Laurier University professors Herbert Pimlott and Nathan Rambicana have been accused of defamation by former student Lindsay Shepard for recording a public access television clip of Jordan Peterson debating gender pronouns. Now, they are suing her for defamation.
00:00:00.160You know, I don't expect a lot of intelligence from radical Marxist professors, but you'd think at least a bit of self-awareness would come from a situation that, frankly, they should have learned their lesson from by now.
00:00:13.060I'm talking, of course, about Laurier University professors Herbert Pimlott and Nathan Rambicana, the two professors who were in the meeting, the infamous meeting, in November of 2017 with former Laurier grad student and teaching assistant Lindsay Shepard.
00:00:27.560You've heard the audio from the meeting now, which Lindsay Shepard had the foresight to record and then leaked to media outlets.
00:00:34.540In the audio, the professors reprimand her for daring to show a public access television clip of Jordan Peterson debating gender pronouns.
00:00:43.240The clip from TVO, the Ontario equivalent of CBC, was not too offensive for the public broadcaster, but for a Laurier University classroom was just too dangerous for students.
00:00:55.200The professor said it contributed to a toxicity in the classroom.
00:01:00.020They said that it was offensive to show Jordan Peterson without criticizing him in the same way that it would be to show a clip of, you guessed it, Adolf Hitler.
00:01:11.360Well, in the little over a year since that story became international news, it's been a spectacularly eye-opening experience for many people about the state of free speech or lack thereof on college campuses.
00:01:23.560Laurier University was forced to apologize to Lindsay Shepard.
00:01:28.180Nathan Rambucana not only apologized to Lindsay Shepard for the meeting and also apologized to Jordan Peterson because he said that it was wrong and untrue and should not have happened for Peterson to have been described that way.
00:01:42.000So after these very public apologies and international embarrassment for Laurier University, what are the professors doing?
00:01:49.620Well, according to a Canadian press report, they are suing Lindsay Shepard, filing a third-party claim against her, saying that she's responsible for any defamation of Jordan Peterson.
00:02:00.740Now, they filed this to defend themselves against a lawsuit that Jordan Peterson is filing against them.
00:02:07.920But here's where things don't make sense.
00:02:10.020The professors say that they didn't defame Jordan Peterson, that he wasn't defamed, that he didn't suffer any damages.
00:02:16.080But this latest third-party filing against Lindsay Shepard changes that a bit.
00:02:20.860They're saying, okay, well, maybe he was, but if he was, it's not our fault, it's Lindsay Shepard's fault, because she was the one that shared the audio.
00:02:29.320She was the one that published the words that, well, we said.
00:02:33.700Yeah, it doesn't really make much sense, does it?
00:02:35.720They're saying that this thing didn't happen, but if it did, it was Lindsay Shepard's fault, even though, in the case of Nathan Rambucana, he already apologized because of an admission that what he did was wrong.
00:02:47.040So, they seem to have forgotten the apology for the thing that they now say didn't happen.
00:02:52.780Yeah, this is pretty much, as I said earlier, not expecting much intelligence from neo-Marxist professors.
00:02:59.040We now have a professor suing his former student, someone that he said in a very open and candid letter he wishes he had nurtured more and mentored more.
00:03:09.500And now he's going to be putting her in a seat where she has to defend herself.
00:03:13.840This is a recent graduate, someone who has, by a lawsuit she's filed against the school and the professors, been left unemployable in her chosen field because of what this ordeal did to her.
00:03:25.700And this sends a chill across campuses, not just in Canada, but in the United States as well, that not only will you be subjected to these closed-door witch trials if you say the wrong thing based on what a left-wing professor thinks,
00:03:39.220but further to that, when you try to stand your ground, you could find yourself facing a lawsuit from these people.
00:03:45.900They just can't get enough of trying to drag Lindsay Shepard through the ringer.
00:03:49.960And remember, Lindsay Shepard is only a household name because she had the foresight to record this.
00:03:55.540Without that audio, we would never know the scope of what happened at Laurier and what we know is happening at campuses across North America.
00:04:03.360This is why it's never been more important to stand up and stand firm and say, yes, we must preserve and protect free speech on campuses.
00:04:11.100We must expose the professors who are not supporting free thought, the professors who are punishing people for daring to have a controversial opinion
00:04:19.360or daring to show a video clip of someone else with a controversial opinion.
00:04:24.280We don't know what's going to happen in court yet.
00:04:26.140The judge could throw this whole thing out.
00:04:27.940Remember, this is only going to proceed if the judge agrees that Jordan Peterson has been defamed
00:04:34.000and then agrees that Lindsay Shepard bears responsibility for it.
00:04:38.320But again, it's another twist in a saga that shouldn't exist in the first place
00:04:42.760and further prove that the left just doesn't get it.
00:04:46.480They don't get that they're the ones in the wrong here, not Lindsay Shepard.
00:04:50.120For the True North Initiative, I'm Andrew Lawton.