Dec. 1, 2017 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
52:09
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| All right, people, we are live on the YouTube, and joining me today is a grad student at Wilfrid Laurier College, who wasn't even on Twitter a month ago, and is now a major player in the free speech wars. | ||
| Lindsey Shepard, welcome to The Rubin Report. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I think you're the first guest I usually tell people, right before we start, that there's booze behind you. | ||
| And you're the first guest, I think, that was about to a bottle of something. | ||
| Tell us about the current predicament you find yourself in. | ||
| Um, yeah, sure. | ||
| Well, first off, thanks for coming in. | ||
| I'm glad we were able to get you out here. | ||
| You came from the great white north of Canada. | ||
| Your story is... | ||
| Completely crazy and yet totally obvious to people I think that have been paying attention to what's going on sort of at universities and in free speech in general and crossing the border by the way of Canada and the United States and plenty of other countries. | ||
| So first off before we get into the details and we're gonna play some audio and we're gonna read some statements and all that stuff. | ||
| How are you? | ||
| I'm doing well. | ||
| It's been a pretty crazy time. | ||
| For example, earlier this week I had a six-page paper and a presentation due. | ||
| Didn't do it. | ||
| Couldn't do it, right? | ||
| I don't have time. | ||
| This has kind of taken over my life for now, but I'm okay with that. | ||
| And I'm willing to make sacrifices. | ||
| Yeah, well we need people like you in this fight, and I think you kind of got thrust into this almost accidentally, but it's pretty clear to me that you're willing to be in the fight, and that's sort of what we need. | ||
| So before we get into all the specifics for the people that don't know anything about you, tell me a little bit about what you study in the first place. | ||
| What are the things that actually brought you here in the first place? | ||
| Sure, so I'm doing my Master of Arts in Cultural Analysis and Social Theory, but my Bachelor's degree is in Communication, so that's why I'm a Teaching Assistant in Communication. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Alright, so we're going to play some audio. | ||
| We have two separate audio parts that I want people to play. | ||
| How long was the whole chunk of audio? | ||
| About 42 minutes. | ||
| Okay, so about 40 minutes. | ||
| So we're going to play a piece right now that's about 5 minutes, and then later we have a piece that's about 3 minutes. | ||
| I'm sure many of the people have listened to the whole thing, but we tried to parse out the parts that I thought were most important. | ||
| But before we play them, why did you record the audio? | ||
| So I got an email summoning me to the meeting, and the audio is of the meeting that I'm speaking of. | ||
| Actually, why don't we set it up first? | ||
| So what did you actually do that caused you to be summoned to a meeting? | ||
| And again, this is what, about six weeks ago or so, right? | ||
| Yes, it was at November 1st. | ||
| So, I played about four minutes of a debate between Jordan Peterson and another fellow at the University of Toronto named Nicholas Matt, so two scholars, on a show called The Agenda with Steve Pakin, which is just like a great moderate talk show produced by TV Ontario, which is like a public broadcaster in Ontario. | ||
| But it turns out someone was offended, and it all went down from there. | ||
| So yes, I got an email saying that there were some concerns about the content of my tutorials. | ||
| But then it said, this was from Professor Rambucana, who was writing this email, I'm asking someone from the Diversity and Equity Office to come in to meet with us. | ||
| And I thought, Like if they're going to bring a diversity and equity official in over this, I need to record this because if this ends up being ridiculous, which it was, then I want to have proof that this is happening. | ||
| Man, so you really were tipped off to some of what has been going on. | ||
| This didn't come as a complete surprise to you. | ||
| In that case. | ||
| So what we're going to hear is the professor and the diversity officer talking to you. | ||
| How did you do it, by the way? | ||
| I think people would like to know. | ||
| Was it your iPhone in your pocket? | ||
| Was something in your pocketbook? | ||
| What did you actually do? | ||
| It was just my laptop out in front of me. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Did they wonder why your laptop was right in front of you while you were having this meeting? | ||
| I said I was taking notes. | ||
| Yeah, so there was three people in the meeting, Professor Ram Bukhana, and then Dr. Herbert Pimlott, who's my program coordinator, my master's program, and then the diversity and equity official is Adria Joel, and she's in charge of gendered violence and sexual assault prevention. | ||
| Right, and a couple other things that we should just clarify. | ||
| The complaint was anonymous, correct? | ||
| So no one, so they were saying someone was offended, but no one stepped forward to say that they were the person that was offended. | ||
| And also, just to be very clear, the piece that you showed, this wasn't about whether trans people should have rights or be treated poorly or anything like that. | ||
| This was about the debate over the words that we can use related to their pronouns, correct? | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Okay, I think, have we set it up properly? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| You feel good about that? | ||
| All right, so we're gonna throw to about, it's gonna be roughly about four or five minutes of audio here, and then we'll be back with Lindsay in a moment. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So if you would just give us the whole story, and then, sorry, I just feel that because I'm just sitting in. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Okay, so we have to teach about grammar, and in the Pearson book there was a section about pronouns and using like gendered language, so I wanted to make it more engaging, so what I did is we were talking about in papers using they as like a singular. | ||
| And then we were also talking about, like, his and hers and, like, how to construct sentences with that. | ||
| And then to contextualize it, I brought up, like, a YouTube debate. | ||
| So a debate with both sides, Jordan Peterson's side and this fellow named Nicholas Matt, who's also a prophet U of T. Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do you have the name of the video? | |
| It was from the Agenda with Steve Pakin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| It was, like, a YouTube debate. | ||
| It was one hour long, but I showed about five minutes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| I mean, the students were very interested, I could tell. | ||
| All of their eyes were on the screen. | ||
| And after, when we had a debate, there were people of all opinions. | ||
| And from what I could see, it was a very friendly debate. | ||
| Obviously, this person who had an issue did not express it to me. | ||
| They just went straight to whoever. | ||
| I don't really know what happened. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Just for some additional context, you came from U of T, is that right? | |
| No. | ||
| SFU. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, from SFU. | |
| Okay, so you weren't like one of Jordan Peterson's students. | ||
| No. | ||
| So just to give you some context about what Jordan Peterson is, he is a figure that's basically highly involved with the alt-right. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| The website Rebel Media, which is an alt-right website, has been involved in raising multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars for his research. | ||
| It's... he... that's a week and a half ago. | ||
| He gave a lecture in which he identified student protesters by posting their social media accounts so that people would bully and threaten them online. | ||
| He lectures about basically critiquing feminism, critiquing trans rights... I mean, I'm familiar. | ||
| I follow him. | ||
| But the thing is, can you shield people from those ideas? | ||
| Am I supposed to comfort them and make sure that they are insulated away from this? | ||
| Is that what the point of this is? | ||
| Because to me, that is so against what a university is about. | ||
| So against it. | ||
| I was not taking sides. | ||
| I was presenting both arguments. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So the thing is about this is, if you're presenting something like this, you have to think about the kind of teaching climate that you're creating. | |
| And this is actually, these arguments are counter to the Canadian Human Rights Code. | ||
| Ever since, and I know that you talked about C-16, ever since this passed, it is discriminatory to be targeting someone due to their gender identity or gender expression. | ||
| So bringing something like that up in class, not critically, and I understand that you're trying to like... It was critical. | ||
| I introduced it critically. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How so? | |
| Like I said, it was in the spirit of debate. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| In the spirit of the debate is slightly different than being like, okay, this is, this is like a problematic idea that we might want to unpack. | ||
| But that's taking sides. | ||
| Like it's taking sides for me to be like, Oh, look at this guy. | ||
| Like everything that comes out his mouth is BS, but we're going to watch anyway. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| So I understand the position that you're coming from and your positionality. | ||
| But the reality is that it has created a toxic climate for some of the students. | ||
| How many? | ||
| It's great that... Who? | ||
| Like, how many? | ||
| One? | ||
|
unidentified
|
May I speak? | |
| I have no concept of how many people complained. | ||
| Like, what their complaint was. | ||
| You haven't shown me the complaint. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I understand that this is upsetting, but there's also confidentiality matters. | |
| The number of people is confidential? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Is one or multiple students who've come forward saying that this is something that they were concerned about and that it made them uncomfortable. | ||
| If this is, for example, a trans student, this is basically debating whether or not a trans student should have rights within one of their classes. | ||
| And that's not something that is really acceptable in the context of the kind of learning environment that we're trying to create. | ||
| It would be the equivalent of debating whether or not a student of colour should have rights or should be allowed to be married. | ||
| Do you see how this is not something that's intellectually neutral that is kind of up for debate? | ||
| I mean, this is the Charter of Rights and Freedom. | ||
| But it is up for debate. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But, I mean, you're perfectly welcome to your own opinions, but when you're bringing it into the context of the classroom, That can become problematic, and that can become something that creates an unsafe learning environment for students. | |
| But when they leave the university, they're going to be exposed to these ideas, so I don't see how I'm doing a disservice to the class by exposing them to ideas that are really out there. | ||
| And I'm sorry I'm crying, I'm stressed out, because this to me is so wrong, so wrong. | ||
| Okay, so that is just about a five-minute portion of the 42-minute video. | ||
| I just want to be very, very clear before I give this back to Lindsey here. | ||
| Everything that you heard that professor say is complete drivel. | ||
| I was making notes while we did it. | ||
| We were kind of shaking our heads together. | ||
| First off, let's just talk about Peterson for a second. | ||
| Peterson is highly involved with the alt-right rebel. | ||
| Media company out of Canada, which is owned by Ezra Levant, a Jew, is part of the alt-right. | ||
| What did that state? | ||
| Like, did that even mean anything to you when he said that? | ||
| Actually, I shake my head when he says it, and that's why he says yes after. | ||
| Because I was, I'm still under the impression he's not involved with the alt-right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I mean, interestingly now, Rebel Media, which was referenced, they've interviewed me, and that's how I've now become also associated with the alt-right. | ||
| I met Ezra like two weeks ago at an event in Florida, and he's a completely nice guy. | ||
| I don't know all of his politics and everything, but the guy couldn't be nicer. | ||
| Just silliness. | ||
| Alright, so you're creating a hostile teaching climate by presenting ideas. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What are we supposed to make of this? | ||
| I mean, when he was saying these things to you, obviously you were getting emotional. | ||
| Did you want to fight back more? | ||
| You were really kind of taking it, and I think you stood your ground where you felt you had to. | ||
| But did you really want to push back on that, creating a hostile teaching environment? | ||
| You did exactly what a teacher's supposed to do. | ||
| I mean, it's almost like my mind just doesn't work the way that theirs does. | ||
| That's what I was kind of realizing, is like, they're making these huge stretches that, like, talking about they in the singular is tantamount to debating someone's humanity, in addition to debating, like, whether a student of color has rights. | ||
| I mean, they're just making these huge stretches, and my mind doesn't work that way, and I'm just, you know, I'm more reasonable about things. | ||
| Yeah, so then he referenced C-16, which is this new, I guess, directive, the human rights, the Canadian Human Rights Code. | ||
| This is what put Jordan Peterson on the map a year ago, when he basically, in effect, but correct me if I'm wrong on any of this, basically he said, I have no problem with trans people, but you, meaning the government, can't tell me what labels to use, or what words come out of my mouth, that is, will come from my mind, and that's all. | ||
| Peterson was proven right here. | ||
| I mean, that's what I kept thinking the entire time, is that Peterson was right. | ||
| He was warning about this a year ago, and now look how it has been turned on to someone like you. | ||
| Yes, and even people who don't agree with Professor Peterson are angry that Professor Rambucana used that argument because now it's kind of proven him right. | ||
| Right, which is really interesting. | ||
| The other line that really got me was he said that this is like debating whether a trans student has rights. | ||
| Just to be very clear, what are your feelings on trans people and the rights that they should be afforded? | ||
| I believe they should have all the rights that everyone should have. | ||
| I have no problem with trans people. | ||
| It's so strange because I'm just such an empathetic and kind person. | ||
| So to suddenly be transphobic, it's like, wow, what do you call the people who are actually transphobic then? | ||
| Because I'm just so okay with it. | ||
| Right, which is the irony of what they do in general. | ||
| Then they call someone like you a transphobe, and then they call someone like you an alt-right, and what it does is it makes it seem like the alt-right, or being a transphobe, that this must be the widest tent ever, because they take everybody in there. | ||
| So, okay, so you record this thing. | ||
| I assume it went worse than you anticipated. | ||
| Like, did you really think, I mean, you recorded it, so you must have, you know, sort of guessed what was gonna happen. | ||
| What did you do right after that? | ||
| Right after that, I sent it to media outlets. | ||
| Just right after. | ||
| I was really not happy with the way it went. | ||
| Especially how they were accusing me of violating this policy and that law. | ||
| You know, one of the most frustrating things to me, though, was that I didn't get to know what the complaint even said. | ||
| And also, this is not a formal complaint that went through any kind of university body. | ||
| This was, from what I assume, an email to the professor that said, I'm unhappy. | ||
| And at this point, we don't even know if that actually exists, correct? | ||
| We have no indication whether it was, as he said, it was one or many or something to that effect. | ||
| We don't even know that even one existed. | ||
| This may have come from them. | ||
| We just simply don't know. | ||
| We don't know. | ||
| Was there any other recourse? | ||
| You know, I've heard some people say, well, she went right to the media. | ||
| Was there any other recourse you think you could have taken at the university? | ||
| Or did you feel you had exhausted that because this was the diversity people? | ||
| Yeah, and the diversity and equity people control a lot more than we might realize, I think. | ||
| And just seeing the president of the university's response to all this, what would have been the point of going to her? | ||
| I mean, look at how she's reacting. | ||
| She's publicly made it clear that she's not willing to support what I did. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| She's not willing to support my stance. | ||
| And really, she's not. | ||
| Which is a stance for... | ||
| Freedom of inquiry, which stands for freedom of speech, which stands for actual education. | ||
| Not willing to stand for any of those things. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| We should read some of the Vice Chancellor's statement. | ||
| What do you think? | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| So I'm going to read some of this. | ||
| We're going to we're going to throw it up. | ||
| After listening to this recording, an apology is in order. | ||
| I should say this is Vice Chancellor Deborah McClatchy. | ||
| After listening to this recording, an apology is in order. | ||
| The conversation I heard does not reflect the values and practices to which Laurier aspires. | ||
| I'm sorry it occurred in the way that it did, and I regret the impact it had on Lindsay Shepard. | ||
| The university is committed to ensuring that the vitally important role of teaching assistants supports an enriched learning environment for all students. | ||
| Let me be clear by stating that Laurier is committed to the abiding principles of freedom of speech and freedom of expression. | ||
| Giving life to these principles while respecting fundamentally important human rights and our institutional values of diversity and inclusion is not a simple matter. | ||
| The intense media interest points to a highly polarizing and very complicated set of issues that is affecting universities across the democratic world. | ||
| The polarizing nature of the current debate does not do justice to the complexity of issues. | ||
| So that statement sounds pretty good, basically, right? | ||
| I can see where there's a little bit of a slide in that, but pretty good, right? | ||
| Pretty good, but I mean, at the start there, it was, you know, I'm sorry for the way the meeting occurred and the way that it did. | ||
| And, you know, what I get from that is, I'm sorry it was like three on one. | ||
| I'm sorry you had no representation. | ||
| I'm sorry that they weren't nicer to you. | ||
| But I'll just be honest, like when I was in that meeting, I didn't feel like I needed anybody. | ||
| I didn't particularly feel bullied either. | ||
| Which is kind of interesting because that's a point that so many people bring up is like she was bullied like this is three-on-one this is not fair this is like basically harassment so it's kind of interesting to me that like I actually like never felt that way because all that really mattered to me was the content of what they were saying which was that like there's only one brand of acceptable ideas here and because you're not promoting that you're in trouble Yeah. | ||
| So the inherent conflict here is that the president and the vice chancellor are sort of saying different things, right? | ||
| I mean, the vice chancellor in this statement is basically saying, we stand by Lindsay. | ||
| The president is sort of saying that diversity and inclusion supersede. | ||
| Well, the president and vice chancellor are the same person. | ||
| It's Deborah McClatchy. | ||
| She has both positions. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, that changes everything for me, I suppose. | ||
| Okay, so then what does that prove, other than that I'm confused about this? | ||
| Um, yeah, I mean, I've been... She also did an interview with Steve Paikin. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And remember, the clip I showed is from The Agenda with Steve Paikin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So just a couple days ago, I think, she was on The Agenda with Steve Paikin, and he kept asking her, like, did Lindsay do anything wrong? | ||
| And, you know, she wouldn't give a clear answer. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But because her argument would have to be that by C-16 that show shouldn't even be allowed to be on television then, right? | ||
| I mean, that topic should not be discussed. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And that's just quite ludicrous. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You mentioned bullying. | ||
| I've seen a couple articles now written by apparently legitimate organizations in Canada that you're the bully. | ||
| You're the bully. | ||
| What was the one just a day or two ago? | ||
| that you're bullying these students and using your white privilege. | ||
| What are some of the things you've been called, by the way, after this? | ||
| Some pretty legit people. | ||
| I bullied the students, but also I bullied Professor Rambucana because he's a person of color and I'm white. | ||
| And so I used my white woman tears to overstep my boundaries and try to step all over his job just because he's a racialized body. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| As they say, which is, again, such a stretch that it's like I can't even process how you think that way. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And you've been called alt-right and all the rest of it, right? | ||
| I mean, that's just coming. | ||
| Did you ever think that you were going to have to get on Twitter because of something like this? | ||
| First off, the fact that you weren't on Twitter before this is the most wonderful thing I've ever heard. | ||
| And that's the truly sad part to me of all of this, is that you now have to be subjected to Twitter. | ||
| I've actually kind of been enjoying Twitter. | ||
| Well, everyone enjoys it at first. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It is nice to address things just in my own words, which is why I made it. | ||
| And also, there was just kind of the dynamic of how I started a Twitter out of all this, but Professor Ram Mukana took his Twitter offline, Professor Herbert Pimlott hid his Twitter, and then Adria Joel, the diversity and equity person, is just nowhere to be found throughout all of this. | ||
| For the past month, nowhere to be found. | ||
| Really? | ||
| I mean, that's fascinating. | ||
| I should address that my confusion over the President and the Vice Chancellor, because the way you described the President's words actually sounded slightly different than this statement, which just shows you that they're trying to play both sides of everything, you know? | ||
| And they kind of have to. | ||
| You know, coming from the perspective of needing student tuition dollars, they do have to try to play to both, because students do expect to kind of be coddled now. | ||
| It's how they're kind of raised. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, you know, I get it from that perspective. | ||
| But of course, it's not my principle. | ||
| My principle is, you have to stand by academic freedom, freedom of expression. | ||
| All right, well, speaking of dollars, let's throw to the second audio clip, which is about | ||
| two or three minutes and I thought was particularly interesting. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do you understand how what happened was contrary to, sorry, what was the policy? | |
| The gendered and sexual violence policy. | ||
| Do you understand how... Sorry, what did I violate in that policy? | ||
| So, gender-based violence. | ||
| Transphobia in that policy. | ||
| Causing harm to trans students by Bring their identity as invalid. | ||
| Or their pronouns as invalid. | ||
| Or something of the kind. | ||
| Potentially invalid. | ||
| So I caused harm and violence. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Which is, under the Ontario Human Rights Code, a protected thing, and also something that Laurier holds as a value. | |
| Okay. | ||
| So, by proxy of me showing you the video, I'm transphobic and I caused harm and violence. | ||
| So be it. | ||
| I can't do anything to control that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, so that's not something that you have an issue with? | |
| The fact that that happened? | ||
| I mean, I know in my heart and I know I expressed to the class that I'm not transphobic, and if any of them... I don't know, again, I don't know what they said, but I made my... I don't think I gave away any kind of political position of mine. | ||
| I remain very neutral. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's kind of the problem, is that if you're framing something that is like this. | |
| Like, just to give you the example of, like, in lecture, I also showed something that was from, like, a member of the alt-right. | ||
| Were you there for the, uh, when I played the Guns Unlimited video talking about 3D printing, etc.? | ||
| So this is someone who also has a site like the ones that fund Jordan Peterson, like Patreon, | ||
| like the white supremacist website that basically uses, that gets funding for these projects if | ||
| they get kicked off of things like Indiegogo, etc. | ||
| But I framed it by saying those kinds of things, by actually bringing out the critical perspective. | ||
| To just present information like this neutrally, it can help cultivate An environment where these kinds of opinions, like alt-right opinions, white supremacist opinions, anti-trans opinions, anti-gay opinions, anti-women misogynist opinions, where those can feel like it's a space where those kinds of opinions can be nurtured and created. | ||
| And that's kind of the frame on why some kinds of content we would use in class and some we wouldn't use or we would only use those for upper year classes or grad students like for example in one of your classes it might be appropriate to watch a white supremacist like recruitment video something that Richard Spencer has done because there's students with more critical faculties that have been exposed to more things that have had more time to kind of process these are very young students | ||
| And something of that nature is not appropriate to that age of student, because they don't have... 18? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| They're adults. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, but they're very young adults. | |
| They don't have the critical toolkit to be able to take it apart yet. | ||
| This is one of the things that we're teaching them, and so this is why it becomes something that has to be done with a bit more care. | ||
| I get what you mean about framing it. | ||
| Like, I remember when you talked about the 3D printing of the guns and how you said it was problematic. | ||
| And, like, in retrospect, yeah, I should have used that word, problematic. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I thought that would have been a good word to frame it. | |
| Well, it's good that you acknowledge that, especially since you're saying that this is not something that you agree with, this is not something that you're trying to promote. | ||
| It's just that you're trying to open up the debate. | ||
| But the problem is that that particular debate is about whether trans people are people or not. | ||
| Does that make sense? | ||
| It's a language issue, and you can extend it to whether You want to extend it to personhood or not? | ||
| And I did present that argument. | ||
| I did present the argument that by denying people their pronouns, you are denying their dignity. | ||
| Man, I mean, that guy really should not be allowed at a university or any place of higher education anywhere. | ||
| I mean, literally everything he said there was pure drivel. | ||
| The debate is whether trans people are people. | ||
| That has nothing to do with the debate. | ||
| It has nothing to do with the debate that you brought up or anything to do with the debate that Jordan Peterson brought up. | ||
| But you conceded a little ground there. | ||
| You said, I should have said it was problematic. | ||
| Did you feel that that gave you a little bit of an out with him or something? | ||
| Yeah, I don't even know if I stand by that statement. | ||
| People have asked me, like, do I rescind that? | ||
| Like, would I say it was problematic? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Yeah, probably not. | ||
| But, you know, when you're in a meeting like that, like, you just have to say things. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The reason that I threw to it by saying speaking of money is because I thought it was interesting that then he decided to go after Patreon because my show is funded by Patreon. | ||
| The reason we were able to fly you here and put you in a hotel is because of my patrons that fund this. | ||
| These are not racists and bigots. | ||
| Most of them are sort of disaffected lefties and we've got some conservatives. | ||
| My audience is all over the place. | ||
| I really don't even know where my audience is. | ||
| But I thought that was sort of interesting because I've seen that pop up lately, that they want to go after the money sources for all of these people and scare you to ever try to crowdfund now because you, for whatever you want to do in the rest of your life, you could probably crowdfund because people admire your courage. | ||
| What did you make of him going after sites like that? | ||
| I'd never heard of Patreon before that. | ||
| I wasn't very involved with internet culture or anything, so yeah, I'd actually never heard of it. | ||
| I thought he said Hatreon. | ||
| Well, there is a site called Hatreon, which is for people that have been booted off of Patreon for certain political views. | ||
| They created another site called Hatreon, which is, that's actually where more of the alt-right, for whatever the alt-right is, that seems to be where their people go. | ||
| What did you think about this thing about age, which I thought was interesting? | ||
| You said 18 is an adult, and he basically was saying, well, they're young adults, we have to wait until they're older to teach them these ideas, except he's the very person that's going to insulate them from the ideas, so you don't magically, your brain doesn't magically just learn more by the time you're 21 if you've been insulated the whole time. | ||
| Right, yeah. | ||
| I think it's just a really unfair position to take, because my students, like, in that class, they were so mature and intelligent, and they had really great things to say. | ||
| So, yeah, I think it's kind of insulting to them to suggest that they can't handle this. | ||
| Yeah, I know, I've always been a person who has never liked to have been infantilized, or like, I don't like it when people condescend me, and so I treat people with that same respect, but I find it condescending to say that, you know, you can't handle an idea, even though you're in a university, and you got into a university. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| By the way, I think it was sort of, well, not sort of, it was extremely condescending the way he said, well, when he showed that video for the class that you were in about the guns, he did it the right way. | ||
| He did it the right way. | ||
| But what you did by just presenting things, that was wrong. | ||
| I mean, that's the reverse of teaching. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, it's really kind of gross. | ||
| What's it been like for you on campus since then? | ||
| You were telling me right before we started a little bit about that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I've found out that a lot of people just don't like what I did. | ||
| They don't like that I showed that video clip in class. | ||
| Do you think they really grasp what actually you showed? | ||
| Do you think they really understand the issues or they're just going off of what they're hearing and she's a transphobe and blah blah blah? | ||
| Maybe both. | ||
| And, you know, the thing is, like, now I'm regarded with a lot of suspicion. | ||
| And people have told me that they're afraid that I'm recording every encounter with them. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Don't worry, we're not recording this. | |
| And so, yes, I'm regarded with suspicion. | ||
| Are people avoiding you? | ||
| Like, when you go onto campus, like, you can tell people? | ||
| Yep. | ||
| And the thing is, like, And, you know, maybe it is awkward for my classmates, like my graduate classmates. | ||
| And that's fine. | ||
| It might be weird for them. | ||
| But they don't even try to talk to me about it at all. | ||
| But when I go on their social media accounts, they're liking all these comments that disparage me or mock me or something. | ||
| And it's like, wow, like we sit across from a table with each other and you can't even bring up these things with me in person, you avoid eye contact with me, yet I look at your social media and it's all about me. | ||
| Yeah, it's such intellectual cowardice. | ||
| I don't know if you happen to see a little exchange that Jordan Peterson had earlier in the week with this guy, I think his name's Ira Wells, who wrote a really awful, I would argue libelous, article about Jordan. | ||
| Jordan calls him out on Twitter, says, debate me. | ||
| I offered to host the debate. | ||
| I'll go to Canada to do it, or we can do it right here, whatever they want to do. | ||
| The guy tweets out, yes, he'll do the debate. | ||
| And then in a private email exchange says he doesn't want to do it anymore and now has declined. | ||
| And it's like, this is what you all do. | ||
| You say all these things behind the comforts of your computer, but then in reality will never defend your ideas. | ||
| Are you getting any support in quarters that you didn't expect? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, even though I am treated a bit weirdly in my classes, like I am getting tons of support. | ||
| A lot of professors. | ||
| Is it private or public? | ||
| A bit of both, yeah. | ||
| I've gotten hundreds of messages, for sure, and a lot, like, the majority are from, you know, grad students, students, professors, and, you know, also just members of the general public who are really dismayed that this is the state of education, especially when a lot of people bring up, like, their tax dollars are going towards this, too. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's interesting because right before we started I was mentioning Brett Weinstein, who I know you're familiar with, and the whole situation at Evergreen. | ||
| And Evergreen is considered one of, if not the leftist, most left schools in America. | ||
| And you were saying that Laurier basically is one of the most left schools in Canada. | ||
| Yes, but the thing is... | ||
| So you would think, by standard logic, you would think, oh, these would be the most places of most tolerance, where trans people would be most accepted, where racial minorities would be most accepted in all this, and yet the narrative is now suddenly that they're all under attack at these schools. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There's a lot of homogeneity with the ideology of Canadian universities, though. | ||
| There's something called the Campus Freedom Index, and it talks about freedom of speech on campus, and no Canadian schools do particularly well at all. | ||
| I know Wilfrid Laurier has, across the four criteria, I believe just Ds and Fs. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| That's incredible. | ||
| So I want to read a statement. | ||
| The Laurier Rainbow Center, which is the LGBTQ, do I need any other letters now? | ||
| I know something happened in Canada, you need a couple extra letters. | ||
| Yeah, there's also Two-Spirited. | ||
| Oh yeah, I saw Two-Spirited is in there now too. | ||
| Do we know what that is? | ||
| It's exclusively for indigenous people who identify as male and female simultaneously. | ||
| Yes, well, the Rainbow Center issued a statement which I am going to read. | ||
| I thought there's so much richness in this. | ||
| Dear Laurier community, in the face of recent media attention, we feel it is our responsibility to speak out against the climate of transphobia that is being fostered at Laurier. | ||
| The university's silence on these issues has allowed for a one-sided perspective to be cultivated in the media that is entirely disconnected from the experiences of trans people. | ||
| We speak now as a collective of queer and trans students asking you to engage critically with the media you read and to hold our community with care. | ||
| On Friday, November 10th, an article was published in the National Post that disparaged the university's response to a situation that emerged in a first year communications course. | ||
| We are obligated to uphold the confidentiality of parties and therefore are unable to comment directly on the situation that instigated this article. | ||
| We can, however, speak to the ways which this article and the dozens that have been published since are defending and perpetuating transphobic beliefs and attitudes. | ||
| Under the banner of freedom of speech, the news media have advanced a critique of institutional practices aimed at increasing inclusivity | ||
| and challenging oppression. | ||
| The always present but often unnamed other at the center of these critiques are the trans and | ||
| non-binary individuals who these institutional practices would support. We must understand the | ||
| ways in which these attacks on the PC culture of the university are in actuality attacks on the | ||
| needs of trans people that these critics do not support. | ||
| The discourse of freedom of speech is being used for cover over the underlying reality of transphobia that is so deeply ingrained in our contemporary political context. | ||
| Ironically, these discourses seem intent on silencing those who speak out against the systemic violence perpetrated against trans people while propagating a far-right ideology. | ||
| In fact, recent empirical studies conducted by White and Crandall in 2017 have shown that freedom of speech endorsement is predicted by underlying prejudicial attitudes. | ||
| I mean, again, every word of this is just nonsense. | ||
| So let's just try to unpack some of this here. | ||
| What violence are trans people subjected to at Wilfrid Laurier? | ||
| Is there any evidence of systemic violence, meaning it's coming from the university? | ||
| And if it is, that has nothing to do with a grad student showing a video. | ||
| Um, yeah, so, like, on top of this, there was a petition and letter launched by about fifty-nine faculty members, so professors, who are saying that there's just a severe harassment problem of trans people now on campus. | ||
| And their evidence... Now, meaning now, meaning since? | ||
| Apparently, yes. | ||
| And their evidence is rants on their work voicemails, okay, and some emails. | ||
| Have any of these been released publicly? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| Again, nothing public. | ||
| No. | ||
| And as a reporter said to me as we were talking about this the other day, like, for her, that's just a usual Tuesday. | ||
| Like, if you're putting your opinions out there, people are not going to respond so nicely. | ||
| And unfortunately, you know, why I've been critiquing the Rainbow Center is They're making themselves, they're creating this false binary of, like, that to be LGBTQ is to be antithetical to free speech and freedom of expression, which is just nonsense. | ||
| And I've gotten a lot of letters actually from trans people who say, like, we don't agree with what this Rainbow Center is doing. | ||
| They don't speak for us. | ||
| Yeah, I'm so glad you said that so succinctly, because I think you're totally right. | ||
| They're making it sound like if you, not make it sound, this is what they're saying. | ||
| The discourse of freedom of speech is being used to cover over the underlying reality of transphobia that is so deeply ingrained in our contemporary political context. | ||
| So that the implication is that if you exercise free speech, you are somehow a bigot, which then can be applied across the board anywhere. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And it's not as if they haven't benefited from free speech. | ||
| Of course they have. | ||
| And, you know, when I was speaking at a free speech rally on Friday, a week ago, they had a counter-protest. | ||
| Who counter-protests free speech? | ||
| And their argument was that their voices... Though I would defend their right to do it. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| Their argument is they're being silenced, and this has been their continuous narrative, is they're being silenced by media, they're being silenced. | ||
| But they're in the news almost as much as I am. | ||
| It started to become, actually, kind of more about them. | ||
| So I disagree that they're being silenced. | ||
| Do you know of any issues with trans people at Wilfrid before this? | ||
| I'm not to say, of course, there's gonna be some prejudicial people, and there's gonna be somebody that doesn't like you because you're a woman, or you're white, and there's gonna be somebody that doesn't like a black person, or a Muslim person, or whatever else, but was, I mean, they're talking about, they're saying this is systemic, this stuff. | ||
| Now you're saying, since your thing, there's been some voicemails, which we don't know where they come from. | ||
| Um, yeah, I'm, maybe there is, like I'm probably, systemic, is the word violence? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Systemic, uh, where are we here? | |
| I'll find it in a second. | ||
| I mean, even in that meeting, they did bring up, you know, like trans suicide rates, as if I was somehow contributing to that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Um, and yeah, so I mean, I think, you know, I don't deny that trans people do experience violence, but I don't think they're going about this the right way, and you're just gonna make people have resentment towards you if you're gonna act this way, and act as if | ||
| To be trans is to be against free speech. | ||
| It just doesn't make sense. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What's your general political leanings? | ||
| Because as I mentioned earlier, you said in this, in the original audio, I don't think it was in the portion we played, and you've said to me, you don't agree with everything Jordan Peterson says. | ||
| I find that to be like the funniest comment that people have to say now about everybody. | ||
| Anytime you say you like somebody, you have to say, but I don't agree with everything they say, which is generally, it's a pretty obvious statement, right? | ||
| I mean, is there anyone on earth you agree with 100%? | ||
| No, yeah, exactly. | ||
| And, you know, can't we just like someone because they have interesting perspectives? | ||
| Like, that's my thing, is I'm just, I like interesting people. | ||
| And why can't we talk about what they're putting out there? | ||
| It's, so, yeah. | ||
| What would you say your general political beliefs are? | ||
| I don't need to know every specific everything, but before this, because now if people Google you, I mean, they're gonna just see all this horrible stuff. | ||
| So what were your beliefs before this? | ||
| Um, I consider myself left-leaning, um, and I kind of still do, but also, I've also been tempted by the idea of, like, maybe I should just, like, join the right. | ||
| They're being so welcoming to me, it's like, I should just join the right. | ||
| But what do you make of that? | ||
| I mean, it's kind of funny. | ||
| I mean, I can see it in you, like, it's kind of funny, but to me, this is like, you're sort of having your, what everyone calls the red pill moment, where it's like the rubber's meeting the road with your life right now, you know? | ||
| And I've seen this happen so many times, and I've seen it happen to myself, where it's like, man, let's put it this way. | ||
| Are you getting any backing from people on the left? | ||
| Yeah, some. | ||
| So some private backing and things like that, but I mean, your public defenders basically have all been You know, these alt-rights. | ||
| It's sometimes hard to tell, right? | ||
| And it's become so muddied because, yeah, if leftism and maybe, you know, yeah, leftism is about silencing and suppressing and censorship, then like, no, I don't want to be associated with those values at all. | ||
| What does leftism mean to you now? | ||
| Like when you say, I consider myself mostly on the right. | ||
| Sorry, on the left. | ||
| On the left, yeah. | ||
| For example, my principal value is protecting the environment. | ||
| I like Canada's healthcare system, so socialized medicine. | ||
| And I consider myself a feminist, too. | ||
| It's interesting that I can be in agreement with all those things, but they still think I'm a terrible person. | ||
| Where does the feminism piece fit into this? | ||
| Because I'm going to guess that the feminist community, the general feminist community, ain't going to be having a lot of what you're serving up these days. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, it's, yeah, I kind of almost understand Some resentment to feminism now. | ||
| Before, I thought, like, yeah, those people just don't get it. | ||
| But now I'm kind of seeing why there's resistance towards feminism, and it's because of this kind of censorship stuff, and it's because of, you know, making males out to be, like, devious people. | ||
| You know, that's just not helpful. | ||
| That's not productive for society. | ||
| So, you know, that's something that I've come to realize now, is kind of understanding where that resistance comes from. | ||
| So you're sort of going through it right now, like you're kind of really challenging all of your beliefs. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, it's actually kind of cool in a way, right? | ||
| Like, I know it's kind of exhausting probably, but... Yeah, but I like learning about other people's perspectives. | ||
| And even, for example, a lot of my supporters throughout all this have been religious people. | ||
| And I'm not religious, but I've kind of realized that, like, Their free speech is like a huge value to religious people for, you know, many different reasons. | ||
| So I'm, you know, I'm finding myself kind of almost allied with people who, you know, normally maybe I wouldn't have been. | ||
| But that's what I think is great because it's productive to understanding other people in society. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, I can't tell you how much I truly hear you, and I think that so much of my audience can truly hear you, because I think a lot of them are going through this sort of same thing. | ||
| What about friends and family? | ||
| Support or not support? | ||
| Are your family, are they supportive of everything you're doing? | ||
| Yes, they are. | ||
| Yes, and also my friends are as well. | ||
| Yeah, have you had any friends that have given you the... Really? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, I hate to tell you, but that's coming next. | |
| But you're going to get a lot of new friends at the same time. | ||
| I mean, that's truly what's going to happen here. | ||
| Has any of this affected sort of what you want to do in your future? | ||
| If I was to ask you six weeks ago what you wanted to be when you grow up and you're out of school? | ||
| I didn't know then and I still don't know now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, but I suspect this will probably Change things? | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Because now I've kind of made it clear that I'm not willing to play along with the political correctness stuff. | ||
| And, you know, once you take that position, there's a lot of people who regard you as kind of a dangerous person. | ||
| But I think I'm not interested in a society that is so stifling and feels like they need to censor themselves around other people. | ||
| It's almost even just kind of bland. | ||
| Really bland. | ||
| And it's also fake, because a lot of people will play the game around other people, and they'll go along with the political correctness stuff, but when they go home, they make fun of things, and they grumble about the political correctness. | ||
| So it's also just fake. | ||
| Yeah, well that sort of goes to the virtue signaling you were talking about before, where it's like, in your classes, these kids, these students, sorry, will sit across from you and say nothing, but then they'll go online and publicly, you know, because they want the cred, they'll throw you under the bus or say all these awful things about you, but they never have the guts to sit across from you and do it right then and there. | ||
| And maybe that's also just a result of, is that the culture we live in now? | ||
| People are more passive-aggressive because they can say stuff online. | ||
| So I saw you got into a little thing on Twitter where someone was calling you, I guess it was, who was the girl? | ||
| I'm sorry, I don't remember her name. | ||
| I believe her name is Adita Choudhury. | ||
| Yeah, okay, so she wrote an article, I think, on medium.com. | ||
| Basically, I mean, she was in effect calling you a white nationalist, right? | ||
| What were some of the exact words? | ||
| It was that article, but just also her tweets from, you know, almost from the day I started my Twitter. | ||
| Just, yeah, I want a white ethnostate. | ||
| I have, you know, I'm a crying white girl. | ||
| Have you ever called for a white ethnostate? | ||
| No, and I never will. | ||
| Just want to get that out there, you know? | ||
| Yeah, and You know, I... So for my two first years of university, I was also in this kind of camp of ideas, is that white people are racist no matter what. | ||
| Like, I bought into that idea. | ||
| And, you know, I bought into the idea that it's just a power structure, there's no such thing as reverse racism. | ||
| But I started to question that, and I started to see that It's actually, like, hurtful what they say. | ||
| And I don't tolerate any kind of racial harassment, because what she's doing is racial harassment. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And it shouldn't be tolerable for any race. | ||
| What's interesting is, so as someone that was in that line of thinking pretty recently, did you think you were racist? | ||
| Because if the idea is white people are racist, by definition, by the color of their skin, their immutable characteristic of whiteness, that they're racist, meanwhile you're white, while having those thoughts, did you automatically have to think you were inherently racist? | ||
| I definitely had like, Struggles with the white guilt, you know? | ||
| And just like, always having to be aware of cultural appropriation and that kind of stuff. | ||
| But eventually I just rejected it because it just... | ||
| You know, I just don't agree intellectually where these ideas come from. | ||
| It gets the point, like in one of my classes just a couple weeks ago, someone said, he was kind of making a comment about how white people who eat quinoa are racist, because then the people who farm it can't eat it. | ||
| And that's just kind of the thinking now, and I just, yeah. | ||
| I like quinoa. | ||
| I like quinoa too. | ||
| High in protein, light, saute a little garlic. | ||
| I guess we're Nazis now. | ||
| The Nazis did love quinoa. | ||
| I think that's the main takeaway from this whole thing. | ||
| So this girl writes this piece about you, and basically you sent out a tweet saying that in effect what she was doing was libel. | ||
| And then I saw a little bit of pushback, people saying, wait a minute, the new free speech absolutist is now calling something libel, which I think is so fascinating to me because libel is a law. | ||
| There are libel laws. | ||
| I am a free speech absolutist, but I do believe in the libel laws. | ||
| I have no problem with them whatsoever. | ||
| If you malign someone to destroy them, which by calling people white supremacists and Nazis, these days you're calling for violence because a lot of the same people will say you can punch a Nazi too. | ||
| So they're actually calling for violence towards you. | ||
| But did you struggle with that a little bit when you were sending that tweet? | ||
| Because I've done the same thing too, by the way, and I got shit for it and I don't regret it. | ||
| Well, I think what she's doing is trying to ruin my reputation and associate me with all these things, which I'm so clearly not. | ||
| And what really troubles me about her personally is that she's a PhD student at another university in Ontario, from what I can see on her profile. | ||
| And actually, a lot of the hate I've been getting is from PhD students. | ||
| At, you know, largely universities in Ontario. | ||
| And it's just so troubling because those people are going to become professors. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And those people are going to have serious power over the way that we think. | ||
| And so if they're just literally of the idea that there's a correct way to think, those people should not be in positions where they're leading young thinkers, right? | ||
| Absolutely not. | ||
| And especially someone like her who is You know, despite my struggle to say this, but she's a racist, basically. | ||
| She's a racist against white people. | ||
| Because now I'm starting to think, okay, I think you can be racist against white people, even though I was taught in university that that doesn't exist. | ||
| It does, doesn't it? | ||
| isn't it? | ||
| Well, because it's so inherently racist because what she's basically saying was | ||
| that if you said the exact same things that you say now but you weren't white, that it wouldn't be racist. | ||
| Right. | ||
| That ain't right. | ||
| But you know what we'll do? | ||
| In honor of open inquiry, Adita, that's her name, I will gladly invite her here. | ||
| I'll find out and reach out to her. | ||
| I will find her and welcome her here to sit down with you again. | ||
| I'll gladly fly you both out. | ||
| I suspect she's probably not going to want to do it, but I gladly will do it and I will be as neutral as I possibly can be. | ||
| I'd also, I know we have to cut this short because you're heading back to Toronto now, But I'd love to get you in here with Jordan sometime and you can, to Jordan's face, I know you did Crowder with him last night over Skype, but you can talk to him about the issues that you might have differences with him and I think he would love to do that. | ||
| And more than anything else I just want to thank you for doing this because We need people, brave, decent people like you to be doing this and I think that's why you're getting the reaction that you're getting. | ||
| It's like we keep looking for other heroes because there's so many bad actors these days and I genuinely thank you for taking the time and I wish you luck on everything you're doing. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| All right, guys, so for more on Lindsay, you can follow her on Twitter, at New World Hominin. | ||
| And normally we do Patreon questions after this. | ||
| We're not doing it today because Lindsay does have to jump on a flight and get back to Canada. | ||
| But I do want to give a special shout out to all our patrons who make shows like this happen. | ||
| Because we were able to fly Lindsay out, we put her up in a hotel. | ||
| I can't even buy you lunch, though, because you've got to get out of here quick. | ||
| But I'll find something here that I can give you. | ||
| All right, guys, thanks for watching. | ||
| And again, it's New World Hominin. |
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