Juno News - Have schools gone too woke？

00:00:00.000 We'll switch from journalistic ethics to the academic realm here.

00:00:14.160 I have always put a spotlight on academic freedom.

00:00:17.080 I'm a member of the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship.

00:00:20.340 I'm not really a scholar anymore.

00:00:23.240 I almost did a master's degree this year.

00:00:25.020 That's another issue entirely.

00:00:26.720 But I do absolutely value academic freedom and open inquiry, and I've had a great chance to chat about it casually with my next guest, Professor Jeff Horstman, who's with Wilfrid Laurier University, which, of course, has been the hotbed of this very discussion.

00:00:43.120 It's where my colleague, Lindsay Shepard, infamously got into a bit of trouble there. 1.00

00:00:47.480 Jeff, it's good to talk to you.

00:00:48.440 Thanks for coming on today.

00:00:49.960 Oh, thanks for having me.

00:00:50.840 So you are one of the co-chairs of the Heterodox Academy campus community at Laurier, and you had alerted me to an event that you had coming up, which I want to talk to you about here, and also some of the broader issues in Heterodox in the academy here.

00:01:06.840 But you've decided to put a spotlight on the Ministry of Education in Ontario.

00:01:11.840 Explain.

00:01:12.100 Well, what we're interested in really is some of the profound changes that have been occurring in K-12 education over the last probably couple of decades, sort of quietly, and probably in the last five years or so, and certainly since the pandemic, parents have really started to notice dramatic changes.

00:01:34.600 And we've got a couple of scholars from OISE, this is the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, to come and talk to us about some of these trends that have been happening, some of the competing policy models that have been behind these changes, and really just engage in a real data-driven empirical discussion about these educational changes, which really has been lacking on campus.

00:02:03.600 So I think this is an opportunity for people to actually get a chance to hear from some experts and ask some questions and learn.

00:02:10.600 Yeah, 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.

00:02:22.600 And what a lot of people found so shocking about that is that there's a Conservative government in Ontario, at least nominally so.

00:02:28.600 And what's interesting is that a lot of these issues tend to prosper, irrespective of who's in power.

00:02:33.600 I mean, there seems to be this education bureaucracy that basically gets free reign over these sorts of issues.

00:02:40.600 issues.

00:02:41.600 Yes, I think it is.

00:02:42.600 Yes, I think it is.

00:02:43.600 It really is.

00:02:44.600 It's kind of this permanent staff, I think, that occupy multiple levels of bureaucracy.

00:02:50.600 I think, first of all, the Ministry of Education itself, I think many people are surprised that this infiltration of this social justice policy worldview is occurring under a Conservative government in the province of Ontario.

00:03:07.600 And that really reflects, I think, just the permanent staff that don't really change with government.

00:03:13.600 And it's unclear how much they really take direction from the politicians or how much the politicians are motivated to make these changes.

00:03:22.600 And then also the schools of education themselves, I think, are really dominated by this ascendant social justice worldview.

00:03:31.600 Most of the younger professors especially are openly advocating for social justice education.

00:03:37.600 So, you know, there's these different levels.

00:03:40.600 And, of course, the unions is another important piece of this puzzle.

00:03:44.600 They are quite openly picked an ideological side as well.

00:03:48.600 So you really have it from a variety of fronts that are pushing this.

00:03:53.600 You 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.

00:04:04.600 Or you can go and, you know, change the world by inventing this.

00:04:08.600 You can discover the cure for cancer.

00:04:10.600 There's certainly an activation of young minds, which, you know, I'm just sitting behind a microphone in my basement.

00:04:15.600 Other of my classmates have done far more impressive things.

00:04:19.600 But now there's like a different type of activation taking place.

00:04:22.600 And 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.

00:04:32.600 Right. Well, to be clear, those aren't my words.

00:04:34.600 These are actually words of the people who of the OISE experts help craft that.

00:04:39.600 But so they probably can tell you a lot more about this.

00:04:42.600 But I think really what they're referring to is that there is this idea.

00:04:48.600 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.

00:04:58.600 Right. And really, it is an oppression, a world of different types of oppression that we need to correct.

00:05:05.600 And really, we need to teach students to work to overcome these various types of oppression.

00:05:12.600 So there's an anti oppression sort of mindset in this critical pedagogy that that is seeping through things.

00:05:20.600 So I think that's one of the underlying features of the new educational policy direction.

00:05:26.600 I know when I started talking about these issues, you know, however many years ago it was, there was always this this hiving off of, you know, sociology departments and oh, the postmodernists are doing this.

00:05:37.600 You know, the sociologists are doing this. It really is everywhere now.

00:05:40.600 I mean, just you're in the hard sciences, you're in chemistry and biochemistry.

00:05:45.600 So just before the interview started, I just Googled decolonizing biochemistry to see what came up.

00:05:51.600 And 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.

00:06:06.600 Now, I don't know what's in any of these resources. I'm just rhyming off the headlines here.

00:06:10.600 But 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. 0.92

00:06:20.600 But but even your hard sciences has not been immune from this. 0.94

00:06:24.600 No, it's not. I mean, it's it. I think for the for the most part, it has been.

00:06:31.600 But it's coming. You can see it in different ways. There are different steps that are coming.

00:06:36.600 I believe you talk to Lee Revers, maybe, and certainly in his department, it seems to be perhaps more advanced than it is at ours.

00:06:45.600 But certainly there is a push for it. There's a push to decolonize. 0.78

00:06:50.600 No one really can define exactly what that means.

00:06:54.600 I was going to say, yeah, if you if you were to just go social justice, Jeff, and you say, OK, I'm all in.

00:06:59.600 What does that even mean to decolonize chemistry? Like, like, how do you even do that?

00:07:04.600 That's a really good question. I mean, Lee has talked about this a little bit.

00:07:08.600 I think he's trying to think about this, you know, and and I don't know.

00:07:13.600 I 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.

00:07:22.600 Right. So 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. 0.88

00:07:33.600 So you'd use things like the E and Z isomers. It might be that type of thing.

00:07:38.600 But I mean, ultimately, no one really knows. And I don't think anyone's thought about it, to be honest.

00:07:43.600 Maybe some people have, but most people are just scared to challenge it.

00:07:47.600 And that's about all we know.

00:07:49.600 So we have seen in the last few years, I think, this tremendous resurgence of people like you who are really minded towards academic freedom.

00:07:58.600 I mean, Jordan Peterson is probably one of the most famous anywhere in the world.

00:08:01.600 But by no means is he the only one. I know at Laurier, you've got a small contingent of rabble rousers of heterodox thinkers.

00:08:08.600 I've had a few of them on the show, David Haskell and Will McNally and yourself.

00:08:12.600 And I know at other schools there are. So in some way, there seems to be a bit more of a resistance now.

00:08:17.600 Would you say things are better or worse now than, say, five years ago?

00:08:21.600 I think it's a good question. Five years ago, I didn't even pay attention to this much.

00:08:28.600 So I might say things say things are better five years ago.

00:08:31.600 But when I started to notice, you know, three years ago, I thought things were very dire.

00:08:36.600 But 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.

00:08:45.600 You know, I think in the lockdowns of people were apart and isolated.

00:08:49.600 They all thought if if they were worried about some of these things, they thought they were the only ones.

00:08:53.600 But 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?

00:09:06.600 What exactly, you know, what are the benefits of hiring based on race and sex? Can anyone explain this?

00:09:15.600 And very often you find that the explanations are very unsatisfactory.

00:09:19.600 And 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.

00:09:26.600 But 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 so we can really try to get to truth.

00:09:45.600 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.

00:09:53.600 And we do have more and more active members.

00:09:56.600 And I think that is really positive.

00:09:59.600 We're starting to other people from other universities, from the public are getting interested.

00:10:03.600 So I think it is really starting to have an impact and 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.

00:10:14.600 And, you know, it hasn't been easy.

00:10:16.600 We often have to do security reviews and and you get in, you know, you kind of have trouble in small ways.

00:10:22.600 But 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.

00:10:27.600 I think I think just too many people are not behind them anymore.

00:10:30.600 I think the public I think you talked to Eric Kaufman a few days ago on your show and his his work on the polling data is super clear that the public is just not on board with this stuff.

00:10:43.600 So 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.

00:10:54.600 Yeah. 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.

00:11:00.600 So I like that you offer a bit more of a rosy picture of things.

00:11:03.600 And 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.

00:11:08.600 Right. I've always been a subscriber to that.

00:11:10.600 The problem is that when you think you've hit rock bottom, somehow it manages to get a little bit worse at times.

00:11:14.600 But 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, but they've learned that there is a cost to censoring.

00:11:26.600 There's a cost to shutting things down. There'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, what did you do there?

00:11:35.600 And I mean, your school has been subject to, I think, now years of litigation going on because of the Lindsay Shepard thing.

00:11:41.600 And while the school hasn't just, you know, done the complete apology and, you know, everything yet, there's been a cost to doing what it did.

00:11:49.600 And 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.

00:11:57.600 And that that I think is very crucial here.

00:12:00.600 And that's where I get to play my tiny little role in independent media and in showcasing these stories, because there needs to be a cost if you go and trample on academic freedom, I think.

00:12:11.600 Yes, I think I think they're starting to realize that a little bit.

00:12:14.600 I mean, it just takes a few people, you know, like us to, again, write a few letters.

00:12:20.600 They know, OK, this is going to be embarrassing if people start paying attention to this.

00:12:26.600 But I would just like to, you know, if any administrators are listening, this is an opportunity.

00:12:30.600 I 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.

00:12:42.600 I can't tell how many students talk to me about this is just so boring, this whole thing.

00:12:48.600 I'm really tired of it.

00:12:49.600 So I really do think that there's if a university administrator is really smart, this is what they do.

00:12:55.600 They would come out.

00:12:56.600 They would come out.

00:12:57.600 We're going to be the first.

00:12:58.600 We're going to be a true free speech university.

00:13:00.600 We're done with the EDI, the racial discrimination.

00:13:04.600 That's all over.

00:13:05.600 If 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.

00:13:12.600 And I think the first mover opportunity is just huge.

00:13:16.600 I don't know why someone would just reach up and grab it and like, yeah, come in.

00:13:20.600 There have been a couple in the U.S. that have.

00:13:23.600 But in Canada, that lane is just wide, wide open, isn't it?

00:13:26.600 Right.

00:13:27.600 It is.

00:13:28.600 It's wide open.

00:13:29.600 All the universities are almost identical on this.

00:13:32.600 Yeah.

00:13:33.600 All right.

00:13:34.600 Well, I'm not sure how many university administrators we have in our ranks in the audience.

00:13:38.600 But if you know one, or perhaps you're married to one, go and show them this episode.

00:13:42.600 They could be the star.

00:13:43.600 It's funny you mentioned that.

00:13:44.600 So 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.

00:13:51.600 It was this one librarian, Vickery Bowles.

00:13:54.600 I'll always remember her name, who was like the librarian standing, standing athwart history, yelling stop to the censors.

00:14:00.600 And exactly.

00:14:01.600 And I'll always remember her until maybe not the end of time, but certainly the end of my time because of that.

00:14:06.600 So there could be a university administrator that does the same thing that becomes just like the beacon of freedom and free speech and an academic inquiry in Canada.

00:14:15.600 So the opportunity is there.

00:14:16.600 Just take it.

00:14:17.600 You deliver the inspiration.

00:14:18.600 The event hosted by the Heterodox Academy at Wilfrid Laurier.

00:14:21.600 What is the Ministry of Education promoting in our schools?

00:14:25.600 You can see the details up on the screen there.

00:14:27.600 It is on Thursday, June 13th.

00:14:29.600 I'm going to be out of town, but I hope it goes well.

00:14:31.600 And I expect to get a full report afterwards.

00:14:34.600 But Professor Jeff Horsman, good to talk to you.

00:14:36.600 Thanks so much, Jeff.

00:14:37.600 Thank you very much, Andrew.

00:14:39.600 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:14:42.600 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - June 10, 2024

Have schools gone too woke？

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript