Rebel News Podcast - SHEILA GUNN REID ｜ Professor David Haskell on COVID groupthink and the death of divergent views on campus

00:00:00.620 Oh, hey Rebels, it's me, Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're listening to a free audio-only

00:00:05.200 recording of my weekly Wednesday night show, The Gunn Show.

00:00:07.780 However, this is the internet, so you can listen or watch whenever you feel like, whenever

00:00:13.240 is convenient for you.

00:00:14.360 Tonight my guest is Professor David Haskell of Laurier University, and we are discussing

00:00:21.120 the state of free speech on campus, especially for conservatives, and especially during the

00:00:31.440 times of COVID.

00:00:32.760 Now, if you like listening to the show, then I promise you're going to love watching it,

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00:01:17.600 And now please enjoy this free, audio-only version of my show.

00:01:23.480 Is free thought completely lost in academia, or has it been yet another fatality of COVID?

00:01:29.800 I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gunn Show.

00:01:47.600 The lesson from history is clear.

00:01:53.220 Your only hope is to become organized and active.

00:01:57.760 Be willing to sacrifice today for freedom tomorrow.

00:02:03.600 Take the long view of the situation, not the short fix.

00:02:08.200 Okay, so let's say that things suddenly change, and you can go back and complete your university

00:02:14.640 degree.

00:02:16.100 Well, if that's the case, God bless you.

00:02:18.580 Go there.

00:02:19.300 But don't fall back into apathy.

00:02:22.440 Because what good is a university degree when in a year or two, the government says,

00:02:26.760 you can't work, because you won't think or act according to their next mandate.

00:02:34.160 I kid you not when I say your time is short.

00:02:37.760 Start protesting with signs that embarrass these tyrants.

00:02:42.580 Write letters and make videos exposing them.

00:02:45.980 Send them out widely.

00:02:47.780 Share them on social media.

00:02:49.480 Put them on your university's social media.

00:02:52.680 Get politically active with parties that stand up for freedom.

00:02:58.280 And if you go back to school at some point, go into every meeting that is focused on social

00:03:02.800 justice and ask the professors and students in attendance, where were you when I was expelled?

00:03:11.460 Where were you when people were being fired?

00:03:14.860 Where were you?

00:03:17.100 Wilfred Laurier University professor David Haskell has been an outspoken critic of vaccine

00:03:22.120 mandates, lockdowns, and the intolerance of divergent ideas in academia and on Canada's

00:03:28.100 university campuses.

00:03:29.680 Now, a few days ago, Haskell spoke at an event held to support students who are resisting

00:03:33.800 vaccine mandates for moral, medical, or ethical reasons.

00:03:37.400 The event was held at Trinity Bible Chapel, which is, as some of you may know, a high-profile

00:03:42.360 lockdown resistor church headed by Pastor Jacob Rayome in Waterloo, Ontario.

00:03:47.460 Haskell recorded his speech.

00:03:48.820 And since he's a university professor, it was obviously meticulously researched and footnoted.

00:03:54.800 But when he put it up on YouTube, it survived all of 180 seconds before it was taken down

00:04:00.200 and censored by big tech.

00:04:02.000 Well, I'm not one to just let big tech censorship happen.

00:04:05.520 If I can get around it in my way, I will.

00:04:08.180 So, joining me tonight to talk about censorship, free speech, academia, and COVID, and what we

00:04:14.620 all do next, is Professor David Haskell in an interview we recorded yesterday afternoon.

00:04:28.200 Joining me now from his home is Professor David Haskell.

00:04:32.060 Well, it's to my great embarrassment that I have not had you on the show sooner, considering

00:04:36.480 your struggles with free speech, as I would say that you're someone behind the enemy lines

00:04:41.540 at Wilfrid Laurier University, specifically because you are a self-identified Christian male

00:04:50.380 conservative working in liberal arts.

00:04:53.640 Now, I wanted to have you on the show initially to talk about the letter that you wrote advocating

00:05:01.360 against vaccine mandates at the school.

00:05:04.700 Why don't you tell us, though, before we get into that, a little bit about yourself?

00:05:09.140 Well, as you say, I'm teaching at a public university.

00:05:12.880 I'm one of the rare breed.

00:05:14.980 I'm a conservative at a public university.

00:05:17.040 When you look at the studies, that's probably about 6% of the professoriate, which is minimal

00:05:23.080 and reducing every year.

00:05:24.960 And I'm also a little bit different because I actually speak up.

00:05:29.120 And there are many conservatives on campus who don't speak up.

00:05:34.040 And as a result, they have less and less of a chance to be able to say what they stand

00:05:40.300 for.

00:05:40.580 Um, and as we've seen, there's a purge going on and, and maybe this is going to light the

00:05:46.420 fire under those who have been silent for so long.

00:05:49.260 Yeah, I think a lot of people, uh, COVID has really been the point at which they are mugged

00:05:55.260 by reality where, you know, they didn't speak up about the compelled speech of pronoun use

00:06:01.820 or any of those things because it didn't directly affect them.

00:06:04.400 But I think the tentacles of the octopus of COVID and all the restrictions that come with

00:06:09.600 it and the restrictions on civil liberties for a lot of people, this is their come to

00:06:15.000 Jesus moment for a lack of a better word.

00:06:17.300 Now you did write a letter, you and some of your other colleagues, you wrote a letter to

00:06:21.120 the university opposing the vaccine mandate.

00:06:24.100 Can you tell us a little bit about that, but also the reception from the university and,

00:06:29.900 and maybe I guess some of the students too regarding that.

00:06:33.080 Right.

00:06:33.860 Well, uh, this was way back in September when we wrote this, uh, the letter and, um, it

00:06:38.620 was myself and some colleagues from Laurier, also a colleague from Waterloo.

00:06:43.120 Um, and the idea was that we just wanted to show that from a legal perspective, from an

00:06:48.320 ethical perspective and a scientific perspective, there were really good reasons to be against

00:06:53.220 this vaccine mandate.

00:06:54.860 And we wanted to really remove the opportunity for our, our university to say, we didn't know

00:07:02.620 their, their ability to deny, because we offered the legal arguments.

00:07:07.480 We, we offered the scientific arguments, the ethical arguments.

00:07:11.160 And yet the response from, from them was that essentially, well, the government says we can

00:07:16.240 do it.

00:07:16.720 We can do it.

00:07:17.940 And now the interesting thing, Sheila, is that the government actually, at least in

00:07:22.580 Ontario, gave them the option.

00:07:24.360 You know, you can do testing.

00:07:25.960 You don't have to implement this particular mandate in such a way that students are expelled

00:07:32.320 or, or people are fired.

00:07:34.100 You can just do regular testing.

00:07:36.060 And yet our universities across Ontario still chose to go the most punitive route, despite

00:07:42.920 not having to.

00:07:43.600 No, we were talking off camera.

00:07:46.220 And for me, I really worry about the state of our civil institution, civil society going

00:07:53.780 forward, but also businesses too, when we are ultimately purging the most moral amongst

00:08:00.080 us from positions of leadership.

00:08:02.760 When I think about a business, the person who is governed by their conscience above all else

00:08:07.640 and their ethics, that's the person I want running the show.

00:08:10.740 And yet those are the people actively being shown the door by their employers in the public

00:08:16.940 and the private sector because they resist the vaccine mandate.

00:08:20.300 And it's happening for a whole host of reasons.

00:08:22.660 These people are often painted as anti-vaxxers, but a lot of times they're just conscientious

00:08:28.900 objectors.

00:08:29.760 They're people who won't divulge their own vaccine status because they don't want to participate

00:08:34.520 in the secretory system of it all.

00:08:37.340 And we can even go further and say that they're pro-truth.

00:08:40.740 And so you're talking about who's getting purged.

00:08:44.140 It's people.

00:08:45.400 There are people in my camp, fellow professors, who are fully vexed.

00:08:50.560 But what they really are objecting to is this notion of compelled behavior.

00:08:57.520 They're objecting to the erosion of freedom and rights.

00:09:00.940 And so this is what we need to be concerned about.

00:09:03.800 And to your point, the people who have stood up to this are people who are standing up for

00:09:07.660 truth, but they're also being punished in terms of the student body.

00:09:12.540 The students I've found who are standing up for this are those who have taken it upon

00:09:17.980 themselves to not go with the standard narrative, but actually research.

00:09:22.640 These are the kind of students you want at a university.

00:09:24.880 And yet they are the ones being punished.

00:09:28.180 Now, what has the reception been like to your letter from the faculty, your fellow faculty,

00:09:35.400 but also the students too?

00:09:37.320 Because the students can sometimes get a little bit prickly when their professors say and do

00:09:42.700 things that offend their delicate sensibilities.

00:09:45.620 Well, we've got two issues.

00:09:48.460 The letter, which was written in September, has kind of gone under the mat.

00:09:54.380 There's also the video that was just done of a speech that I gave.

00:09:57.960 And that's the one that really has probably caught the more attention of others.

00:10:03.480 Although I haven't had people from the university negatively comment.

00:10:09.620 I'm getting a lot of good comments from those who have been affected by this mandate, and

00:10:15.300 they're very supportive.

00:10:16.600 But you ask, what kind of atmosphere is on our universities?

00:10:20.360 Let me tell you a quick story.

00:10:22.080 So one of the courses I teach is public speaking.

00:10:25.100 And in that course, I get them as a final assignment to write a persuasive speech.

00:10:29.900 And this year, I said, what I want you to do is to write a persuasive speech on why the

00:10:35.720 vaccine mandates here on the university campus are a flawed idea or are maybe not a good thing.

00:10:45.360 So I wanted them to take that position because it's the hard position.

00:10:49.500 It's the hard position because it goes against the narrative.

00:10:53.120 And if you really want to show your skills as a persuasive speech writer, you take the

00:10:57.220 hardest position and argue it.

00:10:58.740 So it was completely pedagogically sound.

00:11:01.820 Well, what I had was a rebellion in my class.

00:11:05.100 The students, not all of them, but a significant number of the students refused to look at the

00:11:13.480 other side of the argument.

00:11:15.340 Not only that, they were able to appeal to my boss, the dean, and get him to challenge me

00:11:21.920 on the assignment.

00:11:23.560 Now, my issue here is, one, as a professor, I'm supposed to be the expert when it comes to

00:11:29.960 the pedagogical framework of my assignments.

00:11:34.080 But implicit in that was this idea that we shouldn't expose students to ideas they don't

00:11:40.880 like.

00:11:41.800 And I'm not talking about radical ideas.

00:11:44.040 I'm talking about ideas based in empirical evidence and good moral reasoning and just

00:11:49.540 saying to them, listen, I want you to go and explore the other side of this issue only insofar

00:11:55.580 as you can find the good empirical evidence and the strong moral reasoning, which is a

00:11:59.640 completely legitimate thing to ask.

00:12:01.980 But they rebelled.

00:12:03.340 And they were supported by administration.

00:12:05.900 So this is what we now see in university.

00:12:09.140 The main idea, or I'm sorry, the main impetus of a university, which used to be seek the truth,

00:12:15.680 is now protect you from ideas that you might not like.

00:12:18.700 Now, speaking of people being protected from ideas that they might not like, big tech is

00:12:24.840 really great at that.

00:12:26.620 It's one of the things we struggle with a lot at Rebel News.

00:12:30.260 A lot of times we just have to double up on our work and publish two versions of the same

00:12:35.120 video, one accurate one and one self-censored YouTube one that directs people to go to Rumble

00:12:41.860 if they want the full story.

00:12:43.560 And you've experienced this firsthand.

00:12:45.200 You had a speech, and you'll tell us more about this, at Trinity Bible College.

00:12:50.420 That's Pastor Jacob Rayom, who has held true to his conscience and rejected many of the

00:12:59.500 lockdown restrictions on churches to great personal cost.

00:13:03.940 You had a speech there that you hope to inspire courage amongst a group of students.

00:13:09.980 And your video lasted three minutes on YouTube.

00:13:12.940 Yeah, that's right.

00:13:15.760 Now, happily, it's up on Rumble, and I would encourage people.

00:13:20.900 It's on BitChute as well. 1.00

00:13:22.100 And thankfully, there are these other platforms.

00:13:25.240 But I got it immediately, about three minutes after I posted it on YouTube, I got a notice

00:13:31.760 that it had been taken down because I had violated the community standards.

00:13:35.600 And in particular, it said that I had violated something like the scientific consensus.

00:13:43.700 Now, the irony here, Sheila, is that I posted, I linked to the academic studies that were supporting

00:13:52.920 my position.

00:13:53.860 So my position was there is valid reason to be against the vaccine mandate because we've

00:13:58.980 now seen through numerous academic studies that the un-vaxxed and the vaxxed, they both

00:14:06.440 spread and catch COVID in near equal numbers.

00:14:10.800 So by having a vaccine mandate, scientifically, there's no validity.

00:14:15.340 It doesn't stop anything.

00:14:16.900 So I linked to those studies from the New England Journal of Medicine, British Medical Journal,

00:14:23.460 The Lancet.

00:14:24.460 These are the top medical journals in the world, and I linked to them.

00:14:27.980 Similarly, I linked to the studies that show that the vaccine itself has now been shown

00:14:34.900 to be a greater risk to young people than COVID itself.

00:14:41.760 And now that wasn't my opinion.

00:14:43.020 I linked to the studies, again, in the video description.

00:14:47.460 So I had proof.

00:14:49.560 But the fact that YouTube would not take these academic journals as part of the scientific

00:14:58.140 conversation, there are only certain ideas that they will allow.

00:15:02.800 And this was clear evidence of that.

00:15:04.500 So anyway, I was off YouTube in a matter of three minutes.

00:15:07.240 Isn't it, though, counterintuitive to scientific thinking to decide that there is an absolute

00:15:15.260 consensus on something?

00:15:17.120 Correct me if I'm wrong.

00:15:18.040 That's the most dangerous thing to science.

00:15:21.420 Science doesn't work if you say, well, that is, you know, the debates close.

00:15:26.520 If that were the case, we'd still think that the world was flat.

00:15:29.200 We'd still think that the, you know, well, we wouldn't have any of the advances that we

00:15:35.600 have today.

00:15:36.600 And so we want that one voice, that one Galileo who says, wait a minute, wait a minute.

00:15:43.320 We've got to talk about this sun-earth thing, right?

00:15:46.020 We want those voices, those dissenting voices, because maybe they're correct.

00:15:49.900 But now, on any number of topics, we don't get that.

00:15:54.700 And as you move into a world, a society, where the facts don't align with what is promoted

00:16:03.840 as truth, you're going to get in a lot of trouble.

00:16:07.360 You know, eventually, you want the person who is doing the surgery on you to actually

00:16:13.640 know the facts, not just the ideology.

00:16:15.920 You want the person building your buildings, flying your planes, et cetera.

00:16:20.600 Facts really matter.

00:16:22.000 Empirical evidence really matters.

00:16:24.500 You've written quite extensively on this in the past.

00:16:27.560 And again, this whole idea that there are certain things that we are allowed to think and not

00:16:32.460 allowed to examine on the flip side.

00:16:36.800 For me, I think that the greatest advances in humanity and the well-being of man have come

00:16:44.020 from a time when we were freest to think.

00:16:47.300 And yet, not only are we seeing governments telling us what we can and can't think,

00:16:52.760 we also have the censorship of big tech, since social media is the new public square,

00:16:59.860 limiting the free and liberal exchange of ideas.

00:17:02.580 We have people making our minds up for us now.

00:17:06.080 What does this mean for the future of mankind, I guess, now that I have you?

00:17:12.100 Where does this take us?

00:17:13.500 Well, we don't really even have to guess.

00:17:18.180 We can say, well, what was it like before the Enlightenment?

00:17:21.280 What was it like before we said, let's put aside our tribal differences and agree on a

00:17:26.580 standard that anyone could come to?

00:17:29.020 And the standard was empirical evidence and rational thought.

00:17:33.140 And so when empirical evidence becomes the standard, it means that you will advance.

00:17:40.480 Prejudice is as much as possible left to the side.

00:17:44.060 But when it becomes the idea that my personal experience becomes the truth, well, then you'll

00:17:53.260 never have consensus and you're back to tribalism.

00:17:55.940 I really worry about that because the people at my university and universities across Canada

00:18:01.700 have couched this in really clever language.

00:18:04.620 So now empirical evidence is called white supremacy, right? 0.92

00:18:10.760 And I hate white supremacy as I was taught what it was as a youth. 0.94

00:18:17.540 White supremacy is a guy walking around with a hood and he's chanting KKK some different 0.99

00:18:25.480 chants.

00:18:25.960 That's not what they're saying.

00:18:28.880 They're saying that anything that advances what would be Western values, Western culture,

00:18:34.880 empirical evidence, it's now deemed white supremacy.

00:18:38.240 So they flipped the script.

00:18:40.080 They've created new definitions so that they can get rid of all the advances we've made in

00:18:45.360 terms of moving beyond tribalism and accepting standard and objective measures.

00:18:52.200 They want to get away from that.

00:18:53.320 And the reason they do is they know that their arguments wouldn't hand, wouldn't stand up

00:18:57.360 to the facts.

00:18:58.120 So let's get rid of this reliance on facts so that anything goes.

00:19:02.840 And in particular, what they're trying to force, which is a very, very terrible, nonsensical,

00:19:08.780 unscientific mandate and ideas.

00:19:13.560 Yeah, it's true.

00:19:14.460 We hear all the time, my truth, my truth, my truth.

00:19:17.420 Well, there's no my truth in your truth.

00:19:18.960 There's just truth.

00:19:19.900 There's experiences and a worldview through which you look at the world.

00:19:24.600 But truth is a thing.

00:19:26.500 And apparently it's just not a thing anymore when you deal with people from the left side

00:19:31.700 of the spectrum.

00:19:32.220 But it's also seeping into people I thought were conservative are sort of adopting these

00:19:37.600 things.

00:19:38.020 And I think it's because, as you point out in your article in C2C Journal, that, you know,

00:19:46.800 some 60% of conservative professors reported hostility towards their beliefs from faculty

00:19:52.300 colleagues.

00:19:52.980 And so people who are not as strong, more of strong moral character, people who are not

00:20:03.760 resilient to bullying, it's pretty easy to just say, fine, I'll do what you want me to

00:20:10.360 just leave me alone.

00:20:11.500 Um, and, uh, I think that leaves fewer and fewer people on the battlefield of new ideas.

00:20:18.120 And not only that, it's such flawed thinking because they don't leave you alone.

00:20:21.420 Never, never, never.

00:20:23.280 It's, and let's say that you do manage to get them to leave you alone.

00:20:28.720 If you've raised your children in the same values that you have, your children are doomed.

00:20:38.420 They're coming after your kids, right?

00:20:41.520 This is the last chance to stand.

00:20:45.320 So COVID has been an eye opener.

00:20:48.840 COVID's been an eye opener because it's shown many people who weren't aware that the popular

00:20:56.340 narrative from government, media, and academia often doesn't have any relation to the facts.

00:21:04.980 And in my, in my earlier career as a researcher, I was, uh, heavily interested in, and published

00:21:11.600 in this area of media bias.

00:21:14.020 And I've never seen anything like this.

00:21:16.780 So I've mentioned numerous studies that have appeared in top journals that show that the

00:21:24.900 unvaccinated and the vaccinated spread and catch COVID in near equal numbers or equal numbers,

00:21:30.800 depending on, on the study, which shows that these vaccine mandates are useless.

00:21:35.320 They're not scientifically valid, but I cannot find any reports or few reports on these studies.

00:21:45.960 I, I can find them and I, I'm not a, a medical researcher, but I can find them.

00:21:52.180 Where are the medical reporters at these national newspapers and these national television broadcasts?

00:21:59.540 Why are they not broadcasting these?

00:22:02.020 We have children, young men in particular, who are suffering vaccine injuries at levels

00:22:10.360 never seen in the history of any vaccine in our country and try and find a news article

00:22:17.840 in the mainstream media about this.

00:22:19.800 So as someone who has studied media bias, there's never been such misinformation.

00:22:29.440 And I saw it coming.

00:22:31.320 There are close, close seconds, but COVID really it's taking the cake.

00:22:35.640 But what we have to wonder is, so what's it going to be like at the next mandate?

00:22:40.140 What's it going to be like the next crisis?

00:22:42.780 You know, that's a, an interesting point because we saw all these tried and true tested methods of shutting people up

00:22:50.600 that really didn't apply to COVID, but they use them anyways.

00:22:55.100 They managed to shoehorn them in.

00:22:58.040 For example, criticism about the Chinese government's secrecy, about the origins of COVID.

00:23:03.740 Well, that's white supremacy because you're being critical of China and normal people say, well, I'm, I'm being critical of the Chinese government.

00:23:12.240 That's definitely not the same as the poor, long-suffering Chinese people.

00:23:16.700 But it was, it was all the things that they've used to shut you up in the past.

00:23:20.300 Nobody wants to be called a racist.

00:23:21.740 That's the worst thing ever to be called a racist.

00:23:24.580 And it forces you to self-censor.

00:23:27.200 And then they tried it all again with COVID and it works.

00:23:30.920 And, you know, they, they marginalize the dissenters.

00:23:34.380 You're an, an anti-science, anti-vaxxer, the protests against the restrictions.

00:23:40.260 Somehow it makes it into a CBC headline that those are also racist.

00:23:45.000 They're, you know, they're anti-everything.

00:23:47.500 It's interesting to see the, as you point out, the media bias, the marginalization of people who just say, I just want to be left alone.

00:23:58.180 I just want my civil liberties back.

00:23:59.600 There are a lot of people who don't care anything about COVID.

00:24:02.580 They just want to be left alone.

00:24:04.460 And even they are lumped into this mess.

00:24:07.660 Yeah.

00:24:07.960 Yeah.

00:24:08.260 I mean, it's interesting.

00:24:10.500 And I bring it to the attention of your viewers, because this is something that we really, really need to be aware of.

00:24:16.880 I'm sure they are, but let's just put a fine point on it.

00:24:20.060 When someone is accused of racism, be aware that that is probably used by their opponent because the opponent doesn't have an argument.

00:24:30.640 So that's, we've got to be able to look at it and switch it around.

00:24:33.480 We've got to say, okay, as soon as somebody says they're racist, they're white supremacist, know that that is actually code for, I don't have an argument.

00:24:42.640 So we've got to keep, we've got to keep reinforcing that.

00:24:45.000 Also, the, the idea around COVID has really made it clear that they will always use an argument from public safety.

00:24:55.500 So anytime you hear a government official and academic media talking about safety, your best bet would be to think this is a lie.

00:25:06.840 This is not about safety.

00:25:08.560 But they'll couch it in safety, because the left have always been very good at changing the meaning of words and word manipulation.

00:25:19.380 But, but in this regard, they have just, they've excelled.

00:25:22.920 So I would, I'd caution your audience or I'd make your audience aware, whenever they hear the word, this is for safety, whether it's COVID or whether it's Trudeau saying to keep the internet safe, to keep people from harm.

00:25:35.040 Then you immediately, your antenna picks up and you say, there's a lie coming.

00:25:40.980 It's not about safety.

00:25:43.060 And so we've got to have this mechanism and teach our kids too.

00:25:46.440 If you hear the word safety, know that a lie is coming.

00:25:49.880 It's not about safety.

00:25:51.120 If you hear the word, this is white supremacy, know that it isn't.

00:25:54.700 Know that they are about to lie to you and they don't have facts.

00:25:57.580 So let's keep reinforcing that to our friends, our family, because if they can just have that, that mental jujitsu happen immediately, then it will really, it just kind of keeps you on top of the information that you're being asked to accept.

00:26:14.400 I think two of the most manipulated words of our time are harm and violence.

00:26:19.120 The left has really done a great job changing what those mean.

00:26:22.520 Harm now means things that I don't want to hear and violence also means words that I don't want to hear or things that I disagree with.

00:26:29.940 And so it's funny how we've sort of seen the shift happen that violence was actually a physical thing.

00:26:37.000 Now it's turned into an emotional thing, but because we still use that word to describe whatever's happening,

00:26:43.740 the left feels perfectly justified in reacting with physical violence against words they don't like, because it's all the same.

00:26:53.580 It's just violence to them.

00:26:54.800 And those are the real world consequences of shifting the meanings or expanding the meanings of words.

00:27:01.720 Yeah.

00:27:02.480 And this brings back, this is a long time ago now in terms of media history, but it was 2017.

00:27:11.000 You may recall the Lindsay Shepard scandal that happened at Laurier.

00:27:16.420 So we had a grad student, Lindsay Shepard, and she showed a video that had previously been shown on public TV, right?

00:27:24.060 Public TV to hundreds of thousands of people.

00:27:26.700 And it was Jordan Peterson, and he was talking about his concerns over pronouns and how they were being forced through the human rights tribunals and through the Canadian government.

00:27:37.900 People were being forced to use words that they didn't agree with their belief.

00:27:40.680 And she showed this.

00:27:41.960 She showed this in her class.

00:27:43.800 She was a tutorial leader, and she showed it in her class.

00:27:46.360 And then she was brought before a tribunal of people from my university, and she was told that she'd committed a hate crime.

00:27:54.880 She was told that she'd done violence to the class.

00:27:57.400 And again, this is the way that the left will misconstrue and they'll use words in a way that they were never intended to be used.

00:28:07.180 But as an academic whose research area is often in the area of language, I looked at that, and it really did give me pause.

00:28:16.300 And I'll just commend this to your readers, sorry, your viewers, if they're interested.

00:28:20.480 I wrote a piece called Words Lose Their Meaning at Wilfrid Laurier.

00:28:25.740 And it's a really in-depth look, and it really just takes on what you were already talking about, how they've been able to change the meaning of harm to their purposes, and then it allows them, it gives them the ability to say, well, you harmed me, now I can harm you.

00:28:41.040 So if someone really wanted to go in-depth on that, fun little piece, it ran in Quillette, Words Lose Their Meaning, and it's exactly what you're talking about.

00:28:49.800 Now, I know I've kept you longer than I said I would, but I want to ask you one thing before I go.

00:28:55.560 As a mom whose children are approaching university, I've got one that sort of went a different way, did the trade route, good for him.

00:29:03.760 But, you know, as somebody with daughters who are now sort of headed towards university, what can we do as parents to affect change within the atmosphere of the university to make this not necessarily an easier goal for our children, but to maybe enable, I don't know what the right word is.

00:29:27.700 How do we make this a more tolerable experience for our children, I guess, as parents, or as, you know, by putting pressure on the school?

00:29:37.380 How do we make this better, I guess, is my question.

00:29:40.760 So let's just look at the statistical reality.

00:29:45.660 94, that's probably a low number, 94% of university professors are on the left or far left.

00:29:52.640 95%, so that's a statistical reality.

00:29:57.200 When you survey them and you ask them about conservatives, around 50% say that they see conservatives, especially conservative Christians, as,

00:30:10.560 I want to, this is a quote from a study that was done by Sam Reimer in Sociology for Religion,

00:30:16.100 but the quote is, they see them as enemies to be opposed.

00:30:21.320 And so I'm, I'm doing the paraphrase, but it's pretty close to that.

00:30:24.200 So that, and then you look, and a study done by Yul Inbar at Tilburg University,

00:30:31.040 looked at, again, these solidly left-leaning professors, and they were asked,

00:30:38.480 would you, would you sink a grant? 0.94

00:30:42.580 Would you sink a grant, that is to say, dismiss it, crash it, kill it, if you knew that it was from a conservative?

00:30:50.360 Similarly, would you prevent a conservative from being hired?

00:30:54.980 And about a quarter said yes.

00:30:57.740 Now, that was a quarter who said yes and knew they were being surveyed.

00:31:02.520 How many were thinking it but didn't want to admit it?

00:31:05.040 So if they're willing to do this to someone who is on, on level with them, equal, a colleague,

00:31:12.380 what would they do to your child who has no power?

00:31:17.300 So you're saying, what can be done?

00:31:19.600 What can be done is a new university system can be created.

00:31:23.960 And we could starve the programs that are most hostile to those who think differently.

00:31:30.720 And you can go and you can check out which of those programs they are.

00:31:37.080 My own children are in engineering and science, and my oldest has joined the military to get a trade.

00:31:46.940 So I'm just saying that the advice, how can you make it better?

00:31:53.580 I don't know if I'd phrase that question that way.

00:31:59.220 So maybe we can't.

00:32:00.680 Maybe the system is lost, and we need a new one.

00:32:07.240 I guess that's my answer.

00:32:10.580 I mean, the statistics out there say there are not a lot of people willing to promote diversity of ideas at our universities anymore.

00:32:21.120 And the policies coming from our lead administrators, our top administrators, are moving in just the opposite direction.

00:32:28.220 Well, on that depressing note, Dr. Professor Haskell, I want to give you an opportunity to let people know where they can find you,

00:32:40.740 where they can see some of the speeches that you've done or read some of your work.

00:32:45.020 Because I find you very fascinating, and I'm just so surprised that you work in liberal arts.

00:32:50.740 But it's good to know that there are still some good ones out there.

00:32:54.960 Well, thank you.

00:32:55.600 Well, they can follow me on Twitter.

00:32:57.440 I'm at DMillardHaskell.

00:33:02.180 That's my Twitter handle.

00:33:03.680 I also have a YouTube channel.

00:33:05.640 Apparently, it's still up.

00:33:07.000 The last video I did isn't up on it, but they could follow me there.

00:33:12.220 Also, that's about it, to be honest.

00:33:14.720 If they were to Google my name, I'd definitely have a reach in terms of my written work, whether it's Quillette, C2C Journal, or different national newspapers.

00:33:27.120 I've got a number of op-eds out there from the last five years that speak to these very issues.

00:33:32.880 Great.

00:33:33.040 Well, thank you.

00:33:35.520 I'm so sorry that it was so long for you to come on the show, but hopefully you'll agree to be on again very, very soon.

00:33:43.140 Absolutely, Sheila.

00:33:45.380 Thank you for what you're doing.

00:33:46.680 And as we see what isn't being said in the national media, we see the incredible need for what you're doing.

00:33:56.220 So thanks and keep it up.

00:33:57.600 I will.

00:33:58.140 Thank you very much.

00:33:58.880 Thank you very much.

00:34:28.880 Thank you so much for tuning in.

00:34:43.240 I'll see everybody back here in the same time, in the same place next week.

00:34:47.020 And of course, remember, don't let the government or big tech tell you that you've had too much to think.

00:34:58.880 I'll see you next week.

Rebel News Podcast - December 02, 2021

SHEILA GUNN REID ｜ Professor David Haskell on COVID groupthink and the death of divergent views on campus

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