Juno News - Diversity and Exclusion： An Exclusive Q&A with Lindsay Shepherd

00:00:00.000 so to everyone tuning in hi and welcome to a special true north event which is being recorded

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00:01:06.800 for this feel for the uh for the true north insiders club as far as the event tonight i'm delighted to be

00:01:12.560 joined by true north fellow and newly published author lindsay shepherd lindsay thank you so much

00:01:17.760 for joining me and congratulations a big congratulations on the release of your new book

00:01:22.640 it's excellent i can't recommend it enough i've had the pleasure of reading it already and i can't

00:01:27.360 recommend it enough the book is called diversity and exclusion confronting the campus free speech

00:01:33.680 crisis and it was released uh i think it was just released a few days ago how long has it been lindsay

00:01:39.200 i think it was march 24th so about six seven days a week yeah okay all right well it's already got some

00:01:44.880 very positive reviews on amazon i think you've got a 4.8 out of five star ranking which i believe is higher

00:01:51.200 than any of my books so that's great the people who are reading this book love it let me just tell

00:01:56.320 you a little bit about the book and then we will get into our q a with the author lindsay shepherd

00:02:01.680 so everyone watching this is probably very familiar with what happened to you but let me just go over

00:02:06.320 it a little bit back in 2017 then 22 year old graduate student and teaching assistant lindsay shepherd

00:02:12.960 was brought into a disciplinary meeting where two professors and a diversity office bureaucrat

00:02:18.320 told her that one or more people had complained about the communication studies class that she led

00:02:24.080 she's never told how many people complained nor the alleged complaints uh what they said lindsay was

00:02:29.600 accused of creating a toxic climate of targeting trans folks of spreading transphobia and of violating

00:02:36.800 wilfrid laurie university's sexual assault and gender violence policy that that was always just so

00:02:43.200 shocking to me that they that they told you that you had violated a sexual assault and gendered

00:02:48.320 violence policy is outrageous um and all of that just for the sin of playing a five minute clip about

00:02:54.320 pronouns in her classroom and leading a neutral conversation on the topic as we all know that was

00:03:00.640 five minute clip uh was of dr jordan peterson the famous clip of him on um the show with steve pakin

00:03:08.080 um on ontario television uh so the game changer in all this of course is that lindsay secretly recorded

00:03:14.160 the disciplinary meeting and released the audio to the media in the ensuing year of graduate school

00:03:19.360 lindsay staved off university censorship clashed with academic activist cabal that was up to get her

00:03:25.600 and dealt with going from a no one to going viral this tell-all book reveals what it was like to be the

00:03:31.520 center figure of a national controversy so again welcome lindsay and congrats on the book thank you

00:03:39.280 so so before we get into the content of the book i want to just ask you a little bit of a few

00:03:44.320 questions about the process because i know a lot of people want to write a book a lot of people say

00:03:49.520 they're going to write a book but not very many people can actually finish it and publish it so

00:03:54.320 first of all what was it that made you want to write this book

00:03:57.360 i would say the main motivation was getting the whole story and all of its complexities

00:04:05.360 onto paper in one document where the whole story is there um and it was also for my own benefit

00:04:12.240 because i repeated the story of the laureate controversy so many times and now i can just

00:04:16.720 tell people just buy the book i don't have to i don't have to explain it anymore um and there's so

00:04:23.200 much that um well i mean the laureate controversy was big in the news in 2017 nationally of course

00:04:29.840 but also in some international outlets and the story in the news was kind of you know there was

00:04:35.600 the disciplinary meeting and the secret recording then the university kind of flubbed with their

00:04:41.520 response and then the university apologized and said that there was no complaint after all and i

00:04:47.040 think for a lot of people who were just following the mainstream media stories um that was kind of

00:04:51.920 that and the university apologized and there we go but you know there was so much more happening

00:04:58.000 behind the scenes and there was so much more that happened after and a lot of it isn't necessarily

00:05:03.360 newsworthy it's just things like being gradually alienated by your peers and by your professors

00:05:10.160 um and that's i think an interesting and relatable story for a lot of people that you know should be a book

00:05:17.360 well absolutely and i think one of the interesting things that really comes through in the book

00:05:22.800 lindsay is i mean i find it sort of the irony of the whole thing is that they accused you of bullying

00:05:29.600 they accused you of creating a toxic environment of being harsh to trans people um but but in reality

00:05:36.480 what was happening was that you were the one that was being bullied you were the one that was being

00:05:40.880 uh sort of cancelled at your own university and i think that most people wouldn't have realized that

00:05:46.080 like you said you know the university issued apology store and a story done deal we all lived happily

00:05:51.200 ever after but but the reality was was so much more complex so when you were putting together this

00:05:56.720 book and writing it what what did you find was the biggest sort of challenge or what was the hardest

00:06:01.200 part about writing this book um so this book is a memoir so i kind of had to relive the laurier

00:06:09.760 controversy again which is an interesting experience because i had to go through i wanted everything to be

00:06:15.440 accurate of course um that's just what i wanted to do that's what i believe you should be doing when

00:06:21.760 you're writing a memoir a non-fiction book so i had to go through my old laurier email account

00:06:27.040 um i went through all of the old articles and it really was like reliving the controversy again

00:06:34.480 um and i think i was pretty resistant to doing that i i was almost like no i don't want to touch this

00:06:41.120 like i don't want to enter the password to this laurier email account um but eventually i just sat

00:06:46.720 down got it done it's very interesting to write a book where where you are the main character

00:06:53.200 um but it's also a lot of fun for people who have a story to tell um yeah in my case you know i was

00:07:00.320 someone who went from having no social media no public presence to someone who was in the center of a

00:07:07.120 controversy and uh people were were writing articles that were critical and supportive

00:07:12.880 and so i kind of document all that and what it was like well i think it's really important that you did

00:07:18.320 that and i think that's really the value in the book so let's let's sort of go through what what

00:07:23.840 happened uh one of the things i learned about you in this book uh i mean i think i knew about it

00:07:30.480 about you already because you posted that um that video on youtube a couple years ago saying why i'm

00:07:35.600 saying goodbye to the left or why i'm no longer the left so i knew you weren't a conservative or or

00:07:40.240 or you know someone on the right of the political spectrum but in your book you sort of talk about

00:07:46.080 how you were really excited about grad school you loved learning uh you're sort of a hard-working

00:07:51.440 person you've always had multiple jobs and and you like to be engaged and when you got to laurier

00:07:57.840 you started feeling sort of disillusioned uh with with university and and and you talk about how you

00:08:04.640 felt sort of disappointed but how shallow your classes were and and how uh the post-modern uh

00:08:11.360 post-modern ideology was sort of taking over academia so can you describe how you felt at laurier

00:08:18.480 prior to this whole um this whole debacle with the um jordan peterson clip yeah so i was feeling

00:08:27.600 disillusioned since september pretty much when i entered grad school and i i talk about that in

00:08:34.000 the book um just about how you know i was so excited for grad school because i thought this was the

00:08:40.240 gathering of people who are very curious about the world and they're very open-minded they're willing to

00:08:44.960 talk about anything but instead i found the opposite in that um a lot of my professors were kind of

00:08:52.080 activists a lot of the students were activists and it seemed that a lot of the time ideological

00:08:57.840 conformity was the goal of grad school um and not to mention just i found the academic standards uh quite

00:09:05.360 low which i mean you could attribute that to wilfrid laurie university as a middle of the pack kind of

00:09:11.440 school or you could it's probably attributable to canadian post-secondary at large yeah and so i

00:09:18.320 i i started googling things that i had never googled before um such as why is my grad program all about

00:09:26.400 feminism and colonialism and marx and i think that was just the beginning because before i had never

00:09:32.320 done anything like that uh i just thought you know whatever they teach you is like what you need to

00:09:38.240 know and it's it's really important but i i really started to feel when i got to grad school like what is

00:09:45.040 going on here and maybe that was kind of when i i that's kind of when i started to be exposed to

00:09:50.960 jordan peterson um i started watching a couple things reading reading some articles from publications

00:09:58.240 like ario which is kind of like quillette which is kind of like a free thought platform um and i

00:10:05.200 started opening up to these different ideas and so when i came across that tv ontario agenda with steve

00:10:12.240 pekin panel about um pronouns i thought oh this is this is really interesting there are lots of

00:10:18.720 different viewpoints being presented here uh i wonder what my class would think about this it just

00:10:23.360 so happens that the next class is going to be about grammar um we've you know pronouns is a topic in our

00:10:29.200 textbook let's see what my class thinks about this um because i didn't have a strong opinion myself

00:10:35.440 and of course that was a problem that was the problem is that i was neutral on this topic of gender

00:10:41.840 pronouns but how dare you um did did you have an impression back then that jordan peterson and his

00:10:49.360 ideas were taboo like did you know you said that you're non-ideological and you um you didn't really

00:10:55.680 expect your graduate program to be so full of marxism and feminism when you encounter jordan peterson did you

00:11:01.840 know that that he would lead to this kind of example did you have an inclination that he was sort of

00:11:06.880 becoming toxic i know it was 2017 which is before a lot of his big famous sort of flares like the

00:11:13.280 one with kathy newman and and and some other things that that ended up helping you know get him

00:11:18.400 cancelled or branded as extreme but but at the time in 2017 did you did you have that feeling

00:11:25.440 i think i was very interested in what he had to say um i had never seen anyone like this before

00:11:31.440 like jordan peterson but i i was also you know way younger back then and i was really influenced by

00:11:37.920 how people kept saying he's dangerous and i think i was influenced by the negative opinions and so i was

00:11:44.640 really approaching with caution and so that's why in the original secret recording i say in the meeting

00:11:50.800 you know i'm not a fan of jordan peterson you guys think i am but i'm not and well here we are a

00:11:56.160 couple years later and i'm definitely a fan so well that's good uh one of the things i noticed you

00:12:02.240 you talked about was you know there's all these concepts that we have floating around like political

00:12:06.560 correctness on campus and and post-modernism and they are sort of abstract concepts but to you i mean

00:12:13.200 you you lived through them you know exactly what they feel like not just what they are in theory

00:12:18.880 um so can you sort of explain what what that was like yeah so it's just that's what i think is

00:12:26.560 great about this book is everything's from the first person and so you know political correctness

00:12:32.880 um you know the suppression of free speech and censorship i don't have to explain it as an

00:12:38.640 analysis because i just have to recount what i what i lived through at the university and um you know just

00:12:46.640 one example is how the transgender activists from the rainbow center at the university they would

00:12:53.920 often invoke this you know idea that speech is violence and stuff like that and so you really

00:13:01.200 become entrapped in in what their ideology is they're they're using it on you um so i i recount all

00:13:10.240 that i i put their statements in the book and that's what you know this is the kind of documentation

00:13:15.920 aspect is these statements are in the book they're all there for for everyone to read and it all it

00:13:21.920 all comes together quite nicely i think well and and i think that's also what makes the book very

00:13:27.520 accessible like like i think that this could be a great book for university students even high

00:13:32.480 school students um people who aren't necessarily aware of what's going on on university campuses but

00:13:38.560 maybe they want to know you know what's to come um and and i mean you know the idea that you just

00:13:45.680 explained that that speech is violence just just out of curiosity did you ever subscribe to that way of

00:13:51.760 thinking like prior to this incident would you have uh sort of agreed with that analysis that some speech

00:13:57.920 is equivalent to physical violence um possibly i think i might have almost gone there okay um but

00:14:10.320 luckily i was steered away well you say that they kind of trap you in it and and it's true because they

00:14:16.800 are you know they're so warped in their ideological thinking um and they're so convinced of their own

00:14:21.840 self-righteousness and their moralism um that that they believe their own nonsense like to someone like

00:14:28.560 me reading it it's like the you know these statements and these kind of things you include

00:14:32.560 in your book they make me laugh because they feel like you know they're straight out of an orwell novel

00:14:38.080 uh but to the people reading it you can tell that they believe it they're zealots and they believe

00:14:43.200 firmly in what in what they believe which makes them i think all the more all the more dangerous so

00:14:48.640 lindsay let's go back to that that fateful day um that you got hauled in front of this um

00:14:55.760 tribunal uh i i think it's more accurately called the star chamber but but so so you you you showed

00:15:01.440 this clip to your students in your class um the students i think were almost the same age as you

00:15:06.720 weren't they they're maybe a couple years younger than you a couple years younger younger okay so you

00:15:11.680 see you had a debate uh i think that that you thought it went pretty well there was an interesting back

00:15:16.480 and forth and no one seemed really offended um and and and then just why don't you just walk us

00:15:22.000 through uh what happened what happened in in real life yeah in the classroom yeah so that's the thing

00:15:30.080 is people have this impression that that students are so fragile and you know there's snowflakes and

00:15:36.000 they can't handle discussion and a lot of you know academics and higher education professionals they

00:15:43.600 lend credence to this view but when i showed that tvo clip in my class there were no tears no one stormed

00:15:51.200 out of the room it was all fine um and after that i don't know what transpired because no one came to me

00:15:58.480 to complain um the university later said that there wasn't any complaint and that's still a mystery we

00:16:06.320 still don't know how how someone found out what went on in the class and then it somehow got to

00:16:13.200 a diversity bureaucrat um it's it's all still a mystery and it might be forever well i i in my head

00:16:20.720 it just it runs like a like a total satire like you know some some suck up to the teacher you know one

00:16:27.200 of the teachers pet that that wants to go into a phd under one of these professors mentioned that that

00:16:32.640 jordan peterson clip was shown in your in your classroom and and he just you know couldn't

00:16:37.600 handle that and and absolutely you know ran with it um so so so you got an email saying uh lindsay you've

00:16:45.280 you violated our policy we want to talk to you or why don't you walk us through the next uh the next

00:16:50.480 steps there well i got an email that was a lot more vague so i got an email saying there are some

00:16:56.800 concerns with the content in your class and that was from nathan rambucana my my supervising professor

00:17:04.160 for that communication studies class and i guess his vagueness was the red flag to me because if

00:17:11.120 you're not willing to just tell me what the problem is um over email or just give me a phone call or

00:17:16.800 whatever but instead you need to organize this big meeting where there's going to be a diversity and

00:17:21.600 inclusion person then i'm kind of like whoa like this just sounds kind of way out of proportion

00:17:28.960 and it was that kind of red flag that made me want to secretly record the meeting where exactly they

00:17:35.120 told me uh that i violated the gendered and sexual violence policy as well as they also said i violated

00:17:42.400 the ontario human rights code and bill c bill c16 itself um so they did which validates jordan

00:17:50.320 peterson's whole point right the whole point of his you know discussion on tvo there was that it was

00:17:56.960 going to become illegal to just talk about this kind of stuff yeah yeah exactly so they couldn't see that

00:18:04.160 though the irony in that okay there's so much irony in this story lindsay so so you you get pulled into

00:18:10.320 this classroom um was it a classroom or an office it was an office an office with these three professors

00:18:17.920 or two professors and one uh bureaucrat i i've asked you this question before but what was it that made

00:18:24.080 you record the video because you know you weren't a journalist at the time you you know you weren't

00:18:29.040 someone who um were just you know would record things because you wanted to refer to them later if

00:18:34.320 you were writing about it or if you were doing a podcast or something um i i still find it one of the

00:18:39.520 most remarkable things that you had the foresight to bring your laptop and record that meeting and let

00:18:45.920 me tell you every time i am doing a meeting where i'm not exactly sure what what's going to come out

00:18:50.800 of it or if you know i'm talking to someone um i always record it and that's something i had to learn

00:18:55.040 uh as a journalist and there have been several times where i wish i had recorded something but i didn't

00:19:00.640 um so you know 20 22 year old lindsay shepherd what what was it that made you record this meeting

00:19:07.520 yeah it was just that it was so fishy the whole thing and it was just an instinct that i probably need to

00:19:12.960 protect myself here um it's just me going in with these people who you know have power over my future

00:19:21.440 at the university especially because my my ma program supervisor was there my master's program

00:19:28.080 supervisor and he has nothing to do with the teaching assistant role so i was kind of thinking

00:19:34.080 what is he doing here uh you know is my standing as a student at risk because of this one clip i played in

00:19:42.400 in a class so i think i just knew i need some record of what's happening here

00:19:50.400 well and i mean just i i can't imagine how scary that must have felt i mean i i think you know it

00:19:56.720 could be terrifying you're you're you're across the country going away for school doing your master's

00:20:02.000 you're probably paying a bit of money to be there and all of a sudden you know you have these three

00:20:07.920 supervisors two male professors and one female bureaucrat calling you in i i can't imagine i'm

00:20:14.800 i'm impressed that you were able to maintain your composure even in that kind of a situation because

00:20:19.600 i mean i think most of the reason part of the reason why it became such a big national story

00:20:23.840 it's because people were just so outraged by the way that you were treated forget about the

00:20:27.120 ideology of these professors and the crazy uh tirades that were going on but just the way that you were

00:20:32.320 treated as a as a young student a young woman like it's just so totally off bounds so so how did you

00:20:38.320 feel uh while you were being uh talked to or interrogated by these professors i actually wasn't

00:20:45.120 scared um because when i received that email from nathan rambucana summoning me to the meeting

00:20:51.520 i at that point i was like wow if this is what the university is then if they're gonna kick me out then

00:20:58.320 kick me out like i'll fight but but um i don't want to be a part of this and so i think i i was a little

00:21:07.680 bit um i don't know empowered by that so i didn't go in scared i went in baffled by what they were saying

00:21:16.800 um and maybe just feeling kind of that's why i cried in the meeting is i was very confused i was

00:21:24.240 dreadfully confused as to why like higher ups at the university like professors were telling me that

00:21:32.000 you know this is not a place for open debate because it just went counter to everything i believed

00:21:38.400 and i really revered the institution of the university i was hoping to go into academia i felt

00:21:45.840 very at home at the university and for them to put all of just throw all that out it was very

00:21:53.600 confusing um but when i again when i walked out of the meeting when it was over i thought

00:22:00.800 this in my mind this has now become an issue of public interest because universities people need

00:22:06.640 to know what's going on um and yeah i'm glad i did that right because i i want people to know what's

00:22:14.000 going on right now i mean covid stuff aside what do we really know about what's happening in

00:22:20.560 universities the stuff that leaks out it's so slight we don't really have a full picture of

00:22:25.520 what's going on unless people are willing to to tell well absolutely and um i i i think again that's

00:22:34.560 part of the reason why your story really struck a chord because you know we had a feeling that there

00:22:40.080 was something bad going on at schools but i don't think that many people realize just how bad it had

00:22:45.760 gotten uh so what happened next lizzie what made you take that recording and go to the media and how

00:22:52.960 did you uh you know again a 22 year old grad student in waterloo uh not in the media not a

00:22:59.120 journalist how did you end up getting that audio recording into um the mainstream media into the

00:23:05.680 national post and then and then you know into newsrooms and newspapers across the country

00:23:10.320 so i once i became just certain that this is an issue of public interest uh this needs to be public

00:23:20.240 i right after i came out of the meeting pretty much i started googling journalists just kind of

00:23:25.600 around the local area um and i just would look at ones who specialized in kind of free speech stuff

00:23:34.960 and one article that popped up was how um christy blatchford the now late christy blatchford from the

00:23:42.800 national post she had had a speech shut down at the university of waterloo in 2010 and so i thought

00:23:48.800 oh okay this will probably be interesting to her then and this is very local and stuff and um i sent

00:23:55.360 it to pretty much every other news outlet as well and but christy blatchwood was the first to reply

00:24:01.600 and uh she called me the next morning and i think broke the story the next day or maybe a couple days

00:24:09.520 later and then sort of i mean christy blatchford is absolutely uh you know top tier one of the best

00:24:17.360 uh journalists canada's ever seen in my opinion um so it's not surprising but tremendous that she picked

00:24:23.920 up your story and then was it simultaneously that the audio got leaked or how did that happen

00:24:29.520 so i when i sent uh the email to these different media outlets i told them i have a recording

00:24:38.320 and uh i and like now i know how important that is what that i'm working at true north that when

00:24:45.360 someone comes with that like proof it's so important um so i guess i kind of knew that back then in some

00:24:52.400 way um i asked christy please don't mention that i have this recording i let her listen to it of

00:24:59.360 course and i let her pull quotes from it but i said please don't publicize that i recorded it because

00:25:06.480 i don't know if what i did was legal um and she said okay no problem it just it just looks like i i have

00:25:13.600 a good memory uh in the article with the direct quotes um but yeah i later found out it is legal to

00:25:21.360 record because only one person in the room needs to know that there's a recording going on and so

00:25:26.800 in that disciplinary meeting it was me who knew that it was being recorded yeah and i think it is

00:25:32.320 different in in different jurisdictions but but but in ontario yeah that's that's right so so the story

00:25:39.280 just kind of took off like it became the biggest news story i think in the country and it definitely went

00:25:46.240 beyond just canada um i was down in california at the time and i remember hearing about it and seeing

00:25:51.600 it not just through social media but people were talking about it um what what was that like uh for

00:25:58.080 you just sort of very quickly going viral and having your story told and i mean having your story told

00:26:05.040 in a very favorable way like i think that the early media coverage of what happened was incredibly

00:26:10.800 favorable probably vindicating you and and and really showing how awful uh you were treated what

00:26:18.000 what was what was that like yeah so there was the original article that came out by christy blatchford

00:26:24.880 and after that i kind of thought okay well there we go the story's out uh that's all i wanted now my work

00:26:31.360 is done uh you know um but then a couple days later i did just kind of more interviews and more just kept

00:26:39.680 coming in and i just kind of did it uh i didn't have any pr help or anything i just told the story to

00:26:51.120 pretty much every outlet that asked um yeah and i mean it wasn't just i mean you were on the biggest

00:27:01.360 sort of conservative shows and podcasts at the time you were on with dave rubin um you were on

00:27:08.640 the rebel i think i think you did an interview with jordan peterson as well at that time or maybe

00:27:13.280 that was later i don't know that was around the same time yeah that was on louder with crowder

00:27:18.000 okay but then but then you also um were part of the mainstream media i mean i remember seeing you do an

00:27:23.520 interview on the cbc uh you were global you were really um and and again treated very fairly and

00:27:30.640 favorably in those in those outlets so was that was that surprising to you what was that like

00:27:38.800 yeah so when i first decided to go to the media i knew that it could go either way and it wouldn't

00:27:46.560 necessarily go in my favor but i decided to just kind of throw my hands up and say whatever people

00:27:52.800 perceive it to be then fine like there is a chance that uh this could go very wrong and i might have to

00:28:00.640 you know change my name and like move somewhere else uh because when you google me i'll i'll be

00:28:05.920 like some sort of transphobe bigot uh but i was lucky that that didn't happen and and so you're right

00:28:11.920 i did feel vindicated and um just the positive comments that i was seeing you know it made all my

00:28:20.160 doubt kind of wash away um were there any sort of got you interviews at the time was there ever anyone

00:28:26.640 that was really sort of doubting you or questioning you and in those early interviews i remember

00:28:33.200 doing one interview um on cbc radio it might have been carol off i can't remember though but i just

00:28:40.400 remember thinking this this person from the cbc sounds like they really don't want to talk to me

00:28:45.360 it was just the tone of voice um she just sounded kind of exasperated she was kind of like okay so hi

00:28:52.960 hi but that i don't think there were any gotcha interviews just just she was way too busy and

00:29:00.960 important to be talking to some some lowly uh university student i guess yeah um okay and and so

00:29:09.520 uh you got to travel uh you outlined this fit in your book as well you got to go to california

00:29:14.320 you got to go to australia um what was there a highlight uh for you at that time or was it all just

00:29:20.960 one big uh highlight it was pretty much all one big highlight and maybe the peak though was going

00:29:30.080 to australia uh because i had that moment and i i describe it in the book where you know i'm flying

00:29:38.160 first class to australia to do a speech i just think i don't think my life is going to get any better

00:29:44.880 than this so i'm going to enjoy it yeah i mean that's pretty that's pretty special uh getting to

00:29:51.680 do that uh so so that that's not where the story ends though lindsay that's maybe that's where a lot

00:29:57.680 of us uh you know it ends for a lot of us because you know you you were this household name this

00:30:03.760 explosive story everyone was so outraged by the way you were treated and not just by the way you were

00:30:07.920 treated but by the contents of what they were saying that that showing a neutral clip of of

00:30:13.520 jordan peterson was like showing a neutral clip of hitler um or or milo yiannopoulos which apparently is

00:30:19.440 equally as bad um so so everyone was sort of shocked by that but but the story didn't didn't end there

00:30:26.560 you know you as as lindsay shepherd the student had to carry on and then continue to go to your classes

00:30:32.960 continue to face those professors and your colleagues your your cohort in your in your school

00:30:38.960 day to day and so i i kind of remember seeing a little bit here and there of your tweets at the

00:30:43.760 time talking about how your classmates were being incredibly rude to you they were alienating you no

00:30:48.800 one wanted to talk to you anymore they were kind of trying to make your life difficult so why don't

00:30:53.600 why don't you tell us a little bit about what happened next yeah so in in the following semester

00:31:00.160 um it was just kind of this gradual alienation and i mean one of the clearest examples is

00:31:11.200 one of my professors um so for half of the semester we were doing class presentations

00:31:16.640 where that was all the class was was we presented to one another and i want to watch other people's

00:31:22.560 presentations i like learning the content and i like learning from other people's presentation styles

00:31:27.920 um and all of a sudden she announced that um the class would only be who you invite to your

00:31:36.720 presentation now so the class was off for the rest of the semester but when you do your presentation

00:31:42.160 you can just invite who you want and so i i realized uh that everyone else had invited each other to the

00:31:51.280 presentations except for me and so i was the only one who had to leave the room and the class was just

00:31:57.200 canceled for just me for the rest of the semester wow and that that's why i think the title diversity

00:32:04.080 and exclusion is so fitting because they don't want to include people with different viewpoints

00:32:10.880 they want to exclude and i thought that was kind of a nice example of that wow and and i mean so petty

00:32:19.360 right like what what do you think that was going through their minds at the time that they

00:32:24.240 that you had sort of betrayed the institution and the professors or what why was it that that they

00:32:30.400 sort of turned their backs on you do you think um yeah i think they just had this feeling that i was

00:32:36.160 tearing apart the entire university i was especially the communication studies department um that i was

00:32:42.160 you know trying to destroy them it was honestly this feeling of when you're walking around on campus you're

00:32:49.280 like a toxic person and you're like poisoning everything that's how they wanted to make me feel right

00:32:58.000 and um yeah in some ways it it kind of works i mean i can see what they're doing especially because

00:33:05.440 for example uh before the controversy i was invited to you know the the coffee outings that we all went to as as

00:33:13.680 grad students and classmates but of course it kind of dropped off or someone i had someone who i

00:33:19.920 sat next to in nathan rambucana's lecture every week uh but of course that stopped and she started

00:33:26.640 sitting on the opposite side of the room and i sat alone it's just that kind of stuff right and it

00:33:30.880 all kind of gathers together yeah i mean it's it's sort of now we look at it and it's like telltale

00:33:37.520 cancel culture they just tried to kind of unperson you and and and make you you know go away disappear

00:33:45.600 um but but for you actually living through that um you know you really outline how how tough it was

00:33:52.800 um so what was it like from an academic standpoint um finishing you know i know you wrote about it a

00:34:00.320 little bit how you had some trouble finding a master's advisor for your thesis and and that you you

00:34:05.920 know you you were worried that they were going to fail you just because of what happened uh from

00:34:09.760 an academic perspective how how were things after that i think they had to be fair in that regard

00:34:17.280 um at the end of the day because there are you know appeal mechanisms within the university for

00:34:23.600 academic grades um and i think they wanted to avoid that so i think i pretty much got the grades that

00:34:31.520 um i would consider fair well that's good yeah and how about i mean i know that a lot of people turned

00:34:39.360 on you a lot of your fellow students didn't want anything to do with you did you get any support uh

00:34:45.760 were were there any professors that that sort of came to your side any any students that sort of let

00:34:51.280 you know that they were with you or what was that like yeah this is kind of the flip side so this is

00:34:56.960 the positive part is i made a lot of friends um at the same time and we started the laurier society

00:35:05.920 for open inquiry which was you know pretty much a free speech club and you know i have a lot of good

00:35:12.160 memories from that time just kind of you know countering what the university was doing by saying

00:35:17.760 hey it's okay to have uh some non-mainstream speakers come in and and we're allowed to talk about

00:35:24.400 these different ideas and so it was nice to be able to organize those events talk to lots of people

00:35:31.200 um three professors in particular deserve a shout out um david haskell william mcnally and jordan

00:35:39.040 goldstein they were the three professors at laurier who were on my side you know on the side of free

00:35:46.480 speech and really fighting what the university was doing and trying to get the university to realize that

00:35:52.240 free speech is important um yeah and i mean the thing for you is you know you you were gone after

00:35:59.280 a year because you finished your master's program with those professors that came out publicly to

00:36:03.360 support you i mean that's their job that's their life and so uh you know it's a big a big risk for

00:36:09.280 them as well what is the state of free speech now at laurier it's hard to say it's it's so difficult when

00:36:18.320 no one's really talking about what's going on inside and that's actually why i decided to stay

00:36:24.240 at laurier is i thought you know these people probably want to get rid of me so bad because

00:36:29.280 at one point i did think i'm gonna leave i'm just gonna get out of here and a lot of people were

00:36:33.680 actually urging me to do that to leave laurier amid the controversy but i decided why would i do that

00:36:40.640 that's exactly what they want so i'll just stay and i'll get my degree which i think was the right the

00:36:46.160 right choice and i got to see what was going on in the inside um yeah well good for you for doing

00:36:54.000 that uh one of the things that still baffles me to this day is how i mean you became sort of like

00:37:00.640 public enemy number one at laurier you started organizing these free speech events and and and

00:37:06.480 they became increasingly controversial um somehow your race got dragged into it um and and it started

00:37:14.880 to become this thing not just about how you were transphobic but that you were also somehow a white

00:37:21.680 supremacist and i think the rationale went something like this uh because you're a white woman and your

00:37:28.240 supervisor was uh is a immigrant i think or the children of immigrants from i think sri lanka or

00:37:34.160 something like that um that you were using your whiteness uh as power over him or something i remember

00:37:41.680 uh people accusing you of using uh a pejorative called white girl tears um which um maybe maybe

00:37:49.840 you can help enlighten us as to what what the heck any of that means yeah i mean it's exactly that so

00:37:56.400 they were trying to say that you know actually in this situation as the low level ta that i was i held

00:38:02.880 all the power because i had my white woman tears and um i cried during the meeting which was some sort of

00:38:09.840 display of power um but i mean there was this this writer named yuri harris who wrote in quillette

00:38:18.320 i think the article the article was called white woman tears or something and he breaks it down he says

00:38:25.120 you know there is a discussion of power in the laurier controversy but it's not to do with race

00:38:30.960 it's to do with job position um it's to do with you know this diversity bureaucrat professors and me

00:38:38.880 who's a low level ta um race doesn't play into it and i also say in the book i mean herbert pimlot uh

00:38:49.360 was my ma supervisor he was also in the meeting and he is a white man so what's the race dynamic there then

00:38:56.720 right right and and i believe that these professors didn't they get censured didn't they get like uh

00:39:04.640 you know leave with pace or something they lost out on anything they just got like free money to do

00:39:09.680 nothing right it's so unclear that the university was very you know unaccountable not being transparent

00:39:17.840 about what was happening but they did disappear for a year and uh someone on twitter gave me the advice

00:39:24.240 i don't know who it was um to check the sunshine list to see if they got paid and in the year that

00:39:29.920 they disappeared and they were they were they received their six-figure salaries so wow well for

00:39:35.440 people that don't know the sunshine list is the uh proactive disclosure in ontario that lists all

00:39:40.240 government employees that make over one hundred thousand dollars a year so the fact that both these

00:39:45.200 professors are getting paid like that um i think that does sort of display who who has the the power

00:39:51.200 is it's so interesting lindsey because you know just 10 years ago the idea of two male professors

00:39:58.240 bringing in a female young student super uh ta you know that would be clear power dynamic right that

00:40:06.160 these older established professors who are also men were sort of bullying this young student who's in a

00:40:12.320 precarious position and she's a female but then you know because everyone's woke now and because

00:40:17.040 the world's gone crazy uh somehow the 22 year old has the power because of her um the tone of her

00:40:25.040 skin which uh is so so patently absurd um you know i laugh but it's it's actually not really funny it's

00:40:31.920 it's kind of terrible and depressing but but i digress so let's talk a little bit about the reaction

00:40:38.880 from laurier because i feel like you heard a lot of different things from a lot of different people

00:40:44.160 again at the time you know we just kind of heard okay the the university apologized done deal but

00:40:49.440 in your book you sort of outline how it was a little more complicated than that so

00:40:53.520 can you can you outline a little bit of the back and forth with the uh laurier officials that you

00:40:57.840 experience i mean honestly there wasn't much back and forth um they would sometimes claim to the media

00:41:06.080 that they were corresponding with me but really they were just sending me copies of press releases that

00:41:11.520 went out um i think before i even got any information i remember there was this one time

00:41:18.160 um i'm pretty sure they released a big statement to the news first and um and then to me like way later

00:41:27.440 and so i went when like news agencies were calling me to ask about the statement i was like what statement

00:41:32.960 um so you know maybe that was like part of their their game their strategy but so so they issued an

00:41:38.960 apology at first but then they kind of later defended what they did didn't they yeah that's the thing

00:41:47.440 is because then um the lawsuit chapter comes in so okay let's let's go to the lawsuit chapter then

00:41:54.800 let's why don't you tell us about what what the what the status is tell us about the law school the

00:41:59.200 lawsuit sorry yeah so um i decided um yeah so i howard levitt um was kind of you know helping me out

00:42:08.880 throughout the controversy he's a toronto employment lawyer uh he would he would just kind of give me

00:42:14.400 advice sometimes or we'd correspond very very occasionally and um he asked me if i wanted to

00:42:22.480 sue the university i think he asked me a couple times and at first i said no i don't want to do that

00:42:28.160 but then there was kind of a moment where i said yeah let's just see where this goes this lawsuit might

00:42:36.320 you know prove something interesting at the end of the day it might prove the direction that we're

00:42:40.400 going to go in regards to free expression on campus um so that was launched in 2018.

00:42:48.480 it's now 2021 and there's no movement on that case nothing to report um because what is what are you

00:42:55.600 actually suing them for what is what is the basis of the lawsuit um i think the legal the legalese is

00:43:03.840 uh shock and negligence yeah okay um you know that that kind of stuff emotional abuse in legalese right

00:43:14.320 right um but and so jordan peterson also sued um for defamation um because they compared him to

00:43:24.240 hitler and called him a charlatan and stuff like that so um then it gets kind of confusing because

00:43:32.240 the university said they launched a third party case so they're saying if jordan peterson was indeed

00:43:39.840 defamed then it is my fault because i released the recording so it's kind of me who defamed him

00:43:46.640 so it's kind of the circular lawsuit thing going on um and because jordan peterson's involved and he's been

00:43:53.120 ill lately um the case has not progressed because it won't until he's better okay interesting so so

00:44:02.400 let's talk a little bit about about jordan peterson then so so at the time you said that he was starting

00:44:07.440 to influence you you had seen some of his videos online i assume the videos were related to post

00:44:13.040 modernism since that's sort of what you talked about that you were dismayed by um what what was

00:44:18.800 it like uh you know because i think after this whole thing happened you got to meet him he interviewed

00:44:25.280 you um what you know what was your experience like meeting him and getting to know him a little better

00:44:30.320 i've actually only met him once and it was a quick handshake uh at one of his events in toronto uh in

00:44:40.400 january 2018 i think it was um he had i think he had just released 12 rules for life around then and

00:44:48.400 he was doing a talk at wycliffe college um which is within the university of toronto and so you know we

00:44:55.440 me and my some of my friends from the free speech club the lorries society for open inquiry we drove

00:45:00.880 down from waterloo to toronto to see it and um there i remember there was a huge line of people

00:45:06.480 waiting to get their book signed by him and so he had like no time but so i was about to leave

00:45:11.760 thinking i don't i don't think i'm gonna get to say hi to him this time uh but then by chance he was

00:45:18.000 walking through the hallway for i guess some sort of break washroom break perhaps and uh he noticed me

00:45:24.240 and so we said hi and that was pretty much it okay but but but you did uh he did interview you

00:45:30.720 is that right i i'm not just imagining that am i i think it was just the louder with crowder

00:45:35.920 where it was that kind of yeah stephen crowder jordan peterson and i and you had a discussion and

00:45:43.360 and that sort of it went through what happened it's interesting because i remember also at the time

00:45:49.280 these professors accused you of sort of being one of his students and sort of being

00:45:53.680 an agent of jordan peterson uh why do you think they had that impression yeah well that was

00:46:00.080 actually nathan rambucana's first question to me or second question to me in the meeting was uh so

00:46:07.120 you were one of jordan peterson's students right no never even i don't think at that point i'd ever

00:46:13.920 even been to ontario so interesting never been to yeah and to me that's kind of sexist right like he

00:46:22.960 assumes that you couldn't possibly come up with this on your own that you had to be sort of like acting

00:46:28.320 under this nefarious uh shadow of jordan peterson or something like that um you know what why do you

00:46:37.360 why do you think he thought that i actually saw that from a couple other people too just on on

00:46:43.760 twitter and social media that uh they thought someone else was behind everything i was doing

00:46:49.680 um i don't know i guess it's just underestimating people is part of what they do i guess

00:46:58.160 yeah no i i sometimes get that too where people again like in the dark corners of the internet but

00:47:02.880 sometimes more broadly they'll say like oh uh candace malcolm she used to work for jason kenny like

00:47:09.920 she's just a puppet for jason kenny or oh you know her husband does this she's just a puppet for her

00:47:15.760 husband and to me i always feel like it's based in like some kind of sexism but maybe maybe it's just

00:47:21.520 you know people being awful uh because it's the internet and that's that's what people tend to do

00:47:26.640 um lindsay let's talk a little bit about universities um you know you you lived through it

00:47:35.120 uh you you saw the the worst elements of of your school and i think that really what it shined the

00:47:42.320 light on was was what the environments is like at universities across canada and probably around the

00:47:47.760 world um i i just sort of wonder you know this this tendency towards marxism and post-modernism

00:47:54.320 uh you know it's as bad it's worse than we think it is what's your impression of universities now

00:48:01.360 having gone through all this i i still believe that they can be redeemed i'm not ready to give up

00:48:11.280 on the university um that being said i think now i know what to look for you can kind of tell by a

00:48:20.160 core syllabus or even a description you know if it has the word social justice you want to stay away

00:48:26.640 from it for example because it's going to try to get you to toe an ideological line um and before i

00:48:33.760 hadn't known that so i actually remember looking back at the communication studies 101 course outline

00:48:40.320 the syllabus and that was the course i was a teaching assistant for and it actually said that uh in

00:48:46.080 this class we take a social justice approach to communication studies and i before i would just

00:48:52.080 kind of skip over that um because i wasn't invested in these issues so i think okay sure whatever but now

00:48:59.280 that's something you want to stay away from right um i guess campus free speech is not at top of mind

00:49:07.680 right now because of covid i mean no one is even gathering at universities at all so it's hard to say

00:49:15.600 um i mean i i don't think it's gotten any better i think it is getting worse all the time and people

00:49:24.400 pretend it's not happening uh the thing is if you don't have any if you don't express any non-mainstream

00:49:31.920 position then you'll probably never have any encounters with the activists who are who will

00:49:38.080 try to target you or whatever um so a lot of people who don't express any kind of different opinion

00:49:45.440 they'll go on thinking that oh there's no problem it's all good and they continue to disseminate that

00:49:52.160 viewpoint which is very wrong well two things i want to pick up on what you said one you know you're

00:49:58.560 now a trained mind so you know what to look for but the reality is i mean you just skimmed over

00:50:03.440 social justice because it didn't mean anything to you at the time and it was just another university

00:50:07.440 buzzword but you know there's so many young people out there that just don't know that they don't know

00:50:12.480 that social justice is code for marxism or post-modernism they don't know what to look for

00:50:18.800 or or they might not have a choice it might be pushed down their throats at a younger age like in high

00:50:23.680 school or you know in a general you know poli sci 101 class so i worry that it that it is getting

00:50:31.120 harder and harder to to avoid but also you know you talked about how covid nothing's really happening

00:50:36.960 right now maybe this is an opportunity uh for some change that when things come back they they can be

00:50:43.760 different uh what do you think we can do to to improve uh things at universities

00:50:50.080 um well one thing i suggest in the book is just close diversity offices um and it's very interesting

00:51:00.000 because i was actually listening last night to a discussion with james lindsay who was part of he's

00:51:06.960 he wrote the book um cynical theories he was a co-author of that book how activist scholarship destroys

00:51:12.560 everything i think is the subtitle and he was on michael malice's podcast i listened to a snippet

00:51:19.280 and he said that you know these kind of diversity and inclusion critical race people

00:51:24.400 their ideology is actually not convincing to that many people and so that's why they need

00:51:29.520 all this infrastructure and these offices to try to convince everyone because otherwise they're not

00:51:36.320 buying it and so they have to pour all this money um create all these jobs to try to force people to

00:51:44.480 think a certain way um which i thought was an interesting perspective and so yeah i think

00:51:49.920 we we just need to close these offices because their sole purpose is to get you to become an activist

00:51:57.760 uh or at least just have the correct position on all cultural issues you know being pro-choice um you

00:52:07.280 know uh letting trans women into women's shelters they they're just training you in washington we sort

00:52:16.000 of saw that or felt that i did anyway last summer when the sort of riots were erupting in cities across

00:52:22.480 north america and all of a sudden we were all told that that everything about our society was racist and

00:52:27.520 we're all institutional racists and everything was white supremacy it's like you know that this culture

00:52:32.960 from university campuses just moved into the mainstream and while there's a lot of virtue

00:52:38.240 signaling out there and a lot of sort of like forced uh apologies that you see i i think most people

00:52:45.920 just sort of like you said they kind of roll their eyes um anyway uh well well lizzie this is this is

00:52:52.160 great uh again i think your book is fantastic and i'm really glad that you wrote it i'm glad that you

00:52:57.520 you put it out uh we've got we've got a bunch of our true north insiders tuning in and watching this

00:53:03.520 live so why don't we go to some questions if it is the viewers of anyone watching if you have a question

00:53:09.280 you can either raise your hand or you can just uh in the chat here uh write write a question and i'll uh

00:53:16.320 i'll i'll do my best to to try to answer it i got i got a couple questions that were sent in

00:53:21.120 um already so so maybe i'll go to one of those first um this question says lindsay in addition to

00:53:27.920 your experience at wilfrid laurier you were banned on twitter because of an exchange you had with the

00:53:32.480 infamous jessica yaniv you've also been critical of bill c16 and the trans movement in canada for

00:53:39.200 those people that accuse you of being a transphobe what is your response to them

00:53:43.840 um yeah i just i don't really hate anyone i'm not a hateful person i'm not and

00:53:54.080 i remember christopher hitchens is the one the late christopher hitchens is the one who said um

00:53:58.480 you know phobia implies that you're scared of something he always said that about islamophobia

00:54:03.680 that was one of his favorite like his famous things on youtube was uh he's he's not scared

00:54:09.680 of islam he's you know critical of it um so yeah i'm not uh hating anyone i'm not scared of anything

00:54:18.480 um i just saw a threat to open discussion and that's kind of where my focus remained

00:54:26.240 um i actually yeah i wasn't that invested in in issues related to transgenderism uh i one line i have

00:54:35.840 in the book is that uh prior to the laurier controversy if you had asked me are trans women

00:54:41.280 women like you know like one of those streeter interviews where they come up and ask you a

00:54:45.440 random question you don't have any time to process it and they said that i'd probably be like um yeah

00:54:50.400 sure you know but i'm lucky now that i consider the laurier controversy it was a very concentrated um

00:54:59.120 um education process i don't mean education from the university i mean education from

00:55:05.520 you know different sources and so i learned a lot from people who were writing about

00:55:11.440 transgender ideology like gender critical feminist thought um just people who had thought about the

00:55:18.080 issue uh so now i would definitely be on the side that says no biological males should not be in

00:55:25.440 females prisons and stuff like that or sports or any number of things right um yeah i mean we kind

00:55:32.480 of didn't really get into that whole that whole subject of sort of like the meat of what the the

00:55:37.360 jordan peterson clip was about but the idea um was of pronouns and i remember at the time lindsay i

00:55:45.520 maybe maybe uh this shows how out of touch i was at the time but but i remember at that time when the

00:55:50.800 pronoun discussion happened i had to look it up because i honestly didn't know what they were talking

00:55:54.560 about when they said pronouns um i thought okay maybe this means that you know if you're a woman

00:56:00.560 who becomes a man you want to be called he if a man becomes a woman you want to be called she and i

00:56:04.400 thought that was that was the end of it and then i looked up this whole pronoun i watched the whole

00:56:10.160 uh tvo clip there with um jordan peterson um and and and i think that the person who's debating is

00:56:17.600 talking about how you know you should you should program into your phone what someone's pronouns

00:56:23.440 are and and and there's no end in in the number of pronouns that are just absolutely made up like

00:56:30.080 words that you've never heard of like she and your and jay and whatever i i literally never heard of

00:56:35.120 that before um that that moment um but but the idea that jordan peterson was saying was that you know

00:56:41.840 this is all compelled speech it's not you you can't force someone to call you something you can't

00:56:47.200 force someone um to to use the word that you prefer just because you're for it's it's bullying it's

00:56:52.800 totalitarianism um and and that that's sort of the discussion that that's sort of lost in all this

00:56:58.160 you know like i think the point he's made is reasonable but now just saying these kind of things

00:57:02.480 is again considered violence and and hate speech um it's it's great that you went out and did the

00:57:09.040 research and actually learned sort of both sides and sort of sad that the university didn't present

00:57:14.000 that to you you had to go do that on your own time and it's considered sort of dangerous knowledge that

00:57:18.480 you had but um i i guess you know just to follow up um have your views really changed on the issue or

00:57:28.480 um do you mean throughout the lori controversy or or after both i guess or whichever um the thing is i

00:57:38.240 wasn't i think a lot of people assumed that because i played that clip i was somehow invested in the

00:57:44.000 transgender question or like those kinds of issues um which i wasn't so it did i did have to learn

00:57:52.720 quickly about all that um so before i would say i probably didn't even really have that many views

00:58:01.280 uh it's just not something that was really on my radar um yeah and interestingly i think

00:58:08.720 you know since those what 2017 2018 even 2016 when jordan peterson was first talking about compelled

00:58:16.160 speech now we're seeing almost a new dimension which is where you're compelled to put your pronouns

00:58:23.280 in your email uh on a name tag you're seeing a lot of that now and i don't think that was happening

00:58:30.800 um back then but now i know like some government or university departments require it or

00:58:36.240 they at least really encourage it yeah i always kind of laugh when i see it like i remember at the

00:58:44.000 time again that you know the idea of putting your pronouns in your in your bio was like a joke and

00:58:49.040 everyone that i knew was like making fun of it kind of like oh my pronouns are like her royal highness and

00:58:55.600 her majesty or whatever uh but but but now you know sometimes i see people on twitter where you

00:59:02.400 know i exist sort of in like conservative twitter and then sometimes i i accidentally get like sucked

00:59:07.760 into liberal twitter left-wing twitter woke twitter and you kind of go down this rabbit hole

00:59:12.080 and you see these people that are like genuine and serious and then they have their pronouns there

00:59:17.440 and you're like really i can tell you're she her because i'm looking at a picture of you you know

00:59:22.880 and and then yeah to your point that i know a lot of like corporate canada and banks and stuff like

00:59:27.200 that force their employees to do it which is just again compelled speech right um all right let's go

00:59:34.960 back to some questions here i'm getting a lot of people um thanking you lindsay saying congratulations

00:59:40.960 uh penny says i don't have a question for you right now i just want to say thank you very much for all you've

00:59:46.000 done i know it must have been very hard for you and then um she says she does have one question how is

00:59:52.480 the baby i guess he's not a baby anymore though right yeah he's two so he's he's a toddler he's still

00:59:58.800 my baby though he's good that's great all right uh jennifer asks she says hi lindsay what advice would

01:00:06.640 you give to high school students considering going to university that's a good question um yeah because

01:00:14.880 like you said um the social justice stuff is starting in elementary school and that makes it

01:00:22.640 really tough because then by the time these students are getting to university um they're not even

01:00:28.960 critical they they don't have the capacity to be critical or questioning about it because it's all

01:00:33.920 they've ever known um and i think you know we have more information coming from universities than we do from

01:00:41.600 from public schools um yeah we're really in the dark as a public about that what would i say is

01:00:51.280 if you are going to university you need to know what to look for um

01:00:58.640 and i know a lot of people suggest to go into the trades go into sciences where you're not going to be

01:01:03.920 exposed to that um to any social justice ideology and that's good advice but also if if we're kind of

01:01:10.000 playing the longer game and and we want the institution to become less biased we want it to

01:01:17.280 return to a place of free discussion then we do need people who who love the arts and humanities to

01:01:25.040 stick it out and um i hope some people will step up to that and stick it out and um help us bring back

01:01:33.920 a culture of open inquiry i i i mean i totally agree i think it's sort of one of those things

01:01:40.080 though that the university sort of attracts like-minded people like i'll give you an example

01:01:46.080 say you're an undergrad and your teachers are marxist the the the the students that are going to excel

01:01:52.880 the most and the students that are going to be the most excited about the class material and and the best

01:01:58.160 prepared are going to be the marxists the fellow kind of travelers and so they're going to get to

01:02:03.440 know the professors they're going to be the ones that get promoted into graduate school and getting

01:02:08.160 their phds and then in a few years time they'll be the next guard of university professors and you see

01:02:13.520 that now um with the sort of generation generational shift um happening that a lot of the old sort of

01:02:20.160 classical liberal-minded people people like jordan peterson that i imagine used to dominate

01:02:25.440 the academy um are now retiring and leaving and that more and more you're seeing these completely

01:02:33.120 insane woke academics and and then you know they're not even pretending to to be middle of the road like

01:02:40.320 to them showing both sides is wrong as as uh your supervisor told you and uh you know we see it a lot

01:02:47.440 even in the real world um where for instance you know a journalist used to want to be balanced so they

01:02:53.760 would want to like okay let's hear from a liberal let's hear from a conservative uh but then at some

01:02:58.400 point they decided well no conservatives are wrong and they're evil so we're only going to show the

01:03:03.040 liberal point of view um on climate change um they even openly say you know you can't have a balanced

01:03:09.760 discussion you can't say both sides when one side is based on this sort of prestigious liberal science

01:03:15.440 and the other side are these like horribly unenlightened neanderthals who are uh you know who dare

01:03:22.480 question our science um and and so they just don't they just don't tell the other side of the story

01:03:26.880 so you you kind of are seeing this continual closing um closing of the canadian mind right um and i i

01:03:36.000 think it's it's it's hard because conservatives get discouraged people like you decide to leave

01:03:40.720 university you don't get your phd you decide to to come work at true north instead which is great for us

01:03:46.240 you know we we love you but but for for for future potential students you know instead of hearing

01:03:52.480 from lindsey shepard uh they're going to hear from you know marxist number 525 at the school um and so

01:04:01.040 i i i think you know something needs to be done we need to either find a way to encourage more

01:04:08.000 classical liberal or conservative-minded people to go become professors um or we need to shake the whole

01:04:13.600 thing up maybe the next conservative government needs to just completely defund universities i don't

01:04:18.400 know if that's something that that they would ever actually do um or that they there would be appetite

01:04:23.520 for but i feel like something has to change yeah i mean in one video i did um i said if you don't

01:04:33.600 really have um anything you are need to work towards right now but you want to make a change

01:04:40.320 then you should make it your goal to get a phd in you know social justice education from the ontario

01:04:47.280 institute of studies and education which is called oise out of the university of toronto it's a phd in

01:04:52.960 social justice education and you should do that program or something like it um get your degree it's

01:04:59.360 probably not that hard and become a diversity bureaucrat but then do do a 180 and you know we need

01:05:08.480 those people who will stick it out and change things up and that goes for other maybe just like

01:05:14.400 a middle management position at a university we do need people in the system and if i so now if you google

01:05:21.760 me i mean if a university were to google me they would not hire me so that's just not going to happen

01:05:28.800 but for a lot of people maybe there are no search results for your name yet you're too young

01:05:33.760 in in your career or whatnot um so you have a chance to to go infiltrate i'm not trying to use

01:05:41.760 you know nefarious language but you have a chance to infiltrate well i mean not just that but like

01:05:48.960 even becoming a professor i mean you get to influence classroom after classroom the next generation

01:05:54.640 of minds i don't think that that's that's a small feat and i think that that can be

01:05:58.800 an incredibly valuable um experience i i kind of think you know conservatives hate quotas like the

01:06:05.040 idea of having a quota system where yeah you know corporate boards have to be 50 female or you have to

01:06:11.760 have x number of different ethnic backgrounds on each on each position you know conservatives shy away from

01:06:17.520 that but in my mind i think you know if we're really going to fight back against this problem

01:06:22.240 uh we should demand some kind of a diversity of of intellectual thought when it comes to universities

01:06:29.440 could you imagine lindsay if every university had to have equal number of left and right professors

01:06:36.640 like like for every marxist that you hire you have to also hire a libertarian or a classical liberal

01:06:43.040 i think universities would look very different um i i don't know what what that would say about

01:06:48.800 you know having to out a university professor to say like are you a liberal or are you a conservative

01:06:53.040 i don't think that many professors would like that and you know having lists of different

01:06:58.320 ideologies could be a problem but the the idea is still there that you know if we're going to fight

01:07:02.720 back um you know maybe we should try to use um some of their own tools against them what do you think

01:07:10.320 i actually remember um law professor bruce party said that in the last true north event

01:07:15.360 which one was it um big tech censorship one yes he said that we should treat conservatives like a

01:07:24.240 minority group that need representation that's interesting i had never heard that before

01:07:29.920 there could be something to it well i i again i didn't hear that particular part of it i'm going to

01:07:35.280 go back and listen to it but i think that that if we're going to start fighting back uh exactly i mean

01:07:41.440 i mean i mean sometimes you do as a conservative you feel like you you need some kind of extra

01:07:46.000 protection and extra help all right let's go to a couple more of these questions uh so kath asks did

01:07:52.080 you get familiar with laurier policy in order to defend yourself

01:07:59.200 um i don't think there's anything that could have helped me because the bureaucracy is so

01:08:06.480 i mean there was the gendered and sexual violence policy i had violated it um there were some other

01:08:16.560 things that happened later that you have to read the book to find out where i i the policy comes into

01:08:24.000 question but um i mean the university later enacted a a free speech statement and the ford government in

01:08:33.680 ontario actually then made that mandatory for every university to have a commitment to free speech on

01:08:39.680 campus um but my skepticism towards that was well if you still have an entire diversity and inclusion

01:08:48.080 bureaucracy you already have these uh sexual violence policies that say that you're not allowed to talk

01:08:54.240 about pronouns in any kind of questioning way then what is a free speech policy going to do is it

01:09:00.080 doesn't look like it's going to stop any of this other stuff um so you know the the problem for me

01:09:06.080 is getting rid of those that bad policy so just getting rid of the diversity inclusion offices or

01:09:13.440 because i i've sort of seen it head in the opposite direction it seems like every company and corporation

01:09:18.240 now has uh you know a chief diversity officer a chief inclusion officer and it's sort of like going from the

01:09:25.120 universities and spreading everywhere it's just a waste of everyone's time and and money it's it's

01:09:33.520 all it is yeah it's like a make work program for all the marxists in the university uh another question

01:09:39.600 here someone asks did the conservative government of ontario move to make funding of student unions

01:09:45.440 optional help with the ideology being pushed on university campuses did you know about that i do know

01:09:54.080 about that um i remember seeing the outrage from a lot of student groups um it's hard to say because

01:10:02.320 i understood what was going on behind that program for example there are these things called purgs on

01:10:09.600 university campuses public interest research groups um so at laurier it was the l spurg and you have to pay

01:10:18.720 them a fee it's an it's an automatic fee it's an it's one where you have to opt out so you have to fill

01:10:25.200 out an application thing to opt out of paying them the fee so they take all this money and i remember

01:10:30.720 looking at at um ellsberg's annual report and all of the money went to pay their own salaries for activities like

01:10:40.640 protesting the ford government and they disclose it in the report you're we're just paying them for them to carry out their

01:10:48.560 activism they get office space on the university so yeah absolutely those groups need to be defunded

01:10:54.720 ones like that are blatantly partisan and taking student money to fund their their activism it's so

01:11:02.720 wrong um so i think that the goal should be to defund those for sure i think because class has

01:11:10.720 unfortunately been out for over a year now uh it's hard to say what's going on with that i don't think

01:11:18.880 there was enough time to really see um yeah interesting yeah again i do think there's an

01:11:26.320 opportunity with um covid the fact that no one's really been going to schools um that that maybe

01:11:32.480 people will realize that they can get their education in other ways and i think there's been

01:11:36.880 some lawsuits against universities um saying that that students don't want to pay their full tuition

01:11:42.800 because they're not getting the experience i mean can you imagine some of these american schools where

01:11:47.760 tuition is upwards of fifty thousand dollars a year and you're paying that kind of fee to just sit at

01:11:54.480 your house without any interaction without any networking without any of the fun of college

01:11:59.360 um yeah maybe this is an opportunity for some disruption in the in the um secondary school uh

01:12:08.800 area well i don't know because no one is even doing anything about their university being shut down

01:12:15.120 it just seems like they're pretty complacent like okay i'll pay full tuition to just

01:12:20.560 be on my computer all day stare at the screen not get the full learning experience sure sounds good

01:12:26.880 you know i haven't seen anyone protesting that if i was a student right now i would be pretty outraged

01:12:31.600 um i'd be trying to mobilize to say come on and i i think a lot of professors don't like it either

01:12:38.000 because um they have to film themselves and that means uh they're the filming of their the recording of

01:12:45.680 their lecture can just be shown year after year which means that they could be made redundant

01:12:51.600 so uh but no one i haven't heard of any protests in canada at a university not in canada yeah no

01:13:01.360 it's it's interesting when you were saying that they don't like being filmed i thought they were

01:13:04.640 gonna say uh because they're sort of outed for their like outrageous ideology that they're being

01:13:10.080 imposed i just like right before i started this um broadcast i was watching on instagram a charlie

01:13:16.480 kirk video and he had a professor it was like a zoom call and it was showing a student and a

01:13:22.000 professor and the professor was trying to make the student talk about racism but the student didn't

01:13:26.080 want to and it was like they're back and forth and you could just see how ideological the teacher

01:13:30.960 is like they're trying to like force students to to recognize race when they don't want to and you

01:13:37.840 can kind of see how bad how bad it becomes well i remember way back when youtube was sort of new

01:13:43.600 and all of a sudden you could have access to i don't know why but yale university put its entire

01:13:51.360 uh first year lectures online so you can go and do an entire um semester of political philosophy 101

01:13:59.760 taught by a yale professor he goes through all the great um the great thinkers you know from

01:14:05.040 aristotle like all the way up to john locke or whatever and you know you get these lectures and

01:14:10.880 they're free and i remember at the time thinking like like political philosophy was my favorite

01:14:15.200 class in school and i remember thinking like why would anyone pay to go to university when like

01:14:21.520 your teacher is not going to be as good as this teacher is and he's doing it for free um i think

01:14:27.360 i think the reason that most people go to university now is just for the credential

01:14:31.120 uh and for signaling that they that they were smart enough to do it um and because maybe they

01:14:36.480 need it for a job not necessarily because of what they can learn because again you can learn

01:14:40.640 everything and more um by yourself online at your own time as well um all right lindsay let's do a few

01:14:48.720 more questions here so jim asks lindsay why do you think 90 of professors are leftists some of these left

01:14:55.920 wing nuts are actually marxists how can that be this is not representative of society at large

01:15:02.320 yeah um what was that study that we just did a video on at true north four four percent of uh

01:15:12.240 canadian university arts professors are right-wingers and was it 90 percent are leftist it was it was

01:15:19.120 definitely the majority but um why is a huge question um part of it is if you're not a leftist

01:15:28.960 you'll feel intimidated and you'll leave or they will intimidate you into leaving which is i guess

01:15:35.600 where i would classify myself in a way um just having no entry path back in so they kind of you

01:15:43.120 know self-perpetuate and also the problem is it's starting younger and younger so in kindergarten or even

01:15:50.000 before these these kids grow up with um social justice ideology uh it just becomes the default position

01:15:59.200 and it just keeps reinforcing itself um and they'll just they won't hire anyone that that study by eric

01:16:07.440 kaufman out of the university of london it showed that these professors these arts professors they will

01:16:14.480 not hire a trump supporter they will not engage with a gender critical feminist they will just shut it out

01:16:23.440 and so it means they continue to rule it's it's just sad yeah i i wish i could uh well i think i'm

01:16:32.960 trying to help this book will help wake people up i hope so yeah i hope so again it it makes me think

01:16:40.160 like you know we're gonna end up in a world where we have parallel institutions where if you you know are

01:16:46.560 conservative you're gonna go to your own conservative school and and everyone else will go to these

01:16:52.080 left-wing um factories and you kind of have this like further polarization between the two sides uh

01:16:59.520 david makes a suggestion he says pay professors the average private sector wage of their graduates

01:17:06.240 okay which i assume is not is not very high for uh some of these gender studies or um critical race

01:17:14.320 theory professors that kind of makes me wonder lindsay do you know what any of your fellow

01:17:20.160 classmates from lauriat grad school what they're up to um what kind of jobs they went on to get

01:17:25.680 i know i don't really know maybe i should try to look at them on facebook or something but the thing

01:17:33.440 is there are a lot of high paying jobs for people who become diversity consultants or or um inclusion

01:17:41.760 strategists something like that in a lot of cases these are six-figure jobs um if you're a top

01:17:49.680 what is it vice president diversity inclusion at a canadian university you can be making

01:17:54.560 200 000 300 000 a year um so maybe i guess that's not a private sector wage but like you said now

01:18:02.400 private companies do have these people and um i think they are high paying jobs unfortunately

01:18:09.520 yeah you're right i hadn't even thought about that it makes it just feel like the whole thing is a grift

01:18:13.440 like the fact that like seriously all these canadian private sector companies now literally have

01:18:19.200 chief inclusion officer and people whose job it is to just like like lecture

01:18:24.400 the employees about how they're all horrible sexist racist people and there's not even anything

01:18:30.480 they can do about it because it's all um you know unconscious bias and all that kind of stuff

01:18:35.920 um you know you used to kind of laugh at people who go off and do gender studies degrees uh you know

01:18:42.640 useless degree you're not gonna have any job after you graduate but but you know the world is changing

01:18:47.280 and now you're right they do occupy uh powerful positions all right let's try to get through uh

01:18:53.760 one or two more questions here i alluded to this earlier but this question says lindsay you posted a

01:19:00.240 video on youtube saying goodbye to the left in 2018 in response to far left activists canceling one of

01:19:06.720 your events do you consider yourself a conservative where do you consider yourself on the political spectrum

01:19:12.000 now yeah so i published that video in i think it was march 2018 and i think at the in the conclusion

01:19:20.640 of that video i said just call me what you want i'm not going to label myself because at first i saw

01:19:26.880 myself as a leftist and i tried to signal that during the laurier controversy but i realized um i'm just

01:19:36.880 kind of a default leftist like i just considered that the default position to be which i think is the

01:19:43.440 case for probably most young people um and but on upon further reflection i realized hmm yeah i don't

01:19:53.600 consider myself a leftist do i consider myself a conservative um i don't really consider myself a

01:20:01.360 conservative you know sometimes i think i have some conservative positions but even at the same time

01:20:10.320 those conservative parties kind of changing um i see candace sometimes tweeting about what the

01:20:18.800 conservative party is up to what was it aaron tool said something about trans or equity equity yeah so

01:20:26.720 they're kind of adopting the language well to me equity is very different than equality you know

01:20:32.800 the goal is to have equal treatment and equality under the law more or less but to all of a sudden

01:20:38.400 start using these sort of radical terms like equity for trans people i honestly don't even know what

01:20:43.840 that means but i would assume that that was coming from a far left political party not the so-called

01:20:49.680 conservative party and there's there's yeah a couple of uh you know problems there with with the with the

01:20:55.520 party and its communications but i i think a lot of people have traditional values or conservative

01:21:02.000 values without even really knowing it and the the problem for conservatives big big c conservatives like

01:21:09.120 the party is um you know trying to identify those people and connect with them about their values not

01:21:15.840 necessarily about their ideas because i i think you're right that a lot of young people kind of by

01:21:21.040 default see themselves as left-wing and a lot of canadians see themselves as just sort of middle of the

01:21:25.360 road or liberal um because they don't have strong opinions one way or the other so it's it's more

01:21:30.560 important to connect with them based on values than than sort of ideology for me but but i i i i i

01:21:39.680 assume that you sort of you know come from a culturally conservative background and that you are a bit

01:21:44.400 conservative but i'll i'll take you at your word if you say you're not conservative um okay i mean what do

01:21:51.680 you think um because i have a family life and is that why you say that or yeah you're married you

01:21:57.920 have a baby you know you're sort of traditional in that way and it seems like you have a close

01:22:02.880 relationship with your parents you know you you're hard working you started working for yourself i think

01:22:10.000 you write about this in the book that your first job you had when you were like 15 or something like

01:22:13.600 that like you know the value of hard work the importance of community um the importance of family all those

01:22:19.680 things to me are conservatism okay that's a good point but i would i would call myself honestly a

01:22:29.760 a centrist as um you know tainted a word that is for some people absolutely all right well uh leave that

01:22:40.000 there uh another question here this is just a comment i think penny says just for interest amazon prime tv has

01:22:47.760 a channel called the great courses the people giving lectures are mostly professors from various

01:22:52.480 colleges across the us in my opinion the great courses on prime tv are excellent do you have any

01:22:58.960 comment on that lindsay i'll check it out i don't have amazon prime tv but i'm i'll check it out it sounds

01:23:06.000 good all right let's do one more question uh lindsay i am a conservative currently studying at the

01:23:12.720 university of toronto in the last few years particularly while trump was president i often

01:23:17.200 had to hide my conservative views and opinions in order to pass my classes and not be ridiculed

01:23:22.800 i know i'm not alone in my beliefs but post-secondary schools are rife with far-left activists

01:23:29.120 how do conservatives on campus combat the bias of universities

01:23:32.960 well i would say um you need your morale boosted um and so it was important for me during

01:23:44.080 when i was at laurier to have formed the laurier society for open inquiry and just have

01:23:48.960 like-minded people around you um to boost each other's morale and i think that will leave you better

01:23:56.160 off that'll leave you with kind of some support um it'll leave you with better arguments you'll be

01:24:03.200 able to hash out your your points of view and have them ready to present um yeah so find other people

01:24:13.120 it might be difficult because a lot of people are just don't want to out themselves as defenders of free

01:24:21.840 speech they they would rather stay below the radar but i would encourage people that there are

01:24:28.080 strength in numbers and to to join together um when campuses are back and just in in general in life too

01:24:38.240 that's really good advice i remember when i was my last year of university uh i was taking a class

01:24:43.600 on american foreign policy and i was the first person that had to do my presentation um and and i

01:24:49.200 didn't really know like what to expect so i presented and i sort of had a pro-american view

01:24:53.280 at the time and talking about the good of american foreign policy and you know during at the time like

01:25:00.320 it was kind of radio silence i didn't really get very many comments but remember afterwards i had like

01:25:04.320 five or six people come up to me and say like thank you i agree it's so good to hear that there's other

01:25:09.280 people that think this way that don't default think america's evil and america's doing wrong and i mean

01:25:14.880 this was this was during the bush presidency when everyone hated america right but but still um uh

01:25:21.760 you know it it is good to have camaraderie and to sort about yourself because then you you start to

01:25:27.040 make do you start to realize that you're not alone and you make uh you make some friends so i i think

01:25:32.960 you eventually did that at laurier um not to go too much into your personal life but uh i believe through

01:25:39.760 through all of your activism and through your uh free speech club you ended up meeting your your now

01:25:44.480 husband who uh is also uh one of our employees at true north so uh so i think i think things ended

01:25:50.800 well for you lindsay yeah yeah it's a good way to meet people maybe you'll meet your future spouse

01:25:57.440 there you go all right well i think that's an excellent place to leave it so the book is called

01:26:02.480 diversity and exclusion confronting the campus free speech crisis it's available on amazon if you do

01:26:09.840 purchase it and you like it don't forget to leave a five-star review i think it's an excellent book

01:26:14.640 and it really does um deserve it you can you can get it on kindle right now and uh read it over the

01:26:19.840 weekend if you so please or you can order it and get a uh paperback version mailed to you so lindsay

01:26:26.080 thank you so much for your time and really thanks for uh undertaking this really important project and

01:26:31.040 writing this great book well thank you for giving me the opportunity because it was my fellowship at

01:26:36.800 true north where you encouraged me to write the book so thank you as well awesome all right let's uh

01:26:42.880 let's leave it at there good night everyone

Juno News - April 02, 2021

Diversity and Exclusion： An Exclusive Q&A with Lindsay Shepherd

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