Juno News - Dismantling Institutional Wokeness

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show. This is The Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:00:12.640 Coming up, an in-depth look at the campus free speech crisis, institutionalized wokeness, and critical race theory.

00:00:21.780 The Andrew Lawton Show starts right now.

00:00:25.340 Welcome to The Andrew Lawton Show, Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show here on True North.

00:00:33.720 As we started last week, we are doing our Friday shows a little bit differently than we do the rest of the shows in the week.

00:00:41.120 We are not focusing on news of the day, but taking big issues, and in a lot of cases, timeless issues,

00:00:47.120 and really delving into them and hopefully trying to find some solutions to these problems that dog freedom-loving people in society.

00:00:55.600 And today I want to look at campus free speech, but I want to look at a particular dimension of it,

00:01:01.180 which is how it can be protected from a legal or political side,

00:01:05.420 as well as how it's actually working or not working, such as the case may be on campuses.

00:01:11.180 And just as a little bit of background here, when Doug Ford was elected as Ontario's Premier in 2018,

00:01:17.200 he put forward a motion or a directive to universities that they had to have a policy

00:01:23.660 affirming a commitment to free speech based on the famous Chicago principles.

00:01:29.300 People like me were very happy about that.

00:01:31.540 I thought this is exactly what we need.

00:01:33.280 There was a bit of carrot and a bit of stick with the threat that if universities didn't live up to these things,

00:01:38.200 they could have their provincial funding taken away.

00:01:40.960 But three years later, has it done anything?

00:01:43.580 I want to delve into this with three professors who have been instrumental in leading,

00:01:47.900 I think, very important discussions on these issues.

00:01:51.100 Queen's University Law Professor Bruce Party,

00:01:54.000 Laurier University Finance Professor William McNally,

00:01:57.220 and also from Laurier University, a professor in sociology of religion and digital media and journalism,

00:02:04.120 David Haskell.

00:02:05.020 Gentlemen, great to have you on the show.

00:02:06.360 Thanks very much for coming today.

00:02:08.200 Thanks, Andrew.

00:02:09.480 Now, I want to start with you on this, David, because you gave a great talk last week at a conference,

00:02:16.040 the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship, of which I'm a member,

00:02:19.620 and you talked about how in 2018, you and Will, who we'll get to in a moment,

00:02:25.000 were very optimistic about this.

00:02:27.420 Explain what you were feeling when this was announced in Ontario a few years ago.

00:02:31.940 Okay, so this is just running up to the election.

00:02:34.540 The conservatives, progressive conservatives in Ontario had not yet achieved their majority government,

00:02:41.340 but they had campaigned on this idea that they were going to put forth free expression legislation

00:02:49.580 that would guarantee free expression in universities.

00:02:52.620 Will and I, coming from Laurier, we had a history of censorship.

00:02:58.480 We are at one of the most woke universities, at least we're in the top three, I would say.

00:03:04.420 We were excited because we thought, well, here we have a champion, someone who is really said to be a bull in a china shop, right?

00:03:15.600 And we thought that there was somebody, if we had somebody like that coming along,

00:03:19.800 who is willing to break a few teacups, that would be great.

00:03:22.860 So we were very excited on the night of the election when the conservatives won,

00:03:26.660 because we thought things were going to change.

00:03:28.360 But as we would see, there was a lot of bull, but it wasn't the kind we needed.

00:03:34.980 And we'll get to what ended up coming of this shortly.

00:03:38.880 I want to turn to you, William, because you were similarly optimistic about this.

00:03:42.640 You, at Laurier, you've just gone through the Lindsay Shepard affair,

00:03:45.960 and you've seen how a lot of your colleagues don't value free speech.

00:03:49.960 Why did you think this was going to be either the silver bullet,

00:03:52.900 or at the very least, a positive step towards rectifying some of these issues?

00:03:57.540 Well, after the Lindsay Shepard affair broke, David and I started a petition to get the university

00:04:06.020 to adopt the Chicago principles of free speech, and the university declined.

00:04:12.140 They struck their own committee.

00:04:14.620 David was on that, and it's a dog's breakfast of a document.

00:04:18.960 It's the outcome of a fight between David and about 11 other woke, anti-free speech academics,

00:04:25.540 and it reads that way.

00:04:27.540 And we thought that the provincial policy might give us a chance to fortify that policy

00:04:33.040 and push it, but that hasn't happened at all.

00:04:39.320 Let's turn to you, Bruce, because you were not convinced in 2018 that this was going to be

00:04:45.100 the transcendent or aspirational thing that a lot of people on the right thought it would be, were you?

00:04:51.900 Well, when I first heard about it, actually, I thought it was going to be good as well.

00:04:55.560 But when you have a look at it, there's not as much in it as it sounds.

00:05:00.560 It's the right idea, but it's entirely the wrong approach.

00:05:04.200 It's just a directive.

00:05:06.580 It's not a statute.

00:05:07.560 It's not really the law in the proper sense.

00:05:12.180 There's really no carrot and no stick.

00:05:15.080 It can't really be enforced, and simply not directly by professors or students.

00:05:19.300 If your free speech is offended on campus, you can't go somewhere like to a court or some

00:05:24.880 other tribunal to enforce the policy.

00:05:27.560 It's really bureaucratic.

00:05:29.080 And as such, it reflects a nice idea, but it's really ineffective.

00:05:36.060 And to be fair, a lot of schools already had free expression policies.

00:05:40.360 The issue wasn't the absence of the policies.

00:05:43.260 It was the absence of an attitude that really gave any credence or credibility and practice

00:05:48.220 to those policies, it seems.

00:05:49.620 Well, one of the problems with the directive is that it asks universities to draft their

00:05:57.460 own free speech policies.

00:05:59.340 That's asking for trouble, because if they were inclined to do that in the way the directive

00:06:04.900 imagines, they would have done so already.

00:06:07.340 As you say, universities have policies coming out the yin-yang, including on free speech.

00:06:12.240 But they don't carve out free speech or academic freedom as the first and most important priority.

00:06:24.820 And actually, I want to circle back to Bruce's last point about what's the stick here and tell

00:06:31.260 you guys a little story.

00:06:33.180 So the stick is if you feel your speech rights are violated, you complain to, well, first to

00:06:40.000 internally.

00:06:40.780 And if you don't get satisfaction internally, you go to the ombudsman of Ontario.

00:06:45.660 Well, Laurier has a security fee policy that we believe is an extraordinary infraction of

00:06:50.680 our speech rights.

00:06:52.160 We complained internally, and that complaint was rejected.

00:06:57.220 We took it to the ombudsman, and we went through a two-year process that resulted in nothing.

00:07:04.960 And I just want to read you a sentence from the decision, because it's very telling.

00:07:11.700 They said, they basically reminded us of their duty.

00:07:14.860 They said, the ombudsman does not normally investigate broader public policy decisions.

00:07:19.100 Rather, the ombudsman can address complaints about administrative issues.

00:07:23.540 So what the ombudsman did is they looked at whether Laurier followed its security fee policy,

00:07:29.880 and they found it had followed its policy absolutely perfectly.

00:07:33.440 Even though you were challenging the policy itself.

00:07:36.080 That was what we were attempting to do.

00:07:37.580 And they said they didn't feel comfortable wading into the moral and fairness issue of the policy,

00:07:43.240 and weren't prepared to render a decision about it, even though that was the thing we were appealing.

00:07:48.300 So it was completely useless.

00:07:50.280 See, but that is also a big part of the problem here, is the way schools tend to frame their approaches.

00:07:57.880 Very rarely will a school say, well, I shouldn't say very rarely, but generally speaking,

00:08:02.360 a school is not saying, you do not have the right to speak.

00:08:05.600 They are putting up other barriers and roadblocks that prevent a speech from taking place,

00:08:10.900 such as not clamping down on people trying to disrupt the speech,

00:08:14.220 such as imposing thousands and thousands of dollars in security fees.

00:08:17.760 And in a lot of ways, this kind of muddles it, because the school tries to claim this sort of a moral high ground by saying,

00:08:24.980 no, we just want to protect safety, and we just want to do all of this.

00:08:28.500 And I know you specialize in language, David.

00:08:31.020 You must see a pretty big picture problem here, in that they aren't even being honest about what they're doing.

00:08:38.860 Well, that's very true.

00:08:40.300 And it's not just, I want to get to the language issue, Andrew,

00:08:43.420 but here's something that a lot of people outside of academia don't realize.

00:08:47.760 That much of the time, when, let's talk about bringing a speaker on campus who holds conservative or libertarian values.

00:08:57.400 Well, a speaker like that will not be allowed to speak.

00:09:01.580 Most often, they won't be allowed to speak.

00:09:03.220 There'll be a mob that will come out and they'll scream.

00:09:06.580 They'll pull a fire alarm.

00:09:07.940 That's what we saw at Laurier.

00:09:09.180 They'll force the security fee up by saying, we're going to do violence.

00:09:16.200 They'll do things like that.

00:09:18.180 The missing ingredient, what many people don't realize, is that these protesters are most often funded by the university.

00:09:25.840 Like they're organized by people within various organizations under the umbrella of diversity and equity.

00:09:35.220 So you have these smaller campus groups that are dedicated to what are called marginalized or students who are vulnerable.

00:09:48.080 So they have staff and that staff is paid.

00:09:52.020 Well, then that staff will use their time.

00:09:55.720 They're paid by the university, but they'll use their time to organize these rallies.

00:10:01.880 So, in fact, the university has money that's going to these protesters in forms of organization.

00:10:10.600 And then if you're a conservative or libertarian wanting to bring people in, you have to pay out of your own pocket.

00:10:16.160 You know, it's the only free speech that costs thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars on campus.

00:10:22.120 So that's something to keep in mind.

00:10:24.660 Just very briefly, if you want to pursue this, the idea of language certainly plays into this.

00:10:30.740 In any of these free speech policies that are created, they always have weasel words.

00:10:37.180 And actually, Bruce was the one who identified this long before even the Ford government had come out with what it was going to do.

00:10:45.980 So I'm kind of stealing his words here.

00:10:47.920 But they'll put in these very interesting caveats.

00:10:52.780 We want free speech, but it must be inclusive free speech.

00:10:57.720 And we might be able to get into that.

00:10:59.060 But essentially, it means we don't want free speech.

00:11:02.120 Yes.

00:11:02.560 They spend so much time delving into the exceptions and not enough time upholding the rule.

00:11:08.420 And I'll let you respond to that, Bruce.

00:11:09.960 But I wanted to add another dimension for you to weigh in on, too, which is going right back to the fundamentals.

00:11:15.080 The universities we're talking about here are, by and large, publicly funded.

00:11:19.340 But the charter doesn't apply in the same way that it does in other public institutions, does it?

00:11:25.540 Well, it's hard to get a straight answer on that from the courts.

00:11:29.520 Some courts have said in some circumstances, in some respects, the charter will apply.

00:11:34.380 But other courts in other provinces have said not so much.

00:11:37.640 So it cannot be stated as a clear idea that the charter applies to universities.

00:11:43.060 So you must assume that it maybe doesn't, especially in Ontario right now.

00:11:49.220 That might change.

00:11:50.060 But who knows?

00:11:51.620 But on the policies question, as David alludes to, you won't find a university who says,

00:12:00.040 oh, we don't believe in academic freedom or we don't believe in free speech.

00:12:03.680 None of them say that.

00:12:04.680 That's not what they mean.

00:12:05.460 What they mean is, yes, we believe in those things, but, and it's the but that is the problem.

00:12:11.820 And when we're talking about policies, let's just be clear about something.

00:12:17.880 Some of your listeners might think, well, speech is not absolute in the country.

00:12:25.180 Why should it be absolute on campus?

00:12:26.800 But let's just acknowledge this.

00:12:30.460 The laws of the land apply on campus as they do everywhere else.

00:12:35.780 So if you're in the classroom, you're not at liberty to defame somebody or to counsel a crime

00:12:40.820 any more than you would be on the sidewalk.

00:12:42.720 The effect of university policies is to make speech more limited on campus than it is off campus,

00:12:52.660 which is a very strange and ludicrous thing for an institution that exists for the purpose of pursuing truth.

00:13:03.160 That means you're not as free to speak on campus as you are off.

00:13:06.400 That makes no sense.

00:13:07.220 Laurier has recently come out with a qualification to its free speech policy.

00:13:14.000 And this is, I think, was penned by the VP of Equity, Diversity and Inclusivity, but it's not signed.

00:13:21.160 So we don't know where it came from.

00:13:22.920 It's in two different places on the on the university website.

00:13:26.300 So I think they they regard it as very important.

00:13:28.540 It's titled The Intersection of Freedom of Expression and Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.

00:13:34.080 So that's an interesting intersection.

00:13:36.640 And I think there's going to be an accident at that intersection.

00:13:40.240 And they recognize they ramble on.

00:13:42.980 They recognize that free speech has been historically turned against those seeking justice.

00:13:51.240 And they hold on just a sec, which just again, I want you to continue with that.

00:13:57.120 But that's not even true.

00:13:59.320 You know what I mean?

00:14:00.280 The fact that LGBT go back to women, the fact that any of these so-called vulnerable groups ever got the rights that they have is because of free expression.

00:14:14.400 So, again, this is the way that the left throws out these false equivalencies, this asymmetrical ideology.

00:14:22.700 It's simply not true.

00:14:24.060 So carry on, Will.

00:14:24.960 But for those who are listening, it's kind of the test.

00:14:29.880 Whenever I hear anything put forward now by university administrators, I say, what are they hiding?

00:14:35.120 Sorry, carry on, Will.

00:14:37.000 Just two more from this.

00:14:38.660 There's so many gold nuggets in it.

00:14:40.720 One that disturbs me is they say there's a difference between personal opinions expressed on social media versus ideas expressed in the classroom.

00:14:49.240 And they say because in the classroom, these ideas might not reflect the university's values of equity, diversity, and inclusion.

00:14:57.840 So this gets right at what Bruce was just saying.

00:15:00.280 Is our free speech outside the university different from inside?

00:15:04.540 Is that what they're telling us?

00:15:05.740 Well, that, I think, is an important point because the whole premise here, and I think Bruce touched on this well by talking about the laws of Canada applying in a university, because people will say, well, free speech isn't hate speech.

00:15:19.420 And I would say no, and we already have in criminal law in Canada, a very narrow, justifiably so definition of what hate speech is.

00:15:26.920 The issue is that universities want to further narrow and further narrow the confines of what is not just socially acceptable speech, but legally acceptable speech.

00:15:37.040 And if I can put out a more general or philosophical question here, it used to be that universities were the ones that were pushing the boundaries of speech outside what was socially acceptable, and now they're narrowing.

00:15:50.300 And this is, I think, the biggest contrast of, you know, the traditional and I would say positive view of universities.

00:15:57.780 And what's happening now is that they're not pushing the boundaries out.

00:16:00.820 They're constraining those boundaries.

00:16:02.820 Sorry, I just wanted to clarify something that Will was saying, because, and we've spoken at great length about this.

00:16:08.660 So when he says that you shouldn't say, I'm sorry, when our administration in the policy he was referencing says that what's said on social media shouldn't be said in the classroom, I think that I'll just clarify that you should always be talking in the classroom about what is relevant to the course, right?

00:16:29.000 We don't advocate someone politicizing the classroom.

00:16:33.660 I don't want to see people who are talking about 17th century poetry bringing in Black Lives Matter, although that happened at our university. 0.98

00:16:42.120 I mean, I'm against when that happens, but my point would be, let's say you are commenting on something on social media.

00:16:49.560 Often I'll quote studies that go against the narrative that's being taught at my university.

00:16:58.140 But sometimes those come into my class because it actually relates to the course content.

00:17:03.520 So I just want to kind of put a finer point on what Will was saying.

00:17:07.320 Bruce, you had a thought too.

00:17:09.220 Well, the thought that I was going to express was this.

00:17:11.640 It's very easy for universities to endorse academic freedom these days, partly because most of the people at the universities are singing the same song.

00:17:26.660 So if you're a person at the university, a professor or a student, and you believe in the prevailing narrative, then you have the freedom to say what you think.

00:17:35.120 And that's not the same thing as embracing the idea of of ideological or viewpoint diversity.

00:17:44.840 So, yeah, there are outliers at the universities who will cause trouble by saying what they think in the name of academic freedom.

00:17:51.920 And that's that's where these conflicts arise.

00:17:53.760 But they don't arise nearly as often as you'd think for the very reason that a particular constituency has essentially captured the university.

00:18:01.040 And most people are reading the same book.

00:18:03.520 If they really wanted diversity of thought.

00:18:07.540 Then they would need to go out today and hire a whole lot more conservative, classically liberal, libertarian professors, because there are very, very, very few of those on campus right now.

00:18:19.820 That's the age old expression about free speech that you don't need free speech for speech you agree with.

00:18:25.200 You need it for speech you disagree with, which is exactly the type of speech that would find itself subject to censorship in various forms.

00:18:33.700 And that actually brings up a topic I wasn't planning on getting into, but I feel it is important, which is the makeup of Academy of the Academy and of the various professors in it.

00:18:44.860 And with all due respect to you, David, I think we expect a lot of this wokeness from the area of study that you've picked.

00:18:50.380 So it's good that you're there pushing back against it.

00:18:53.000 But I've noticed that these attitudes are infiltrating areas where I think a lot of people thought they were kind of immune to it.

00:19:00.420 And I'll go to you on this one, William.

00:19:02.260 You're in finance.

00:19:03.100 You'd think that something as simple as numbers would not be subject to the scourge of wokeness and censorship.

00:19:10.120 But that isn't actually the case.

00:19:12.380 Well, I'm in a department that combines business and economics, and I'm probably the most right most member.

00:19:20.600 There's over 125 faculty feel quite lonely.

00:19:28.020 And finance is kind of it's still pretty good, but it's going in this sustainable finance direction now that we hear from David Carney and Tiff Macklem.

00:19:38.100 So even it is getting polluted by these trends.

00:19:43.340 And so I've got to be careful of what I say even around the business school.

00:19:47.680 Even the sciences now are coming into this.

00:19:50.760 I mean, you'd think that if you are in physics, you don't have to worry about any of this.

00:19:54.500 And that's not true anymore.

00:19:56.360 Well, I remember a couple of years ago, I always try to read some of the journals that are not just to read the titles and the abstracts, not even to read the studies.

00:20:05.260 And, you know, there was one about how hurricane names are sexist and how one of them was, you know, toxic masculinity in the study of glaciology or something like that.

00:20:14.400 And it is getting to the point where it's becoming inseparable reality and parity.

00:20:19.980 But this is something that has very real world implications for people that are going into academia in earnest and people wanting to make a difference in their field of study.

00:20:29.560 And you, David, I mean, you were in the middle of this conflict with Lindsay Shepard.

00:20:33.660 And I know a lot of the professors like you and like Will have become vilified online just by virtue of standing up for free speech.

00:20:42.420 And I know professors that have spoken out have been targeted by students in terms of course feedback, complaints to deans and all of these things that have nothing to do with are they providing an education?

00:20:53.520 Are they doing what they're supposed to do?

00:20:55.520 So what is your read on where things are going with this?

00:20:59.240 Can I just set David up here?

00:21:03.700 Well, I'll let David.

00:21:04.480 David, can Will set you up?

00:21:06.300 Absolutely.

00:21:07.120 Okay.

00:21:07.740 Set up a way.

00:21:08.720 This policy document that I've been reading from closes with the following sentence.

00:21:15.200 If students have experienced racism, hate, or oppression in the classroom, there are avenues at Laurier to address concerns, see below.

00:21:23.120 And then there's a list of offices and links.

00:21:26.320 Now, you know, no one wants racism or think it's appropriate.

00:21:31.000 But hate and oppression are extremely subjective.

00:21:34.140 And oppression is the centerpiece of the entire social critical theory.

00:21:38.720 So it really creates the grounds.

00:21:41.360 It weaponizes students to complain about what their instructors are teaching in the classroom.

00:21:48.240 And this has been David's experience.

00:21:50.900 Well, yeah.

00:21:51.280 And just to add to the setup to David here.

00:21:53.760 Sorry, David.

00:21:54.240 You're very patient.

00:21:55.360 You know what?

00:21:56.060 I love the good story.

00:21:58.340 So you just keep talking.

00:21:59.140 Is that we've conflated genuine oppression with disagreement, where a student who's from an upper middle class family getting a university education in a wealthy country like Canada could claim to their university and have their claim heard very legitimately that they are being oppressed because you've expressed a viewpoint that disagrees with theirs.

00:22:20.860 So with that, I'll go to you on this, David.

00:22:22.920 Right.

00:22:23.800 Right.

00:22:24.380 Well, I'm glad that Will actually brought up that we have an official page on our university website that is essentially dedicated to Will and I.

00:22:33.900 And it's how to get these guys fired.

00:22:35.940 That's what the page is.

00:22:37.140 Congratulations.

00:22:39.120 And it says, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:22:40.760 There's this thing called academic freedom.

00:22:43.080 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:22:43.880 We have a policy on free speech.

00:22:45.780 But if you really want to get these guys fired, then you've got to use a different tact.

00:22:50.580 And that tact is going to be through discrimination and harassment.

00:22:54.380 Right.

00:22:54.620 You've got to go the Ontario Human Rights Code route.

00:22:58.040 That's what they're saying.

00:22:58.860 They're saying and look for this in the classroom.

00:23:01.760 Now, I've got a very jaundiced view of this.

00:23:04.380 You know, people might say, oh, Haskell, you're reading into that.

00:23:08.400 There are some other things that make me believe that this is intentional.

00:23:11.960 The fact that our student newspaper wrote two editorials that said the same thing, how to get these professors fired.

00:23:19.960 It begins to make you a little paranoid.

00:23:22.800 It was Woody Allen who said, if you're paranoid, it's a great strategy when people are out to get you.

00:23:27.480 So back to this in my own classroom, just in the last semester, I had two complaints go to to the official office where these kind of human rights complaints go within our university.

00:23:46.060 And both of them were unfounded.

00:23:47.700 I want to get to the punchline.

00:23:48.840 They were unfounded.

00:23:49.640 They were not allowed to proceed.

00:23:52.900 But I was in that for weeks where I was being threatened with disciplinary action, where I was being threatened that you've breached the Ontario Human Rights Code.

00:24:04.600 And the interesting thing is, again, in the end, these were all lies.

00:24:11.860 Right.

00:24:13.000 But the students have been told to see, I think that the students, they don't recognize what is the truth and what is a lie.

00:24:18.800 They just assume they hear something that upsets them.

00:24:22.100 Therefore, that must be harassment.

00:24:23.980 That must be oppression.

00:24:25.760 But thank goodness there's actually still some semblance of reality in our courts and in our legislation.

00:24:35.160 Still not not for long, probably, but still.

00:24:38.300 So when these complaints from students are compared to what actually is the threshold for discrimination or harassment, it doesn't meet the mark.

00:24:46.880 Right.

00:24:47.280 Like, actually, I'm simply showing them studies or I'm doing my job diligently.

00:24:54.500 And they're saying that that is what the oppression is.

00:24:58.380 But I had these complaints come against me.

00:25:00.760 And I can't help but think that they're reading these documents and they're saying this is what we need to do.

00:25:07.080 They're being the good minions of the professors who are also eager to see the exit of Will and I.

00:25:16.700 Because these discussions have moved into human rights code territory and all of these other things like racism and oppression and sexism and homophobia, transphobia, all of these things.

00:25:28.520 Is tenure still the trump card defense that it historically was in academia or are professors really under the sword of Damocles with these developments?

00:25:39.400 Well, tenure is still very important without tenure, you wouldn't have a shot, but it's also not ironclad, because in a dispute about discipline or termination.

00:25:52.580 It's really a dispute between the university administration and the faculty association until the faculty association has to take up your case.

00:26:02.000 And if they're of the opinion that you've spoken badly and don't mind if you are disciplined, then you've got no place to go because individual faculty don't have legal rights under their collective agreements.

00:26:16.020 But all of this is a reflection, I think, the stories that Dave and Will have been telling is a reflection of what has become the dominant intellectual premise of the university, and that is critical theory.

00:26:33.000 And critical theory is not really a theory and it's not really critical in the same sense that critical thinking is critical.

00:26:38.900 It's it's basically a set of premises it's an agenda proposition and the proposition is that Western society is oppressive period.

00:26:49.500 And if you dispute that, then you are in the wrong you are wrong by definition.

00:26:54.800 And therefore, you are racist or you are oppressive or you are you are doing the exact thing that the critical theory describes it.

00:27:03.800 Your speech is a demonstration of the truth of the theory.

00:27:09.800 And why then wouldn't you be disciplined because you've you've you've been shown to be wrong and people who are not familiar with the theory think it's crazy.

00:27:18.800 I mean, it's it is crazy. It's it's cuckoo.

00:27:21.800 But this is the logic now of the way the university works and one of critical theories propositions.

00:27:30.800 Because it's a theory that attacks the the foundations of the Enlightenment, which is at the bottom of Western civilization.

00:27:37.800 It's attacking the very notions of reason and evidence.

00:27:43.800 So if you bring reason and evidence to your classroom, you are being oppressive.

00:27:49.800 I mean, that's how crazy it is.

00:27:51.800 And free speech itself is is this, you know, white Eurocentric patriarchal value.

00:27:57.800 And when you have people that, again, are prepared to strip away all of these building blocks, you have you have nothing left.

00:28:05.800 And critical theory, not just limited to universities now.

00:28:08.800 And this is where people on the right have historically, I think, missed the boat on this.

00:28:12.800 This is now seeping into a lot of corporate training, certainly education in lower years, secondary and primary schools.

00:28:19.800 So I think that's something we should explore in a future show in more depth.

00:28:23.800 You had a comment, Will.

00:28:25.800 Oh, gosh, what Bruce has just said is so important.

00:28:29.800 I just have to repeat it almost.

00:28:32.800 The critical theory lies behind everything we're observing.

00:28:36.800 All the university administrations have embraced it.

00:28:39.800 And that's what drives equity, diversity and inclusion.

00:28:43.800 It is the practical application of critical theory within the university.

00:28:48.800 So it's antithetical to free speech.

00:28:50.800 Disputation.

00:28:51.800 We don't need disputation because we assume oppression.

00:28:57.800 You know, Ibram Kendi said you're either racist or anti-racist.

00:29:01.800 There's no not racist.

00:29:02.800 So, you know, you can't take a nuanced view of that.

00:29:06.800 You can't if you dispute it, you're the bad guy.

00:29:09.800 So that's just so important.

00:29:11.800 But the question I was going to ask him related back to this issue of the Ontario Human Rights Code.

00:29:18.800 And what I'm seeing happen is there's a desire to let or get students to complain about topics in a course on the grounds that they're discriminatory.

00:29:31.800 So if I if I were in the appropriate course and wanted to discuss whether trans women should compete in women's sports, what I might foresee is a student complaining, saying the very topic is discriminatory.

00:29:44.800 Perhaps the students transgender themselves and they would go to the opposite dispute resolution and say, well, this this is violating the Ontario Human Rights Code. 0.75

00:29:54.800 And this is my question for Bruce is, you know, does the Ontario Human Rights Code cover universities?

00:30:01.800 Because the protected social areas are housing, contracts, employment, goods and services and membership in unions.

00:30:09.800 It doesn't apply to universities as far as I understand.

00:30:12.800 Well, no, it does. The Human Rights Code will apply to universities because education is a service.

00:30:17.800 So universities are subject to the code.

00:30:20.800 It's just that the code does not do what it at first seems to be doing.

00:30:25.800 It seems first to to provide the right to equal treatment for for any reason, for all the enumerated reasons in the code.

00:30:37.800 But it has acceptance and those exceptions allow for special programs and those special programs are permitted for purposes of ameliorating what they would consider to be historical disadvantage.

00:30:49.800 And the way that all plays out to make a long story short is that permissible for universities probably hasn't really been tested to be.

00:31:00.800 But but at the moment, it looks like universities may be able to essentially discriminate against everybody except for a very small group like straight white men.

00:31:14.800 So in other words, they may be allowed, for example, to post job opportunities that are targeted at particular racial groups or or women or particular ethnic backgrounds or exclude the other groups that are not historically disadvantaged.

00:31:35.800 And that would appear to be exactly the opposite of what the Human Rights Code guarantees. And I would say that it is one of the things that I find interesting about the last 15, 16 months as we've gone through the pandemic is it's it's put a little bit of a freeze in some of the more public examples of this campus attack on free speech because no events have been allowed.

00:32:00.800 So the idea of pulling a fire alarm on a vent or having a speaker shut down hasn't been there.

00:32:05.800 But you both William and David have spoken about that this undercurrent is still very much alive and well students complaining about you and about your not even about your teaching, but just about your view of the world as though that is somehow oppressive to them.

00:32:21.800 And it's interesting because I spoke, I think it was in 2018 at a Laurier Society for Open Inquiry event and I was quite sad that I wasn't important enough to have the fire alarm pulled that was actually the real deflation of my ego that I didn't get deplatformed.

00:32:35.800 I wasn't up there at some of the levels, but when school gets back to normal or we hope back to normal in the fall, a lot of these issues are I think going to be coming back with a vengeance, especially with what we've seen in the last year and the George Floyd protests, the resurgence of Black Lives Matter, and it seems a lot more unquestioning acceptance of this doctrinal wokeness. 0.79

00:33:00.800 What's your prediction on how this is going to unfold?

00:33:03.800 My prediction is that rougher times are coming for people who are libertarian, conservative, and that means rougher time for students as well, not just faculty.

00:33:14.800 So you may have touched on this in a previous show, Andrew, and I apologize if I'm plowing this field again, but Eric Kaufman just in March, he's at the University of London.

00:33:25.800 He's at the University of London with a study that looked at the number of conservatives in Canadian universities and also in the US and the UK, but I'll just talk about the Canadian data and how they're treated.

00:33:37.800 Well, it's about 6%, no, it is 6% of professors who would say that they're conservative or right-leaning.

00:33:44.800 And the vast majority obviously aren't, but of the leftist professors, about a quarter, and I'm sorry, those under 40, I'll do it by age, those under 40 are willing to punish those who are conservatives, right?

00:34:02.800 The next generation of liberal, in quotes, liberal professors say that they are willing to punish someone for their conservative views.

00:34:12.800 So what does it look like in the future?

00:34:15.800 As these younger liberal professors move through the system, they're even more hostile toward conservative viewpoints and the people who hold those viewpoints.

00:34:25.800 So it's going to be, it's going to be terrible.

00:34:30.800 Even more for the students though, if you are a conservative student on campus and you make your values known, you are a target.

00:34:40.800 Now, if a professor, and we have really good data, Inbar and Lammers did a study, if people want to look it up.

00:34:49.800 And they asked liberal professors, would you sink the grant application or would you stymie the job opportunity for someone if you found out they were conservative?

00:35:02.800 25% said yes.

00:35:05.800 Now, if they're willing to do that to an equal, what do you think they're willing to do to a student, a subordinate?

00:35:14.800 So it's open season, but particularly for conservative students who are willing to stand up for their principles.

00:35:22.800 So what does the future look like dismal?

00:35:26.800 William, what are your predictions?

00:35:29.800 Let's see if I can get more negative than David.

00:35:33.800 You know, Laurier still has a security fee policy and is committed to it.

00:35:40.800 Over the last couple of years, only the administration invites visiting speakers.

00:35:46.800 Our new vice president of equity, diversity and inclusion had two events in the fall that were about equity, diversity and inclusion and invited social justice academics and administrators in EDI.

00:36:02.800 And in one of the more pernicious trends that I'm seeing is the university is taking positions on contentious social issues, which has a very chilling impact on free speech.

00:36:14.800 So in particular, Laurier's taken positions in favor of climate strikes, scholars strike.

00:36:23.800 They last summer, they fully embrace systemic racism, which means that they embrace critical race theory.

00:36:28.800 They've embraced indigenization, indigenous ways of knowing, which is a very contentious issue, to say the least.

00:36:38.800 And each time they do this, they take that topic and sort of move it out of bounds that you you can't dissent to the university's position or you'll be pilloried.

00:36:49.800 And you can't even really discuss it in a more nuanced way.

00:36:52.800 You'll be pilloried.

00:36:53.800 And and David and I have the scars to show.

00:36:56.800 We've had a an online mob come after us on social media.

00:37:03.800 We have we have our own fan club.

00:37:05.800 Yeah.

00:37:06.800 It's not the good time.

00:37:08.800 So I'm very pessimistic and Bruce, I'll give you the last word on this.

00:37:16.800 What are your predictions predictions?

00:37:19.800 Well, predictions are hard to make.

00:37:21.800 I mean, I have to agree with Will and Dave about the idea that this is going to get worse.

00:37:28.800 I don't see any real real progress being made.

00:37:33.800 There's there's too much resistance.

00:37:34.800 I think you can see that in the in the contradictions inherent in the way the universities now function.

00:37:41.800 So on the one hand, if you are to make the proposition to them, for example, the university should not be political, that they're supposed to be in neutral institutions that have professors who themselves investigate questions and they might be political themselves about those questions, which is fine.

00:37:59.800 But the institutions themselves shouldn't be taking positions on things.

00:38:03.800 And that advice has completely been rejected.

00:38:06.800 As Will says, they are adopting political stances on these various political questions.

00:38:12.800 And then you say, OK, all right, so you're in now the the realm of politics.

00:38:17.800 Here's a proposition for you.

00:38:19.800 Within the university, you should have a diversity of political opinions.

00:38:24.800 So as to to enhance this search for truth that you claim to be about.

00:38:30.800 And the response to that is, oh, no, we don't want to be political.

00:38:34.800 We don't want to get into ideology.

00:38:36.800 And so putting those two things together, the bottom line is very simple.

00:38:43.800 They are of a particular view and they will not they do not want to put up with opposition to that view.

00:38:50.800 Those views are political.

00:38:52.800 And the contrary political view is really not considered to be legitimate.

00:38:57.800 So we just kept getting more and more negative as these closing remarks ended up, which wasn't the intention.

00:39:04.800 But let me just put this out before I wrap things up.

00:39:06.800 Do any of you see any source for optimism here?

00:39:09.800 Do you think this is just going to get worse before it might hopefully get better?

00:39:15.800 I mean, this isn't happening right now, I don't think, but I suppose it's possible that that that people who are thinking about going to university might start to wonder if it's worth it.

00:39:32.800 If it becomes apparent that certainly in some fields, all they're getting is a kind of of indoctrination instead of education, then they might rightly wonder if it's worth the time and expense.

00:39:46.800 I don't know if that will happen, but it's a possibility.

00:39:48.800 Well, that's a bit of an action item for people.

00:39:51.800 If you're listening and thinking of going to university or perhaps you're a parent of someone who is.

00:39:56.800 I mean, these sorts of changes do take time, but ultimately universities are businesses.

00:40:00.800 And if they're seeing their enrollment go down, perhaps in the absence of a more imminent or immediate solution, we could see some hope on the horizon there.

00:40:08.800 So thanks for that recommendation, Bruce, and giving us perhaps a glimmer of hope as we head into the weekend and as the school season is getting ready to gear up in just a couple of months time.

00:40:18.800 My thanks to Bruce Barty, Queen's University law professor, Laurier finance professor William McNally and David Haskell, also from Laurier sociology of religion and digital media and journalism.

00:40:29.800 A great discussion, gentlemen, and thank you so much for your work and your active rebellion just by virtue of thinking something different than your colleagues do.

00:40:37.800 Thanks very much.

00:40:38.800 Thank you.

00:40:39.800 Thanks, Andrew.

00:40:40.800 Thanks, Andrew.

00:40:41.800 Well, like I said, I wasn't expecting it to be as negative, but I think the one little twist I'd say to make that a more constructive close is that you need to be able to diagnose the problem if you want to do anything about it.

00:40:56.800 And I think a lot of people who are far removed from universities, people who think, well, that doesn't, it's just those eggheads in the rivalry towers, it doesn't affect me.

00:41:04.800 Everything else in society is downstream of this from domestic and foreign policy, politicians, governments, law schools, med schools, all of this is downstream of this.

00:41:13.800 And if, as William and Bruce were talking about with critical theory, if the foundations are being stripped away at this core undergraduate level in academia, it means that everything else, everything else is subject to this permeation of what I think I called on the fly doctrinal wokeness or wokeism.

00:41:31.800 Yeah, I'll have to look back at the footage and see what I said, but I liked it when it popped into my head.

00:41:36.800 In any case, my thanks to William and David and Bruce for coming on.

00:41:40.800 Such a great discussion, even if it is a bit of a difficult one.

00:41:44.800 Hope you all have a great weekend.

00:41:46.800 We'll be back in just a few days time with more of Canada's most irreverent talk show.

00:41:50.800 This is the Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.

00:41:52.800 Thank you, God bless, and good day.

00:41:54.800 Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton Show.

00:41:56.800 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - June 11, 2021

Dismantling Institutional Wokeness

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