this,
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this program wasn't going to be what I expected. The university experience, you know, the graduate
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school experience wasn't going to be what I expected.
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And were you the only one who did not share that approach?
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Um, pretty much. Yeah. I mean, if it wasn't an identity issue, it was a colonialism issue or,
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uh, something about Marx. So, I mean, the topics were very predictable.
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And looking back, do you think, I guess you were a little taken aback by all of that,
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but looking back now, do you think that you should have known what to expect? Or do you think that
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one, a student would be within the right to show up with the perspective that you had and go,
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Yeah. So when I looked back at, at the program page for the program that I applied to,
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I did, I did think to myself, you know, how could I miss this? You know, there,
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there are certain keywords, uh, you know, like social justice or, you know, there are certain
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words where you kind of know what the bent of the course is going to be or what the bent of the
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program is going to be. Uh, but at the time I just wasn't familiar with that language. Uh, I wasn't,
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I just wasn't attuned to that. So, uh, I, I wouldn't have known.
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So looking back, do you think that, that you were wronged by this experience? I mean,
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we're going to talk about some, some real particulars, uh, in a few minutes, or do you
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think, Oh, I just shouldn't have done that. Um, Oh, I mean, I'm the first one to say that I don't
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think that academic program should exist. I mean, that is my master's degree. I have a master's degree
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in cultural analysis and social theory. I don't think it should exist. I don't think it contributes
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anything. I don't think it has any substance, but you know, I think anyone who graduates from
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that kind of program, and there are other ones too, like, you know, social justice studies,
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um, the graduates will keep on, you know, maintaining the facade that they, they have this
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really important degree and they're a very important person because they have a master's
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degree in this. Um, but you know, I'm, I'm just honest about my experience that, uh, this
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program shouldn't exist. And there, there are many, like I said, similar programs, anything with
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the name social, with the word social justice in it. Um, some, some people say that it's often
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things that end with studies that are the most, um, you know, intellectually lightweight, academically
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lightweight, the least studious, the ones that are called studies are the ones where you're doing
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the least amount of studying. Uh, let's get to that, that fateful day here. Let, let's tee this up
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because there was a seminar session that changed everything for you. You played five minutes
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of clips from a TVO program, TVO Ontario program called the agenda with Steve Pakin. Now for those
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across the country, they'll probably know Steve Pakin as someone who's typically, or who has often
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been the moderator of federal leadership debates in Ontario. He hosts sort of one of the flagship
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discussion programs on, on the Ontario public broadcaster, uh, TVO. I mean, Lindsay, would you agree
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that, you know, at the time of you playing this clip, TVO is pretty much the most sort of mainstream
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program, uh, you can really get in terms of discussion in Ontario. Oh yeah. And I mean, I've
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first learned about the program because I had seen it played by other professors in, in my previous
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courses. Um, yeah. So you played five minutes in a seminar of a discussion of three different, uh,
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individuals, guests who were, who were all relatively unknown at that point. Although one of them
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is professor Jordan Peterson, who is very known now, of course, why did you play that clip? What
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was happening in the assignment that you were given for that day that led you to say, this is something
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that is relevant to this discussion? So when you're a graduate student, you generally also have
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a TA ship, a teaching assistantship. And so I was the TA for communication studies 101. So a first year
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communication course, uh, because that's what my undergrad degree was in. And, um, the way the
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course was structured was every week there was a kind of topic related to writing skills and language
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skills. So it could be, um, punctuation, it could be citation, uh, and there were two weeks on grammar.
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And so I thought, okay, grammar, I'll, I'll go over the typical do's and don'ts. Uh, but I also want
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to show how grammar could be a really interesting issue that we encounter in everyday life. And to do
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this, I, I showed the clip that you mentioned from TVO and it was a discussion on pronouns. And actually
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in, in the textbook for that course, pronouns was, you know, mentioned, you know, gender, gendered
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pronouns was, uh, a subheading in the textbook. And I thought, this is so interesting because Dr.
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Jordan Peterson, uh, as well as Dr. Nicholas Matt, who's a professor of transgender studies at the U of
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T they're, they're talking about what is fundamentally a language issue and grammar issue, but it's on a panel
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discussion show. And this is, you know, I think this will be really interesting and relevant for
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my students. And so I brought in, uh, the clip. Well, let me play that clip because we have that
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clip right here. Uh, at least part of what you played here's professor Jordan Peterson speaking
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on the agenda. What is it you find offensive about this legislation? Well, fundamentally there were two
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things that really bothered me, although there have been other things I've thought about since one was
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that I was being asked as everyone is to use a certain set of words that I think are the
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constructions of people who have a political ideology that I don't believe in and that I also
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regard as, as dangerous. What are those words? Those are the made up words to re that, that people now
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describe as, um, as gender neutral. And so to me, they're, they're, they're, they're an attempt to
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control language and, and in a direction that isn't happening organically. It's not happening
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naturally. People aren't picking up these words in the typical way that new words are picked up,
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but by force and by fiat. And I would say by force because there's legislative power behind them.
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And I don't like these made up words, ze and zur and that sort of thing. Okay. What about,
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they're not all made up, quote unquote made up words. For example, they is one of them. Yeah,
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but we speak to an individual as they. Right. But we can't dispense with the distinction between
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singular and plural. I mean, I know that the advocates of that particular approach say that they has been
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used forever as a singular, and that's actually not correct. It's used as a singular in very
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exceptional circumstances. Like if your child wishes to bring a book to school, they're welcome
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to do so. But that's just dramatically incorrect. Well, it is also, there's some debate about that
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because it is, they is used like that sometimes, but it's never been used as a singular replacement
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for he or she. And so it's not, it's not a tenable solution. And that's the best of the solution.
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So Lindsay, that's part of the clip that you played for the class. What was the reaction
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to hearing this clip? My students were very willing to talk about this and everyone in the room had,
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you know, different things to add. So I think at the end of the day, by the way, no one was offended
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by this. Well, at least not, not that I could see no one cried or ran out of the room or got mad.
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It was just a very collegial discussion. We talked about how language evolves. You know,
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some students made the point that we don't speak, we don't speak Shakespearean English anymore. So
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what's the big deal if we add Xi and Xur? Some other students were more on Dr. Peterson's side. So
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they, you know, they were against compelled speech. We talked about they and them in the singular,
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singular. And we talked about situations where maybe you already use that, that term in the
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singular, because maybe you don't know someone's gender. And so you don't refer to them as a he or
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her, you say they. We talked about whether some other students, whether any students in the class
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speak other languages, and whether those languages have gendered pronouns or not. And overall, it went
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really well. I taught three blocks of classes, kind of going over the same, the same things. And I went
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home just like any other night, thinking that the class went well. And Lindsay, just to be clear,
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I mean, in no other clip, I know Jordan Peterson has a reputation that precedes him that is not
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necessarily accurate about the things he said, but he really focuses his remarks and his position back
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then. This clip that's now four years old, talking about how he doesn't want to say
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Zer and Zay, and he will not be compelled to do it by any rules or laws. But I believe he has been
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explicitly clear that, you know, if a person would like to be identified as he or she, you know,
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regardless of maybe he thinks, well, perhaps that person is biologically different gender,
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what have you, he believes it's important to respect those choices, and it's no sweat off your
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back. So do that. I mean, he has no problem with any of that. He just doesn't like the Zer and
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the Zay, the neutral pronouns. Am I correct in representing that?
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That's what was in the clip. If you watch some other footage of Jordan Peterson, which
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I did later when it became clear that I needed to know more about him, but he also does talk
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about how your identity is not, you know, individually constructed. You know, other people are going
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to perceive you a certain way. And so, you know, you can claim to say what you are, you can claim
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something, but that doesn't mean that other people perceive you that way. He's also said that in some
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Okay, but in the clips that you played in the classroom for class discussion, there was nothing
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particularly, you know, incendiary in the rest of that interview that didn't get out there. So,
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so you went home and you felt like, okay, we'd done this seminar, we'd had this interesting
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discussion, some people for, some people against, and it was fairly polite and well-mannered.
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And then you heard from your supervisor, from Nathan Rambucana. Tell us what happened.
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Yeah. So about a week after that class, I, I get an email and it's from the supervising professor.
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Yes. Nathan Rambucana. And he says that, uh, there have been some concerns about my class and he would
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like to meet with me as well as with my, um, my MA coordinator. So the coordinator of my master's
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program, as well as the, uh, diversity office bureaucrat. So that the gendered and sexual
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violence officer, uh, from the university, those are the formal titles of that person.
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Yeah. I mean, it's actually longer than that. It was the gendered and sexual violence
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prevention coordinator, something like that. Um, but yeah, someone from the diversity office.
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Um, and so I got this email and the meeting was, was to be the next day. So it was less
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than 24 hours notice and they didn't say in the email what the problem was. They, they just
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used the word concerns. There have been some concerns about the content of your class.
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And so I thought to myself, um, this is so fishy that they won't just tell me what the problem
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is, or they, they won't just try to talk to me, uh, more informally. You know, they, they
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want to bring in all these people. This is just kind of suspicious. Like what have I
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done? I mean, I knew it was, I gathered that it was related to the Jordan Peterson
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clip because that's the only thing it could have been from the previous week. Um, so I,
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I said to myself, I think I need a way to protect myself when I go into that meeting.
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I think the best way to do that is to record it and not tell them that I'm recording just
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in case anything goes really awry. And I consulted with my mom too, and she agreed that, um, I
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should record it. And, uh, so that the next day, that's, uh, what I did. If we want to go
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into that part, what happened at that meeting? What did they tell you?
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So they told me that by playing that clip from, you know, the agenda of Steve Paikin,
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I had targeted trans folks. I had created a toxic environment. I had violated the university's
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sexual violence policy, uh, because I, I invalidated pronouns. I invalidated, you know,
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personal pronoun use. Um, I, they also accused me of, of making arguments that were counter
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to the Ontario human rights code and counter to bill C-16 itself. Um, you know, bill C-16
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was part of the clip I showed because Jordan Peterson was arguing against it. It's, it's
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now law. It's now in the, um, you know, gender expression is, I don't know, codified. Is that
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the word? What did you say in response to all of that?
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So I was really confused and baffled as to why this was happening because my impression was
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still that the university is somewhere where we can talk about anything where, you know,
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nothing is, is off the table. And, you know, ideally we don't have ideological, uh, goals
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to meet here because we're just trying to seek the truth. We're just trying to look at different
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perspectives and different research. And, you know, I didn't, thing is when I went into that
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meeting, I didn't have any background in, um, works related to freedom of expression or,
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you know, academic freedom. I, you know, I had never read On Liberty by John Stuart Mill. I hadn't
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read Kindly Inquisitors by, by Jonathan Rauch. So I, I didn't know the argument. So all I was doing
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was trying to express in that meeting that, why are you guys telling me that being neutral could,
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because this was the problem was that I didn't disavow Jordan Peterson in the class. You know,
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presumably it would have been fine for me to show that clip if I had disavowed Jordan Peterson,
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but I didn't, I just didn't take any position because that's what I saw the role of an educator
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as is you just, you, you don't try to force any views upon the students. Um, and what happened
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in that meeting in terms of any threats that, that, that were made to you veiled or otherwise
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about the repercussions that you would be facing for what you had done?
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They were very vague. Um, so the basis of, of me being pulled into this meeting was that there were
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anonymous complaints or one complaint about the class. And so I repeatedly asked during the meeting,
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can I please see the complaint? You know, is it written somewhere? Can I please see it? Um,
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they said, no, I said, can you tell me at least how many people complained? They said, no. And so this,
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this was another red flag, right? I mean, when, when you're telling me there's, there's an anonymous
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complaint against me, but you won't even let me see what was said. Uh, it's, it's just, I just don't
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have any reason to believe that. Were any of these people who were in this meeting in the class, uh,
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observing what you were teaching? No. How did they get word about what happened then? The class,
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was the class recorded by anyone? Nope. Um, it's, it's still very unclear how, how this, these complaints,
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uh, came to be. And I mean, I could jump ahead and say that the university eventually did apologize
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and admit that there were no complaints. Um, and so it's, it's still, there's been no transparency about
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how did this meeting even come to be then? The university said in their apology statement
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that the meeting should have never happened. So, you know, was, I mean, what could have happened
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is maybe some students were having a discussion about how they really enjoyed that class.
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And then someone from the diversity office overheard and brought it to Nathan Rambucana. Like, I don't
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know, maybe someone was praising the class, uh, and then someone overheard, like, it's just,
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it's still a mystery four years later, you know? And your meeting, it became quite emotional for you
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as something that ended up being played out on the national stage. Uh, you, you broke down in tears
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during that meeting at one point. Yeah. Yeah. I think I, maybe a couple points during the meeting
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where, yeah, I cry because I'm just so confused as to why they're trying to tell me, you know,
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they're basically telling me my, my understanding of academia is wrong. And that as a TA and as a student,
00:23:49.300
my job is to enforce a viewpoint. Uh, and that viewpoint is that, you know, Jordan Peterson is
00:23:55.620
bad. He's a charlatan. And we, we always have, we never have to question pronouns. You know,
00:24:01.760
we don't do that. That's what they were trying to tell me. And I was just quite baffled. Um,
00:24:07.500
how did the meeting resolve? The meeting ended on the note of, we're going to bring this to the
00:24:16.020
higher ups. And from now on, we're going to sit in on some of your classes. You have to send all,
00:24:22.180
all your materials to us first, and we have to verify it. Uh, and you're not allowed to play
00:24:27.380
any more videos in the class. Now they didn't know that you were recording this meeting, of course.
00:24:33.300
And soon after you shared this audio tape, other people heard it. This became a news story,
00:24:39.400
a national news story, an international news story. Everyone was talking about it. Everyone
00:24:44.240
had an opinion about it. How did it go from being a small class? As you said, not a lot of people,
00:24:51.680
uh, in your master's program, a meeting with a few of you to suddenly catching like wildfire.
00:24:57.600
Once I left the meeting that I was in, I thought to myself, this is no longer just about me and my
00:25:08.880
class and these professors. I think this has now gone to the level of being a matter of public
00:25:15.260
interest. And I think people need to know what is happening in universities. Uh, you know, parents of,
00:25:21.900
of students who are in university need to know, taxpayers need to know,
00:25:25.700
other students need to know. And so I, I sought out reporters that, that might be willing to cover
00:25:33.560
this because like I said, I thought it just needed to be public. And so, uh, you know, basically right
00:25:41.240
after the meeting, I started looking up reporters and I emailed almost, I think every mainstream media
00:25:48.080
outlet pretty much. And the first person to reply to me was Christy Blatchford from the national post,
00:25:54.840
the now late Christy Blatchford. Um, and, and she called me the next morning. I told her, you know,
00:26:00.700
I, I have this recording. She listened to it and, uh, she, she released her story in November, 2017,
00:26:07.380
November 10th. I think it was. Did you expect the story would go as, as far and as wide as it did?
00:26:12.880
No. So after, after Christy Blatchford's column, I, I had this, you know, I thought to myself, okay,
00:26:21.780
like I did my part. I, I contributed because I let people know something that is happening.
00:26:27.520
I alerted them to a wider issue and now my work here is done. And, uh, at that point I thought,
00:26:34.020
you know, maybe I'll, I'll leave Wilfrid Laurier University. I wasn't quite sure, but all I knew was
00:26:38.500
that, okay, I have this, this one column out and I'm happy now. And I think I've done my part to
00:26:44.680
alert the public. Um, but then, you know, after that, it was, uh, there were some more columns and
00:26:52.280
articles coming out and it really did pick up. And when I corresponded with reporters, I would send
00:26:58.660
them their recording, um, because so that they could verify it. And at the, at that point,
00:27:05.260
you know, when the first article was out, I said to Christy Blatchford, you know, I'm not sure it was
00:27:11.180
legal for me to do that secret, to record that meeting. And so could you not mention that I did
00:27:17.180
that? And, and she obliged, but later I found out that it was legal for me to have that recording
00:27:25.240
because all you need is for one person in the room to know that a recording is happening. So that
00:27:29.960
one person was me and, um, global TV, I did a TV interview with them. And when I was watching the
00:27:38.620
broadcast later that night, I noticed that they included some of the, an excerpt of, of the audio.
00:27:45.380
And, you know, I, I'm not sure I ever gave permission for that. I honestly can't remember,
00:27:51.840
but it turned out to be a good thing because that's when the story really took off is when people
00:27:57.720
could hear it for themselves. I think at first I was protective of the recording being public
00:28:02.060
because, um, I cry in it and I just found that maybe kind of embarrassing. But I think that was
00:28:08.400
a key part of what really made it resonate with people because there were, uh, there, there were
00:28:13.400
people who were parents of university age students who thought what is going on in these institutions?
00:28:19.500
Uh, there were people who thought, yes, academia is, is, is really messed up right now. There were other
00:28:23.680
people who had major criticisms of you. There was a commentator on CBC who denounced you for your white
00:28:28.760
girl tears. Why did you make of this deluge of response? Yeah, it was super interesting because
00:28:35.540
I was someone who, you know, prior to all this, I had no social media. I was a very private person.
00:28:42.020
Um, and then all of a sudden, you know, everyone kind of had an opinion and everyone was,
00:28:48.360
was talking about this. So it was on, um, a CBC panel show, the Sunday one. And there was a
00:28:56.840
panelist, John Ibbotson, who, who called me a newsmaker of the year for 2017. It's just, you know,
00:29:03.000
for a news segment, it's not any kind of award. Right. And, um, there was a writer named Vicky
00:29:10.220
Mochama. I think at the time she might've been at the star. I can't remember. And she rolled her eyes
00:29:16.280
and kind of scoffed when he said this on air. And, um, she said that I was only getting attention
00:29:25.080
because of my white girl tears and that it's too bad that I was the one to bring this free speech
00:29:32.780
issue to light because I lean hard right in some of my choices. And so, I mean, I rewatched that clip
00:29:40.240
four times to ensure I heard everything correctly because first of all, she was dismissing me based
00:29:46.520
on my race. And she was also dismissing me based on her perception of, of where I lean politically,
00:29:53.840
which I would say is, is not really accurate. But what, you know, what does it mean to say that
00:29:59.320
what only leftists should be bringing up free speech issues? If, if you, if you're perceived to
00:30:05.380
be right-wing, then, you know, you should not be bringing up these issues. What does that even mean?
00:30:10.240
And, uh, but I mean, some, some other professors and, and media commentators repeated that as well.
00:30:17.000
The, the white woman tears thing. And Lindsay, what would you say this sort of the ratio of support
00:30:22.640
to opposition is that you receive from the general public and emails that you saw in news stories,
00:30:27.080
uh, that you saw in terms of people who were coming to your defense to those who, uh, like the CBC
00:30:32.780
commentator had a lot of criticisms to offer you. I think there was, it was probably,
00:30:39.060
if I had to guess maybe 80, 20, 80 support and 20 criticism in that initial, um, during the
00:30:47.980
controversy. I, I, I felt very supported, um, by, by the general public, by a lot of, of journalists.
00:30:56.000
And what about by, by the institution? I mean, what happened officially with this experience
00:31:02.740
as the story was becoming a national and an international news story? What happened after
00:31:08.540
you left that meeting with Rambucana and the others? What was sort of the next step?
00:31:14.300
Well, the thing is, I went to, I went public right away. So I don't really know how the university
00:31:22.320
would reacted had I not gone public right away. Uh, I don't know if they would have tried to
00:31:28.160
discipline me further, expel me, suspend me. Uh, you know, I think the response was,
00:31:36.500
it was really just defined by it being a public matter. And I think the university quickly realized
00:31:41.740
that they were, they really didn't look good and they had to do something about that. And so they,
00:31:52.040
they kind of, um, just left me alone, you know, bureaucracy wise, but did you go to class next
00:31:59.240
week? The week after? Yeah. Yeah, I did. And how was that? You were in the news, they were talking
00:32:05.800
about you on, on national television and there you were back to, I guess, both being the TA and the
00:32:10.900
class you were teaching and also sitting in on the seminars you were participating in. What was that
00:32:15.040
like? What was the response from others? So previously with, with my graduate school
00:32:21.120
colleagues, I think we had a cordial relationship. Um, you know, when, when everyone out went out for
00:32:26.920
coffee after class, I would join, uh, we'd, we'd discuss the class, all that. So I felt like I was
00:32:33.160
part of the cohort, but immediately after, um, the controversy became, you know, news and, and you
00:32:41.640
couldn't avoid it anymore and you couldn't ignore it. That's when the alienation started. And that's
00:32:48.500
when I just started being ignored. You know, I walk into the room, they all look down. Um, I mean,
00:32:55.620
there were more serious things too, that I, that I describe in the book that I can't really go into
00:33:00.080
here, but, um, it really was defined by alienation. And the thing is though, it didn't really hurt me
00:33:09.260
because I had that wide support and it was just interesting how, when I logged onto my computer,
00:33:15.080
I had this barrage of support. I had all these letters coming in that were congratulating me and
00:33:21.260
thanking me, um, people wanting to connect with me. And then I go to class and I'm just, you know,
00:33:29.720
kind of alone. And, and, um, it's, it was, yeah. How far away from graduation were you when this seminar
00:33:36.620
took place and when the meeting with Rampakana took place? So it was November, 2017. Um, the academic
00:33:44.820
year would end in April, 2018. And then in the summer, I would be writing my paper, which is just
00:33:52.440
an independent thing. You don't need to go to class. Uh, and that means graduation in, in October,
00:33:58.480
2018. So I, but in terms of class, yeah, five, six months. Did you finish going to class?
00:34:04.720
Yeah, I did. Um, so I had originally told Christy Blatchford and she wrote in her column that I was
00:34:13.460
about 70% sure I would be leaving the university. And at the time I, I was pretty set on that. And a
00:34:19.720
lot of people were urging me to leave as well, but I started to think about it and, you know, they,
00:34:28.020
the university would love it. If I left, it would make things so easy for them. Uh, there wouldn't be
00:34:32.760
any kind of direct pressure on them. No one would be seeing what's going on on the inside. And so I
00:34:38.560
thought I'll stay. And, you know, and then I actually, I started a free speech club in, in January,
00:34:45.540
2018, the Laurier Society for Open Inquiry. And because the university kept reiterating that, oh,
00:34:52.060
they, they are big supporters of free speech. And of course they allow free speech.
00:34:55.260
And so we created this club myself and some, some friends that I met along the way.
00:35:01.000
And we, we thought, okay, well you, you claim to support free speech so much. Well,
00:35:05.660
let's see. And, uh, I mean, that kind of stuff is, is in my book. It turned out that they in fact do
00:35:12.180
not support free expression and they tried to stifle it over and over again. Uh, well, you wrote a
00:35:18.780
column for McLean's magazine before class finished on March 22nd, 2018. Uh, the headline was why I
00:35:25.200
invited Faith Goldie to speak at Wilfrid Laurier University. Uh, Ms. Goldie was a very controversial
00:35:31.180
figure. People have a lot of different opinions on her and Laurier Society for Open Inquiry invited a
00:35:35.880
number of guests, uh, throughout that academic year to speak. And Faith was one of them. Uh, the talk
00:35:40.860
ended up being shut down by, I guess, people pulling the file arm and it was a very controversial
00:35:44.960
event and people were calling for the university to shut it down and so forth. What happened at that
00:35:49.240
experience? Yeah. So, I mean, the club had, had held quite a few events before that, but we did want
00:35:57.500
to hold a high profile event because, uh, you know, we just wanted our club to kind of get noticed. Um,
00:36:05.220
you know, to be frank, we didn't have much of a cashflow. We kind of needed some money coming in.
00:36:09.560
And so we thought, how can we attract these things? And we thought, and someone suggested
00:36:15.420
Faith Goldie and, you know, I was someone who was just unengaged in the culture wars for all
00:36:22.080
these years. Right. I, when I was an undergraduate student, I just kind of went to class, went to work
00:36:27.920
and, and for the most part, minded my own business. Like, I mean, I read the news and all that, but not
00:36:32.640
really related to free expression issues or culture war issues. And so when someone suggested
00:36:40.580
her, I kind of looked her up. I thought, oh yeah, controversial, but, um, yeah, sure. And
00:36:46.700
yeah, like you said, the event was shut down by fire alarm. Um, the university said that very
00:36:57.420
mysteriously there's, there's no security camera footage in the area where the fire alarm was
00:37:02.760
pulled. So we'll just never know what happened. Uh, of course, no one will ever be, be charged for
00:37:07.580
pulling the fire alarm or anything like that. Um, but you know, there, there were actually some more
00:37:12.960
egregious examples of the university censoring as well. That was just the most high profile because
00:37:18.720
there was such a large protest. That's what really makes the news, right? Is when there's,
00:37:23.060
when there's a huge protest against something, right? Um, but yeah, there, there were some other
00:37:27.900
examples as well. Uh, for example, we, we invited Francis Whittowson, who's a professor at Mount Royal
00:37:34.560
University and she's, you know, one of the most outspoken, you know, leading voices against
00:37:40.900
indigenization initiatives in universities because she sees them as stifling open inquiry, um, as
00:37:48.840
being, uh, not beneficial to indigenous students. Because if you keep pushing indigenous students
00:37:56.400
into indigenous studies, rather than just other programs, um, they're not benefiting as much from
00:38:03.060
their education. So these are the kinds of arguments that she makes. So you did the society for open
00:38:07.600
inquiry. You did the events with, with a number of guests, including Faith Goldie, Francis Whittowson,
00:38:12.380
and then you went and, and you completed your thesis, did you? And you handed it in, um, you know,
00:38:17.720
at the due time. And, and did you get the degree in October? I did. Yeah. And was it Professor
00:38:25.200
Rambucana who awarded you that degree? Who would have been your supervisor? Um, so Professor Rambucana
00:38:32.020
was, uh, only my TA supervisor. So I just kind of had, I had a thesis advisor. Um, he
00:38:42.180
described himself as someone who was ambiguous about the whole controversy. You know, it seemed
00:38:47.880
like he didn't really have a strong opinion. Uh, so he was my main supervisor. And then my second
00:38:54.320
reader for my, my, uh, major paper was David Haskell. And he was a supporter. He wrote a couple
00:39:01.800
columns, um, just talking about the Laurier controversy. So he became another voice in support
00:39:07.320
of free expression at the university. So it was nice to have him as my second reader.
00:39:10.280
Have you ever spoken to Professor Rambucana since then, since that meeting you had together that
00:39:15.780
you recorded? No. What would you say to him if you spoke to him now after all of this? Because
00:39:21.280
there's so much of course had happened based on you and him in that meeting. Yeah. I mean, so in some
00:39:28.820
sense, I, I understand that Rambucana and, and Herbert Pimlott, who is the other professor in the
00:39:37.940
meeting, um, it would be hard to, you know, it would be hard in some way to have what you said
00:39:45.520
suddenly in the media. And I understand that and I'm, I'm sympathetic to it. But the thing is,
00:39:51.620
is they went silent for the rest since then. I mean, they never commented publicly. They never said
00:39:59.380
anything. I mean, yeah, sure. There was the, the statement, the official apology from Rambucana,
00:40:04.640
but they, they shut down all of their social media. Uh, they actually left the campus for an
00:40:10.520
entire year. They, they were still paid their six figure salaries, but they, they were not on the
00:40:15.120
campus. They only returned once I had graduated. And I just thought to myself, you know, if, if I was
00:40:22.220
ever secretly recorded and remarks I made were made public, I would just feel like I need to defend
00:40:28.180
myself. I don't, I just can't really respect the decision to cower away and, and not explain yourself.
00:40:37.240
Um, especially when it's, when it's a matter related to, you know, universities and, and really
00:40:48.460
Lindsay, before we go, what are the main takeaways of your experience now,
00:40:53.280
really four years later after that happened, 2017, that meeting with professor Rambucana,
00:40:59.880
what does this mean for today's students and have things gotten better? Have they gotten worse?
00:41:05.760
They've gotten worse, uh, or at least it's been stagnant and there's been no change.
00:41:11.860
Uh, there's still a problem with, with censorship and self-censorship. There's a study by a university
00:41:19.500
of London professor named Eric Kaufman that came out recently. And he found that a third of
00:41:25.760
conservative PhD students in the U S have been disciplined. And so, I mean, this is,
00:41:34.280
Discipline for, for speech related issues and for running afoul of political correctness rules.
00:41:39.520
That's right. That's right. And so we, and there are incidents popping up all the time. I mean,
00:41:45.340
uh, Barbara Kay wrote in the post-millennial a few months ago about a student at the university of
00:41:50.920
Manitoba who on his personal Facebook wrote, um, pro second amendment. So pro gun rights and pro life
00:41:58.520
posts. And apparently more than a dozen anonymous complaints came in over his personal Facebook posts.
00:42:06.780
And he was actually kicked out of the university. And now the matter is before the courts.
00:42:10.700
This, this was, I think in the 2019, 2020 academic year. So there's, these things are happening all
00:42:16.200
the time. You know, the leftist professors still like to pretend that it's not happening. Uh, they'll,
00:42:22.260
they'll keep going on and saying that, uh, there's no problem. And, uh, I also, you know,
00:42:29.120
one of the conclusions I come to in my book and that I expand upon is that these diversity offices
00:42:35.620
need to be shut down. You know, I had a diversity bureaucrat in the meeting with me and, you know,
00:42:42.460
I, I had never thought much of diversity offices before that. Um, I was pretty neutral about them,
00:42:48.320
but I, I know now that they are offices of the enforcement of ideological conformity. You know,
00:42:56.460
that you have to think that trans women are real women. You have to be pro choice. You have to believe
00:43:02.560
that Canada is a systemically racist country. If you don't believe those things, then, um,
00:43:08.380
they're going to either force you to believe them or you're going to get kicked out. You're going to
00:43:12.360
get in trouble. That, that is why those offices exist. And so I think maybe the first step to
00:43:18.560
bringing back a flourishing culture of free expression on universities is to get rid of those
00:43:23.380
offices. And I mean, you know, the ideology permeates in, in academic studies too, but hopefully
00:43:30.860
shutting down the offices could be an important first step. Lindsay, if you had to, would you go
00:43:35.980
through this whole experience again? Would you do anything differently? I would go through it again.
00:43:42.480
Yeah, no, I, it was really important for me to, to learn about these things because if I hadn't gone
00:43:48.720
through this controversy, yeah, I might be someone who, who does deny that there is a problem.
00:43:55.660
Uh, I might be someone who thinks, Oh, you had complaints made against you at the university.
00:44:01.780
Wow. You must be a bad person. But now I know that basically anyone who's anyone who's had a
00:44:07.620
complaint made against them. Uh, it's not a signifier that you're a bad person. It just means maybe
00:44:12.260
you're, you're a little more edgy. Um, so I think that I would have come to have the views that I
00:44:18.220
currently have, but the Laurier controversy accelerated that learning process for me. And for
00:44:24.880
that, I'm quite thankful in my book. I described, you know, graduation day and how my, my classmates,
00:44:32.380
they kind of came out with the same degree that I have. And, uh, what did they learn? I don't know.
00:44:39.140
I, I didn't feel like I learned much. So I, I think they feel the same way. They actually did
00:44:43.180
indicate that they felt the same way, um, at some points in the program, but at least I came out of
00:44:48.680
it, understanding a really important issue. And that is the issue of free expression. And now I
00:44:54.140
feel like I have a, a very just strong background and a strong understanding of these issues.
00:45:00.380
It's quite a story. And it was one that was on the front pages, dominating the debates. I remember,
00:45:04.480
uh, my own radio program, uh, talking about it with the panelists and so forth and going on other
00:45:09.260
shows. I mean, it was quite something hard to believe it was four years ago. We've covered a lot
00:45:13.160
of the terrain, but I know there's a lot more details of it, both about your particular
00:45:16.860
experience and the broader concerns with campus free speech, all in your new book,
00:45:21.040
Diversity and Exclusion, Confronting the Campus Free Speech Crisis, available online at Amazon.
00:45:26.560
Lindsay Shepard, thanks so much for joining us today. Great conversation.
00:45:30.660
Full Comment is a post-media podcast. I'm Anthony Fury. This episode was produced by Andre Pru with
00:45:36.220
theme music by Bryce Hall. Kevin Libin is the executive producer. He can subscribe to Full
00:45:41.200
Comment with Anthony Fury on Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:45:46.080
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