00:22:11.420So I think this is an opportunity for people to actually get a chance to hear from some experts and ask some questions
00:22:18.000Yeah, I mean, I know Jamil Javani, who's now a conservative member of parliament, in his acceptance speech, he talked about the woke liberals, basically, that have infiltrated the Ontario education system.
00:22:30.940And what a lot of people found so shocking about that is that there's a conservative government in Ontario, at least nominally so.
00:22:37.120And what's interesting is that a lot of these issues tend to prosper, irrespective of who's in power.
00:22:42.780I mean, there seems to be this education bureaucracy that basically gets free reign over these sorts of issues.
00:22:48.820Yes, I think it is, it really is, it's kind of this permanent staff, I think that occupy a multiple, multiple levels of the bureaucracy, I think, first of all, the Ministry of Education itself, I think many people are surprised that, that these, this infiltration of this social justice, policy, worldview is occurring under a conservative government in the province of Ontario.
00:23:15.700And that really reflects, I think, just the permanent staff, that don't really change with government, and it's unclear how much they really take direction from the politicians, or how much the politicians are motivated to make these changes.
00:23:32.560And then also the schools of education themselves, I think, are really dominated by this ascendant social justice worldview.
00:23:40.600Most of the younger professors, especially, are openly advocating for social justice education.
00:23:47.060So, you know, there's these different levels.
00:23:49.120And of course, the unions is another important piece of this puzzle.
00:23:53.000They are quite openly picked an ideological side as well.
00:23:56.920So you really have it from a variety of fronts that are pushing this.
00:24:01.340You know, I recall going back to when I was a student, there was certainly some empowerment there of, you know, I had teachers that were saying, you know, you can go and, you know, build a well in Africa like this young guy did, or you can go and, you know, change the world by inventing this, you can discover the cure for cancer.
00:24:18.400There was certainly an activation of young minds, which, you know, I'm just sitting behind a microphone in my basement.
00:24:24.360Other of my classmates have done far more impressive things.
00:24:27.940But now there's like a different type of activation taking place.
00:24:30.980And I know you mentioned this when you announced the event, that social justice is about training students to use your words to be, quote, activists of revolutionary change, unquote.
00:24:40.280Right, well, to be clear, those aren't my words.
00:24:43.100These are actually words of the people who, of the OISE experts helped craft that.
00:24:47.960But so they probably can tell you a lot more about this.
00:24:51.100But I think really what they're referring to is that there is this idea, and I think this is the social justice idea in education, is that we have a variety of things that we need to correct in the world, right?
00:25:07.320Really, it is an oppression, a world of different types of oppression that we need to correct.
00:25:13.820And really, we need to teach students to work to overcome these various types of oppressions.
00:25:20.560There's an anti-oppression sort of mindset in this critical pedagogy that is seeping through things.
00:25:28.280So I think that's one of the underlying features of the new educational policy direction.
00:25:33.820I know when I started talking about these issues, however many years ago it was, there was always this hiving off of sociology departments and, oh, the postmodernists are doing this, and, oh, the sociologists are doing this.
00:25:54.060So just before the interview started, I just Googled decolonizing biochemistry to see what came up.
00:26:00.580And the first hit, decolonizing and diversifying the biosciences curriculum, why we need to decolonize the biosciences curriculum, decolonization in the Faculty of Science, a place to start, decolonizing chemistry, teaching, and learning.
00:26:14.720Now, I don't know what's in any of these resources.
00:26:17.080I'm just rhyming off the headlines here.
00:26:19.000But suffice it to say, unless, you know, Avogadro was an evil, dirty, stinking colonialist, I'm not entirely convinced that there is a connection between colonization and chemistry.
00:26:28.860But even your hard sciences has not been immune from this.
00:27:22.100I mean, it really just ends up being a little bit silly when you start to do it because it would be more about using words that are not oppressive.
00:27:31.660So trying to change the language, you know, maybe, you know, with cis trans isomerization, you might not want to use that language because that could be offensive.
00:27:42.300So you'd use things like the E and Z isomers.
00:27:57.320So we have seen in the last few years, I think, this tremendous resurgence of people like you who are really minded towards academic freedom.
00:28:06.760I mean, Jordan Peterson is probably one of the most famous anywhere in the world.
00:28:09.660But by no means is he the only one I know at Laurier, you've got a small contingent of rabble rousers of heterodox thinkers.
00:28:16.880I've had a few of them on the show, David Haskell and Will McNally and yourself.
00:28:21.180And I know at other schools there are.
00:28:22.860So in some way, there seems to be a bit more of a resistance now.
00:28:26.420Would you say things are better or worse now than, say, five years ago?
00:28:33.840Five years ago, I didn't even pay attention to this much.
00:28:37.060So I might say things were better five years ago.
00:28:40.480But when I started to notice, you know, three years ago, I thought things were very dire.
00:28:45.720But what I have noticed in the past year or two is that people are starting to find one another and they're starting to just speak again.
00:28:53.760You know, I think in the lockdowns of people who are apart and isolated, they all thought if they were worried about some of these things, they thought they were the only ones.
00:29:02.220But when you start speaking and you start meeting other people and then when you start being able to discuss and try to challenge each other and try to find people to explain what exactly do things like decolonization mean?
00:29:15.160What exactly, you know, what are the benefits of hiring based on race and sex?
00:29:24.040And very often you find that the explanations are very unsatisfactory.
00:29:27.920And I think people are really starting to to realize that and they're starting to get a little bit of courage, just a little bit.
00:29:35.420But I think if we as long as we can explain politely and make our case with evidence and write letters and try to open up that Overton window again so that we can actually do science in the broadest sense where we hear both sides of an issue.
00:29:50.760So they can really try to get to truth and what I would say about the green shoots, so to speak, or the optimism, I feel, is that our Heterodox Academy group is growing and we do have more and more active members.
00:30:07.720We're starting to other people from other universities, from the public are getting interested.
00:30:11.740So I think it is really starting to have an impact.
00:30:15.540And the fact that we're able to just have discussions on campus that you wouldn't have been able to have a couple of years ago, I don't think.
00:30:24.480We often have to do security reviews and you get in, you know, you kind of have trouble in small ways.
00:30:30.660But I think it's hard now for the administration to really shut it down in a way that they could have a short time ago.
00:30:36.020Because I think just too many people are not behind them anymore.
00:30:38.700I think the public, I think you talked to Eric Kaufman a few days ago on your show and his work on the polling data is super clear that the public is just not on board with this stuff.
00:30:51.820So I really think we'd now have an opportunity now for a full court press to really push back and hopefully reestablish classical liberal norms of a liberal democratic society.
00:31:03.340Yeah, and I think that's, I mean, it's good because I had Bruce Party on recently and he's just the perennial pessimist on this.
00:31:08.280So I like that you offer a bit more of a rosy picture of things.
00:31:11.940And there is something to the idea that it has to get worse for people to see how bad it is and want to make it better.
00:31:16.700I, I've always been a subscriber to that.
00:31:18.640The problem is that when you think you've hit rock bottom, somehow it manages to get a little bit worse at times.
00:31:23.280But the one thing that I also find encouraging is that universities have learned now, perhaps not all of them and perhaps not as much as they should,
00:31:31.480but they've learned that there is a cost to censoring.
00:31:34.480There's a cost to shutting things down.
00:31:36.080There's a cost to targeting people because there is a whole group of people that are all too willing to stand up and point the finger at them and say,
00:31:43.480And I mean, your school has been subject to, I think now years of litigation going on because of the Lindsay Shepard thing.
00:31:49.840And while the school hasn't just, you know, done the complete apology and, you know, everything yet, it's, there's been a cost to doing what it did.
00:31:57.600And I think other schools as well have probably looked at that and said, you know, maybe, maybe I don't want to treat that, that TA the same way that Laurier treated Lindsay Shepard.
00:32:06.280And that, that I think is very crucial here.
00:32:08.760And that's where I get to play my tiny little role in independent media and in showcasing these stories,
00:32:13.020because there should, there's, there needs to be a cost if you go and, and trample on, on academic freedom, I think.
00:32:19.880Yes, I think, I think they're starting to realize that a little bit.
00:32:22.800I mean, it just takes a few people, you know, like us to, again, write a few letters.
00:32:29.420They know, okay, this is going to be embarrassing if, if people start paying attention to this.
00:32:35.320But I would just like to, you know, if any administrators are listening, this is an opportunity.
00:32:39.360I think right now, if you're a university administrator, you have a tremendous opportunity because young people are getting really tired of the social justice worldview at universities.
00:32:51.080I can't tell how many students talk to me about this is just so boring, this whole thing.
00:33:13.540If you want to learn, if you want to do hard things and you want to be competent and you want to explore ideas, you come to our university.
00:33:21.080And I think the first mover opportunity is just huge.
00:33:24.720I don't know why someone would just reach up and grab it and like, yeah, come in.
00:33:28.540There have, there have been a couple in the U S that have, but in Canada, that, that lane is just wide, wide open.
00:33:41.380Well, if you're a, I'm not sure how many university administrators we have in our ranks in the audience, but if you know one, or perhaps you're married to one, go and show them this episode.
00:33:52.800So I don't know if you remember a couple of years back when the Toronto public library defended its right to rent space to, I think it was Megan Murphy.
00:33:59.980It was this one librarian, Vickery Bowles.
00:34:03.820Who was like the librarian standing, standing athwart history, yelling, stop to the censors.
00:34:09.100And, uh, exact, and I'll always remember her until, uh, maybe not the end of time, but certainly the end of my time because of that.
00:34:15.240So, uh, there could be a university administrator that does the same thing that becomes just like the beacon of freedom and free speech and, and academic inquiry in Canada.
00:34:23.200So the opportunities there, just take, you deliver the inspiration.
00:34:26.680Uh, the event hosted by the heterodox Academy at Wilfrid Laurier.
00:34:30.220What is the ministry of education promoting in our schools?
00:34:33.580Uh, you can see the details up on the screen there.