The Candice Malcolm Show - Diversity and Exclusion： An Exclusive Q&A with Lindsay Shepherd

00:00:00.000 so to everyone tuning in hi and welcome to a special true north event which is being recorded

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00:01:06.880 for this feel for the uh for the true north insiders club as far as the event tonight i'm delighted to be

00:01:12.600 joined by true north fellow and newly published author lindsey shepherd lindsey thank you so much

00:01:17.760 for joining me and congratulations a big congratulations on the release of your new book

00:01:22.640 it's excellent i can't recommend it enough i've had the pleasure of reading it already and i can't

00:01:27.460 recommend it enough the book is called diversity and exclusion confronting the campus free speech

00:01:33.600 crisis and it was released uh i think it was just released a few days ago how long has it been lindsey

00:01:38.860 i think it was march 24th so about six seven days a week yeah okay all right well it's already got some

00:01:44.820 very positive reviews on amazon i think you've got a 4.8 out of five star ranking which i believe is higher

00:01:51.240 than any of my books so that's great the people who are reading this book love it uh let me just

00:01:56.280 tell you a little bit about the book and then we will get into our q a with the author lindsey

00:02:00.840 shepherd so everyone watching this is probably very familiar with what happened to you but let me just

00:02:05.900 go over it a little bit back in 2017 then 22 year old graduate student and teaching assistant lindsey

00:02:12.300 shepherd was brought into a disciplinary meeting where two professors and a diversity office bureaucrat

00:02:18.020 told her that one or more people had complained about the communication studies class that she led

00:02:23.820 she's never told how many people complained nor the alleged complaints uh what they said lindsey was 1.00

00:02:29.600 accused of creating a toxic climate of targeting trans folks of spreading transphobia and of violating

00:02:36.740 wilfrid laureate university's sexual assault and gender violence policy that that was always just so

00:02:43.260 shocking to me that they that they told you that you had violated a sexual assault and gendered

00:02:48.380 violence policy is outrageous um and all of that just for the sin of playing a five-minute clip

00:02:53.740 about pronouns in her classroom and leading a neutral conversation on the topic as we all know that

00:03:00.460 was five-minute clip uh was of dr dordan peterson the famous clip of him on um the show with steve

00:03:07.740 pakin um on ontario television uh so the game changer in all this of course is that lindsey secretly

00:03:13.500 recorded the disciplinary meeting and released the audio to the media in the ensuing year of graduate

00:03:18.880 school lindsey staved off university censorship clashed with academic activist cabal that was up to get her 1.00

00:03:25.320 and dealt with going from a no one to going viral this tell-all book reveals what it was like

00:03:30.780 to be the center figure of a national controversy so again welcome lindsey and congrats on the book

00:03:37.360 thank you so so before we get into the content of the book i want to just ask you a little bit of

00:03:43.900 a few questions about the process because i know a lot of people want to write a book a lot of people

00:03:49.280 say they're going to write a book but not very many people can actually finish it and publish it so

00:03:53.740 first of all what was it that made you want to write this book

00:03:57.480 i would say the main motivation was getting the whole story and all of its complexities

00:04:04.600 universities onto paper in one document where the whole story is there um and it was also for my

00:04:11.740 own benefit because i repeated the story of the laurier controversy so many times and now i can just tell

00:04:16.980 people just buy the book i don't have to i don't have to explain it anymore um and there's so much

00:04:23.520 that um well i mean the laurier controversy was big in the news in 2017 nationally of course but also in

00:04:30.520 some international outlets and the story in the news was kind of you know there was the disciplinary

00:04:36.380 meeting and the secret recording then the university kind of flubbed with their response

00:04:42.060 and then the university apologized and said that there was no complaint after all and i think for a

00:04:47.580 lot of people who were just following the mainstream media stories um that was kind of that and the

00:04:53.040 the university apologized and there we go but you know there was so much more happening behind the

00:04:58.500 scenes and there was so much more that happened after and a lot of it isn't necessarily newsworthy

00:05:04.080 it's just things like being gradually alienated by your peers and by your professors um and that's

00:05:11.640 i think an interesting and relatable story for a lot of people that you know should be a book

00:05:17.480 well absolutely and i think one of the interesting things that really comes through

00:05:22.120 in the book lindsey is i mean i find it sort of the irony of the whole thing is that they accused

00:05:28.560 you of bullying they accused you of creating a toxic environment of being harsh to trans people

00:05:34.480 um but but in reality what was happening was that you were the one that was being bullied you were the

00:05:39.640 one that was being uh sort of canceled at your own university and i think that most people wouldn't

00:05:45.540 have realized that like you said you know the university issued an apology story and a story done deal we all

00:05:50.780 lived happily ever after but but the reality was was so much more complex so when when you were putting

00:05:56.340 together this book and writing it what what did you find was the biggest sort of challenge or what was

00:06:00.960 the hardest part about writing this book um so this book is a memoir so i kind of had to relive the

00:06:09.500 laurier controversy again which is an interesting experience because i had to go through i wanted everything

00:06:15.080 to be accurate of course um that's just what i wanted to do that's what i believe you should be

00:06:21.460 doing when you're writing a memoir a non-fiction book so i had to go through my old laurier email

00:06:26.080 account um i went through all of the old articles and it really was like reliving the controversy again

00:06:33.460 um and i think i was pretty resistant to doing that i i was almost like no i don't want to touch this

00:06:41.160 like i don't want to enter the password to this laurier email account um but eventually i just sat

00:06:46.740 down got it done it's very interesting to write a book where where you are the main character um but

00:06:53.920 it's also a lot of fun for people who have a story to tell um yeah in my case you know i was someone who

00:07:01.080 went from having no social media no public presence to someone who was in the center of a controversy

00:07:07.640 and uh people were were writing articles that were critical and supportive and so i kind of

00:07:13.840 document all that and what it was like well i think it's really important that you did that and i think

00:07:19.060 that's really the value in the book so let's let's sort of go through what what happened uh one of the

00:07:25.360 things i learned about you in this book uh i mean i i think i knew about it about you already because

00:07:31.440 you posted that um that video on youtube a couple years ago saying why i'm saying goodbye to the left or

00:07:36.760 why i'm no longer the left so i knew you weren't a conservative or or or you know someone on the

00:07:41.560 right of the political spectrum but in your book you sort of talk about how you were really excited

00:07:48.100 about grad school you loved learning uh you're sort of a hard-working person you've always had

00:07:52.460 multiple jobs and and you like to be engaged and when you got to laurier you started feeling

00:07:58.960 sort of disillusioned uh with with university and and and you talk about how you felt sort of

00:08:05.180 disappointed but how shallow your classes were and and how uh the post-modern uh post-modern ideology

00:08:13.140 was sort of taking over academia so can you describe how you felt at laurier prior to this whole um this

00:08:21.280 whole debacle with the um jordan peterson clip yeah so i was feeling disillusioned since september

00:08:29.900 pretty much when i entered grad school and i i talk about that in the book um just about how you

00:08:37.080 know i was so excited for grad school because i thought this was the gathering of people who

00:08:41.700 are very curious about the world and they're very open-minded they're willing to talk about anything

00:08:45.820 but instead i found the opposite in that um a lot of my professors were kind of activists a lot of the

00:08:53.100 students were activists and it seemed that a lot of the time ideological conformity was the goal of grad

00:09:00.300 school um and not to mention just i found the academic standards uh quite low which i mean you

00:09:07.500 could attribute that to wilfrid laurie university as a middle of the pack kind of school or you could

00:09:12.300 it's probably attributable to canadian post-secondary at large yeah and so i i started googling things that i

00:09:21.080 had never googled before um such as why is my grad program all about feminism and colonialism and

00:09:28.640 marx and i think that was just the beginning because before i had never done anything like that

00:09:33.380 uh i just thought you know whatever they teach you is like what you need to know and it's it's really

00:09:40.080 important but i i really started to feel when i got to grad school like what is going on here and maybe

00:09:47.020 that was kind of when i i that's kind of when i started to be exposed to jordan peterson um i

00:09:53.160 started watching a couple things reading reading some articles from publications like ario which is

00:09:59.600 kind of like quillette which is kind of like a free thought platform um and i started opening up to

00:10:06.360 these different ideas and so when i came across that tv ontario agenda with steve pakin panel about

00:10:13.420 um pronouns i thought oh this is this is really interesting there are lots of different viewpoints

00:10:19.540 being presented here uh i wonder what my class would think about this it just so happens that

00:10:24.300 the next class is going to be about grammar um we've you know pronouns is a topic in our textbook

00:10:29.660 let's see what my class thinks about this um because i didn't have a strong opinion myself

00:10:34.740 and of course that was a problem that was the problem is that i was neutral on this topic of gender

00:10:41.880 pronouns but how dare you um did did you have an impression back then that jordan peterson and his

00:10:49.320 ideas were taboo like did you know you said that you're non-ideological and you um you didn't really

00:10:55.660 expect your graduate program to be so full of marxism and feminism when you encounter jordan peterson 0.80

00:11:00.840 did you know that that he would lead to this kind of example did you have an inclination that he was

00:11:06.280 sort of becoming toxic i know it was 2017 which is before a lot of his big famous sort of flares like

00:11:13.280 the one with kathy newman and and and some other things that that ended up helping you know get him

00:11:18.200 canceled or branded as extreme but but at the time in 2017 did you did you have that feeling

00:11:23.620 i think i was very interested in what he had to say um i had never seen anyone like this before

00:11:30.960 like jordan peterson but i i was also you know way younger back then and i was really influenced

00:11:37.560 by how people kept saying he's dangerous and i think i was influenced by the negative opinions and

00:11:43.760 so i was really approaching with caution and so that's why in the original secret recording

00:11:49.040 i say in the meeting you know i'm not a fan of jordan peterson you guys think i am but i'm not

00:11:54.300 and well here we are a couple years later and i'm definitely a fan so well that's good uh one of

00:12:01.080 the things i noticed you you talked about was you know there's all these concepts that we have

00:12:05.160 floating around like political correctness on campus and and post-modernism and they are sort of

00:12:10.380 abstract concepts but to you i mean you you lived through them you know exactly what they feel like

00:12:16.800 not just what they are in theory um so can you sort of explain what what that was like

00:12:22.480 yeah so it's just that's what i think is great about this book is everything's from the first

00:12:29.300 person and so you know political correctness um you know the suppression of free speech and censorship

00:12:35.480 i don't have to explain it as an analysis because i just have to recount what i what i lived through

00:12:42.940 at the university and um you know just one example is how the transgender activists from the rainbow

00:12:51.420 center at the university they would often invoke this you know idea that speech is violence

00:12:57.840 and stuff like that and so you really become entrapped in in what their ideology is they're

00:13:05.440 they're using it on you um so i i recount all that i i put their statements in the book

00:13:12.900 and that's what you know this is the kind of documentation aspect is

00:13:16.720 these statements are in the book they're all there for for everyone to read and it all it all

00:13:22.180 comes together quite nicely i think well and and i think that's also what makes the book very

00:13:27.300 accessible like like i think that this could be a great book for university students even high school

00:13:32.680 students um people who aren't necessarily aware of what's going on on university campuses but maybe they

00:13:39.260 want to know you know what's to come um and and i mean you know the idea that you just explained that

00:13:46.400 that speech is violence just just out of curiosity did you ever subscribe to that way of thinking like

00:13:52.400 prior to this incident would you have uh sort of agreed with that analysis that some speech is equivalent

00:13:58.900 to physical violence um possibly i think i might have almost gone there okay um but luckily i was

00:14:11.000 steered away well you say that they kind of trap you in it and and it's true because they are you know

00:14:17.480 they're so warped in their ideological thinking um and they're so convinced of their own self-righteousness

00:14:22.760 and their moralism um that that that they believe their own nonsense like to someone like me reading

00:14:29.100 it it's like the you know these statements and these kind of things you include in your book they

00:14:33.360 make me laugh because they feel like you know they're straight out of an orwell novel uh but to

00:14:38.700 the people reading it you can tell that they believe it they're zealots and they believe firmly in what

00:14:44.040 in what they believe which makes them i think all the more all the more dangerous so lindsay let's go

00:14:49.360 back to that that fateful day um that you got hauled in front of this um tribunal uh i think it's more

00:14:57.740 accurately called the star chamber but but so so you you you show this clip to your students in your

00:15:03.360 class um the students i think were almost the same age as you weren't they they're maybe a couple years

00:15:08.400 younger than you a couple years younger younger okay so you see you had a debate uh i think that that

00:15:14.080 you thought it went pretty well there was an interesting back and forth and no one seemed really

00:15:18.100 offended um and and and then just why don't you just walk us through uh what happened what happened

00:15:25.000 in in real life yeah classroom yeah so that's the thing is people have this impression that that

00:15:32.660 students are so fragile and you know there's no flakes and they can't handle discussion and a lot

00:15:38.180 of you know academics and higher education professionals they lend credence to this view but when i showed

00:15:46.780 that tvo clip in my class there were no tears no one stormed out of the room it was all fine um and

00:15:55.240 after that i don't know what transpired because no one came to me to complain um the university later said

00:16:01.540 that there wasn't any complaint and that's still a mystery we still don't know how how someone found out

00:16:10.380 what went on in the class and then it somehow got to a diversity bureaucrat um it's it's all still a

00:16:17.020 mystery and it might be forever well i i in my head it just it runs like a like a total satire like

00:16:23.760 you know some some suck up to the teacher you know one of the teachers pet that that wants to go into a 1.00

00:16:29.420 phd under one of these professors mentioned that that jordan peterson clip was shown in your

00:16:34.280 in your classroom and and he just you know couldn't handle that and and absolutely you know ran with

00:16:41.160 it um so so so you got an email saying uh lindsey you've you violated our policy we want to talk to 0.98

00:16:47.640 you or why don't you walk us through the next uh the next steps there well i got an email that was a lot

00:16:53.460 more vague so i got an email saying there are some concerns with the content in your class

00:16:59.280 and that was from nathan rambucana my my supervising professor for that communication studies class

00:17:05.900 and i guess his vagueness was the red flag to me because if you're not willing to just tell me what

00:17:12.700 the problem is um over email or just give me a phone call or whatever um but instead you need to

00:17:18.900 organize this big meeting where there's going to be a diversity and inclusion person then i'm kind of

00:17:24.020 like whoa like this just sounds kind of way out of proportion and it was that kind of red flag that

00:17:31.400 made me want to secretly record the meeting where exactly they told me uh that i violated the gendered 0.95

00:17:37.800 and sexual violence policy as well as they also said i violated the ontario human rights code

00:17:43.820 and bill c bill c16 itself um so they did which validates jordan peterson's whole point right

00:17:51.760 the whole point of his you know discussion on tvo there was that it was going to become illegal to

00:17:57.960 just talk about this kind of stuff yeah yeah exactly so they couldn't see that though the irony in that

00:18:05.460 okay there's so much irony in this story lindsey so so you you you get pulled into this classroom um

00:18:12.320 was it a classroom or an office it was an office an office with these three professors or two professors

00:18:18.700 and one uh bureaucrat i i i've asked you this question before but what was it that made you

00:18:24.460 record the video because you know you weren't a journalist at the time you you know you weren't

00:18:29.060 someone who um were just you know would record things because you wanted to refer to them later if you

00:18:34.520 were writing about it or if you're doing a podcast or something um i i still find it one of the most

00:18:39.760 remarkable things that you had the foresight to bring your laptop and record that meeting and let me tell

00:18:46.240 you every time i am doing a meeting where i'm not exactly sure what what's going to come out of it

00:18:51.160 or if you know i'm talking to someone um i always record it and that's something i had to learn uh as a

00:18:55.800 journalist and there have been several times where i wish i had recorded something but i didn't um so

00:19:01.340 you know 20 22 year old lindsey shepherd what what was it that made you record this meeting

00:19:05.840 yeah it was just that it was so fishy the whole thing and it was just an instinct that i probably need

00:19:12.860 to protect myself here um it's just me going in with these people who you know have power over my

00:19:21.080 future at the university especially because my my ma program supervisor was there my master's program

00:19:28.060 supervisor and he has nothing to do with the teaching assistant role so i was kind of thinking

00:19:33.720 what is he doing here uh you know is my standing as a student at risk because of this one clip i played

00:19:41.920 in in a class so i think i just knew i need some record of what's happening here

00:19:49.300 well and i mean just i i can't imagine how scary that must have felt i mean i i think

00:19:55.600 you know it could be terrifying you're you're you're across the country going away for school

00:20:00.720 doing your master's you're probably paying a bit of money to be there and all of a sudden you know

00:20:06.620 you have these three supervisors two male professors and one female bureaucrat calling 1.00

00:20:12.540 you in i i can't imagine i'm i'm impressed that you were able to maintain your composure even in

00:20:17.860 that kind of a situation because i mean i think most of the reason part of the reason why it became

00:20:22.420 such a big national story it's because people were just so outraged by the way that you were treated

00:20:26.400 forget about the ideology of these professors and the crazy uh tirades that were going on but just

00:20:31.360 the way that you were treated as a young student a young woman like it's just totally off bounds so

00:20:37.400 so how did you feel uh while you were being uh talked to or interrogated by these professors

00:20:42.660 i actually wasn't scared um because when i received that email from nathan rambucana summoning

00:20:50.120 me to the meeting i at that point i was like wow if this is what the university is then

00:20:56.140 if they're gonna kick me out then kick me out like i'll fight but but um i don't want to be a part

00:21:04.300 of this and so i think i i was a little bit um i don't know empowered by that so i didn't go in

00:21:12.340 scared i went in baffled by what they were saying um and maybe just feeling kind of that's why i cried

00:21:21.500 in the meeting is i was very confused i was dreadfully confused as to why like higher ups at

00:21:28.380 the university like professors were telling me that you know this is not a place for open debate

00:21:34.160 because it just went counter to everything i believed um and i really revered the institution

00:21:40.620 of the university i was hoping to go into academia um i felt very at home at the university

00:21:47.380 and for them to put all of just throw all that out it was very confusing um but when i again when i

00:21:56.840 walked out of the meeting when it was over i thought this in my mind this has now become an issue of public

00:22:03.320 interest because universities people need to know what's going on um and yeah i'm glad i did that right

00:22:12.260 because i i want people to know what's going on right now i mean covid stuff aside what do we really

00:22:19.460 know about what's happening in universities the stuff that leaks out it's so slight we don't really have a

00:22:24.880 full picture of what's going on unless people are willing to to tell well absolutely and um i i i think

00:22:34.160 again that's part of the reason why your story really struck a chord because you know we had a feeling

00:22:39.660 that there was something bad going on at schools but i don't think that many people realized just how

00:22:44.860 bad it had gotten uh so what happened next lizzie what what made you take that recording and go to

00:22:52.380 the media and how did you uh you know again a 22 year old grad student in waterloo uh not in the media

00:22:58.880 not a journalist how did you end up getting that audio recording into um the mainstream media into the

00:23:05.740 national post and then and then you know into newsrooms and newspapers across the country

00:23:10.340 so i once i became just certain that this is an issue of public interest uh this needs to be public

00:23:19.520 i right after i came out of the meeting pretty much i started googling journalists just kind of around

00:23:26.020 the local area um and i just would look at ones who specialized in kind of free speech stuff

00:23:35.080 and one article that popped up was how um christy blatchford the now late christy blatchford from the

00:23:42.880 national post she had had a speech shut down at the university of waterloo in 2010 and so i thought

00:23:48.880 oh okay this will probably be interesting to her then this is very local and stuff and um i sent it to

00:23:55.720 pretty much every other news outlet as well and but christy blatchford was the first to reply

00:24:01.580 and uh she called me the next morning and i think broke the story the next day or maybe a couple days

00:24:09.500 later and then sort of i mean christy blatchford is absolutely uh you know top tier one of the best

00:24:17.480 uh journalists canada's ever seen in my opinion um so it's not surprising but tremendous that she

00:24:23.740 picked up your story and then was it simultaneously that the audio got leaked or how did that happen

00:24:29.580 so i when i sent uh the email to these different media outlets i told them i have a recording

00:24:37.280 and uh i and like now i know how important that is what that i'm working at true north that when

00:24:45.400 someone comes with that like proof it's so important um so i guess i kind of knew that back

00:24:51.600 then in some way um i asked christy please don't mention that i have this recording i let her listen to it

00:24:59.280 of course and i let her pull quotes from it but i said please don't um publicize that i recorded it

00:25:06.320 because i don't know if what i did was legal um and she said okay no problem it just it just looks like

00:25:12.580 i i have a good memory uh in the article with the direct quotes um but yeah i later found out it is

00:25:20.060 legal to record because only one person in the room needs to know that there's a recording going on

00:25:26.020 and so in that disciplinary meeting it was me who knew that it was being recorded yeah and i think

00:25:32.080 it is different in in different jurisdictions but but but in ontario yeah that's that's right so

00:25:37.960 so the story just kind of took off like it became the biggest news story i think in the country and it

00:25:45.480 definitely went beyond just canada um i was down in california at the time and i remember hearing about

00:25:51.220 it and seeing it not just through social media but people were talking about it um what what was that

00:25:57.020 like uh for you just sort of very quickly going viral and having your story told and i mean having

00:26:04.520 your story told in a very favorable way like i think that the early media coverage of what happened was

00:26:10.040 incredibly favorable probably vindicating you and and and really showing how awful uh you were treated

00:26:17.520 what what what was what was that like yeah so there was the original article that came out by christy

00:26:24.380 blatchford and after that i kind of thought okay well there we go the story's out uh that's all i wanted

00:26:30.500 now my work is done uh you know um but then a couple days later i did just kind of more interviews and more

00:26:39.220 just kept coming in and i just kind of did it uh i didn't have any pr help or anything i just told the

00:26:49.580 story to pretty much every outlet that asked um yeah and i mean it wasn't just i mean you were on the

00:27:00.680 biggest sort of conservative shows and podcasts at the time you were on with dave rubin um you were on

00:27:08.080 the rebel i think i think you did an interview with jordan peterson as well at that time or maybe

00:27:13.280 that was later i don't know that was around the same time yeah that was on louder with crowder

00:27:17.580 okay but then but then you also um were part of the mainstream media i mean i remember seeing you do

00:27:23.460 an interview on the cbc i think you're a global you were really um and and again treated very fairly

00:27:30.420 and favorably in those in those outlets so what was that was that surprising to you what was that like

00:27:37.320 yeah so when i first decided to go to the media i knew that it could go either way and it wouldn't

00:27:46.640 necessarily go in my favor but i decided to just kind of throw my hands up and say whatever people

00:27:52.780 perceive it to be then fine like there is a chance that uh this could go very wrong and i might have

00:27:59.740 to you know change my name and like move somewhere else uh because when you google me i'll be like some

00:28:06.340 sort of trans fo bigot uh but i was lucky that that didn't happen and and so you're right i did feel

00:28:12.680 vindicated and um just the positive comments that i was seeing you know it made all my doubt kind of

00:28:20.800 wash away um were there any sort of got you interviews at the time was there ever anyone that

00:28:26.860 was really sort of doubting you or questioning you and in those early interviews i remember doing one

00:28:33.720 interview um on cbc radio it might have been carol off i can't remember though but i just remember

00:28:40.780 thinking this this person from the cbc sounds like they really don't want to talk to me it was just the

00:28:46.060 tone of voice um she just sounded kind of exasperated she was kind of like okay so hi

00:28:53.080 but that i don't think there were any gotcha interviews it's just she was way too busy and

00:29:01.000 important to be talking to some some lily uh university student i guess yeah um okay and and

00:29:08.020 so uh you got to travel you out like this fit in your book as well you got to go to california

00:29:14.240 you got to go to australia um what was there a highlight uh for you at that time or was it all

00:29:20.640 just one big uh highlight it was pretty much all one big highlight and maybe the peak though was going

00:29:30.120 to australia uh because i had that moment and i i describe it in the book where you know i'm i'm

00:29:36.980 flying uh first class to australia to to do a speech i just think i don't think my life is going

00:29:44.180 to get any better than this so i'm going to enjoy it yeah i mean that's pretty that's pretty special

00:29:50.860 uh getting to do that uh so so that that's not where the story ends though lindsey that's maybe that's

00:29:57.020 where a lot of us uh you know it ends for a lot of us because you know you you were this household

00:30:02.940 name this explosive story everyone was so outraged by the way you were treated and not just by the way

00:30:07.780 you were treated but by the contents of what they were saying that that showing a neutral clip of of

00:30:13.640 jordan peterson was like showing a neutral clip of hitler um or or milo yunopoulos which apparently

00:30:19.300 is equally as bad um so so everyone was sort of shocked by that but but the story didn't didn't

00:30:25.720 end there you know you as as lindsey shepherd the student had to carry on and then continue to go

00:30:31.860 to your classes continue to face those professors and your colleagues your your cohort in your in

00:30:37.940 your school day to day and so i i kind of remember seeing a little bit here and there of your tweets at

00:30:43.760 the time talking about how your classmates were being incredibly rude to you they were alienating you no

00:30:48.900 one wanted to talk to you anymore they were kind of trying to make your life difficult so why don't

00:30:53.740 you tell us a little bit about what happened next yeah so in in the following semester um it was just

00:31:02.560 kind of this gradual alienation and i mean one of the clearest examples is one of my professors um

00:31:13.000 so for half of the semester we were doing class presentations where that was all the class was was we

00:31:18.600 presented to one another and i want to watch other people's presentations i like learning the

00:31:24.700 content and i like learning from other people's presentation styles um and all of a sudden she

00:31:31.360 announced that um the class would only be who you invite to your presentation now so the class was off

00:31:39.180 for the rest of the semester but when you do your presentation you can just invite who you want

00:31:43.680 and so i i realized uh that everyone else had invited each other to the presentations except for

00:31:52.560 me and so i was the only one who had to leave the room and the class was just canceled for just me

00:31:58.220 for the rest of the semester wow and that that's why i think the title diversity and exclusion

00:32:04.800 is so fitting because they don't want to include people with different viewpoints they want to exclude

00:32:11.940 and i thought that was kind of a nice example of that wow and and i mean so petty right like what

00:32:20.400 what do you think that was going through their minds at the time that they that you had sort of betrayed

00:32:25.460 the institution and the professors or what why was it that that they sort of turned their backs on you

00:32:31.660 do you think um yeah i think they just had this feeling that i was tearing apart the entire

00:32:37.420 university i was especially the communication studies department um that i was you know trying

00:32:43.000 to destroy them it it was honestly this feeling of when you're walking around on campus you're like

00:32:49.520 a toxic person and you're like poisoning everything that's how they wanted to make me feel right

00:32:56.900 and um yeah in some ways it it kind of works i mean i can see what they're doing especially

00:33:04.900 because for example uh before the controversy i was invited to you know the the coffee outings that

00:33:12.660 we all went to as as grad students and classmates but of course it kind of dropped off or someone i had

00:33:19.380 someone who i sat next to in nathan rambucana's lecture every week uh but of course that stopped and

00:33:26.240 she started sitting on the opposite side of the room and i sat alone it's just that kind of stuff

00:33:30.160 right and it all kind of gathers together yeah i mean it's it's sort of now we look at it and it's

00:33:36.520 like telltale cancel culture they just try to kind of unperson you and and and make you you know go

00:33:44.260 away disappear um but but for you actually living through that um you know you really outline how

00:33:50.600 how tough it was um so what was it like from an academic standpoint um finishing you know i know you

00:33:59.780 wrote about it a little bit how you had some trouble finding a master's advisor for your thesis and

00:34:05.000 and that you you know you you were worried that they were going to fail you just because of what

00:34:08.720 happened uh from an academic perspective how how were things after that i think they had to be fair

00:34:15.900 in that regard um at the end of the day because there are you know appeal mechanisms within the

00:34:22.860 university for academic grades um and i think they wanted to avoid that so i think i pretty much

00:34:30.160 got the grades that um i would consider fair well that's good yeah and how about i mean i know that a

00:34:38.620 lot of people turned on you a lot of your fellow students didn't want anything to do with you

00:34:43.260 did you get any support uh were there any professors that that sort of came to your side any any students

00:34:50.280 that sort of let you know that they were with you or what was that like yeah this is kind of the flip

00:34:56.100 side so this is the positive part is i made a lot of friends um at the same time and we started the

00:35:04.940 laurier society for open inquiry which was you know pretty much a free speech club and you know i have a lot

00:35:11.900 of good memories from that time just kind of you know countering what the university was doing

00:35:16.760 by saying hey it's okay to have uh some non-mainstream speakers come in and and we're allowed to talk

00:35:24.300 about these different ideas and so it was nice to be able to organize those events talk to lots of

00:35:30.160 people um three professors in particular deserve a shout out um david haskell william mcnally and

00:35:38.800 jordan goldstein they were the three professors at laurier who were on my side you know on the side of

00:35:46.340 free speech and really fighting what the university was doing and trying to get the university to

00:35:51.800 realize that free speech is important um yeah and i mean the thing for you is you know you you were

00:35:58.580 gone after a year because you finished your master's program with those professors that came out publicly

00:36:03.160 to support you i mean that's their job that's their life and so uh you know it's a big a big risk for

00:36:09.360 them as well what is the state of free speech now at laurier it's hard to say it's it's so difficult when

00:36:18.500 no one's really talking about what's going on inside and that's actually why i decided to stay

00:36:24.280 at laurier is i thought you know these people probably want to get rid of me so bad because

00:36:29.160 at one point i did think i'm gonna leave i'm just gonna get out of here and a lot of people were

00:36:33.680 actually urging me to do that to leave laurier amid the controversy uh but i decided why would i do

00:36:40.520 that that's exactly what they want so i'll just stay and i'll get my degree uh which i think was

00:36:45.620 the right the right choice and i got to see what was going on in the inside um yeah well good for you

00:36:53.540 for doing that uh one of the things that still baffles me to this day is how i mean you became sort of

00:37:00.540 like public enemy number one at laurier you started organizing these free speech events and and and

00:37:06.440 they became increasingly controversial um somehow your race got dragged into it um and and it started

00:37:14.780 to become this thing not just about how you were transphobic but that you were also somehow a white

00:37:21.720 supremacist and i think the rationale went something like this um because you're a white woman and your 0.92

00:37:28.180 supervisor was uh is a immigrant i think or the children of immigrants from i think sri lanka or

00:37:34.200 something like that um that you were using your whiteness uh as power over him or something i remember

00:37:41.680 uh people accusing you of using uh a pejorative called white girl tears um which um maybe maybe you

00:37:50.000 can help enlighten us as to what what the heck any of that means yeah i mean it's exactly that so they

00:37:56.580 were trying to say that you know actually in this situation as the low level ta that i was i held all

00:38:03.040 the power because i had my white woman tears and um i cried during the meeting which was some sort of

00:38:09.900 display of power um but i mean there was this this writer named yuri harris who wrote in quillette

00:38:17.840 i think the article the article was called white woman tears or something and he breaks it down he says

00:38:24.460 you know there is a discussion of power in the laurier controversy but it's not to do with race

00:38:30.900 it's to do with job position um it's to do with you know this diversity bureaucrat professors

00:38:37.380 and me who's a low level ta um race doesn't play into it and i also say in the book i mean herbert

00:38:47.900 pim lot uh was my ma supervisor he was also in the meeting and he is a white man so what's the race

00:38:55.800 dynamic there then right right and and i believe that these professors didn't they get censured didn't

00:39:02.980 they get like uh you know leave with pays or something they lost out on anything they just

00:39:08.500 got like free money to do nothing right it's so unclear that the university was very

00:39:14.080 you know unaccountable not being transparent about what was happening but they did disappear

00:39:20.060 for a year and uh someone on twitter gave me the advice i don't know who it was um to check the

00:39:26.920 sunshine list to see if they got paid and in the year that they disappeared and they were they were

00:39:32.400 they received their six-figure salaries so wow well for people that don't know the sunshine list is the

00:39:37.400 proactive disclosure in ontario that lists all government employees that make over one hundred thousand

00:39:42.740 dollars a year so the fact that both these professors are getting paid like that um i think

00:39:47.980 that does sort of display who who has the the power it's so interesting lindsey because you know just 0.57

00:39:53.620 10 years ago the idea of two male professors bringing in a female young student super uh ta you know that

00:40:03.520 would be clear power dynamic right that that these older established professors who are also men

00:40:09.440 were sort of bullying this young student who's in a precarious position and she's a female but then

00:40:14.800 you know because everyone's woke now and because the world's gone crazy uh somehow the 22 year old

00:40:21.980 has the power because of her um the tone of her skin which uh is so so patently absurd um you know i laugh 1.00

00:40:29.600 but it's it's actually not really funny it's it's kind of terrible and depressing but but i digress so

00:40:36.000 let's talk a little bit about the reaction from laurier because i feel like you heard a lot of

00:40:42.020 different things from a lot of different people again at the time you know we just kind of heard

00:40:46.180 okay the the university apologized done deal but in your book you sort of outline how it was a little

00:40:51.660 more complicated than that so can you can you outline a little bit of the back and forth with the

00:40:56.620 laurier officials that you experience

00:40:58.480 i mean honestly there wasn't much back and forth um they would sometimes claim to the media that they

00:41:06.480 were corresponding with me but really they were just sending me copies of press releases that went out

00:41:12.100 um i think before i even got any information i remember there was this one time um i'm pretty sure

00:41:19.720 they released a big statement to the news first and um and then to me like way later and so i went

00:41:28.160 when like news agencies were calling me to ask about the statement i was like what statement um so

00:41:33.760 you know maybe that was like part of their their game their strategy but so so they issued an apology

00:41:39.500 at first but then they kind of later defended what they did didn't they

00:41:44.480 yeah that's the thing is because then um the lawsuit chapter comes in so

00:41:51.720 okay let's let's go to the lawsuit chapter then let's why don't you tell us about what what the

00:41:56.960 what the status is tell us about the law school the lawsuit sorry yeah so um i decided um yeah so i

00:42:05.320 howard levitt um was kind of you know helping me out throughout the controversy he's a toronto

00:42:10.680 employment lawyer uh he would he would just kind of give me advice sometimes or we'd correspond very

00:42:16.800 very occasionally and um he asked me if i wanted to sue the university i think he asked me a couple

00:42:24.820 times and at first i said no i don't want to do that but then there was kind of a moment where i said

00:42:31.040 yeah let's just see where this goes this lawsuit might you know prove something interesting at the end

00:42:38.500 of the day it might prove the direction that we're going to go in regards to free expression on

00:42:43.800 campus um so that was launched in 2018 it's now 2021 and there's no movement on that case nothing to

00:42:53.120 report um because what is what are you actually suing them for what is what is the basis of the lawsuit

00:42:58.580 um i think the legal the legalese is uh shock and negligence yeah okay um you know that that kind

00:43:10.380 of stuff emotional abuse in legalese right right um but and so jordan peterson also sued um for defamation

00:43:21.540 um because they compared him to hitler called him a charlatan and stuff like that so um then

00:43:29.660 it gets kind of confusing because the university said they launched a third party case so they're saying

00:43:37.760 if jordan peterson was indeed defamed then it is my fault because i released the recording so it's kind

00:43:44.700 of me who defamed him so it's kind of this circular lawsuit thing going on um and because jordan peterson's

00:43:51.880 involved and he's been ill lately um the case has not progressed because it won't until he's better

00:43:58.900 okay interesting so so let's talk a little bit about about jordan peterson then so so at the time you

00:44:06.560 said that he was starting to influence you you had seen some of his videos online i assume the videos

00:44:11.920 were related to postmodernism since that's sort of what you talked about that you were dismayed by

00:44:16.960 um what what was it like uh you know because i think after this whole thing happened you got to

00:44:24.240 meet him he interviewed you um what you know what what was your experience like meeting him and getting

00:44:29.560 to know him a little better i've actually only met him once and it was a quick handshake uh at one of

00:44:38.100 his events in toronto uh in january 2018 i think it was um he had i think he had just released 12 rules

00:44:46.240 for life around then and he was doing a talk at wycliffe college um which is within the university of

00:44:53.720 toronto and so you know we me and my some of my friends from the free speech club the laurie society

00:44:58.960 for open inquiry we drove down from waterloo to toronto to see it and um there i remember there was a

00:45:05.640 huge line of people waiting to get their book signed by him and so he had like no time but so

00:45:10.820 i was about to leave thinking i don't i don't think i'm gonna get to say hi to him this time

00:45:15.340 uh but then by chance he was walking through the hallway for i guess some sort of break washroom break

00:45:21.100 perhaps and uh he noticed me and so we said hi and that was pretty much it okay but but but you did uh

00:45:29.860 he did interview you is that right i i'm not just imagining that am i i think it was just the louder

00:45:34.900 with crowder where it was that kind of yeah stephen crowder jordan peterson and i and you had a

00:45:42.440 discussion and it and a sort of it went through what happened it's interesting because i remember

00:45:47.220 also at the time these professors accused you of sort of being one of his students and sort of being

00:45:53.640 an agent of jordan peterson uh why do you think they had that impression yeah well that was actually

00:46:00.440 nathan rambucana's first question to me or second question to me in the meeting was uh so you were

00:46:07.520 one of jordan peterson's students right no never even i don't think at that point i'd ever even been

00:46:14.380 to ontario so no interesting never been to yeah and to me that's kind of sexist right like he assumes

00:46:23.400 that you couldn't possibly come up with this on your own that you had to be sort of like acting

00:46:28.300 under this nefarious uh shadow of jordan b peterson or something like that um you know what why do you

00:46:37.460 think you thought that i actually saw that from a couple other people too just on on twitter and

00:46:44.360 social media that uh they thought someone else was behind everything i was doing um i don't know i

00:46:51.580 guess it's just underestimating people is part of what they do i guess yeah no i i sometimes get

00:46:59.680 that too where people again like in the dark corners of the internet but sometimes more broadly

00:47:03.940 they'll say like oh uh candace malcolm she used to work for jason kenny like she's just a puppet for 1.00

00:47:11.400 jason kenny or oh you know her husband does this she's just a puppet for her husband and to me i always

00:47:17.700 feel like it's based in like some kind of sexism but maybe maybe it's just you know people being

00:47:23.040 awful uh because it's the internet and that's that's what people tend to do um linds let's talk a little 1.00

00:47:29.560 bit about universities um you know you you lived through it uh you you saw the the worst elements of

00:47:38.700 of your school and i think that really what it shined a light on was was what the environments

00:47:44.020 is like at universities across canada and probably around the world um i i just sort of wonder you

00:47:50.700 know this this tendency towards marxism and post-modernism uh you know it's as bad as force

00:47:57.460 than we think it is what's your impression of universities now having gone through all this

00:48:02.660 i i still believe that they can be redeemed i'm not ready to give up on the university

00:48:12.180 um that being said i think now i know what to look for you can kind of tell by a course syllabus

00:48:20.860 or even a description you know if it has the word social justice you want to stay away from it for

00:48:27.200 example because it's going to try to get you to toe an ideological line um and before i hadn't known

00:48:34.340 that so i actually remember looking back at the communication studies 101 course outline the syllabus

00:48:40.800 and that was the course i was a teaching assistant for and it actually said that uh in this class we

00:48:46.720 take a social justice approach to communication studies and i before i would just kind of skip over

00:48:52.900 that um because i wasn't invested in these issues so i think okay sure whatever but now that's

00:48:59.800 something you want to stay away from right um i guess campus free speech is not at top of mind

00:49:07.680 right now because of covid i mean no one is even gathering at universities at all so it's hard to

00:49:14.780 say um i mean i i don't think it's gotten any better i think it is getting worse all the time

00:49:22.760 and people pretend it's not happening uh the thing is if you don't have any if you don't express any

00:49:30.560 non-mainstream position then you'll probably never have any encounters with the activists who are who

00:49:37.800 will try to target you or whatever um so a lot of people who don't express any kind of different opinion

00:49:44.400 they'll go on thinking that oh there's no problem it's all good and they continue to

00:49:51.160 disseminate that viewpoint which is very wrong well two things i want to pick up on what you said

00:49:57.280 one you know you're you're now a trained mind so you know what to look for but the reality is i mean

00:50:02.700 you just skimmed over social justice because it didn't mean anything to you at the time and it was

00:50:06.120 just another university buzzword but you know there's so many young people out there that just don't know

00:50:11.800 that they don't know that social justice is code for marxism or post-modernism they don't know what

00:50:17.960 to look for or or they might not have a choice it might be pushed down their throats at a younger age

00:50:23.340 like in high school or you know in a general you know poli sci 101 class so i worry that it is getting

00:50:31.120 harder and harder to to avoid but also you know you talked about how covid nothing's really happening

00:50:36.980 right now maybe this is an opportunity uh for some change that when things come back they can be

00:50:43.780 different what do you think we can do to to improve uh things at universities um well one thing i

00:50:53.320 suggest in the book is just close diversity offices um and it's very interesting because i was

00:51:00.400 actually listening last night to a discussion with james lindsey who was part of he's he wrote the

00:51:07.460 book um cynical theories he was a co-author of that book how activist scholarship destroys everything

00:51:13.020 i think is the subtitle and he was on michael malice's podcast i listened to a snippet and he said

00:51:20.120 that you know these kind of diversity and inclusion critical race people their ideology is actually

00:51:25.620 not convincing to that many people and so that's why they need all this infrastructure and these offices

00:51:32.700 to try to convince everyone because otherwise they're not buying it and so they have to pour all

00:51:39.100 this money um create all these jobs to try to force people to think a certain way um which i thought

00:51:47.140 was an interesting perspective and so yeah i think we we just need to close these offices because

00:51:52.080 their sole purpose is to get you to become an activist uh or at least just have the correct

00:52:00.400 position on all cultural issues you know being pro-choice um you know uh letting trans women into

00:52:10.260 women's shelters they they're just training you in washington you and we we sort of saw that or felt 0.93

00:52:16.980 that i did anyway last summer when the sort of riots were erupting in cities across north america

00:52:23.340 and all of a sudden we were all told that that everything about our society was racist and we're

00:52:27.760 all institutional racists and everything was white supremacy it's like you know that this culture from

00:52:33.260 university campuses just moved into the mainstream and while there's a lot of virtue signaling

00:52:38.620 out there and a lot of sort of like forced uh apologies that you see i i think most people

00:52:45.920 just sort of like you said they kind of roll their eyes um anyway uh well well lizzie this is this is

00:52:52.220 great uh uh again i think your book is fantastic and i'm really glad that you wrote it i'm glad that

00:52:57.340 you you put it out uh we've got we've got a bunch of our true north insiders tuning in and watching

00:53:03.220 this live so why don't we go to some questions if it is the viewers of anyone watching if you have a

00:53:08.940 question you can either raise your hand or you can just uh in the chat here uh write write a question

00:53:15.000 and i'll uh i'll i'll do my best to to try to answer it i got i got a couple questions that were sent in

00:53:21.260 um already so so maybe i'll go to one of those first um this question says lindsey in addition to your 0.64

00:53:28.140 experience at wilfrid laurier you were banned on twitter because of an exchange you had with the

00:53:32.560 infamous jessica yaniv you've also been critical of bill c16 and the trans movement in canada

00:53:38.600 for those people that accuse you of being a transphobe what is your response to them

00:53:43.900 um yeah i just i don't really hate anyone i'm not a hateful person i'm not and

00:53:53.360 i remember christopher hitchens is the one the late christopher hitchens is the one who said um

00:53:58.200 you know phobia implies that you're scared of something he always said that about islamophobia

00:54:03.080 that was one of his favorite like his famous things on youtube was uh he's he's not scared

00:54:08.840 of islam he's you know critical of it um so yeah i'm not uh hating anyone i'm not scared of anything

00:54:17.780 um i just saw a threat to open discussion and that's kind of where my focus remained um i actually

00:54:27.040 yeah i wasn't that invested in in um issues related to transgenderism uh i one line i have in the book

00:54:36.380 is that uh prior to the laurier controversy if you had asked me are trans women women like you know

00:54:42.760 like one of those street or interviews where they come up and ask you a random question and you don't

00:54:46.500 have any time to process it and they said that i'd probably be like um yeah sure you know um but

00:54:53.040 i'm lucky now that i consider the laurier controversy it was a very concentrated um education process i don't

00:55:02.260 mean education from the university i mean education from you know different sources and so i learned a lot

00:55:08.640 from people who were writing about transgender ideology like gender critical feminist thought

00:55:15.700 um just people who had thought about the issue uh so now i would definitely be on the side that says

00:55:22.160 no biological males should not be in females prisons and stuff like that or sports or any number of

00:55:29.880 things right um yeah i mean we kind of didn't really get into that whole that whole subject of sort of

00:55:36.000 like the meat of what the the jordan peterson clip was about but the idea um was of pronouns and i

00:55:43.380 remember at the time lindsey maybe maybe uh this shows how out of touch i was at the time but but i

00:55:49.060 remember at that time when the pronoun discussion happened i had to look it up because i honestly

00:55:53.160 didn't know what they were talking about when they said pronouns um i thought okay maybe this means

00:55:58.980 that you know if you're a woman who becomes a man you want to be called he if a man becomes a woman

00:56:03.480 and i thought that was that was the end of it and then i i looked up this whole pronoun is going

00:56:09.200 to watch the whole uh tvo clip there with um jordan peterson um and and and i think that the person

00:56:16.800 who's debating is talking about how you know you should you should program into your phone what

00:56:21.780 someone's pronouns are and and and there's no end in in the number of pronouns that are just absolutely

00:56:29.340 made up like words that you've never heard of like she and you're and j and whatever i i literally

00:56:34.640 never heard that before um that that moment um but but the idea that jordan peterson was saying was

00:56:41.440 that you know this is all compelled speech it's not you you can't force someone to call you something

00:56:46.800 you can't force someone um to to use the word that you prefer just because you're for it's it's

00:56:52.160 bullying it's totalitarianism um and and that that's sort of the discussion that that's sort of lost in

00:56:57.640 all this you know like i think the point he's made is reasonable but now just saying these kind of

00:57:02.260 things is again considered violence and and hate speech um it's it's great that you went out and did

00:57:08.980 the research and actually learned sort of both sides and sort of sad that the university didn't present

00:57:14.020 that to you you had to go do that on your own time and it's considered sort of dangerous knowledge

00:57:18.280 that you had but um i i guess you know just to follow up um have your views really changed on the

00:57:25.800 issue or um do you mean throughout the laurie controversy or or after both i guess or whichever

00:57:34.780 um the thing is i wasn't i think a lot of people assumed that because i played that clip

00:57:41.740 i was somehow invested in the transgender question or like those kinds of issues um which i wasn't so

00:57:50.260 it did i did have to learn quickly about all that um so before i would say i probably didn't even really

00:57:57.700 have that many views uh it's just not something that was really on my radar um yeah and interestingly

00:58:07.480 i think you know since those what 2017 2018 even 2016 when jordan peterson was first talking about

00:58:15.820 compelled speech now we're seeing almost a new dimension which is where you're compelled to put

00:58:21.920 your pronouns in your email uh on a name tag you're seeing a lot of that now and i don't think that was

00:58:30.020 happening um back then but now i know like some government or university departments require it or

00:58:35.720 they at least really encourage it yeah i always kind of laugh when i see it like i remember at the

00:58:44.040 time again that you know the idea of putting your pronouns in your in your bio is like a joke and

00:58:49.060 everyone that i knew was like making fun of it kind of like oh my pronouns are like her royal highness

00:58:55.320 and her majesty or whatever uh but but now you know sometimes i see people on twitter where you know

00:59:02.620 i exist sort of in like conservative twitter and then sometimes i i accidentally get like sucked into

00:59:08.020 liberal twitter left-wing twitter woke twitter and you kind of go down this rabbit hole and you see

00:59:12.860 these people that are like genuine and serious and then they have their pronouns there and you're like

00:59:18.120 really i can tell you're she her because i'm looking at a picture of you you know and and then yeah

00:59:23.860 to your point that i know a lot of like corporate canada and banks and stuff like that force their

00:59:28.220 employees to do it which is just again compelled speech right um all right let's go back to some

00:59:35.640 questions here i'm getting a lot of people um thanking you lindsey saying congratulations uh penny

00:59:41.840 says i don't have a question for you right now i just wanted to say thank you very much for all you

00:59:45.980 have done i know it must have been very hard for you and then um she says she does have one question

00:59:52.180 how is the baby i guess he's not a baby anymore though right yeah he's two so he's he's a toddler

00:59:58.500 he's still my baby though he's good that's great all right uh jennifer asks she says hi lindsey what

01:00:06.000 advice would you give to high school students considering going to university

01:00:09.680 that's a good question um yeah because like you said um the social justice stuff is starting

01:00:19.080 in elementary school and that makes it really tough because then by the time these students

01:00:25.500 are getting to university um they're not even critical they they don't have the capacity to be

01:00:31.220 critical or questioning about it because it's all they've ever known um and i think you know we have

01:00:38.040 more information coming from universities than we do from from public schools um yeah we're really in

01:00:45.780 the dark as as a public about that what would i say is if you are going to university you need to

01:00:54.120 know what to look for um and i know a lot of people suggest to go into the trades go into sciences

01:01:03.080 where you're not going to be exposed to that um to any social justice ideology and that's good advice

01:01:08.000 but also if if we're kind of playing the longer game and and we want the institution to become less

01:01:14.740 biased we want it to return to a place of free discussion then we do need people who who love

01:01:23.120 the arts and humanities to stick it out and um i hope some people will step up to that and stick it out

01:01:30.760 and um help us bring back a culture of open inquiry i i i mean i totally agree i think it's sort of one

01:01:39.580 of those things though that the university sort of attracts like-minded people like i'll give you an

01:01:45.600 example say you're an undergrad and your teachers are marxist the the the students that are going to

01:01:52.600 excel the most and the students that are going to be the most excited about the class material and the

01:01:57.880 best prepared are going to be the marxist the fellow kind of travelers and so they're going to get to 0.91

01:02:03.580 know the professors they're going to be the ones that get promoted into graduate school and getting

01:02:08.200 their phds and then in a few years time they'll be the next guard of of university professors and you

01:02:13.360 see that now um with the sort of generation generational shift um happening that a lot of

01:02:18.820 the old sort of classical liberal-minded people people like jordan peterson that i imagine used to

01:02:24.600 dominate the academy um are now retiring and leaving and that more and more you're seeing these

01:02:31.160 completely insane woke academics and and then you know they're not even pretending to to be middle

01:02:39.100 of the road like to them showing both sides is wrong as as uh your supervisor told you and uh you

01:02:46.580 know we see it a lot even in the real world um where for instance you know a journalist used to want

01:02:52.900 to be balanced so they would want to like okay let's hear from a liberal let's hear from a conservative

01:02:56.940 uh but then at some point they decided well no conservatives are wrong and they're evil so we're

01:03:02.180 only going to show the liberal point of view um on climate change um they even openly say you know

01:03:08.000 you can't have a balanced discussion you can't say both sides when one side is based on this sort of

01:03:13.740 prestigious liberal science and the other side are these like horribly unenlightened neanderthals who

01:03:20.180 are uh you know who dare question our science um and and so they just don't they just don't tell the

01:03:26.100 other side of the story so you you kind of are seeing this continual closing um closing of the

01:03:32.980 canadian mind right um and i i think it's it's it's hard because conservatives get discouraged people

01:03:39.000 like you decide to leave university you don't get your phd you decide to to come work at true north

01:03:44.740 instead which is great for us you know we we love you but but for for for future potential students

01:03:51.320 you know instead of hearing from lindsey shepherd uh they're going to hear from you know marxist

01:03:56.700 number 525 at the school um and so i i i think you know something needs to be done we need to either

01:04:05.520 find a way to encourage more classical liberal or conservative minded people to go become professors

01:04:11.100 um or we need to shake the whole thing up maybe the next conservative government needs to just

01:04:16.780 completely defund universities i don't know if that's something that that they would ever actually do

01:04:20.940 um or that they there would be appetite for but i feel like something has to change

01:04:26.060 yeah i mean in one video i did um i said if you don't really have um anything you

01:04:35.700 are need to work towards right now but you want to make a change then you should make it your goal

01:04:42.360 to get a phd in you know social justice education from the ontario institute of studies and education

01:04:48.640 which is called oise out of the university of toronto it's a phd in social justice education

01:04:54.340 and you should do that program or something like it um get your degree it's probably not that hard

01:05:00.480 and become a diversity bureaucrat but then do do a 180 and you know we need those people who will

01:05:09.300 stick it out and change things up and that goes for other maybe just like a middle management

01:05:15.300 position at a university we do need people in the system and if i so now if you google me

01:05:22.080 i mean if a university were to google me they would not hire me so that's just not going to happen

01:05:28.480 but for a lot of people maybe there are no search results for your name yet you're too young

01:05:33.400 in in your career or whatnot um so you have a chance to to go infiltrate i'm not trying to use

01:05:41.380 you know nefarious language but you have a chance to infiltrate well i mean not just that but like

01:05:48.280 even becoming a professor i mean you get to influence classroom after classroom the next

01:05:53.860 generation of minds i don't think that that's that's a small feat and i think that that can be

01:05:58.420 an incredibly valuable um experience i i kind of think you know conservatives hate quotas like the idea

01:06:05.400 of having a quota system where yeah you know corporate boards have to be 50 female or you have 1.00

01:06:11.740 to have x number of different ethnic backgrounds on each on each position you know sort of shy away 1.00

01:06:17.380 from that but in my mind i think you know if we're really going to fight back against this problem

01:06:22.220 uh we should demand some kind of a diversity of of intellectual thought when it comes to universities

01:06:29.460 could you imagine lindsey if every university had to have equal number of left and right professors

01:06:36.560 like like for every marxist that you hire you have to also hire a libertarian or a classical liberal i

01:06:43.260 think universities would look very different um i don't know what what that would say about you know

01:06:49.120 having to out a university professor to say like are you a liberal or are you a conservative i don't think

01:06:53.500 that many professors would like that and you know having lists of different ideologies could be

01:06:59.420 problem but the the idea is still there that you know if we're going to fight back um you know

01:07:04.180 maybe we should try to use um some of their own tools against them what do you think i actually

01:07:10.780 remember um law professor bruce party said that in the last true north event what which one was it

01:07:16.380 big tech censorship one yes he said that we should treat conservatives like a minority group that need

01:07:26.100 representation that's interesting i had never heard that before there could be something to it

01:07:31.060 well i i again i didn't hear that particular part of it i'm going to go back and listen to it but

01:07:36.520 i think that that if we're going to start fighting back uh exactly i mean i mean i mean sometimes you do

01:07:42.560 as a conservative you feel like you you need some kind of extra protection and extra help all right

01:07:47.480 let's go to a couple more of these questions uh so kath asks did you get familiar with

01:07:53.320 laurier policy in order to defend yourself

01:07:55.900 um i don't think there's anything that could have helped me because the bureaucracy is so

01:08:06.780 i mean there was the gendered and sexual violence policy i had violated it um there were some other

01:08:16.320 things that happened later that you have to read the book to find out where i i the policy comes

01:08:23.700 into question but um i mean the university later enacted a a free speech statement and the ford

01:08:33.220 government in ontario actually then made that mandatory for every university to have a commitment

01:08:38.080 to free speech on campus um but my skepticism towards that was well if you still have an entire

01:08:46.300 diversity and inclusion bureaucracy you already have these uh sexual violence policies that say

01:08:53.220 that you're not allowed to talk about pronouns in any kind of questioning way then what is a free

01:08:57.980 speech policy going to do is it doesn't look like it's going to stop any of this other stuff

01:09:02.320 um so you know the the problem for me is getting rid of those that bad policy just getting rid of the

01:09:11.160 diversity inclusion offices or because i i've sort of seen it head in the opposite direction it seems

01:09:16.220 like every company and corporation now has uh you know a chief diversity officer a chief inclusion

01:09:22.500 officer and it's sort of like going from the universities and spreading everywhere it's just a waste of

01:09:30.160 everyone's time and and money it's it's all it is yeah it's it's like a make work program for all the

01:09:36.660 marxists in the university uh another question here someone asks did the conservative government

01:09:42.100 of ontario move to make funding of student unions optional help with the ideology being pushed on

01:09:49.080 university campuses did you know about that i do know about that um i remember seeing the outrage from

01:09:57.720 a lot of student groups um it's hard to say because i understood what was going on behind that program

01:10:06.340 for example there are these things called purgs on university campuses public interest research groups

01:10:12.340 um so at laurier it was the l spurg and you have to pay them a fee it's an it's an automatic fee

01:10:22.040 it's an it's one where you have to opt out so you have to fill out an application thing to opt out of

01:10:27.180 paying them the fee so they take all this money and i remember looking at at um ellsberg's annual

01:10:34.160 report and all of the money went to pay their own salaries for activities like protesting the ford

01:10:42.140 government and they they disclose it in the report you're we're just paying them for them to carry out

01:10:48.460 their activism they get office space on the university so yeah absolutely those groups need to be defunded

01:10:54.220 ones like that are blatantly partisan and taking student money to fund their their activism it's so

01:11:02.680 wrong um so i think that the goal should be to defund those for sure i think because class has

01:11:10.740 unfortunately been out for over a year now uh it's hard to say what's going on with that i don't think

01:11:18.940 there was enough time to really see um yeah interesting yeah again i do think there's an

01:11:26.320 opportunity with um covid the fact that no one's really been going to schools um that that maybe

01:11:32.060 people will realize that they can get their education in other ways and i think there's

01:11:36.860 been some lawsuits against universities um saying that that students don't want to pay their full

01:11:41.740 tuition because they're not getting the experience i mean can you imagine some of these american

01:11:46.840 schools where tuition is upwards of fifty thousand dollars a year and you're paying that kind of

01:11:52.500 fee to just sit at your house without any interaction without any networking without any of the fun of

01:11:58.900 college um yeah maybe this is an opportunity for some disruption in the in the um secondary school uh

01:12:07.980 area well i don't know because no one is even doing anything about their university being shut down

01:12:14.960 it just seems like they're pretty complacent like okay i'll pay full tuition to just

01:12:19.640 be on my computer all day stare at the screen not get the full learning experience sure sounds good

01:12:26.460 you know i haven't seen anyone protesting that if i was a student right now i would be pretty outraged

01:12:30.960 um i'd be trying to mobilize to say come on and i think a lot of professors don't like it either because

01:12:38.440 um they have to film themselves and that means uh they're the filming of their the recording of their

01:12:45.880 lecture can just be shown year after year which means that they could be made redundant

01:12:51.480 so uh but no one i haven't heard of any protests in canada at a university not in canada yeah no it's

01:13:01.640 it's interesting when you were saying that they don't like being filmed i thought they were going to say

01:13:05.220 uh because they're sort of outed for their like outrageous ideology that they're being imposed i

01:13:10.560 just like right before i started this um broadcast i was watching on instagram a charlie kirk video

01:13:17.120 and he had a professor it was like a zoom call and it was showing a student and a professor and the

01:13:22.620 professor was trying to make the student talk about racism but the student didn't want to and it was

01:13:27.280 like they're back and forth and you could just see how ideological the teacher is like they're trying to

01:13:31.820 like force students to to recognize race when they don't want to and you can kind of see how bad

01:13:38.980 how bad it becomes well i remember way back when youtube was sort of new and all of a sudden you

01:13:46.120 could have access to i don't know why but yale university put its entire uh first year lectures

01:13:52.880 online so you can go and do an entire um semester of political philosophy 101 uh taught by a yale

01:14:00.440 professor he goes through all the great um the great thinkers you know from aristotle like all

01:14:06.560 the way up to john locke or whatever and you know you get these lectures and they're free and i remember

01:14:12.380 at the time thinking like like political philosophy was my favorite class in school and i remember

01:14:17.300 thinking like why would anyone pay to go to university when like your teacher is not going to be as good

01:14:23.080 as this teacher is and he's doing it for free um i think i think the reason that most people go to

01:14:28.840 university now is just for the credential uh and for signaling that they that they were smart enough

01:14:34.540 to do it um and because maybe they need it for a job not necessarily because of what they can learn

01:14:39.220 because again you can learn everything and more um by yourself online at your own time as well

01:14:45.200 um all right lindsay let's do a few more questions here so jim asks lindsay why do you think 90 percent 0.97

01:14:53.460 of professors are leftists some of these left wing nuts are actually marxists how can that be

01:14:59.500 this is not representative of society at large

01:15:02.420 yeah um what was that study that we just did a video on at true north for

01:15:09.280 four four percent of uh canadian university arts professors are right wingers and was it 90 percent

01:15:17.900 are leftist it was it was definitely the majority but um why is a huge question um part of it is if

01:15:27.800 you're not a leftist you'll feel intimidated and you'll leave or they will intimidate you into leaving

01:15:34.020 which is i guess where i would classify myself in a way um just having no entry path back in so they

01:15:42.740 kind of you know self-perpetuate and also the problem is it's starting younger and younger so

01:15:47.900 in kindergarten or even before these these kids grow up with um social justice ideology

01:15:55.160 uh it just becomes the default position and it just keeps reinforcing itself um

01:16:02.740 and they'll just they won't hire anyone that that study by eric kaufman out of the university of

01:16:08.720 london it showed that these professors these um arts professors they will not hire um a trump supporter

01:16:16.700 um they will not engage with a gender critical feminist they will just shut it out and so it means

01:16:24.120 they continue to rule it's it's just sad yeah i i wish i could uh well i think i'm trying to help

01:16:33.540 this book will help wake people up i hope so yeah i hope so again it it makes me think like you know

01:16:41.220 we're going to end up in a world where we have parallel institutions where if you you know are

01:16:46.620 conservative you're going to go to your own conservative school and and everyone else will go to

01:16:51.980 these left-wing um factories and you kind of have this like further polarization between the two

01:16:58.380 sides uh david makes a suggestion he says pay professors the average private sector wage of

01:17:05.380 their graduates okay which i assume is not is not very high for uh some of these gender studies or um

01:17:13.640 critical race theory professors that kind of makes me wonder lindsey do you know what any of your

01:17:19.240 fellow classmates from lauriat grad school what they're up to um what kind of jobs they went on to

01:17:25.500 get no i don't really know maybe i should try to look at them on facebook or something but the thing is

01:17:33.740 there are a lot of high-paying jobs for people who become diversity consultants or or um inclusion

01:17:41.560 strategists something like that in a lot of cases these are six-figure jobs um if you're a top

01:17:48.640 what is it vice president diversity inclusion at a canadian university you can be making

01:17:54.200 two hundred thousand three hundred thousand dollars a year um so maybe i guess that's not

01:17:59.260 a private sector wage but like you said now private companies do have these people and um

01:18:05.600 i think they are high-paying jobs unfortunately yeah you're right i hadn't even thought about that

01:18:11.320 it makes it just feel like the whole thing is a grift like the fact that like seriously all these

01:18:15.920 canadian private sector companies now literally have chief inclusion officer and people whose job 0.90

01:18:22.500 it is to just like like lecture the employees about how they're all horrible sexist racist people

01:18:28.500 and there's not even anything they can do about it because it's all um you know unconscious bias and

01:18:34.740 all that kind of stuff um you know you used to kind of laugh at people who go off and do gender

01:18:40.380 studies degrees uh you know useless degree you're not going to have any job after you graduate but

01:18:45.400 but you know the world is changing and now you're right they do occupy uh powerful positions all right

01:18:51.880 let's try to get through uh one or two more questions here i alluded to this earlier but this question

01:18:58.660 says lindsey you posted a video on youtube saying goodbye to the left in 2018 in response to far left

01:19:05.240 activists canceling one of your events do you consider yourself a conservative where do you consider

01:19:10.580 yourself on the political spectrum now yeah so i published that video in i think it was march 2018

01:19:16.900 and i think at the in the conclusion of that video i said just call me what you want i'm not

01:19:23.820 going to label myself because at first i saw myself as a leftist and i tried to signal that during

01:19:32.380 the laurier controversy but i realized um i'm just kind of a default leftist like i just considered

01:19:40.160 that the default position to be which i think is the case for probably most young people um and

01:19:48.580 but on upon further reflection i realized yeah i don't consider myself a leftist do i consider myself

01:19:56.860 a conservative um i don't really consider myself a conservative you know sometimes i think i have

01:20:05.060 some conservative positions but even at the same time those conservative party is kind of changing

01:20:13.280 um i see candace sometimes tweeting about what the conservative party is up to what was it aaron

01:20:21.320 said something about trans or equity equity yeah so they're kind of adopting the language

01:20:28.220 well well to me equity is very different than equality you know the goal is to have equal

01:20:34.340 treatment and equality under the law more or less but to all of a sudden start using these sort of

01:20:39.540 radical terms like equity for trans people i honestly don't even know what that means but i would

01:20:44.800 assume that that was coming from a far left political party not the so-called conservative party and

01:20:50.460 there's there's yeah a couple of uh you know problems there with with the with the party and its

01:20:56.440 communications but i i think a lot of people have traditional values or conservative values without

01:21:02.620 even really knowing it and the the problem for conservatives big big c conservatives like the party

01:21:09.600 is um you know trying to identify those people and connect with them about their values not necessarily

01:21:16.300 about their ideas because i i think you're right that a lot of young people kind of by default see

01:21:21.680 themselves as left-wing and a lot of canadians see themselves as just sort of middle of the road or

01:21:25.880 liberal um because they don't have strong opinions one way or the other so it's it's more important to

01:21:30.960 connect with them based on values than than sort of ideology for me but but i i i i i assume that you

01:21:40.360 sort of you know come from a culturally conservative background and that you are a bit conservative but

01:21:45.400 i'll i'll take you at your word if you say you're not conservative

01:21:48.840 um okay i mean what do you think um because i have a family life and is that why you say that or

01:21:56.800 yeah you're married you have a baby you know you're sort of traditional in that way and it seems

01:22:02.380 like you have a close relationship with your parents you know you you're hard working you

01:22:06.860 started working for yourself i think you write about this in the book that your first job you

01:22:12.060 had when you were like 15 or something like that like you know the value of hard work the importance

01:22:16.400 of community um the importance of family all those things to me are or conservatism okay

01:22:24.320 it's a good point but i would i would call myself honestly a centrist as um you know tainted

01:22:33.980 a word that is for some people absolutely all right well uh leave that there another question

01:22:42.680 here this is just a comment i think penny says just for interest amazon prime tv has a channel

01:22:48.340 called the great courses the people giving a lectures are mostly professors from various

01:22:52.480 colleges across the u.s in my opinion the great courses on prime tv are excellent do you have any

01:22:58.980 comment on that lindsay i'll check it out i don't have amazon prime tv but i'm i'll check it out it

01:23:05.860 sounds good all right let's do one more question uh lindsay i am a conservative currently studying at

01:23:12.700 the university of toronto in the last few years particularly while trump was president i often had

01:23:17.360 to hide my conservative views and opinions in order to pass my classes and not be ridiculed i know

01:23:23.300 i'm not alone in my beliefs but post-secondary schools are rife with far-left activists how do

01:23:29.500 conservatives on campus combat the bias of universities well i would say um you need your

01:23:37.700 morale boosted um and so it was important for me during when i was at laurier to have formed the

01:23:46.220 laurier society for open inquiry and just have like-minded people around you um to boost each

01:23:52.780 other's morale and i think that will leave you better off that'll leave you with kind of some support

01:23:59.220 um it'll leave you with better arguments you'll be able to hash out your your points of view and

01:24:06.720 have them ready to present um yeah so find other people it might be difficult because a lot of

01:24:15.900 people are just don't want to out themselves as defenders of free speech they they would rather

01:24:24.080 stay below the radar but i would encourage people that there are strength in numbers and to

01:24:29.720 to join together um when campuses are back and just in in general in life too that's really good

01:24:38.840 advice i remember when i was my last year of university uh i was taking a class on american foreign

01:24:44.440 policy and i was the first person that had to do my presentation um and and i didn't really know

01:24:49.840 like what to expect so i presented and i sort of had a pro-american view at the time and talking about

01:24:54.780 the good of american foreign policy and you know during at the time like it was kind of radio silence

01:25:01.440 i didn't really get very many comments but i remember afterwards i had like five or six people

01:25:05.140 come up to me and say like thank you i agree it's so good to hear that there's other people that think

01:25:09.940 this way that don't default think america's evil and america's doing wrong and i mean this was this

01:25:16.340 was during the bush presidency when everyone hated america right but but still um uh you know it it is

01:25:23.000 good to have camaraderie and to sort of out yourself because then you you start to make do you start to

01:25:28.220 realize that you're not alone and you make uh you make some friends so i i think you eventually did

01:25:33.700 that at laurier um not to go too much into your personal life but uh i believe through through all

01:25:40.260 of your activism and through your uh free speech club you ended up meeting your your now husband who

01:25:45.280 uh is also uh one of our employees at true north so uh so i think i think things ended well for you

01:25:51.400 lindsay yeah yeah it's a good way to meet people maybe you'll meet your future spouse there you go

01:25:58.140 all right well i think that's an excellent place to leave it so the book is called diversity and

01:26:03.620 exclusion confronting the campus free speech crisis it's available on amazon if you do purchase it and

01:26:10.520 you like it don't forget to leave a five-star review i think it's an excellent book and it really does

01:26:15.480 um deserve it you can you can get it on kindle right now and uh read it over the weekend if you

01:26:20.740 so please or you can order it and get a uh paperback version mailed to you so lindsay thank you so much

01:26:26.740 your time and really thanks for uh undertaking this really important project and writing this great

01:26:31.680 book well thank you for giving me the opportunity because it was my fellowship at true north where

01:26:37.640 you encouraged me to write the book so thank you as well awesome all right let's uh let's leave it

01:26:43.440 there good night everyone

The Candice Malcolm Show - April 22, 2021

Diversity and Exclusion： An Exclusive Q&A with Lindsay Shepherd

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