Juno News - October 02, 2020


Exposing academia's critical race theory agenda

Topics
teaching political views in class
Mentioned
Wilfrid Laurier David Haskell Andrew Lawton Show William McKinley Lindsay Shepard Shakespeare Donald Trump Jordan Goldstein Jordan Peterson Ross McKittrick Maxime Bernier Chris Wallace George Floyd Joe Biden Dalhousie Zoom
Feigning Opposition Activists are pushing for another lockdown

Episode Stats


Length

16 minutes

Words per minute

160.87

Word count

2,579

Sentence count

156

Harmful content

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

At what point does academic freedom and free speech cross the line into propagandizing and advancing a woke agenda in spite of all of the things that universities are supposed to be about? That s one of the discussions that s come about through a debate at Laurier University and other campuses across Canada and North America earlier this month. It s a Scholar Strike, which, according to an oped in The Postmillennial by two Laurier professors, has institutionalized propagandist teaching.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 At what point does academic freedom and free speech cross the line
00:00:09.260 into really propagandizing and advancing this woke agenda
00:00:13.980 in spite of all of the things that universities are supposed to be?
00:00:18.060 That's one of the discussions that's come about through a debate at Laurier University
00:00:23.040 and other campuses across Canada and North America earlier this month.
00:00:26.920 It's A Scholar Strike, which according to an op-ed in the Postmillennial by two Laurier professors
00:00:32.400 has institutionalized propagandist teaching.
00:00:36.240 One of the authors we had on the show a couple of weeks ago, Professor David Haskell.
00:00:39.720 The other, Professor William McNally, joins me on the line now.
00:00:43.460 Good to talk to you again, Professor. Thanks for coming on today.
00:00:46.300 Hey, my pleasure.
00:00:47.480 So what is The Scholar Strike?
00:00:49.240 Well, it seems to have originated in the U.S. and then some Canadian academics championed it
00:00:57.800 and they wanted everyone to take September 9th and 10th off, that's all faculty,
00:01:03.200 and not do any administration or teaching, but instead hold teach-ins on anti-police brutality
00:01:10.780 and then a whole line of a laundry list of issues.
00:01:15.780 So this would have been the first two days of class, September 9th and 10th.
00:01:22.260 Yeah, and that's the weirdest part.
00:01:23.620 I mean, this is already an odd enough school year where classes have had to kind of amend
00:01:27.580 how they're taught and most stuff has moved online, but to say we're not even going to teach.
00:01:32.260 And this is not just for, you know, sociology profs, but this is for finance profs,
00:01:36.700 for chemistry profs, for everyone, right?
00:01:39.000 Yeah, it was, you know, the spirit of the thing was that everyone would do it,
00:01:44.040 and it was championed by all the faculty unions.
00:01:46.200 The Canadian Association of University Teachers promoted it,
00:01:49.480 and then every faculty union, it seems, in Canada, there's a list on their website.
00:01:54.460 And, you know, you're going to get into class as a student,
00:01:58.180 and the first thing you get is sort of critical race theory, you know,
00:02:03.400 on the first day of your Shakespeare course.
00:02:05.560 Was this being pushed by any administrations, or was it just by a few radicals in faculty associations?
00:02:12.740 Well, yeah, at first it was just, I heard about it from my faculty union,
00:02:16.500 who was forwarding an email that was sort of boilerplated from a central source like CAUT.
00:02:22.140 And we got really upset about it.
00:02:26.100 We don't like the union promoting these things, which are inherently political, using their distribution list.
00:02:34.000 But then that they would advocate not teaching your discipline,
00:02:37.680 and teaching and said the content that ScholarStrike was promoting seemed outrageous to us.
00:02:42.440 So, in fact, David Haskell wrote an email to the administration and said, you know, you have to condemn this.
00:02:48.640 This is unacceptable.
00:02:50.040 And then we were shocked to find a statement from the university administration wholeheartedly supporting ScholarStrike
00:02:56.420 and encouraging faculty to not teach their disciplines, to teach the content provided by ScholarStrike,
00:03:03.180 and violate, you know, the inherent contract, right?
00:03:08.280 Like, we're selling a product, which is our courses, and the administration was saying,
00:03:13.800 no, no, you'll just teach something else that's very political instead of what the student has paid to receive.
00:03:21.600 And that seems to be key here, because you're not viewing this as a discussion of they don't have the right to pursue these things.
00:03:29.140 I mean, you're a big believer in free speech and academic freedom, as am I.
00:03:32.120 You're basically saying this is false advertising to the students.
00:03:35.280 Yeah, yeah, it's like a form of fraud.
00:03:37.880 You know, ScholarStrike supporters are free to support that opinion.
00:03:42.660 I don't happen to agree with most of it.
00:03:44.320 Of course, you know, we're all against police brutality, of course.
00:03:47.420 But the laundry list of demands that they came up with becomes farcical.
00:03:54.660 One of their planks called on everyone to support the custodial union at the University of Toronto.
00:04:02.660 Apparently, the U of T is trying to outsource its custodial work to a third-party company.
00:04:08.560 And ScholarStrike wanted us to support the CUPE local in their fight against outsourcing of custodial work at the University of Toronto, right?
00:04:16.580 It has nothing to do with police brutality and race.
00:04:22.480 That's what George Floyd's memory is about now, is the who takes out the trash at U of T.
00:04:26.820 Yeah, yeah.
00:04:28.180 So it's bizarre.
00:04:30.420 It's like they weren't even serious about their primary cause and purpose.
00:04:36.100 But, you know, that's their right.
00:04:37.760 And people want to support that.
00:04:39.280 They're entitled to have that opinion.
00:04:40.680 But the problem here is having a there's two problems here is having the university sort of act fraudulently with respect to the students and offer to sell them something, which is a course on, say, Shakespeare accounting, and then substitute it with critical race theory, which is outrageous.
00:05:00.420 And the other problem here is having the university administration take a position on all of this university administration should be studiously agnostic on political issues and allow faculty and students to explore these issues, to discuss them.
00:05:17.980 And in that process, sharpen our understanding.
00:05:21.640 And if they come out and say, no, no, the right way to view this is that it's systemic racism and to take a critical theory lens really distorts the capacity of people to find their own opinions.
00:05:34.800 And really puts a lot of pressure on dissenting opinions.
00:05:39.660 Students who who might not agree with the administrative line really are at a disadvantage because other students can hit them over the head by saying, hey, you know, we have the authority of the administration on our side.
00:05:53.380 And and so therefore we're right and you're wrong and you should shut up and, you know, we'll get a cancel mob going after you.
00:05:58.680 Yeah. Yeah. And that's, I think, something especially Laurier would be aware of with everything that went on with Lindsay Shepard, who's now a colleague of mine here at True North back in in 2017. 0.86
00:06:09.000 And you'd think Laurier would be keenly aware of what happens when administration gets involved in stuff like this.
00:06:15.700 When I look at this story, I mean, the big problem is that this critical race theory and this narrative is injected into everything now.
00:06:23.020 I mean, there used to be certain places where you'd expect to see it certain faculties.
00:06:27.160 But the fact that, as you mentioned, you going to your Shakespeare class or your accounting class is now to some people supposed to be a learning opportunity about race relations suggests that they're really trying to expand this where there will be no safe space from it to use the university lingo.
00:06:43.580 Yeah, yeah. It's infecting everything.
00:06:45.800 You know, the Lindsay Shepard affair, just to mention that, when that happened, a central issue there was whether Lindsay had the right to show the agenda episode with Jordan Peterson and whether it was appropriate to the communication studies class.
00:07:02.280 And she was eventually exonerated. And the university, the president came out with a statement saying, hey, it's really important that we stick to the material that is, you know, in the course description and is appropriate for the discipline.
00:07:15.680 And she said that back in late 2017. Here we are, you know, three years later, and now she's saying, oh, go ahead and teach critical theory.
00:07:24.080 It's now infused our HR department, our administration, the president uses terms like systemic racism and anti-racism.
00:07:36.120 And these are critical race theory terms. And, you know, once you start using that language, you're going to start using that lens for viewing the world.
00:07:43.660 And it's only one lens. There's lots of other ways to view these phenomena.
00:07:48.920 How many professors say, maybe not an exact number, but how many actually took part in this? Or was it mostly this, you know, by email battle?
00:07:58.660 In the scholar strike, it's almost impossible to tell because all of the classes are now on Zoom.
00:08:05.320 So there's really no way of knowing. I would imagine a great number in the Faculty of Arts and the humanities, because that's, you know, where most of these academics, quote unquote, practice.
00:08:19.480 But, yeah, there's no way of knowing.
00:08:21.100 And this is something as well that I find particularly troubling because, you know, it's not going to end here.
00:08:28.100 And at certain points, I mean, you, I know, have already cemented your fate as being loathed by most of your colleagues by speaking out on these issues, as has Professor David Haskell.
00:08:38.120 But there are going to be a lot of other professors that perhaps are middle of the road on a lot of these issues that are going to look at this and say, OK, if I want to stay around, I have to jump on that train.
00:08:47.140 Yeah, there's a lot of institutional pressure here to to conform to the orthodox opinion and not speak out against it.
00:08:59.360 Both David Haskell and I have been getting mobbed on social media, on Twitter and on Instagram by students and faculty for speaking out about these issues.
00:09:10.780 So you don't hear too many faculty speaking out, not at Laurier, not anywhere in Canada.
00:09:17.500 It's a pretty small group of people who are prepared to publicly even question any of this.
00:09:24.060 Do you think the Laurier experience, because we have this, we had the Lindsay Shepard affair, is it distinct from other universities in North America, do you think?
00:09:32.300 Or is it just we're hearing about it more because of, you know, people like you and like Lindsay and like David Haskell and like Jordan Goldstein?
00:09:38.720 That's a good question.
00:09:41.440 A little bit of it is just, you know, the circumstances around what happened to Lindsay and then us jumping in to defend her and then getting turned on and becoming more vocal about it.
00:09:55.460 Because it is happening in every university in North America, this critical theory is like a intellectual cancer that has creeped in everywhere.
00:10:07.440 And it's into the human rights departments and the university administrations as well.
00:10:12.840 You know, you saw with Donald Trump just signed an executive order banning any critical race based training in any federal department or contractor.
00:10:27.720 Yeah, that's huge.
00:10:29.120 And again, what people on the left are trying to do right now is conflate critical race based training with anti-racism.
00:10:38.040 And that's a very dangerous leap because they're trying to position an argument so that if anyone opposes it, well, they're actually racist.
00:10:45.420 Yeah, yeah.
00:10:46.100 You noticed on the debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, Chris Wallace referred to it as racial sensitivity training.
00:10:54.420 He didn't say anti-racism or critical race theory, so he completely misrepresented it and made it look really benign because who wouldn't be against, you know, who would be against racial sensitivity training?
00:11:06.980 That sounds very reasonable.
00:11:08.040 We should all be more sensitive.
00:11:09.660 But that's not what this is.
00:11:11.280 This is about a revolution and pulling down the capitalist system and democracy and at universities pulling down reason and the scientific method.
00:11:22.160 And banning the outsourcing of garbage collection too, the true social justice battles of 2020.
00:11:28.780 You know, if they were to focus only on that stuff, it wouldn't bother me as much.
00:11:32.740 Oh, or one or the other, you know?
00:11:34.700 Yeah, yeah.
00:11:35.140 Yeah, pick one or the other.
00:11:36.560 You can have two different movements, that's fine, but don't lump them both into the same.
00:11:40.620 I know that obviously the school still didn't step in to stop the scholar strike, but I'm curious, did they give any response to the letters that you had put forward,
00:11:50.380 to the complaint that was put forward by SAFS, the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship?
00:11:55.180 Any response at all?
00:11:56.640 Yeah, yeah.
00:11:57.020 Thanks for bringing that up.
00:11:58.020 The Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship, or SAFS, wrote a letter to Wilfred Laurier complaining about this,
00:12:05.420 that it was a violation of the spirit of free inquiry that should guide universities.
00:12:12.560 They also sent a letter to Dalhousie and one to U of T.
00:12:16.000 So, Laurier wasn't the only one doing this, but no, no, there's been no formal response to this, as far as I know.
00:12:25.260 There hasn't been a statement officially.
00:12:28.300 So, as far as I can tell, the new policy is, if you want to be political in your classroom, go ahead.
00:12:34.860 And, which, you know, is outrageous.
00:12:38.420 Last year, during the federal election, I was supporting Maxime Bernier and the People's Party.
00:12:44.240 And I have to admit that I was teasing my students about the election and mentioned it a little bit more than I should have.
00:12:53.200 And they weren't happy about it.
00:12:55.220 I heard about it in the course evaluations, you know, and on reflection, I think rightly so.
00:13:01.080 You know, it shouldn't be my place to use that platform to espouse my political beliefs.
00:13:07.000 I should just be teaching the discipline that the students paid to learn about.
00:13:11.880 And, you know, if we want to have a meeting after class in the bar over a beer, you know, that would be the appropriate venue to talk about politics.
00:13:19.520 Yeah, and I think your point is very valid there, that it doesn't go both ways.
00:13:22.760 You don't have the same license on your political views to do what's been done under the scholar strike for people with opposing political views.
00:13:30.560 No, no, no, no, no, no, because there's so few conservatives at the university, they get really surprised when they hear a conservative view.
00:13:43.080 Just two weeks ago, we got an email from our union talking about a climate committee.
00:13:49.480 And the email started out with a reference to the fires in the Pacific Northwest and how this forces us to take emergency action to fight climate change.
00:14:02.380 And I had just come across an article by Ross McKittrick at Guelph where he had done a long study of precipitation and found that it was just trending.
00:14:12.180 It wasn't trending up.
00:14:14.040 It was just fluctuating normally.
00:14:15.600 And there was really you couldn't blame climate change for what's happening.
00:14:19.480 And I wrote an email back to the author of this letter and they said, yeah, you're right.
00:14:25.920 You know, I wasn't aware of that literature, but I was using a little too much hyperbole and I probably shouldn't have.
00:14:31.740 And it seemed to me like, well, you're just in an echo chamber then.
00:14:35.340 You know, you never get challenged and you feel free to write an email to 550 faculty being alarmist and assuming everyone's going to agree.
00:14:46.380 Very well said.
00:14:47.500 And by the way, I'll happily take you up on that offer to chat about politics over a beer.
00:14:52.140 That'd be great, Andrew.
00:14:53.460 Yeah.
00:14:53.680 Once everyone's allowed to be in the same room as each other, we look forward to it.
00:14:57.620 William McNally, professor of finance at Wilfrid Laurier University.
00:15:01.920 The letter, fantastic, an op-ed in the post-millennial written by Professor McNally and David Haskell.
00:15:08.160 Professor, thanks so much for coming on.
00:15:09.640 Always a pleasure.
00:15:10.760 Yeah, great.
00:15:11.420 Thanks, Andrew.
00:15:11.900 Well, that does it for me.
00:15:13.600 My thanks again to Professor McNally and all of you for tuning in to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:15:18.520 We'll be back with Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show next week here on True North.
00:15:22.400 Thank you, God bless, and good day, Canada.
00:15:24.180 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:15:26.780 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.
00:15:31.920 True North at www.tnc.news.com