Juno News - Andrew Lawton with Lindsay Shepherd： Standing up for Free Speech in Canada Pt.1

00:00:00.000 Welcome, Andrew Lawton here from True North with a bit of a new type of feature we're doing,

00:00:09.140 which is just having some really in-depth conversations, one-on-one chats with people

00:00:13.920 who are really at the center of a lot of the key battles that we're seeing in Canada. And one of

00:00:19.100 the big ones that I've been covering more broadly is the free speech battle, and more specifically,

00:00:24.760 the way that this has been impacting one person in Canada in particular, and that is Lindsay

00:00:29.340 Shepard, of course, the former Wilfrid Laurier teaching assistant and grad student, now the

00:00:34.960 columnist with the Post Millennial here at True North from time to time, and some other places as

00:00:39.340 well. Lindsay Shepard joins me from British Columbia. Lindsay, good to talk to you. Thanks for coming on

00:00:43.540 today. Hello, no problem. So this is something that you and I have talked about in the past,

00:00:49.000 because this whole ordeal that you've been in the mid-step has now been going on for, I think,

00:00:53.540 like 14 or 15 months here. And now we have the latest chapter of this, which is, of course,

00:00:59.380 you facing legal action. And I was wondering if you could explain a little bit about how you are now

00:01:06.360 in the eyes of a claim filed against you responsible for what someone else said about Jordan Peterson.

00:01:12.760 Sure. So it's a third-party claim. So it does still mean that I'm being sued. So I'm being sued by

00:01:21.460 professors Rambucana and Pimlott, not the actual university. Don't know if they're planning on

00:01:27.180 joining in or anything. But for now, it's just doctors Rambucana and Pimlott. So they're saying

00:01:32.220 that during the meeting that I recorded, because I recorded it, I am responsible for their words,

00:01:39.880 essentially. So Jordan Peterson filed a defamation suit against them. And by bringing me in as the third

00:01:46.800 party, they're saying, well, if Jordan Peterson was indeed defamed, then it is my fault, because I

00:01:54.940 recorded it and gave the recording to media outlets.

00:01:59.320 The whole point of this, though, this whole ordeal, I find to be rooted in a fundamentally flawed premise,

00:02:05.800 because at first you're saying, and you noted this, that Jordan Peterson wasn't defamed. But then,

00:02:10.900 okay, if he was, it was Lindsay's fault. But then you have the apology from Rambucana,

00:02:15.480 where he says, yeah, I should have never described Peterson in that way. So we've got

00:02:20.060 three narratives here that aren't just inconvenient to one another, but three narratives that really

00:02:24.960 are completely contradictory to each other.

00:02:28.680 Yeah, yeah, I actually was going to bring up Rambucana's apology, which is a public apology,

00:02:33.900 right? Like, I mean, it's on his website. And he says, you know, I implied that Dr. Peterson is like

00:02:38.940 Hitler, which is untrue and was never my intention. While I disagree strongly with many of Dr.

00:02:44.920 Peterson's academic positions and actions, the tired analogy does him a disservice and was the

00:02:50.120 opposite of useful in our discussion. So I know that this is going through the court system. And

00:02:55.600 it's important that I mentioned that this has not been proven in court anything. This is just based

00:02:59.960 on a claim. You're defending yourself, as I think you should, and as you have a right to. But the other

00:03:05.160 element of this statement of claim that I find so baffling, and I know you've pointed this out as

00:03:10.380 well, is one section here that I want to read, point nine, where it says that the meeting that

00:03:17.740 took place, so this inquisition that you recorded, that you shared the audio of, was acting pursuant

00:03:23.900 to their respective academic freedom. So this meeting, which the school has apologized for, which Rambucana's

00:03:30.860 apologized for, in their statement of claim, they're saying that meeting was all part of their academic

00:03:35.840 freedom, and also that it was to just better understand the circumstances. So this was not

00:03:42.440 an exploratory meeting, in your view. This was really a reprimand, was it not?

00:03:47.180 Well, yeah. And actually, if you look at the statement of defense they filed in the Peterson suit,

00:03:53.240 so not in this claim, but in their statement of defense for Peterson, they actually say it was not

00:03:58.680 a disciplinary meeting, and they say I was never ordered to attend the meeting. So apparently now,

00:04:06.240 when our supervisors tell us to come into meetings, we can just politely say, oh, no, thanks, I don't

00:04:12.220 want to come to the meeting. Thanks for the suggestion. So it's kind of, that was a very strange point.

00:04:18.740 It was a disciplinary meeting. A lot of people haven't listened to the whole recording, because it is

00:04:23.560 42 minutes. So they just listened to some sort of highlights. But at the end, it is clear that,

00:04:29.000 you know, there are sanctions. And what, and obviously, what changed the whole narrative here

00:04:33.760 was that I recorded it, and I recorded it and released it quite quickly. So if I had just not

00:04:40.580 recorded it, not gone to the media, it would have been a very, very different scenario.

00:04:45.520 Yeah, and you and I talked about that in the past, that whole idea that this really would have just

00:04:49.700 been, you know, university student complains about professor had you not been able to produce that

00:04:55.400 evidence. And even in spite of all of this, I mean, that recording is so revealing. And this is where I

00:05:03.440 wonder how this revisionism is expected to fly, because this is really being a revisionistic act to

00:05:09.440 say that this meeting was voluntary, that it wasn't mandatory, and that it was just for better

00:05:14.440 understanding. Right. And like, I can kind of see their argument with Rambucana's academic freedom.

00:05:21.240 Okay, sure, it's, it's his course. In the claim, they do make a point to say that, you know, the

00:05:26.760 clips I played during the class were played without Rambucana's knowledge, approval or consent. And that's

00:05:32.300 true. But every single class was like that. We didn't need his consent for for anything. It's not

00:05:38.260 like we met weekly, and planned our courses between, you know, the eight TAs that he had,

00:05:43.180 I had met him, I think, two or three times in person before that, we were just communicating by email.

00:05:49.300 But with Professor Pimlot's academic freedom, this kind of seems to me kind of irrelevant, because

00:05:54.960 many academics came up to me and said, you know, why was Pimlot there? He was the coordinator for my

00:06:01.520 master's program, which is separate from my TA ship with Professor Rambucana. So it was either some sort of

00:06:08.880 intimidation tactic. It was him seeing if I was going to stay in my master's program. There's just

00:06:14.720 no reason for him to be there. His academic freedom is not really relevant, it seems.

00:06:18.860 And then we've also got to square this with Adria Joel being there. This was the school's,

00:06:23.860 the titles are just interchangeable words, like you just, it's like Mad Libs, but like the gender

00:06:27.940 manager, violence coordinator, some odd. But her role there as well speaks to that intimidation.

00:06:33.780 This wasn't just, you know, a general run-of-the-mill mentorship between you and a professor.

00:06:40.240 Yeah, exactly. And she's represented by different lawyers. So it's, Rambucana and Pimlot have one set

00:06:48.900 of lawyers, and then the university and Adria Joel have another one. So they're not in it. I honestly

00:06:54.360 haven't heard anything from Adria Joel since. She's completely fallen off the map.

00:06:57.820 So let's explain this part to me here, if you can. The student complaint that apparently triggered

00:07:05.280 this whole thing, which I was under the understanding had been debunked during the

00:07:09.680 school's investigation of this, now seems to have come back from the dead in this third-party claim.

00:07:14.960 And now in this claim filed by Rambucana and Pimlot, we're back to having a student complaint

00:07:20.080 triggering this.

00:07:20.960 Yeah, I mean, I guess, are they kind of shifting their language to call it a concern? Something

00:07:27.640 like that. And it does appear that there was some sort of concern that someone heard. And

00:07:34.920 it was Adria Joel that approached Rambucana, I think, that made this all happen. But yeah,

00:07:41.140 I mean, there's a statement that's public on the Wilfrid Laurier website, and it's from

00:07:45.880 Professor McClatchy, or sorry, President McClatchy. And she is talking about the neutral third-party

00:07:53.280 fact-finding investigation that happened in December 2017. And, you know, it says there

00:07:59.380 that basic guidelines and best practices on how to appropriately execute the roles and responsibilities

00:08:04.960 of staff and faculty were ignored or not understood. I was involved in no wrongdoing. And it has been

00:08:13.060 made clear to those who were involved in the meeting that Ms. Shepard, oh, in the meeting

00:08:17.860 with Ms. Shepard, that their conduct does not meet the high standards set for staff and

00:08:22.780 faculty. So, I mean, that statement is, you know, public.

00:08:28.240 Sounds like they should be suing McClatchy now, because she's the one that's basically said,

00:08:32.080 they've got to own that. In a lot of ways, though, and I've thought that you've been in the right

00:08:37.360 this whole situation, as I think most sensible people have. But do you think that you poked the

00:08:41.940 bear a little bit too much with your lawsuit against them and against the school? Like,

00:08:46.700 do you think that this suit is really only a response to that, even though it's filed under

00:08:50.960 a different one? Sure. Yeah. I mean, but it just didn't seem like they felt like they did anything

00:09:01.000 wrong. And I just, it seemed like everything was just going to carry on, you know, like I was going

00:09:05.480 to graduate, I was going to be out of their hair. And then now that, now that I'm gone, they can just

00:09:10.960 continue doing things the way they want to do things, which includes, you know, meetings like

00:09:15.900 the one I was in. And so, and a lot of people were, were urging me to sue. So I, you know,

00:09:23.580 we're going to go with that. Well, good. And you should. And I think that when we look at this

00:09:28.920 context here of the school's apology, you wrote and tweeted a fair bit after that apology came,

00:09:35.800 that indicated that this was never really a mea culpa, we move it behind us. I mean,

00:09:40.780 the way you were treated by professors, the way you were treated by fellow students, I mean,

00:09:44.740 it's very much stuck with you after that. So for the school to say, and for any of the professors

00:09:51.180 to say that's old news, wouldn't really fly with your experience of it. And I guess what I would put

00:09:56.720 to you then, in the context of this third party claim against you, I know you've had many chats

00:10:04.180 about this with your own lawyer, presumably, what's likely to come here? I mean, is this just a

00:10:08.820 throwing something at the wall and hoping it sticks? Or is there a very real chance that our

00:10:13.340 system, from what you understand, could find you culpable for sharing that audio?

00:10:19.200 I really have no idea. I feel like it could go either way. So it'll honestly, it'll be kind of

00:10:26.520 interesting to me in a way to see which way our legal system goes to, because it'll kind of

00:10:31.740 maybe set a precedent.

00:10:32.920 We have a climate now in Ontario, where the new provincial government has made campus free speech

00:10:39.480 a priority. And I think a lot of people have taken from the Ontario government's policy,

00:10:43.900 somewhat of a wait and see approach of, you know, maybe it's good in principle, but will it actually

00:10:48.940 have the ramifications? But are you convinced that if this policy that Laurier has been compelled to

00:10:54.960 put forward now, was there two years ago, that you would have gone through this still? I guess that's

00:11:00.920 the big question. And I know, hypotheticals are challenging. But you were one of the key players

00:11:05.900 that I think inspired people talking about these policies. Do you think it would have made a

00:11:09.620 difference?

00:11:12.260 Um, I'm not sure. It's really hard to answer something like that. Yeah. But what I do, and I agree that it's

00:11:21.940 kind of a wait and see with this policy right now. But I also fear that no students are going to even

00:11:28.460 try to rock the boat in any way. You know, now it's seen as like, if you, if you care about free

00:11:35.100 speech, you are, you know, you've gone too far. So I just worry that already, this policy, you know,

00:11:44.280 no one's going to act in a way that would, we would need to enact it, if you know what I mean.

00:11:48.880 We've got your lawsuit against the school and the people in the meeting. We've got Jordan Peterson's

00:11:53.660 lawsuit. Now we've got the third party claim under Jordan Peterson's lawsuit against you.

00:11:58.860 Do you have any sense of the timeline of these things and any dates that are coming up imminently?

00:12:05.180 No, no, it is all pretty complex with all these lawsuits going around. But you know, clearly they

00:12:12.260 have responded to Peterson's. So they filed a statement of defense. And now they've done this

00:12:18.440 third party claim. But I actually, my statement of claim was filed before Peterson's against them.

00:12:26.820 And they actually still haven't filed a statement of defense for that. So that was back in June.

00:12:31.420 And they're going after you in another unrelated case. Yeah. Wow. Okay, so we don't have like a court

00:12:38.000 date yet. It's still working its way through the always expeditious legal system. Yes. All right,

00:12:45.000 Lindsay Shepard, great to have you on about this. Thanks so much for your time today.

00:12:47.760 Yeah, thank you.

Juno News - January 17, 2019

Andrew Lawton with Lindsay Shepherd： Standing up for Free Speech in Canada Pt.1

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