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Dec. 27, 2017 - Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
02:04:35
Deconstruction: The Lindsay Shepherd Affair
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A couple of professors from Wilfrid Laurier to talk about the Lindsay Shepard scandal and what happened with Professor Rambucana and Pimlot and Administrator Adria Joel.
Adria, right?
Adria Joel, who I think is the unsung...
What would you call it?
The unsung villain in this entire process, because she seems to have escaped relatively unscathed, even though I think her role is more reprehensible than anyone else's.
Anyways, why don't you guys introduce yourself and talk about what you've been doing at Wilfrid Laurier, and also just let everybody know why we're meeting.
Yeah, well, I'm Dave Haskell, and I'm a prophet Laurier.
I'm in the Faculty of Liberal Arts.
This is my colleague, Will.
Will, how did we come into this whole thing?
Like, this didn't just happen with the Lindsay affair.
Like, well, to background, we support maximum freedom of expression.
And we've really found each other along with a few other professors who feel the same way that we do, that free expression and free inquiry is the core value of a university.
But sort of how do we run into each other?
I'm in the business school, so my exposure to faculty arts is minimal and I've been really sheltered from this professionally.
But watching what's happening in the U.S., watching what was happening to you at U of T. I'm a grad.
I did my PhD here.
And it was in January that our university leadership sent out an email explaining to the faculty how to think about the Trump travel ban.
And declaring its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusivity.
And I was really offended by that, that they would see fit to pronounce on a political issue in another country.
Offended why?
I've got a PhD.
I'm able to reach my own conclusions about whether these things are good or bad.
I don't need my administration preaching to me about the right way to think about an issue, a political issue particularly.
So why do you think they did that?
And what do you think they were thinking when they did that?
Because that sort of seems self-evident, right?
It's not the administration's role to dictate a political stance to the faculty.
That's just clearly not their role.
So what do you think they were thinking?
It seemed like a manifestation of Trump derangement syndrome.
It seemed like just the same reaction that the Democrats in the US were having, that they lost to this horrible person and they couldn't understand why.
And he was so reprehensible.
And here was yet another terrible thing that he was doing.
And we must all agree how bad it was.
Well, I mean, even if...
The funny thing is, even if you can make that case, say personally and even socially, the idea that you could make that case and then be university administration and then tell your faculty to think that way, I mean, that's taking it in a whole different...
That's taking it to a whole different level of presumptuousness.
Did that come from...
Our administration or from the Diversity and Equity Office?
No, from the administration, from the leadership, the university leadership over the CPAM. It's confusing because I remember we also got an email from the Diversity and Equity Office when Trump won and they said that they've created a safe space and they were going to be open for extra hours in case anybody needed to go and find comfort.
Right, that happened a lot in the United States, eh?
But you'd think at least the Americans have some justification for it, given that it's their country.
I mean, we need safe spaces because a conservative was elected in the United States, not even in our country.
It does seem to be a little bit on the absurd side.
Well, it's just to me, you know, they didn't send out an email when Justin Trudeau won.
And I have to imagine that there were some students who were offended.
Like, there's got to be conservative students at Laurier.
But it's very much a one-sided conversation when we talk about administration, when we talk about the diversity and equity office.
They talk about diversity, but they really don't mean it because they do not want those students who are ideologically diverse.
They talk about inclusion, but they purposely will exclude those students.
And an email like that is proof positive of that kind of exclusion.
Well, that was the thing that just got me hopping mad.
And I was emailing back and forth with a colleague at Queen's, and we were talking about the importance of free speech, and this had outraged me.
And he sent me a link to a Star article that David had written.
This is now maybe a month later in February or March about this guest speaker.
Oh, Daniel Robitaille.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And that she couldn't speak.
And was she Gamache's lawyer?
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
So merely because she served as a defense lawyer for someone, she was pilloried.
Well, this was another...
When people look at the Lindsay Shepard affair, this is not an isolated case at Wilfrid Laurier.
This is something that is...
It is a regular occurrence, and now it isn't always as high profile, but whether it's students in my office saying, I can't speak, whether it's my colleague sometimes saying to their students, who believes that they're stifled?
And every hand goes up, and there have been cases of that.
Colleagues have come and told me.
But we've got these other examples, like when Daniel Robitaille came to speak at the Brantford campus of Wilfrid Laurier, and some students agitated until she was forced not to do so.
And my president...
We should provide some background.
So that was the Gomeshi case, right?
And so Gomeshi was a CBC journalist who was accused of sexual assault and sexual misbehavior by a number of people, who was immediately let go at CBC, who was dragged viciously through the press, I would say, and then was found innocent.
In the courts.
And he had a defense lawyer, and the defense lawyer had been invited to speak.
Yes, she was part of the defense team.
She was going to speak, and she wasn't going to speak about the Gomeshi trial, in fact.
She was going to talk about what it's like to be a high-power, powerful lawyer in the big city, in Toronto.
I mean, that would have been really valuable for the criminology students.
But the students who were agitating against her, really, with the support of several professors, they were saying, well, no, if she comes on, it will trigger students.
It will mentally harm students.
And so that was used as justification.
It's very interesting, too, to me, to see that these claims of harm and so forth are generally put forth by people who have no clinical expertise whatsoever.
And their idea is that the way that you...
First of all, that the way to aid people's mental health is to protect them, and there's no evidence for that whatsoever.
And the second is that in your attempts to protect them, the best thing to do is to shelter them from exposure to ideas that would be challenging or frightening, which is precisely the opposite of what a clinician does when he's trying to, or she, is trying to deal with someone who has excess anxiety.
What you do...
In a case where someone who has excess anxiety, even as a consequence of a trauma, let's say, is you get them to voluntarily expose themselves to increasingly larger doses of exactly what frightens them.
That's the curative root.
So not only is it advice that's being...
Disseminated, say, by people who aren't clinicians, it's actually advice that's being disseminated who are promoting the opposite of what an informed clinician would do.
And that isn't my opinion.
That's as close to a consensus as anything you could reach among clinical practitioners, right?
One, the rules for clinical improvement is get your story straight, something like that, talk about your past, sort it out, and expose yourself to the things that you're afraid of that you're inclined to avoid.
That's the pathway to...
To resilience and more robust mental health.
Okay, so tell us the story a bit.
You guys have an inside view of what's happened on the Wilfrid Laurier campus since the Lindsay Shepard affair broke.
I should just say that, you know, after this Robitaille event, I read David's piece and immediately emailed him and just said, kindred soul.
And we met and we had lunch and...
And just talked about, you know, free speech and the Chicago Statement and how can we get it implemented at the university, but we just couldn't see any way forward.
Right, so that's another thing we want to discuss.
You guys have rewritten the Chicago Statement, right, so that it's more appropriate in a Canadian context.
Right, we call it the Laurier Statement for Freedom of Expression.
Okay, okay, and you've been trying to convince, or you've been trying to communicate with the university authorities to have that ratified, essentially, adopted as a statement of principles.
And have you had any success with that, or what's the consequence?
They deferred to a task force that's going to be held.
And we can certainly...
Okay, and is that in the aftermath of the Shepherd Affair?
Is that going to be part of it?
Well, we didn't really do anything over the summer, just because...
It just seemed too big a mountain, and there seemed to be no way to introduce the idea.
Right.
Now you've got your catalyst.
And Lindsay Shepard becomes the catalyst.
Oh my goodness.
And, you know, what...
What an object lesson in what goes on at Laurier, but also what an object lesson in how you handle these free speech opponents.
She's really given a model that other students, I hope, will follow.
But it was through this Robitaille thing that we got to know each other and a few others.
Yeah, there's a couple more of you.
That's right.
And so about five, I think you told me.
That's right.
So the Robitaille incident really brought us out of the woodwork.
We started to chat and say, you know, we see this problem on our university.
We don't know what to do.
And then when the Lindsay Shepard scandal broke, we all immediately were emailing us.
It's happened again, is essentially what we were saying.
And we said, we've got to do something about this.
I'd already...
I was out on a trip and I came home and I said to my wife, where are the newspapers?
This was November 12th when the story broke, Christy Blatchford's story.
And I said, honey, where are the newspapers?
She said, I can't let you see them.
I said, why not?
She said, you cannot read the papers.
And of course, it was because Christy Blatchford's article was in there.
So as soon as I read it, I was beside myself.
I thought, it's happened again.
And this time, this is really terrible.
They've attacked a TA, is what they've done.
With the full force of the administration.
And claims that she had done mental harm.
Broken two laws.
Two laws, federal and provincial.
I was sincerely worried that they were going to railroad this young lady.
They could have easily taken her to the Ontario Human Rights Commission.
I contacted Christy Blatchford.
I said, can you put me in touch with her?
She was kind enough to do so.
I got in touch with Lindsay, and I said...
I know that this is a terrible time, but you've got a professor who supports you.
I knew that these gentlemen also would.
And then quickly, as quickly as I could, I wrote an op-ed for the Toronto Star that week, just again saying, this is happening.
The world needs to be aware of it.
But it was really after that Monday, after the story broke on the Saturday, we started to talk.
And how can we assist, Lindsay?
And how can we...
Well, the op-ed helped.
And the fact that the Star ran it was quite remarkable as well.
So, hooray to the Star.
The Star really does want to do its best to champion free expression.
Yeah, well, you'd think journalists would actually be concerned about that to some degree.
Well, and I think they are.
Like, one of the things that's happened to me in the last year is that, although the press coverage of what I did, and just to remind people, so last year I made a video about Bill C-16, which was the bill whose provisions Lindsay Shepard theoretically transgressed against, just to be clear about that.
And when I first made the video, I was accused by all sorts of people, including journalists, of...
Well, first of all, making unnecessary noise and being unnecessarily alarmist, which were the minor accusations.
And then the more major accusations were that, you know, I was all the things that you'd expect a far-right agitator to be, a bigot and a transphobe and a racist and all of these things.
But what was interesting was that the journalists...
By and large, especially the main journalists, turned around on that issue really quickly.
It was probably within three weeks, because what happened was a couple of them actually went and read the policy documents that I had referred to on the Ontario Human Rights Commission website, which are still there and which are still appalling, and have led exactly to this situation with Lindsay.
And as soon as they read what I had been...
What outing, let's say, in my video, then they started to understand that I wasn't just ringing a bell for no reason at all.
It was actually reasonable, I think, of people to go after me to begin with, because Canada is such a safe and peaceful place, and our political situation and economic situation has been so stable that when someone comes out and says, look, we're in danger of making a major error, the logical first response should be, No, there's something wrong with you.
It's like, we're fine.
There's something wrong with you.
The law is just trying to protect these people.
Right, exactly.
Well, and so it's reasonable.
I think it was reasonable for me to be hit hard in the aftermath of doing that.
Because, well, generally speaking, whistleblowers in Canada or alarmists in Canada have very little to be alarmist about.
But this, okay, so now, so, fine.
So this thing happened with Lindsay.
What have you seen happening on the Wilfrid Laurier campus?
Well, things that I'm not particularly proud of, I would say.
I mean, I knew that Will and some other colleagues were going to come to the aid of Lindsay, but I was thinking that once her recording became public, that we would just have a flood of professors Coming to support our cause, which is we had a Laurier Statement for Freedom of Expression modeled on the Chicago Statement.
We thought that immediately people would just say, of course, we need to reinforce that this needs to be the primary mission.
Free expression, free inquiry needs to be the primary mission.
And we got that out pretty fast.
We really did.
In about 10 days.
And got it on change.org.
And then I was emailing everybody that I knew and trying to get people interested.
And I would say out of 50 emails I sent, I got 15 signatures from personal relationships.
So even with personal relationships, you could only get a 30% hit rate.
So what do you think's stopping professors from signing that, say, or clambering on board, especially in the aftermath of the Shepard recording, which we should point out, you know, and this is one of the things that's very interesting, is that outside Wilfrid Laurier, and perhaps outside universities that are in the same boat, the reaction to that Recording was universal, right?
And national and international and uniform.
And the reaction was, what the hell?
This is scandalous.
There's nothing about this that is acceptable, right?
And so what struck me as so remarkable is that even though there's been international outrage over this and very...
and not...
And an outrage of a sort that's only been disputed by a very small number of people.
At least to begin with, Wilfrid Laurier responded en masse, let's say, as if this was somehow debatable.
You know, as if there were two sides of the story here, let's say.
And I thought, well, I thought Rambucana and Pimlot, who were the professors, what they did I thought was appalling.
For in upbraiding her, and in the manner in which they did it, and in the language that they used.
But I thought what was truly terrifying was the presence of Adria Joel at that inquisition, because she was an administrator who was hired specifically to do exactly what she was doing by legislated necessity on the part of the Ontario Liberal government, right?
Because it wasn't just the university that was involved in this.
Her position was set up because of legislative necessity, which is something also to keep in mind when we're going after the universities.
Okay, so you had a hard time getting faculty on board.
How many faculty members did sign it?
59, is it?
Out of how many faculty?
550.
550 full-time.
And so you say, well, what's going on with them?
Well, I think that some, maybe, I know this is hard to believe, but maybe unaware, even now.
I think there's a big proportion that are unaware.
As unbelievable as that is.
Okay, well that's its own mystery because I don't know where you'd have to have been in the last month to not have noticed that this has happened.
I think that people, perhaps in the sciences, the computer sciences, the math, they've got their head down and they're doing their research.
And so I don't think there's anything diabolical there.
I think that what we...
But business as well, I've got very few signatures from the business faculty.
I mean, some...
But a lot of people just aren't engaged.
It's a bit of a commuter school, a little bit, so I think people are just getting on with their research and their teaching, maybe not aware of the problem.
Well, that's an interesting thing in and of itself, because I think part of what's led to the occupation of the university, let's say, by the radical postmodern types, is the proclivity of the scientists, in particular, But also, I would say,
the more serious scholars to be focusing narrowly on their field of inquiry, which is essentially what they should be doing, and not paying attention to any of the broader contextual issues, which is actually a perfectly fine strategy when things are going well, but a terrible strategy when they're not.
And what you also see...
So we've got these people who might not be aware...
We've got the few who are aware and are supporting maximum free expression, but then you've got these other people who are convinced that maximum free expression, free inquiry, is not a good thing for a university.
Those people are definitely congregated within the arts and the humanities, and they justify it because they are applying a social justice lens, or what they would call a critical theory lens, to this entire issue.
How about a quick summary of critical theory?
Well, critical theory, I mean, in a nutshell, it's an idea that came from the Frankfurt School in Germany.
It transfers over to Columbia University.
It is some German scholars who are Marxists, and what they are saying is that...
Marxism as an economic unit or as an economic philosophy really doesn't work.
It doesn't transfer very well.
But let's change it over to a social theory.
And it's a theory of oppressor and oppressed.
And it's very bifurcated.
You are either one or the other.
And if you are the oppressed, you're good.
Mm-hmm.
And if you're the oppressor, you're bad.
And it's as simple as that.
There's no nuance.
Or, okay, I'm being as bad as they are, so I'm giving you the really broad strokes on this.
But essentially, it does set up the villain and the victim.
And it is the idea that we must do everything to silence the villain, the oppressor...
And to center the oppressed.
Yes, and then we will elevate the oppressed.
The same thing happened, essentially, with the French deconstructionists in the 1970s.
It is.
So this is the motivation behind it.
But when you hear them talk about critical theory...
It is not critical thinking.
There's a big difference.
And so parents will hear, well, they're teaching critical theory.
Isn't that a good thing?
No, because critical thinking means I'm going to show you both sides of this argument.
Critical theory means I'm going to deliberately give you one side of the argument.
I'm going to tell you who's right, and I'm going to tell you who's wrong.
There's an oppressor and an oppressed.
The oppressor is the bad guy.
The oppressed is the good guy.
And it's a very manipulative argument.
So there's, let's say, two reasons why people wouldn't sign the petition.
One is they're doing something else and they're just not interested in it.
And fair enough, even though I think that that's dangerous at the moment.
The second is that they're actually Philosophically or ideologically opposed to the propositions.
And so to what degree do you think the latter is the determining factor behind the relatively small degree of support that you guys have been able to drum up?
It's a big thing that a group of faculty signed an open letter to the university complaining about the violence and that the administration needed to make the campus safe.
Safe, yeah.
They did the same thing with me after I made my video.
I made the campus unsafe and 200 people signed a petition.
What does unsafe mean?
I mean, this is the problem.
The left, the far left, are taking words that have a traditional meaning, a traditional definition, and they're blowing that definition completely away.
At one time, harm meant that there was an infliction of damage that would have lasting effect and it would compromise the appearance or the function.
We can think about damage to a car.
Lasting and it's affecting the appearance or the function.
That's what harm is.
But they've stretched that definition so that it becomes meaningless.
That an objectionable idea becomes harm.
That when you show a video, you've made a place unsafe.
And that...
Yeah, that's the language of trigger warnings and safe space.
But it's disingenuous.
There was a trance rally, and one of the speakers said that letting...
I hope I can quote this properly.
Letting Peterson's views be heard in the classroom is violence.
Mm-hmm.
It is violence.
Yes, you can react with violence.
I've thought a lot about one of the tenets of postmodernism.
Less so, I would say, of critical theory, but particularly of postmodernism, and it's more Marxist variance, is that the only motivation for the construction of hierarchies is power.
And you think, well, that's...
No.
There's lots of reasons for producing hierarchies, right?
There's hierarchies of competence, there's hierarchies of interest, there's hierarchies of aesthetic quality.
Like, there's all sorts of...
Wherever you can make a qualitative judgment, you make a hierarchy.
So there's...
The idea that power is the only driving force behind the construction of hierarchies is absolutely Preposterous.
So you think, well, why in the world would anyone make that claim that it's only power that exists?
Well, as far as I can tell, at least one of the reasons is that it justifies the use of power.
If you have your position because of power, which is basically tyranny, then I'm fully warranted in my use of power against you.
That's all there is.
So I think it's a great justification for it.
Okay, so how many people signed the petition stating that the campus had become unsafe?
That was like 79.
79, just like that.
Okay, so you got more people signing a petition claiming that what Shepard did made the campus unsafe than you did getting...
Okay, so that's interesting, because one of the things we're going to address later is the President's letter as a consequence of the inquiry into the Lindsay Shepard affair.
And one of the things she says...
People who've tried to downplay what happened at Wilfrid Laurier have said basically two or three things.
One is that...
Well, that Shepard is not to be trusted, and she's really like a subtle arm of the right wing.
That's one, and that she's a reprehensible character.
Yes, yes, or Peterson.
No, they directly went after her.
I'm quite sneaky that way.
The second is that Pimlot, Rambucana, and Joel misinterpreted Bill C-16, which I think is absolutely preposterous.
I think they interpreted exactly the way that it was written, especially if you consider the surrounding policies, and that's what I was warning about last September.
And the third is that this was an isolated incident and doesn't truly reflect the reality either of Wilfrid Laurier or other campuses.
And that's stated explicitly in the President's letter.
And so that's one of the things I wanted to discuss because I don't buy that.
I think this wasn't an anomaly.
This wasn't people stepping out of line.
And I think the proof of that is not what Rambucana did or Pimlot.
Because we could say, yeah, yeah, they're ideologically committed professors and they...
And they're not very professional in their administrative abilities, and they went after a TA unprofessionally and stupidly.
That's bad.
That's not really bad.
What's really bad was that there was a paid administrator at the meeting who was hired to do exactly that.
And so the fact that she was there is the proof to me that this is not only not an isolated incident, it's actually a logical and inevitable consequence of legislative moves that made these bureaucratic positions necessary and the practical reality that these administrative positions do exist on the campuses.
So, there's no isolated incident issue there.
Now, how do you think Lindsay's been treated at Wilfrid Laurier?
Like, what's your impression of her personal situation there?
I think that...
So, on the positive side, there have been students who have rallied to her support, and that's been really encouraging to see.
It was...
Some students on campus who are dedicated to freedom of expression, they mostly are coming from the conservative clubs, whether it's the conservative political club or other conservative groups, although definitely invitations have been extended to other groups of other political stripes or other, they really haven't rallied to Lindsay, sadly.
So those students have, to a certain extent, befriended her or brought her under their wing or just have begun associating with her and saying, how can we support you?
I think in her classes, and I'm just going from what I've seen, I follow her on Twitter.
So I see what's been going on there.
Apparently, you know, and I don't think this is inaccurate.
The other grad students are being quite scathing.
Yeah, yeah, that's what I've heard from her and from her tweets, is that at least they're cold.
At minimum, they're cold.
And the professors as well, including the one who told her that she couldn't use her laptop in class because she didn't want to be recorded.
I mean, you couldn't script this level of idiocy.
But my thought is, students always ask me, Dr.
Haskell, can I record what you're talking about?
And I say, yes.
Yes, the answer is yes.
The answer is yes, because you know what?
I don't say anything in my class that I wouldn't publicly say.
And I want to be accountable.
I want people to know what I'm saying in my class.
I want them to know I'm fair, I'm balanced, I present both sides of the argument, I'm not afraid of that.
I mean, why are people afraid of accountability?
That's beyond my understanding.
Yeah, well, that's a very good question.
So, okay, so I think...
I think what we'll do now is go through this letter, because what happened yesterday, I guess, is the President had appointed a third-party fact-finder to look into what happened with the Lindsay Shepard affair, right?
And there were concerns about that, because many people, including Christy Blatchford, were concerned, and the lawyer that's representing Lindsay, Howard Shepard.
Leavitt.
Leavitt, Howard Leavitt, was concerned that the person who was appointed to do the third party investigation wouldn't be neutral because he had tweeted his agreement with a variety of, let's call them politically correct issues, quite publicly.
But it does look like he's done a credible job.
That's how it appears to me.
Anyways, the president, who was very closed-mouth or assiduously neutral about this whole affair has released a report, and I thought we could go through it and talk about whether or not we think that it addressed the issues reasonably.
So, because I think it did in some part, but I think it didn't in others.
So, This is from McClatchy.
Deborah McClatchy, PhD, who's the president and vice chancellor at Wilfrid Lurie and relatively new at it.
So, I mean, she's really being raked through the coals, that's for sure.
But she was the vice president academic, which was the second most senior position for the last five years.
So she's not...
So she's accustomed to this.
Okay.
Okay, it is...
I believe it is time for some clarity around the events of the past few weeks here at Wilfrid Laurier University, stemming from the very regrettable meeting, so that's an interesting turn of phrase to begin with, that followed the showing of a TVO clip by a teaching assistant during a tutorial.
As the newly appointed president and vice chancellor of this incredible 106-year-old institution, I'm here to set the record straight and announce some important changes.
The issue has highlighted some deficiencies, but as importantly, it has created opportunities.
Yeah, well, to me, that's a kind of marketing doublespeak.
It's like we could just go with the deficiencies issue for now.
Opportunities for Laurier to improve our own performance, to lead a broader discussion on academic freedom and freedom of expression.
And opportunities to work together as a community to demonstrate the strengths we have as an institution.
When the issue first broke, I erred on the side of caution.
As a person and as the president of Laurier, I am sensitive to the viewpoints and concerns of our students, staff, and faculty.
As an employer, I am cognizant that the four people who were in that meeting room are employees and one is also a student.
All four are entitled to due process.
I did not want to rush judgment.
Rather, I wanted to ensure we were able to objectively assess the facts and make sound decisions flowing from that assessment.
That seems reasonable enough, and I would say the events that have transpired probably justified her approach, although I had taken issues with some of the things that she had said and not said when she was on the agenda, but whatever.
We hired an external fact finder with expertise in human resources issues.
I have received the report and we are taking decisive action to ensure these events will not be repeated.
The report, along with what we already knew, has led me to the final conclusions, following conclusions and actions.
There were numerous errors in judgment made in the handling of the meeting with Ms.
Lindsay Shepard, the TA of the tutorial in question.
In fact, the meeting never should have happened at all.
Okay, that's probably the most damning statement in the entire report, I would say.
And then she says, Okay, so we can take that apart a little bit.
No formal complaint.
Okay, so Rambucana claimed that one or more students had complaint.
He wouldn't say how many, and he wouldn't say what the nature of the complaint was.
Now, what this document seems to indicate that is that, well, if there was a complaint, which it leaves vague, there was nothing that would constitute a genuine complaint in an administrative sense.
And that's why the meeting should have never happened.
So I guess one question would be, What, if any, appropriate disciplinary action should be taken against Rambucana and Pimlot?
And I don't know the answer to that.
Because, you know, they're not administrative experts, and I don't think faculty can be.
But, by the same token, I don't feel like I understand exactly what happened to bring about the meeting to begin with.
Do you guys know?
I mean, whatever we do know, we've had to piece together from different media reports because, as has been said, our president is not releasing the findings of this.
Like, this is going to be, this is a secret, the independent investigation.
We will never know what it actually says.
We don't know what all the recommendations are.
I think we can take her at her word that she's telling us what's So why is she making it secret or keeping it secret?
Is that this concern with, what do you call it, confidentiality that seems to be the camouflage behind which these things are always hidden?
That seems to be implied or even said explicitly, but I've seen other cases where there's been disciplinary measures...
And we get more details than this, right?
So I don't know the level of confidentiality that is required under law.
But what I can say, and I'll let Will talk about what the disciplinary actions can be.
Let's keep in mind that when Rambucana said that there had been a complaint, and it says here that there wasn't, He then echoes that in his apology to Lindsay.
He then says, of course, and I'm paraphrasing here, so I'm not being completely accurate in terms of what he exactly said, but he said something like, of course, there are things I can't discuss because of the complaint that was made by a student.
So he's echoing what seems to be an untruth.
Well, this is about as close a statement as you might imagine in a statement like this, stating that it was an untruth.
I mean, she said, no formal complaint nor informal concern relative to a Laurier policy was registered.
I mean, that's...
That's as close as you can get to coming right out and saying that the statement that there was a complaint was a falsehood.
And I just want to follow that thread for a second.
So here we have a controversy that was started on an untruth.
And it seems to be that this is part of the whole modus operandi here, when we hear, and there's been harm.
Right.
And it's unsafe.
Right.
Daily violence.
Although, again, when the media, Global National News, Globe and Mail, checked in to see if there were any police reports related to any harassment or any threats, no police reports.
Same thing happened.
So at some point, don't we have to say there's a boy who cried wolf?
Well, this is even, this is more egregious even though than claiming harm.
I mean, because, you know, maybe people were getting nasty tweets and so forth, and I suspect they were.
But the thing is, is that Rambucana and Pimlot directly claimed that there had been a complaint, right?
And so that's a big problem that isn't thoroughly addressed here.
Well, and either somebody heard about the tutorial and the fact that a Peterson video was shown, or Ramu kind of found out somehow, but he decided that was unacceptable.
And that the right way to approach it was to claim that a student had complained, because it's not such a big problem that he found it unacceptable, let's say.
It is his class.
Like, he has a right to talk to his TA about what's going to be shown and what's not going to be shown, even though he handled it, I think, reprehensibly in that meeting.
He could come out and say, look, like, that isn't the sort of thing I want to be discussed in my class.
I don't agree with Peterson.
I think he's a jerk.
And, like, here's the other things you should be concentrating on.
But to come out and say, a student complained, and then to buttress that with the accusation that she had violated federal and provincial law, as well as the university...
And to bring in Andrea Joel.
Exactly.
And I don't understand why Joel was there without some sort of formal paperwork or...
Well, I think that the reason for that is that the positions that people like Joel occupy are so ill-defined and so fundamentally reprehensible in their organization, in their aims, is that this is exactly the sort of thing that you would expect.
And so I thought, she didn't say much in that little inquisitorial recording, but I thought the things she did say were spectacularly What's the discipline?
What is the discipline?
Do you have any sense of this?
I can't speculate.
I don't know.
Communications?
What happens when somebody lies or when somebody brings forth a complaint that wasn't a complaint?
I don't know.
Well, that's one of the things this document does not address.
Like, it's a big problem.
It's a big problem if there was no complaint and the reason she was disciplined was because there was a claim that there was a complaint.
Like, that's...
Well, we don't have to beat that to death anymore.
But what about if there's a claim that there's harm?
What about if there's a claim that the campus has daily violence?
What if there's a claim that such and such area has become unsafe?
Does that need to be...
action against people who are making those claims?
Well, that's a very good question.
Okay, so that's a problem that isn't addressed in this report.
It's a big one.
Okay, and I mean, the President is obviously not happy with this because she also says, "The errors in judgment...
Okay, no formal complaint, no informal concern was registered about the screening of the video, This was confirmed in the fact-finding report.
So, they're not beating around the bush about this.
They're stating it very clearly.
The errors in judgment were compounded by misapplication of existing university policies and procedures.
Basic guidelines and best practices on how to appropriately execute the roles and responsibilities of staff and faculty were ignored Not just not understood.
Ignored or not understood.
Okay, that's a pretty damn damning statement there too.
I don't even know all the particulars here.
I heard Howard Levitt say that she was entitled to some sort of representation.
Lindsay was entitled to some representation.
Under the bylaws of our university, she was supposed to have had that.
That nobody offered that to her.
Right, so that's an administrative follow-up at the level of employee-employer relationships to say nothing of the academic issues at stake here.
We don't have policies and procedures about how to carry out an inquisition.
That's not what she's saying.
I think there's a medieval document that you can use.
But one thing, Jordan, I want to point out here is that the errors in judgment were compounded by misapplication of existing university policies.
Misapplication of existing university policies.
At the end of this document, she's going to say that our gendered and sexual violence policy needs to be reviewed.
So which is it?
Right.
Was it an error in application or an error in policy?
And this is confusing.
Yeah, it is.
Because my suggestion would be the policy is terribly flawed.
We have a colleague who's one of the free speech proponents at our university, Dr.
Andrew Robinson.
He is an expert in human rights law and he went through our gendered and sexual violence policy with a fine tooth comb and he says, this document is unworkable.
It makes thought a crime.
And he wrote an op-ed to that effect.
So my point would be...
And who did he...
What organization is he part of?
He's Laureate.
Yeah, but which sub...
Human Rights and Human Diversity.
Right.
That's exactly it.
This is his field.
Yes, exactly.
And so when he looked at this, he says, this goes beyond what the Ontario government was even asking for.
And it gets to the point where it actually makes...
You can be guilty of...
Thought crime.
You can be guilty of transphobia without any intent.
If someone says, I've been harmed mentally, that is enough for conviction under this particular policy.
It's the same with the Ontario Human Rights Commission's policies.
Intent doesn't matter.
So this isn't misapplication.
I'm saying, did Adria Joelle actually get it right?
And so, is it a misapplication?
So it'll be interesting if the university does discipline her, if she gets legal representation, who claims that she was actually applying the policies correctly, because that is the question, right?
But it could be two things.
It could be the policies are flawed, and this is the consequence, and they were misapplied.
We don't know.
But there's definitely ambiguity here, and that's a crucial issue.
I think Lindsay was guilty under the gender and sexual violence policy, and she Adria was right in accusing her.
She was wrong about C-16.
It would have been an Ontario Human Rights Code violation.
But GSB, she was right.
If there had been a complaint.
Right.
This is the point.
Okay.
And how many angels can dance on the head of a hand?
Okay.
Procedures...
In how to apply university policies, same issue here, and under what circumstances were not followed.
The training of key individuals to meet the expectations of the university in addressing an issue such as this was not sufficient and must be improved.
Okay, the question is...
Who are these key individuals?
Do they mean Rambucana, Pimlot, and Joel?
Are they putting all three of those in there?
And then the next question would be, how are they going to improve the training of key individuals?
Because that actually worries me as a faculty member, right?
Whenever the administration decides that it's going to engage in some additional training of faculty members, then that raises the hair on the back of my neck.
Like, is this unconscious bias training?
Is that what they're talking about?
Which has been...
Well, I think...
I can't remember.
I've just read recently...
Nozak himself, who developed the IAT, just published a review paper.
Stating clearly that attempts to reduce unconscious bias by explicit training, there's no evidence whatsoever that they have any positive effect.
And that was Nozek himself who helped develop the IAT. Because the little coterie that developed that test...
The chair of the Harvard Psychology Department, I'll remember her name in a minute, Greenwald, Anthony Greenwald, and Nozek, what's her name?
Mazarin Banaji, three of them developed it.
They're starting to fragment a bit, because the thing has been pushed way too hard, right?
It's not a test that's valid for the purposes that it's being put to, and they know it perfectly well, even though they're Consulting about it and have made quite an enterprise out of it.
But Nozek is, you know, seems to be a pretty credible scientist and he's actually looking at the data and it's clear that these unconscious bias training programs have zero positive impact.
There's some evidence that they have negative impact because of course people don't like being accused of being unconscious racists, right?
So I'm wondering, is that the kind of training?
And there's nothing in here that says this, but this is the problem that it says there will be training Unconscious bias, is that the same as systemic discrimination?
Well, it's the neurological equivalent of systemic discrimination.
So imagine systemic discrimination is built into the structure of the system, right?
Unconscious bias is built into your perceptual structures.
So even before you act or think, you're biased against the members of an out-group.
That's the claim.
And not only biased against the members of out-group, which is a different claim than biased in favor of your in-group, which of course almost every human being is, especially if you think about your family, but that...
That implicit bias also manifests itself in behaviors that would essentially be categorizable as racist, at least at a low level.
And there's very little evidence that the implicit bias that this test hypothetically measures manifests itself in measurable behavior.
We went through a thing in the summer where they ran a regression on salaries at Laurier and found that women were paid a little bit less than men by about 4%.
Did they include age as a covariate?
The answer to that would be no.
The model was, it had rank, and I don't know that it had age.
It only had four categories of professor, though.
It had faculty, a rank.
When this has been done at University of Michigan, for instance, because I looked at comparables, they had 21 categories of professor, or 21 departments.
They really broke it down.
And at ours, we had four.
So you were comparing people, for instance, within the business school who might be in marketing versus someone who...
Psychology.
Yeah.
Well, I know from setting up regression equations ad nauseum that the covariates that you include in the equation determine the outcome of the equation.
Well, the conclusion they reached, the explanation for the statistical significance of the gender coefficient was systemic...
Right, of course.
Well, that wasn't the conclusion they reached.
That was the conclusion they stepped into the inquiry with, and they gerrymandered the statistics until they found a regression equation that supported their initial claim.
So that's not an inquiry.
So what I hear you saying is there's really no scientific basis for this idea that there could be this unconscious bias that could drive all this...
Well, there is evidence that we're full of unconscious biases.
I mean, we couldn't even see if we didn't have unconscious biases because we have to use shortcuts and heuristics to just process the world.
The issue is...
What measurable impact does that have on behavior?
That's the first thing, and it's minimal at best.
First of all, it's not easy to distinguish between racial bias and novelty avoidance, right?
Because what you'd have to do is you'd have to find a person in a racial group, say a white person, who was just as familiar with black people as with white people, and then show that there was a bias, because otherwise you can't distinguish it from a novelty aversion.
And people are characterized by novelty aversion.
You already have developed a preference for that cup over this cup.
I mean, it happens that quickly, and it's that subtle and great and grand, let's say.
So the first issue is, we can't really distinguish unconscious bias from perceptual habit, let's say, or stereotyping from categorization, for that matter.
And that literature has been under assault in a major way in the social psychology literature.
But even assuming that an implicit bias does exist, Which there might be grounds for by noting that people do have an in-group preference, say, for their family members, and perhaps even for their racial members, although it's hard to distinguish that from familiarity preference.
Putting all that aside, which you can't, There's no evidence that these courses that are put in place to reduce that bias have any effect whatsoever on the bias.
It's complete.
Even the people who are pushing the IAT and the idea of implicit bias are willing to say, well, all these things that we're doing to try to reduce it have absolutely no effect or, if anything, a negative effect.
And again, we don't know what the training is going to be.
I guess where we went down this rabbit hole was, we don't know what the training is going to be, right?
We don't know.
We have no evidence to assume, we have no reason to assume that the training is going to address the proper problem.
And every reason to be skeptical that it won't.
Okay, so next.
There is also institutional failure that allowed this to happen.
Well, we don't know what that means, because I'd like to know what the institutional failure was, but that's a pretty broad...
And she says, when there is institutional failure, responsibility ultimately starts and ends with me.
Well, that's a nice statement, and okay, she's taking responsibility for it, but unless it's specified what the institutional failures are, it's just hand-waving.
Going forward, we will implement improved training and new procedures and engage in a very specific administrative review to strengthen and enhance confidence in what students and employees can expect at Laurier.
Specifically, there was no wrongdoing on the part of Ms.
Shepherd in showing the clip from TVO in her tutorial.
Showing a TVO clip for the purposes of an academic discussion is a reasonable classroom teaching tool.
Well, thank God for that, given that TVO is a publicly funded, middle-of-the-road, left-leaning liberal news media establishment.
A credible one, for sure.
I wish that, early on, Immediately following this story breaking that administration had said exactly that.
Because remember, for more than a month now, the public, the Canadian public has wondered, can you show TVOntario videos in classrooms at Laurier?
Right.
And I'm not joking.
And there has not been an answer from administration on that very basic question.
And so people who are thinking about sending their kids to Laurier are thinking, is that the place where they didn't know whether or not you could show public television in a classroom?
Is that the place where it took an independent investigation to come to the conclusion that it's okay to play a clip from the agenda?
Well, we still don't...
Yes, exactly.
It is the place where all of that was in doubt.
That is Wilfrid Laurier.
It is the place where those things were in doubt.
And so they're not quite as in doubt, but we also still don't know what else is...
What else is still in doubt?
Right?
Because if that can be, you wonder, well, you know, that's pretty damn innocuous.
Okay.
Any instructional material needs to be grounded in the appropriate academic underpinnings to put it in context for the relevance of the learning outcomes of the course.
Yeah, well, the question there is, any instructional material needs to be grounded in the appropriate academic underpinnings to put it in context for the learning outcomes of the course.
The question there is, who decides what the appropriate academic underpinnings to put it in context are?
Because that's supposed to be the bailiwick of the professor, period, right?
And with some leeway for the teaching assistants and so on.
But I worry when I hear about context, because I've seen opinion pieces from some of my colleagues who tell me that the appropriate context is within the frame of social justice or within the frame of critical theory.
Well, that's what Rambucana said to Shepard, was that, well, part of the reason you were wrong was because you portrayed it neutrally.
If you had contextualized it, essentially, if you had contextualized Peterson as Hitler, which was Rambucana's statement, then it would have been perhaps appropriate to air the video.
And that is equivalent to leading the witness, right?
And leading the witness is when we have a lawyer, an authority figure, telling the person on the stand what to say, taking my ideas and putting them into that person's mouth.
Right.
Well, that's how you produce unconscious bias.
Right.
But my point would be, so I'm not saying that this is in here, but we really need clarification.
Yeah, well, that's a sentence that I'm not happy about.
Appropriate academic underpinnings to put it in context for the relevance of the learning outcomes of the course.
Jesus, it's just administrative doublespeak the whole way through.
You present in class, you know, what are the criteria for evaluating that?
I show videos all the time in class.
I don't know if they have the adequate underpinnings.
Yeah, well, that's the question, is who decides that?
The answer to that, there's a simple answer to that.
The professor.
That's the answer.
There isn't another answer.
There's no board.
There's no higher authority.
There's nothing else.
You know, and I do show clips from Hitler in my class, in my personality class, when we talk about orderliness and totalitarianism.
I show clips from the triumph of the will.
And I show this other documentary called Crumb, which is about an underground, Cartoonist from the 1960s named Robert Crum, and it is an absolutely shocking documentary.
Like, if you ever want to know more than you want to know about rapists and serial killers, that documentary will tell you.
It's really...
It's a tough...
It's a tough watch.
You know, and I can't...
I can't imagine a...
Like a committee reviewing my teaching materials and allowing those things to go forward without challenge.
It'd be a disaster.
Okay, the ensuing discussion also needs to be handled properly.
Yeah, well...
We have no reason to believe this discussion was not handled well in the tutorial in question.
Okay, so whatever handled properly means, Lindsay Shepard managed it.
Which I think is a good sign here, because if we take that as the model, Lindsay did present the information neutrally, and she was not taking sides.
And if that's our model, that's a good sign.
Okay, that's good.
So that's acceptable.
So I'm a bit troubled by this because we're going to, in three or four paragraphs, find out that we need enhanced training for TAs.
Right.
So did she handle it properly?
Why do we need the training?
Yes, that's right.
And again, who's going to do the training?
Because it's not going to be the faculty.
Because the faculty don't have time, or the inclination for that matter, to run that kind of training.
Is it going to be the diversity and equity?
Yeah, right.
Well, that's the question.
Who's going to do the training?
I have apologized to Ms.
Shepherd publicly, as has Dr.
Rambucana, her supervising professor.
The university has conveyed to her today that the results of the fact-finding report, to make sure she understands it is clear that she was involved in no wrongdoing.
Yes, well, for someone who was involved in no wrongdoing, she sure bloody well got raked over the coals for the last month.
So, the university is taking concrete steps to make changes to ensure this doesn't happen again.
Yeah, well, good.
It has been made clear to those who were involved in the meeting with Ms.
Shepherd that their conduct does not meet the high standards I set for staff and faculty.
Well, that is a big question there, right?
How has it been made clear to those who were involved in the meeting with Ms.
Shepherd that their conduct does not meet those high standards?
Because we don't know.
Does that mean, did the president talk to them?
Is there being disciplinary action?
Like, we, we, because if it was, I don't even know what would be appropriate.
But I would say that not knowing what was done is not appropriate.
And I think it deserves specifics.
I mean, that's what got me into this.
Christy Blackford's article was very accurate because she already had the audio.
But then when we heard the audio, it was so appalling what was done to her in that room.
Horrible bullying.
And just such a violation of what the university should stand for.
That's what coalesced all of the anger.
I mean, in Canada...
Yeah, the devil's in the details.
So it's the same with the...
How it has been made clear to those who are involved.
So because I don't...
I mean, maybe this is something we could talk about, too.
I don't know what would constitute appropriate disciplinary measures as a consequence.
I mean, you have here three people acting on a non-existent complaint who produced an international scandal that damaged Lindsay in a real sense, although it might have also made her stronger, but it certainly didn't have to because a lesser person would have crumbled.
I don't know if she would feel that she...
I think she might take exception to that.
She certainly has not claimed any kind of victim status throughout this whole thing.
No, but that's more a testament to her character than anything else, because she was subject to the kind of attacks, I would say, that would have snowed under a lesser person.
Yes, but she has risen to this challenge.
Yes, definitely.
Definitely.
Well, and thank God for that.
But then there has been real harm done to the university.
There's no doubt there.
And I don't know how you would quantify that in financial terms, but I suspect it's substantial.
But reputational terms, I mean, now I would say internationally, this is what Wilfrid Lurie is known for.
So maybe that's an overstatement, but I don't think so.
That sounds pretty forthright, yes.
Yeah, it is.
One key improvement highlight is the need to enhance our faculty and TA training.
Yeah, well...
Like I said, as a faculty member, whenever I see that, I don't see the role of the administrators at a university to train the faculty.
That's not their role.
Their role is to move paper around for the faculty, fundamentally.
It is the responsibility of course instructors to develop guidelines for the roles and expectations of their TAs.
Fair enough.
The university also has high expectations of professors as TA supervisors.
We recognize the need to do more in this area.
The university's intent is to enhance the training and support for both TA supervisors and teaching assistants, making these mandatory and standardized.
That's my favorite part.
Jesus, dismal.
So my suspicions as a skeptic are that the making of training for faculty mandatory and standardized will do more harm than this scandal has done, over the long run.
So we don't know what the training is, we don't know who's going to do it, we don't know what it's going to be about, but the one thing we do now is it will be mandatory.
Mandatory, yeah.
Mandatory and standardized, right?
Yeah, mandatory and standardized.
Be interesting to see how they'll do that too, because it isn't so easy to make training mandatory for faculty members, right?
You can't just do that by fiat, because they can generally tell you to go to hell, and should Gendered and sexual violence policy.
It has become clear to us that managing the new gendered and sexual violence policy, now that's the one that's mandated by the provincial government.
So it was Bill 163, the provincial bill, that said you need to have a policy on gendered and sexual violence.
Right.
According to our colleague, Dr.
Andrew Robinson, he says we go way beyond what the province even asked for, to the point where it becomes unmanageable and you have instances of thought crime.
So that's what we have.
Like this, for example.
For simply showing a video.
Can I read you the definition?
Is this from the Gendered and...
Yes, it is.
This is from our policy.
This is from our policy.
It is an action that reinforces gender inequalities resulting in physical, sexual, emotional, economic, or mental harm.
Okay, so what's the first part of that again?
Yes, you get lost, don't you?
It is an action that reinforces gender inequality.
Okay, so let's start with that.
An action that reinforces gender inequalities.
Okay, so the first thing we might point out is that no one knows what the hell that means, right?
It's a box that you can put anything in.
So actions, that's a problem.
Because it isn't obvious what constitutes an action, or an inaction for that matter.
And then that reinforces gender inequalities.
Right, so that's the sort of sentence that only someone who's ideologically possessed to the maximum would create, because you can't parse it.
Gender inequalities.
What does that mean exactly?
Discrimination on sex or gender?
It doesn't talk about discrimination.
It talks about inequality, right?
Which would be different if the phrasing had included the words discrimination.
Okay, and the next part is...
Resulting in physical, sexual, emotional, economic, or mental harm.
Right, right.
So it's as broadly construed.
Both clauses are as broadly construed as they can be.
And the reason for that is to allow maximum scope for interpretation, which is exactly what happened with Adria Jewell.
Well, mental harm.
Again, mental harm.
And as you pointed out, mental harm is not backed up by the empirical evidence, apart from Post-traumatic stress syndrome.
Cognitive behavioral therapy would suggest that you actually can do mental good by exposing someone to objectionable ideas in moderation in order to help them become less mentally fragile.
Scott Lillefeld out of Emory University.
A very credible scholar, by the way.
Well, he's written several textbooks on psychopathology, right?
He knows his stuff.
And just this year, he put out a paper where he explored the empirical evidence around microaggressions.
And he did all of the literature.
And microaggressions are, of course, these innocuous actions that are deemed to be bigoted or somehow sexist.
They're acts of rudeness, essentially.
Well, they are actually, it's showing a video from TVO, is what a microaggression is.
And what he said was, there is absolutely no evidence, there's no evidence that microaggressions, these objectionable ideas, lead to mental harm.
He also said that the concept itself is extraordinarily ill-defined.
Which is also a big problem.
Which we can see, right?
That was the beginning of our conversation.
Everything is ill-defined.
Well, if you make the box big enough, you can put anything into it.
And what you see in this gendered and violence policy that Will is reading from, they actually go on to say that this can include Heterosexism.
Your mental crime could be heterosexism.
Yeah, so what if I said something in class like, the empirical evidence strongly suggests that raising children in a two-parent family leads to better outcomes.
Which it does, by the way.
And seriously, it does.
Well, so that's the question.
Well, arguably, right.
Arguably, I've transgressed that policy.
Now, here's an interesting thing, too.
So...
It has become clear to us that managing the new gendered and sexual violence policy has led to a confusion in its application, right?
Okay, so this is back to the issue we described earlier.
Is it a confusion in the application or in the policy?
Now, you just read the damn policy.
Now, it seems to me that there's no way you could apply that policy without confusion.
So it's not a confusion in its application.
It might also be that, but it's a confusion in the policy, written right into it.
Okay, so that's of crucial importance.
Passed by the Board of Governors.
Right.
In fact, the interviews conducted by the FactFinder confirmed that the rationale for invoking the GSVP did not exist.
It was misapplied and was a significant overreach.
Yeah, I'm not so sure about that, because I know that these kind of policies emerge from the same sort of policy framework that characterizes the Ontario Human Rights Commission.
It's the same people doing it.
And the Ontario Human Rights Commission policies are written so that they can be broadly misapplied with no significant overreach.
So, okay, so that's a problem.
To provide clarity of the policy's intent, Okay, so good.
So there they're saying, well, it might have been misapplied, but maybe the policy itself also has some problems.
I think this is really good news.
And we had a meeting with our colleague Andrew, Andrew Robinson today, and we said, you know, what do you think about this?
And he was pleased.
He said, you know, if some good has come out of this controversy, this is one of those good things.
Because definitely, the gendered and sexual violence policy we have at Laurier...
It isn't workable.
It is prejudiced against certain people and certain ideas.
And so it needs to be reworked.
Because it is not an inclusive document.
It excludes.
And so it needs to be fixed.
So this is a good thing.
Well, and it's also a canary in the coal mine for similar policies at universities all across Canada, we'd say, and maybe broader, because one thing you'd hope is that the Lindsay Shepard affair has produced enough negative repercussions to set people back on their heels a little bit and make them dig into these policies, because I can't imagine that there's another university in Canada who would enjoy partaking in a scandal of equivalent magnitude.
What I would hope, and on that point, Jordan...
If someone is a student or if someone is a faculty member, ask for the evidence.
That's what I've learned from this.
There are a lot of claims out there.
Mental harm.
Our campuses become unsafe.
The ideas that are contained in the gendered and sexual violence policy.
I'm saying, okay.
What is the evidence that proves this?
Because this is what a university is supposed to be based on.
From the Enlightenment to today, we are supposed to be able to say, here's the evidence for why we do this.
And the further we get away from evidence, and the more we embrace ideology, we completely remove what the mission of a university is supposed to be.
Well, and the idea of evidence.
We remove the idea of evidence, which means we remove the idea of knowledge.
Because there's no distinction between knowledge and evidence.
Right, right.
So if you are a student and you want to say, what can I do?
Say, what's the evidence of mental harm?
What's the evidence that I'm transphobic?
Right, well, so partly what you're also saying there is a restatement of the old presumption of innocence idea.
It's like, okay, you're accusing me of something.
Prove it.
I'm innocent, buddy.
Prove it.
Where's your evidence?
Yeah, I know we do.
I know.
Well, part of that's tied up with the sexual harassment issue, because increasingly, and this has started, I think, most particularly in the United States, we're moving towards a preponderance of evidence standard instead of an assumption of innocence standard.
That's especially true with these sexual harassment policies that are being derived from From institutions and administrators concerned with such things as the gendered and sexual violence policy.
And that's related to the comment you made earlier about the lawyer who wasn't allowed to speak, right?
Because she had the temerity to offer someone who was accused of a crime a legal defense.
When apparently what we were supposed to do was just assume that the people who were making the accusations were right because they claimed that they were wronged.
So...
We always have to do our caveats, don't we?
We say, I know that we want to protect people who are victims.
Each of us would agree, but it can't be done by sacrificing truth.
Well, you don't protect people from being victimized by undermining the rule of law.
Quite the contrary.
Because ultimately, it comes back to bite you in the behind.
Yes, that's for sure.
And very, very rapidly.
So, okay, in the interim, we will ensure access to the existing support and complaints procedures by providing management and oversight through the Office of Dispute Resolution and Support.
Okay, I'm not sure what that means.
Well, it's actually very good news.
Okay, okay.
It means that the oversight of this is being removed from the Diversity and Equity Office and put under the President's direct control.
So she doesn't think that they're responsible And I'm very worried about diversity and equity office overreach.
This suggests that the president is- As you should be.
It suggests the president is also worried about the diversity and equity office.
That she has said we're not- I can't imagine why.
But the fact that she has done this is really a strong sign that she is aware that that office Needs to be reined in.
Or at least that she's concerned enough about the reputation of the university so that she's not going to let the same mistake happen again.
Which is a good thing.
Like, I don't care why she's doing it particularly, but it's a good thing that it is being done.
Okay, so fine.
So that's good news.
This has the added benefit of improved accountability as that office reports through to me as president.
Yeah, okay.
Well, you can see in those lines that she's not particularly happy about what's happened.
I wonder what sort of financial hit Wilfrid Laurier took.
Because you could imagine that, well, the donors are going to be a lot more conservative than the professors and the administrators and the students.
Well, we've been contacted by a group of alumni who have now organized.
They haven't yet released what would be their press release, but slowly they've been reaching out to other alumni, and it's the Laurier alumni for free expression.
And what they have said is their mandate is, one, to withhold all donations, Until Laurier accepts the Laurier Statement for Freedom of Expression.
And I haven't checked in.
It was just someone acting on her own.
She's a Laurier alumni.
She has, I guess, contacts within the Alumni Association.
And she sent us some contact information and said, here's what I'm doing.
Wanted you to know.
I support your efforts.
And I'm working on this.
I'll let you know when I'm ready to go.
And so that was really encouraging.
I have a colleague who does a survey of chief financial officers quarterly to gauge their optimism about the economy and started down at Duke and he's doing it now for Canada.
And he got responses from two, because he sent out an email just shortly after this broke, he got responses from two alumni who just said, you know, why should I participate in this?
Why should I help you?
This is nuts.
I don't have any respect for you.
These are alumni.
Yes, and I can imagine too that enrollment is going to take a pretty vicious hit.
You know, our business school is quite excellent.
We have a great co-op program.
We, in the finance area, attract a lot of very strong students, and we compete for top-tier students in Ontario.
The entry average is like 89 or something.
And we really compete for what we call the high flyers.
And they can choose any school in the province.
Yeah, well, it doesn't take much of a hit to a reputation to give people who have options the reason to go elsewhere, right?
And then you lose the best people.
And that's when things really start to fall apart.
And what you might begin to see, and I would say that this is something that the general public might look at, watch what happens to the entrance averages in the arts and humanities.
So we might not take a hit, but let's see if the averages take a hit.
Of course.
Because suddenly, and currently, the entrance average to get into our general arts program in communications, let's just talk communications, is mid-70s with an average of 60 in English.
So I don't...
I mean...
Right, which is basically a failing grade, right?
Because if you hand in an essay in high school, you'll get 60.
You really will.
Right, so it's basically, the grading basically runs from 60, it goes zero, you didn't hand it in.
60 to 100, you handed it in.
And let's keep in mind that the tutorial that Lindsay was running was a grammar tutorial, the content of which looked a lot like grade 6 curriculum.
Well, that gets us into a discussion of the schools in general.
I'm thinking that maybe it's not a good idea to lower standards anymore.
Right, right, right.
Okay, okay.
So, academic freedom and freedom of expression.
For those who have chosen to use this incident as an indictment of Wilfrid Laurier University or the plight of Canadian universities in general, I say your assertion is unreasonable and unfounded.
Well, we better stop this interview.
Yeah, yeah, well, you can say that all you want.
I would say instead that what happened at Wilfrid Laurier is a precise manifestation of exactly the sort of rot that both produced Bill C-16 and that I was warning about last September.
And so I don't think the assertion is unreasonable and unfounded at all.
And here's one piece of data.
80% of humanities papers are not cited once.
So...
So let's just translate that for the viewing public.
Yes.
That means that they're producing scholarship that nobody looks at.
Yes.
That even their friends don't look at.
Because, okay, so what a citation is, is I read someone's paper and I find a good idea in it, and then I use that idea to buttress an idea of my own or to riff off or to...
Or to criticize, even, for that matter.
And then I cite them, I say who they were and when they published it, and then the paper, there's a huge bureaucracy that keeps track of citations, and it's a major indication of academic ability to be cited, right?
It's like, it's academic payment to be cited.
Okay, so 80% of humanities papers don't get cited once.
It's absolute failure.
It's absolute failure.
As a game, if someone wanted to play a game, I would suggest that they go and they look at the publications of the professors in a particular area and see if the titles all sound the same.
And if they all say something about intersectionality, colonialism, and these other various...
Social justice words, you might wonder, am I going to get taught the same course again and again by every professor in this program?
Because it seems to me that all of their research is very similar.
How can that be when there's such a broad base of knowledge in the world that we can have such similarity between every publication?
Which then goes on, why do I need to read my colleague's stuff when it's exactly like my own?
Which we see.
So just as a baseline, Jordan, what would you say is someone who's doing some good research, how many citations would they be receiving, maybe collectively?
Like what are we looking at?
Oh, thousands.
Thousands.
Yeah, well a good, like if you, if you write a good paper, then like a great paper will get you a hundred citations, right?
An outstanding, overwhelmingly outstanding paper will get you a thousand citations.
Ten isn't none, you know, you register with ten.
But zero is, that's failure.
It means your work had zero impact.
It means your work wasn't worth the paper it was published on.
And this brings us to a kind of interesting little issue with regards to the rot in the universities, which Deborah McClatchy says does not exist.
It's like, here's how the game works, is that We set up a little ideological garden, right, the ten of us play in, and then we all publish in the same journal and we peer review each other's articles and we just publish them.
There's no critique or very little.
So the barrier for publication is very, very low when it should be very high.
Like a good journal, a good journal will reject 90% of the papers that are submitted to it, right?
So rejection rates really matter.
So, the question is, why do these papers get published since no one reads them and they have nothing to offer?
And the answer to that is very straightforward.
The journals are extremely expensive.
They're way more expensive than they should be.
So just to buy a single paper online for the ordinary person is like $40, which is more than a hardcover book.
That's just to download the PDF. And so the journal itself, the libraries are full of them, are very expensive, and the subscriptions are very expensive.
And so what happens is the professors pressure the university libraries to buy the journals, And the library funds the publisher.
And so the publishers will publish anything.
Routledge is a good example of that, much to my chagrin, because they published my first book.
And they used to be a great publishing house, but they'll publish damn near anything.
And the reason for that is that the libraries are forced to pay radically inflated prices for the publications that no one ever reads.
And so people write...
To publish in journals that libraries have to purchase at inflated prices to produce knowledge that no one will ever read.
And that's the little scandal that plagues the humanities.
I think it characterizes the humanities more than plagues them.
So the idea that there's no systemic rot, let's say, in the universities, especially in the humanities, is just not the case.
Well, this is just far too general.
There is rot, and it's not everywhere.
And this just reveals that I don't think she's that familiar with the situation she's in.
And I've been listening to some of your work and Jonathan Haidt and trying to understand what's been going on over the last two years in universities.
Protective as I am in a business school and starting to realize that it's not everywhere.
It's social justice perspective.
The STEM fields are fine so far.
Right.
Yeah, and the business schools.
Although there are moves into the business schools, but they're still doing all right.
Philosophy is not doing too badly.
Like, there are disciplines that have still remained untouched.
And mostly what's happened so far is that if the discipline has a strong economic or scientific footing, it's proved much harder to corrupt.
And empirical.
Yeah, that's right.
For my part, so I play in the playground of sociology of religion.
But all my stuff, well, most of my stuff is quantitative.
So I actually, I wasn't familiar with what was going...
I don't...
I go to conferences where everybody has to have strong empirical evidence.
I publish in journals that are international journals that are...
Scientific study of religion is what we do.
So, you know, I'm familiar with Foucault and that stuff, but that's not where I play.
So I wasn't really exposed to what's going on.
And you don't really think, well, they can't...
There's no reason to be that concerned about it until about three years ago.
Well, this is it.
But then I'm trying to get into the headspace of some of my colleagues.
So I got out a textbook.
It was called Race, Class, and Gender.
And it's an anthology that's used in cultural studies courses, in women's studies courses, and it's sort of the go-to text, so I'm told.
And I'm reading it, and I turned to page 14, and I can tell you it's page 14 because I was so astounded by what I found.
And it says, objectivity as found through rational thought is a Western and masculine concept that we will challenge throughout this text.
Yeah, right.
Yeah, yeah.
And I said...
It's too bad.
It's too bad that you're shocked by that.
Because...
I couldn't believe it.
So you want to go for irrational?
The PC types have been saying exactly that since the 1970s.
Like, that is exactly...
Make no mistake about this.
This is why McClatchy is wrong.
This isn't something they're secreting in.
This is the dead statement.
Oh yeah, it's that the whole notion of logic and coherence and empirical data, for that matter...
Evidence!
Let's reject evidence!
Let's question the definition of evidence.
Because the underlying idea, remember, the underlying idea here is that all hierarchies are predicated on power.
So if the reason that I put forward something as evidence isn't because it's evidence, It's because it's evidence that I get to have that position of power.
And so if you're a postmodernist and you say, well, I'm going to question your evidence, what you think you're saying is you're going to question my claim to that arbitrary power.
The whole idea that there's evidence outside of claims of arbitrary power, the postmodernists dispensed with that in the 1970s.
That's Derrida.
That's exactly what he said.
And all this time I've been trying to get samples of thousands so that I could say, you know, this is a little bit...
We can say something, we can generalize it.
No, no, that just demonstrates how thoroughly entrenched you are in the reigning patriarchal ideology.
I guess.
And I was just hoping to get beyond anecdotal.
There's no beyond anecdotal.
That's become a methodology.
It's called autoethnography.
There's a technical term for it.
And autoethnography is the publication of a private diary, essentially, in a hypothetically reputable academic journal.
It's only because in the last three or four years that these things have been happening that I say, where do they get this?
How do they find these thoughts?
We don't want to fall into the mistake of making the assumption that this hasn't been thought through.
People are not just misunderstanding what evidence is.
That isn't what's happening at all.
When they say they want to question the definition of evidence, that's exactly what they mean.
When they say, we want to question the definition of evidence because the definition of evidence currently supports the scientific power structure in chemistry, say, and that's fundamentally dominated by, let's say, white men, we can go after the definition of evidence itself.
And that's how we're going to bring it down.
And so the next people on the hit list are going to be the biologists.
They're already under attack from the social justice warriors.
I just read a paper that said that mathematics is whiteness.
Yeah, yeah.
Definitely.
I didn't know that mathematics could have a race.
Yeah, but the thing is, there's nothing illogical about these claims once you accept the central axioms.
The axioms are straightforward.
The world is a battleground of power hierarchies.
That's what it is.
There isn't anything else outside of that.
And each power hierarchy generates its own internal narrative, including rules for what constitutes evidence that support and buttress the structure of that hierarchy.
And because the hierarchies exclude, then it's in the best interests of the people who are excluded to invert the hierarchy.
And of course, they also regard that as just, even though that's part of the incoherence of the entire argument.
That's where they have to turn to Marxism.
But make no mistake about it.
This isn't accidental.
It isn't people misunderstanding what constitutes evidence.
Not at all.
Now, I've been listening to some of your lectures on this for the last year and thinking you sound a little deranged.
Yeah.
Well, I might be a little deranged, but I'm not deranged about this.
And then this whole episode with Lindsay Shepard just proves that every dimension of this is about power.
The doublespeak, the changing of terminology from harm, exposing people to ideas could be violent, the circling, the sacred circling around the victim group.
Well, look at what happened at Wilfrid Laurier.
One of the things that was so bloody interesting that I thought was just fascinating was the unbelievably strategic attempt to transform Shepard into the perpetrator and Rambucana and Pimlot into the victims, especially Rambucana as a professor of color, right?
So what happens...
The reverse narrative was, well, Lindsay Shepard was using something like her white privilege and her white tears to harass a poor professor of color, untenured professor of color.
And there was every attempt made on the part of the people who were going after Shepard to make that the narrative.
And they started accusing everyone of being transphobic just right out of the blocks within days of this.
We were all tired with that epithet.
The labels have been just flying and without any regard to the intent of the person or even the content of it.
Here's something interesting about the transphobia issue, too.
So I've had at least a number of good discussions with trans people, by the way, but also a number of letters from trans people over the last year, about 40 of them, as a matter of fact, which is a lot of letters, because there aren't that many trans people.
And every single one of them, I think I got one letter from a trans person who wasn't happy with what I was doing, but every single one of the other letters said the same thing.
We are sick and tired of being the poster child for these activists who claim to speak in our name.
Because that's another thing that we should be very aware of, is just because an activist comes out and says, I'm a member of this minority group, and therefore I speak for them.
It's like, the first claim might be true, but the second claim is not only unjustifiable, it's actually...
I would say it's not racist exactly, but it's groupist.
Because it's predicated on the assumption that just because you happen to be the member of a class, that you're a representative member of that class.
That class is so homogenous that everyone in it is the same enough so that all the members within it can speak for all the other members.
Used to call that racism when it was applied to racial categories.
Absolutely.
But Lindsay has been very good to point out, and so have some of the media, That there have been transgendered students at Laurier who have spoken out in support of Lindsay.
And we have to keep this in mind, that this is not a transgendered issue.
No, and neither was my comments on Bill C-16.
This is not.
Because, I mean, I know that Lindsay, as she even said, she is not transphobic.
She supports the rights of transgendered people.
She's unequivocal in that.
That's just cover story for her true right-wing beliefs.
And there are transgendered students who have come to her support and at great personal cost to themselves.
Like those are some brave people there, right?
To break with that group, the hostility in that group is real.
In the activist end of the group.
You bet.
But they were so quick to take over this issue.
As their own and claim that the debate itself was violence and that it was just cover for this transphobic climate that existed.
And it has nothing to do with transgender people.
Well, you know, it's funny, too.
You saw the same thing with...
Rinaldo Walcott, when he was on the Director of the Women's and Gender Studies at OISE, at the University of Toronto, he claimed that, he claimed like four times in that interview that the University of Toronto was a white supremacist organization.
And I thought...
I just don't know what to make of that.
Like, I traveled down to my office about a week after that interview, and I happened by some students who were standing outside waiting to write an exam.
So there's about a hundred of them, eh?
And like, this is particularly true at the University of Toronto.
I would say that You could look at that group of students for more than two seconds and think that that was a white supremacist organization.
I mean, it's so ethnically diverse.
If you think that the University of Toronto is a white supremacist organization, then what that essentially means is that the most tolerant institution in the most tolerant city, in the most tolerant province, in the most tolerant country in the world is white supremacist.
So it's like, well then, well, I don't, well, I don't, I don't even know what you could, especially when you say that as someone who's a full professor, I don't know if he's a full professor, who's a professor at that institute.
It's like, where's your evidence for this?
That same professor was using racial slurs against Lindsay.
Oh yes, the white tears thing.
My, They're also misogynistic, right?
Because it's white girl tears.
I could never, ever do something like that to any student of any race.
I just don't understand how the people on the far left can rationalize that kind of behavior.
It just...
Well, I think they can rationalize it with power.
But in terms of civility, just in civility, in recognizing the humanity in every person, How can you resort to those kind of racial slights?
I just, I don't, I don't understand how you can say, don't be racist, and then you make racial comments, terribly racist comments.
I just, I don't, do people...
Well, no, there's, the idea there is straightforward.
You cannot utter racist comments against the dominant group.
That's the rule.
If there's a dominant group, so once you identify them as oppressor, you can say anything you want about them, because by definition, this is axiomatic in the ideology, you can't say anything racist about the oppressors.
That's like a rule.
It's a rule of discourse.
So here's where I go with this.
For self-interest, do you not realize, when you say, I don't care about your effing white fragility, now that was not Waldecott, did I get his name right?
Walcott.
Walcott.
He didn't say, but others, other pundits have said that, and it's appeared on Lindsay's Twitter page where they've assaulted her there, or at least, that's too dramatic, where they've made, insulted her there, insulted her there.
But...
My point would be, even in your self-interest, do you not realize that you are giving ammunition to the real white supremacists?
Do you not realize that there are really dangerous people on the right who are looking for that exact kind of comment to rationalize their behavior?
Well, if you're trying to burn something down, what makes you think you're going to be so careful about how it burns down?
And I really mean that.
Look, I mean, I have interactions with the right-wing racial supremacists online.
They're not very happy with me.
And it's because I call them out for the same sort of behavior that the leftists manifest, which is, like, I'm not impressed by your manifestation of group identity uber-all, let's say.
But I understand that the radical right-wingers are playing the same game as the radical left-wingers.
So you might say, well, why would the radical left-wingers play into their hands?
I would say, well, if you're trying to burn the whole damn house down, then why not inflame the people who are most likely to do it?
And you might think, well, no, that's not in anybody's best interest.
It's the stated aim of this ideology, right?
They want to invert the patriarchy, essentially.
Well, what's the patriarchy?
Well, it's the white supremacist University of Toronto.
So, who cares if you're handing your opponents weapons?
You're hoping that it will escalate, that the people on the left as well as the people on the right...
The point is to escalate it.
Yeah.
We see that it's power because this is the same thing that happened at Evergreen State, and the whole justification there was racism, not...
I know, and they went after Brett Weinstein, who is about as...
I mean, Brett is...
He's a Bernie.
He's a Bernie supporter, right?
Exactly.
Well, I got an email last week from Mike Parris, who was the only colleague of his that publicly defended him.
And he emails me and he says, I've been following the story closely, and I just want to reach out and just, you know, commiserate with you and wonder, is there anything we can do or talk about together?
And I thought, no, you're from Evergreen State.
You know, that's a nightmare.
And I thought, we're not that bad.
Same pattern, repeated.
It's not about transgender people and their rights.
That's just the victim du jour.
No, the transgender people, as far as I'm concerned, were like sacrificial animals on the altar of Bill C-16.
The activists have a new group that's oppressed to wave the flag for, to push forward their ideology.
And as I said, the consistent message I've got from transsexual people is, I wish they'd just shut the hell up and quit putting us out in the public eye in that guise, because all they're doing is making our life more difficult.
It's like, well, it doesn't matter.
We're trying to tear down the patriarchy.
Who cares if your life is being made more difficult?
It's like, you don't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.
We want to keep that in mind.
Okay.
Laurie prepares our students and instructors for difficult discussions.
Yeah.
Probably not.
We support our teachers in navigating complex and divisive issues with care and confidence.
That's a more credible statement.
I mean, especially given the outcome of this.
I just want to take you back to the last sentence of the previous paragraph.
Laurier has a clear commitment to academic freedom and freedom of expression.
Well, that's unequivocal.
Perfect.
Yes, except that they won't adopt the Chicago principles, for example.
And something else to keep in mind that I think this is the first time anybody's talked about this.
When we were established in 1973, the Wilfrid Laurier Act says specifically that this university...
We'll be dedicated to research and teaching in the spirit of free inquiry and free expression.
That is the establishing act of our university.
That's the charter statement.
And that is what it says is our mission.
So in fact, we are breaking the law by not Standing behind maximum free expression and max free inquiry because it is right in our very founding principle, our very founding charter.
And the fact that we are so hesitant to just embrace that and say, we know that it's within this contest of ideas that the best facts come forward and knowledge is advanced.
Why are we afraid of that?
Why are we afraid what's made...
Every university, a great university...
Because we're doubtful about the integrity of the institution.
Like this critique whose claim is that our institutions, our patriarchal institutions, are fundamentally corrupt and oppressive is sufficiently...
What would you say?
Makes people sufficiently guilty.
So they're perfectly willing to circumvent their adherence to policies, to charter policies like that.
I just think that at some point you have to say, this is why you were created.
Maybe we should get back to this.
And maybe, I mean, maybe there's someone who is in the provincial parliament who's going to say, I'm kind of upset that you've actually rejected the very founding charter.
Yeah, well, there's no one in the current legislature that would do that.
Certainly not in the current government.
Not by any, not by, no chance at all.
Okay.
We support our teachers in navigating complex and divisive issues with care and confidence.
We are leaders in ensuring our students, faculty, and staff have the necessary supports and tools to help those who've experienced marginalization and discrimination to engage fully.
Okay, so now you see the reversal, right?
Right away here is...
And this happens every time now that a modern university...
Virtually every time that a modern university comes out with a statement in favor of free speech.
The next thing they do is...
Is bring in this competing set of claims, like to help those who have experienced marginalization and discrimination to engage fully.
As soon as the word marginalization is in there, then you know that that postmodern ethos has manifested itself within the confines of the document.
Properly grounded academic debate at Laurier occurs every day and encourages critical thinking and civil discourse.
Yeah.
Ideas that one finds objectionable should be challenged and debated.
The common good of society depends on the search for knowledge and its free expression.
Hey, fair enough.
Free expression and academic freedom at the university require accompanying responsibilities and accountabilities to be met by members of the university community.
Well, even that statement's not so bad.
I mean, okay...
Faculty members have responsibilities and they should be accountable.
I think that university should be a civil place.
I think that it should be civil.
Yes.
Right?
Yes, definitely.
And I think that there should be tolerance.
But tolerance is very different from an embrace, an complete embrace of what diversity is now defined as, or equity is defined as.
Tolerance means, I disagree, but I'm going to let you speak anyway.
Yes, yes.
And that really is the goal of a university.
So anyway.
Yeah, okay.
We will continue to ensure that we are protected against, protecting against, and dealing with hate and intolerance.
Those have no place in civil society.
See, that I'm not so sure about.
out.
Hate and intolerance have no place in civil society.
The problem with that is hate and intolerance is not defined here.
That is the problem.
And I keep hearing, hate speech is not free speech.
And then when I ask, well, what do you mean by hate speech?
Yes, that is the problem.
Well, the other thing too is I'm actually allowed to hate you.
It's okay.
You might have done something that makes me hate you.
But there are limits on what I can do as a consequence of that hate.
And that is not...
So there's two problems, right?
The first problem is, this is a big one, who defines hate?
That's a major problem.
And the second is, well, you don't limit hate.
You can't limit hate any more than you can limit anger or aggression.
But you can limit the manner in which people conduct themselves when they're motivated by those emotions.
And let's be clear, there is really a clear definition of hate when you look at the criminal code under sections 318 and 319.
It says, you cannot advocate physical violence against an identifiable group.
I am totally on board with that.
Like, let's be clear.
You can't say, go and hurt these people.
I got that.
But that's really clear.
Mm-hmm.
Where's that definition?
I just want to see...
Well, the issue there is something we discussed earlier is, well, then we can gerrymander the definition of hurt, right?
Well, I'm talking physical, advocating physical violence, right?
Yes, yes, yes.
Physical.
I throw that physical in there because the criminal code also does.
I think it does it in such a way to say we can harm.
What is harm?
Again, harm is long-term infliction of damage that compromises your ability to function or your appearance.
Right, exactly.
It's a pragmatic definition, and it's grounded in common law, so we actually have a history of defining it.
So that's safe.
And let's not move away from these definitions, because they're the thing that allow us to have conversations that are uncomfortable, but needed.
Okay, good.
These have no place in civil society, let alone on a university campus.
They will not be tolerated at Laurier.
Yes, well, we saw an example of that not being tolerated with the Lindsay Shepard case.
I remain concerned by the way faculty, staff, and students involved in aspects of this situation were targeted with such vitriol.
Now, now things are starting to get out of hand.
I remain concerned by the way faculty, staff, and students involved in aspects of this situation were targeted with such vitriol.
Vitriol, that's acid, eh?
So, Do you think she's talking about the tweets that Lindsay has received then?
Faculty, staff, and students.
So not just Lindsay.
But I just wonder, does this apply to those who have been advocating free speech?
And I'm pointing it out there.
I mean, all of us who have come out in favor of maximum free speech have been subjected to a lot of vitriol.
Both emails, and it's always anonymous emails.
It's always from people who will not say who they are.
But my point would be, unless there was something that simply said, I am threatening your life...
I just, I delete it.
That's what I do, because this is what happens.
I mean, I wish people were civil, but they're not.
There's no discussing hard issues without conflict.
Like, that's just not happening.
The question is how you limit the conflict.
And you can't limit it to none, because then people can't have a conflict.
They can't solve a problem.
So what you do is you limit it, well, as we've limited quite successfully in our country to date, right?
We use the definitions of violence that have prevailed throughout the establishment of English common law and that works just fine.
My concern about that paragraph is that she's kowtowing, let's say, to concerns about the way that the people who actually, let's say, perpetrated this event were dealt with by members of the general public.
So...
Okay.
Members of the university community must be supported to work and study in an environment free of discrimination and harassment.
That's a tougher one.
And they have my commitment.
We will continue to make this a university priority.
Yeah, that's a sentence that worries me.
In an environment free of discrimination and harassment.
And they have my...
The problem is, it's so difficult to distinguish that between real dispute.
You know, I mean, if you're committed to a line of argumentation, you've staked your whole life on it, say, your whole academic career, and you're engaged in a dispute with someone else who holds a contrary viewpoint, there's going to be heat and sparks generated by that exchange.
There has to be, because otherwise you're not talking about anything of any importance.
Yeah, if we all agree we don't need free speech.
I mean, that's sort of the standard.
Yes, that's the thing.
Right?
But when I read this line, Members of the university community must be supported to work and study in an environment free of discrimination and harassment.
And I just wonder how equally that idea has been applied at my university so far, because certainly we know that our president has sent out letters of support to the LGBTQ community, which she was right to do if they are feeling harassed.
I have no problem with that.
But at the same time, there are official bodies at our university, the Women's Center, and other bodies that are under the auspices of the Diversity and Equity Office, if I'm correct, that are petitioning to have...
There's a pro-life group on campus, and they are petitioning to have them defunded and shut down.
Right, so did Deborah McClatchy send out a letter to all the people who are supporting Lindsay Shepard to say, well, we're really sorry about all the harassment and vitriol that you're receiving?
This is my point.
This is my point.
Our president is aware that there's a group on campus that are These are the pro-life students.
And I don't care what your position is, pro-life or pro-choice.
Whatever your position is, you bloody well have to admit that there's at least a debate.
There is a debate.
And the point I would make is, here truly is a marginalized group of students who have received no support from our university.
None.
And I know my president is aware, because early on in this controversy, I said, in another matter...
Is that these students are being attacked, or I'm sorry, I don't want to use hyperbolic language, these students are being harassed, and they are being harassed because they're being threatened with having their funding removed by official bodies of the university.
Yeah, well the pro-life students are real canaries in the coal mine as far as I'm concerned, regardless of what you think about what they're doing.
They really represent diversity.
It's ideological diversity, but we're not seeing any reception of these diverse students.
Are they being included in this diversity and inclusion?
No, they're being excluded purposely by actual offices of my university.
That's standard practice, I would say, on campuses across the country.
It's just uneven.
It's uneven.
And I think that what we need to see is just a policy that applies to all students and not just those who smell right or are orthodox.
To the social justice orthodoxy.
Yes, or who are in the, what would you call it, acceptable class of victims.
That's right.
Okay, it bears repeating in the current context that Laurier's support for our lesbian, gay, bi, trans, queer, and two-spirited campus community and transgender people in particular is unwavering.
It isn't obvious that it bears repeating in the current context, because the issue here fundamentally is that Lindsay Shepard was subject to an administrative inquisition, despite the fact that she was 100% innocent by the university's own standards.
And so it doesn't bear repeating in the current context that Laurie's support for our LGBTQTS campus community and transgender people in particular is unwavering.
It actually isn't about them.
It's not about them at all.
It's about the fact that she got pilloried for doing something that she was actually right to do.
So, I'm not happy with the fact that this paragraph was inserted into here.
I think it's an indication of exactly the kind of administrative weakness that allowed this sort of event to occur to begin with.
This is the theme though, right, of the justice warriors, is that this is the victim group.
They've repeated over and over that there's been violence, harassment, vitriol.
Everybody's picking up on that.
The union president said that it was daily occurrence.
The president's repeated it.
She's issued a campus-wide email in response to the open letter saying we're going to make this a safe campus.
She's repeating it here.
It's a validation of their narrative of victimization emerging from the Lindsay Shepard event without evidence.
We actually sent an email to our faculty...
The union.
The union president.
And we said, we're concerned about this daily violence on campus.
Could you please supply us with evidence of this?
And she wrote back and she said...
What did she say, Will?
Something...
As I'm telling everyone in the press, no.
No.
Yeah, because it would inflame, didn't she say, because it would inflame the situation even further.
Yes.
It was something like that.
Although, how in the world providing evidence that something like that would happen?
But we're members of the union.
We are paying our fees just like everyone else.
And we just, we wanted some substantiation to these claims that there was violence as a daily occurrence.
Well, the whole premise is that there's injury happening and that's why we can't speak about these things.
So if they can establish the violence, then maybe we're sympathetic to the argument that the speech shouldn't occur.
But that's susceptible to bogus claims if there's no substantiation.
You can't build policy that way.
Not without getting into the kind of trouble that's already emerged.
In light of recent events, we have added measures to improve campus safety.
Well, it is by no...
See, that actually seems to me to be the one sentence in this article so far that's actually a mistake.
Because by going forward with what practices that are going to improve campus safety, then...
The president is validating the claims of the people who claim that this occurrence produced an unsafe environment on the campus.
So I think that that was weak.
We will ensure that all students, staff, and faculty know exactly what our commitment to academic freedom and freedom of expression means in the classroom.
That would be good.
To that end, we have established the Task Force on Freedom of Expression to take input from our community, which we should point out Which won't include Lindsay Shepard, right?
Because she asked to be part of that task force.
In fact, I believe that they offered it to her.
I'm not exactly sure about that.
Some grad students nominated her, and it was prior to the revelation being made that the position would be filled by the president of the Graduate Students Association.
And I think this was poor form.
Just before that announcement was made, the president of the Graduate Students Association put out a statement where...
I'm not sure if it's a he or a she, or I'm not sure of the gender pronoun used, but...
That they were standing 100% behind the trans and LGBTQ... Yeah, and that the fact that they were going to sit on the task force would indicate that all students would be represented properly.
But it's just, they showed this incredible bias.
And then they said, and we're going to be sitting on this.
I just don't know that that does a service to all the grad students who they represent.
All right.
Look at best practices beyond Laurier.
Hey, they could look at Chicago.
That'd be good.
And develop a clear, tangible...
And you never know.
Maybe they will.
You never know.
And develop a clear, tangible set of practical, implementable guidelines that will bring clarity to this issue for our own classrooms and will have the potential to serve as best practices for others.
Well, that's exactly what you guys are recommending.
That is my commitment to you.
Well, and it's not like the University of Chicago is a lightweight And it's not just the University of Chicago.
Over 30 universities, many of them Ivy League, have adopted the Chicago Statements to great effect.
Right, right.
And so this is...
This is something that has worked, that is working.
It's clearly something that should happen in Canada.
It would be a wonderful thing.
It would be a wonderful thing.
So it's not like we're trying to institute this policy that hasn't worked and that hasn't been accepted by really prominent universities in the U.S. And it doesn't involve U.S. law or legalese.
It is simply a statement of philosophy about what We want, which is maximum free expression and free inquiry, within the bounds of the law.
And I just think this task force is going to be a disaster because the justice advocates aren't interested in free speech.
They want to forbid certain forms of speech, and it's just a question of which topics and who's going to control the list.
Well, there might be enough public scrutiny.
Like, I don't think interest in Wilfred Lurie, I'm sure that the president would be real happy if this went away.
But I think the probability that it's going to go away is very low because I think Wilfrid Lurie is now being watched and being watched by very many people to see what the genuine outcome of this will be.
And I think that even if it was ignored by the mainstream media, which it might be, it's not going to be ignored by people on YouTube and the people who've been generating content associated with Lindsay Shepard.
And the magnitude of that content online is absolutely overwhelming.
I don't know if the Wilfrid Laurier administrators know, because, you know, people older than 40 usually don't know much about online media, but the amount of commentary this has been generated, this has generated on YouTube, is absolutely beyond belief.
Like, it was a major scandal.
Back to the task force, though, and Will, you've said this in the past, the freedom of expression proponents, we already are the compromise position.
Because we are saying, we want you to be able to articulate whatever position you have.
We want you to be able, like, we are the compromised position.
We're not saying we want to shut down anybody.
Whatever your position is, Let's hear it.
That is where we are.
So we're already in that compromised position.
Within the boundaries of the law.
Within the boundaries of the law.
Frictions out of respect for the university and its operations, of course.
So we're already saying we want all these sides to be able to be heard.
I don't understand.
It's already approved.
It is.
It is.
And so what I have to look at is many of the colleagues that I have who are on the left and are hoping for restriction of free expression are really, to a certain extent, linguistic imperialists.
That's exactly why I objected to Bill C-16.
I said that I wasn't going to let the linguistic imperialists take control over my voice.
The fact that it happened to be about transgender pronouns was, well, that was just how that problem manifested itself at that period of time.
But that, what did you call them, linguistic imperialists?
That's exactly right.
And these ideologues on the radical left, who are so good at neologisms, are unbelievably good at grasping the linguistic territory.
I mean, the propagation of words like cisgendered is a perfect example of that.
I don't understand how they can be so against colonialism and imperialism and then want to do that in the sphere of language.
Put in an authoritarian structure, which can only be abused.
Well, that's part of the weird...
See, there's this weird marriage between postmodernism and Marxism, right?
Which makes no sense, because you actually can't be a postmodernist, and I guess you can be a critical thinker and a Marxist, but you cannot be a postmodernist and a Marxist at the same time.
Because...
The postmodernists, hypothetically, are critical of grand narratives, right?
They don't believe that they have any universal validity.
Of course, the problem with that is that without a grand narrative, you can't act.
But they sneak the Marxism in through the back door.
And then the justification, I think, is, for these authoritarian impositions, is that, well, it doesn't matter as long as the right people are being hurt by them.
And the right people would be the people who are in positions of power...
Now, who have no justification for being in those positions of power.
That's not a stable solution.
But you're making the assumption that what's being sought after is a stable solution.
And I think that's a dangerous assumption.
Because I think that the university activists mean exactly what they say.
When they say that we should be flipping over the patriarchy.
They've put no counterproposal forward throughout this, right?
It's like they don't have a solution.
They're not even talking about a list of forbidden topics and who's going to adjudicate it and what the appeals process is going to be.
No, that's always done post hoc.
That way you can keep the level of fear the highest.
You can keep adding to the list as well.
Yes, definitely.
Because it's way better if you want to exercise power over people to never let them be sure which policies they are violating.
And I think that what happened to Lindsay Shepard is an excellent example of that.
So it's a canonical example of that.
It's the Orwellian idea.
Freedom is the ability to say 2 plus 2 equals 4.
And they want to keep avoiding the ability to say 2 plus 2 is 4 by creating new answers and moving on.
You know, UBC just went through this whole process.
Yes.
He came up with a statement on free expression and goes on from paragraphs and paragraphs.
And then the last – nearly the last sentence is, freedom of expression does not trump all other rights.
In the university community, freedom of expression can only thrive constructively when accompanied by other rights, including the equality – Rights of equity, diversity, and inclusion.
There you go.
That's right.
And so now you no longer have free expression.
That's the poison pill, man.
That's the snake in the garden right there.
Yeah, so there's this...
I mean, those are so complicated.
There's individual rights and group rights.
There's positive rights and negative rights.
And they're all in this salad with no guidance as to how you're going to trade them off against each other.
It's like you say, just ad hoc as we go forward.
We'll...
Well, it's so funny to produce an entire document talking about freedom of expression and then to put a sentence like that in as a codicil.
And by the way, also this.
It's like, wait a second.
It's not also this.
It's that little admixture of poison destroys the integrity of the entire argument.
And to put all those words in there, diversity?
Okay, what the hell do you mean by that exactly?
Right.
Inclusivity, that's a word that really, that's one I really have trouble with, because it's very difficult to understand even what that means.
And equity, equity is equality of outcome.
And so that's an impossible goal to begin with, because it multiplies in difficulty as you add number of measurement dimensions, right?
So, and that's the intersectionality problem, so to speak.
So, All right.
Well, with the task force, the interesting thing is Will didn't want to sit on it because having looked at what had happened, I suppose it was the experience at UBC that...
Well, I just saw big arguments happening with no possibility of a constructive outcome.
And so, but I was more hopeful, and I understand Will's position completely, right?
Yes, well, it's easy as a faculty member to get pulled into interminable administrative duties that have no positive outcome whatsoever.
In fact, it's pretty much par for the course.
Well, he makes the, I mean, your most compelling argument, well, two, one, look what happened at UBC, And two, we're already the compromised position.
I mean, what more can you want?
And I get that, but I have let my name stand for nomination.
We'll see this week, I guess, whether or not...
I don't know if I'll get voted on.
Well, one of the things we should find out and publicize is whether any people who have a strong free speech orientation will end up on that task force.
I mean, that's of absolutely critical importance.
Well, they'll certainly get their work done quickly if no one from the free speech side is on it, because they'll just say, right.
But maybe they'll have to create a list of their own about what can't be talked about.
Right?
Who knows where that will go.
One thing that strikes me, though, is just the disregard for history.
People who...
Are marginalized or would be considered in the marginalized group.
If we look at how did they get the rights that they have today, right?
How did that happen?
It was because of free expression, right?
Actually, the easy case to make for free speech is left wing.
It's like powerful people don't need their free speech protected.
They're powerful.
They're rich.
They can say whatever the hell they want.
It's people who are precisely marginalized and oppressed who need all the protection of the law.
Of course, they want to weight it against saying, yes, we want to have People without power to have the freedom of expression, but let's make this a quicker process by making sure those that have power can't speak.
Whoever those who have power is...
Right, well, that's the issue.
Well, you know, you could say, well, wouldn't it be wonderful if those who had unfair power weren't allowed to speak?
It's like, well, maybe it would be wonderful.
But who the hell is going to decide who has power and who has unfair power?
Like, the devil's in the details there.
So the only fair...
Application of this principle is to let everybody have equal opportunity, right?
Not equal outcome, by the way.
Well, that's the free market solution, right?
Because you can't determine these by central fiat, because it's technically impossible, which is actually something postmodernists should know, because that's actually one of the logical consequences of their philosophy, right?
Things are too complicated to decide by fiat, in some sense.
Alright, is there anything else that you guys want to say that you've observed as a consequence of this Lindsay Shepard affair or that you're hopeful about or pessimistic about?
What's the...
how do we solve this?
Just the way we're solving it.
This is the way to solve it.
I think this is a textbook case of the utility of free speech.
Shepard was able to make her case publicly.
There's been a huge debate about it.
There's been some moves made on the part of the university that look positive.
We've got ample opportunity.
Everyone has ample opportunity to have their voice heard.
You know, this video we're making tonight will probably be watched by 150,000 people.
And we had a perfectly reasonable discussion.
I think we gave credit where credit was due with regards to this document, and are jointly hopeful that something positive will come of it, and made some pointed critiques about what it does contain and what it doesn't, but...
We don't want to underestimate the utility of doing these things.
It's useful.
And I think the fact that you guys have this little cabal of people at Wilfrid Laurier who are willing to speak.
I was shocked when you wrote that op-ed and when the Toronto Star published it.
I mean, nothing like that From an academic happened in relationship to me last year in Bill C-16.
We've seen such uniformity of outcry about this from all the newspapers, Globe, Star, Sun, Post.
Which really just shows you the disconnect between what is happening in the academy and what is happening.
It's a disconnect of staggering magnitude.
People outside the academy say, how can you believe that?
What they've been saying is, Really?
This happened?
This actually happened?
That's the universal response.
And the response on the campuses is, well, yeah, it happened.
And we were right.
I have a solution.
I have a solution.
I mean, it's not a solution, but it's...
I call it an inoculant, actually.
So yes, let's get the Laurier Statement for Freedom of Expression at our university and similar statements at all universities.
Why the federal government is not tying funding to this?
I know that the conservatives mentioned it.
It's a suggestion that I made to the conservatives.
Well, this is what needs to happen.
But in addition to that, I think that young people and parents of young people need to look at what's happening and they need to start educating their kids at home.
And they need to start...
And I've written several op-eds where I've said...
People ask me, what is the solution?
I say, start watching the videos of Jordan Peterson.
Start watching the videos of Jonathan Haidt.
Jonathan Haidt.
You bet.
Look into the Heterodox Academy.
They know what they're doing.
Who definitely are scholars of repute.
They are moderate, incredibly civil.
There are also some people outside of academia.
There's a fantastic YouTuber.
My name is Josephine.
She's a Canadian political science student who is at U of T. Moderate.
Really well-spoken.
Articulating classical liberal ideas.
My name is Josephine.
Okay, I'll have to remember her.
She's actually been at...
The reason that I know she knows you, she was at one of your rallies.
I saw it in a video.
There she is in the background.
Another young lady, sorry, woman, who is...
Her name is Roaming Millennial.
Yeah, I know Roaming Millennial.
I've been on her show.
Oh, fantastic.
She's articulating classical liberal ideas.
Yeah, you bet.
And she's a tough cookie, that girl.
She's a tough cookie.
You bet.
And I would say, start watching these people.
Yeah, well, the young people are watching them in droves.
She has a big following, Roaming Millennial.
And I'm grateful for that because, in fact, when these students go into the university classroom, if they choose to go into the arts or the humanities, they're going to go in with knowledge where they can...
I realize it's tough to challenge a professor, but start a Facebook group and say, hey, did you know that there are other ideas too?
Do you know that there's an opposite side to this debate?
Well, we could also encourage parents who might be listening, or students who Thinking about going to university who might be listening to this is that check to see where the university stands on free speech.
And if they dampen down their support for free speech and free inquiry with statements about diversity, inclusivity, and equity, then go somewhere else.
It's a worry.
Another thing, and this is just beginning in Canada, we have a Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship that professors can join.
If a professor has joined the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship, you can be pretty sure they are going to be wanting to give you both sides of the story.
So that's not a bad check either.
Where do they have to do their research, though, the students, to due diligence?
Well, that's good.
It'll educate them, right?
I mean, Lindsay Shepard definitely got educated over the last two months.
They should just give her the degree.
Yeah, no kidding.
No kidding.
She's got her PhD thesis in communication pretty well demonstrated.
There's an auto-ethnography for you.
Yeah, I caused an international scandal by just revealing what had actually happened.
Yeah.
All right.
Good.
My pleasure.
Thank you guys for coming.
And also, it's not common for faculty members, well, to talk to me, first of all, like this.
Certainly not on record.
And it's certainly not common for them to be writing and speaking openly about such issues.
So I don't know what the hell got into you guys.
It's really good that it's happening at Wilfrid Laurier, too.
We realize we're finished now by being associated with you.
Yeah, I said earlier...
Well, it's good of you to offer yourself on the sacrificial altar.
You've got to look your kids in the eye, eventually.
Yeah.
And how are you going to say that you need to stand up for truth if you actually don't stand up for truth?
That is a problem.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right, guys.
Good.
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