Shaun Newman Podcast - #390 - Frances Widdowson

Episode Date: February 17, 2023

She is a former professor of economics, justice, and policy studies at Mount Royal University. She was fired by the university in December 2021 and is a vocal advocate for academic freedom and free speech. She is a co-author of "Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry" and author of "Separate but Unequal." SNP Presents: Legacy Media featuring: Kid Carson, Wayne Peters, Byron Christopher & Kris Sims March 18th in Edmonton Tickets here: https://www.showpass.com/snp/ For more info on Frances: www.wokeacademy.info Let me know what you think Text me 587-217-8500

This is Brian Gitt. This is Ed Latimore. This is Danielle Smith. This is Kristen Nagel. This is Aaron Gunn. This is Vance Crow. This is Quick Dick McDick and you are listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks.

Happy Friday. I hope the week is moving along for you. This is, well, this is exciting times. I'm, you know, I'm taking holidays next week and saying all that. There's still going to be a Tuesday matchup. There's still going to be a, a whole list of shows coming out. Just been working extra hours, double time, if you would,

this week to make sure that when I'm gone, the show continues. So, you know, if you don't listen to this, you'll have no idea that I'm anywhere but sitting in the studio. Either way, March 18th, Eminton, yeah, I'm coming for you. SMP presents the next one, Legacy Media, featuring Kid Carson, Wayne Peters, Chris Sims. I keep saying Kid Sims, Chris Sims and Byron Christopher.

That's going to be a fun night. I hope you guys will attend the last SMP. Well, I think the last two S&P presents have been really good. Either way, the tickets for it are in the show notes, and I hope to see

some of you there. Also, looking for different businesses to advertise Monday, Wednesday, Friday, there's open spots for 2023. We'd love to have you board. In the show notes, there's a, well, give me a text. There's the phone number. And we can certainly hook up and see what we can, you know, see if there's a team-up opportunity for your business and the podcast. Of course, there is the Tuesday mashup as well, but I warn you,

the Tuesday mashup, I think, is down to a month and change. And that's it. Then Tuesday mashup is booked for the year. Isn't that crazy? I only started talking about it not that long ago. brings me to, well, Kristen and the team over McGowan professional chartered accountants. Hey? Ha! Who! I hope I just blasted the airwaves, didn't I. You're like, oh, my God, that was a little loud.

Anyways, excited to have aboard McGowan professional chartered accountants. Kristen, I may say you may have seen her at one of the SMP presents before. She has been there. She's been in the financial industry since 2009, and her education and experience in this field have been focused on helping small, medium-sized businesses, owners with a wide range of business advice and assistance mainly in agricultural retail, not-for-profit, and oil and gas sectors. I got to be honest. We moved our stuff to McGowan.

Geez, now, Chris, now I'm going to be on the spot. Was that a year ago? I think it was a year ago. And what I enjoyed about it is there was like this, I say this all the time. I'm a complete nutter moron at times. And when it comes to taxes, I certainly am a moron. And when you're just starting out a business that's called a podcast and you have no idea what the hell you're doing,

it's nice to have a friendly person on the other side that just kind of is like, nope, you're okay. Eh, man, answers all your questions. We've met with her once since then to, you know, just kind of make sure we're on the right track and that type of thing. And if you're a small business owner and you're looking for that type of feel, I can't speak highly enough about her. All right, there's my sales pitch for you.

After this week, I'm sure she'll have a lot of bullet points. on, Sean, you need to talk about these things. Wow. Hey, here's my personal recommendation because we switched over and have enjoyed it since doing that. Of course, they offer accounting and bookkeeping, business consulting training,

business consulting and training, and financial planning and tax planning. So if any of those tickle your fancy, you know, tax season is, you know, as soon as spring's coming, of course, tax season's coming too. For more information, if you want, go to McGowanCPA.ca.ca.ca. McGowan, M-C-G-O-W-A-N-C-P-A-D-C-A.

There you go. Excited to have Kristen and the team of McGowan Chartered and Professional Chartered Accountants on the podcast Fridays. That's pretty cool. So if you're a business looking to team up with the podcast, hey, follow Kristen's lead. I'd love to have you. Hit me up in the show notes, the text lines there. Rect Tech Power Products. They just had me.

I just started for coffee with Al and Ryan. And we walked through some of their new products. Or, you know, like, obviously, you know, with spring, you know, slowly in the air, this February feels like it's spring. And we all know we're just getting fucked. We're like, we know the cold weather is going to be here and no time flat. And we're going to be like, holy dinah. We all know that message is going to be coming through loud and clear soon enough.

Either way, CEDU has a. a pontoon boat I don't know if you folks know this about me but I'm like a I'm a slow water sport guy I'm not big on on speed on the water I kind of like to just putz around and and so a pontoon boat is like top notch anyways they they got this the seedoo pontoon boat even with the seed who like handle instead of a steering well you know what I'm talking about can you visualize that you know your hands on each side anyways and it's like it's pretty cool like all the seats move so all the outside of it you can like

literally pick up a seat and move it pretty much anywhere on the deck so you can turn them outwards so if you're a fisherman you kind of get the point am i making that clear enough like it's it's it's all like i don't know if is my can i can i can i can i say plastic paneling i i don't know like i've been on a lot of pontoon boats this is like this is pretty cool like it is pretty cool so if you're uh i don't know if that if that talking led you to be like what the heck is you talk about you should check it out and if you want you can go to rec tech power products here in lloyd of course and uh and like actually walk on it right they got stairs up to it and you can actually like sit on it and be like this is hmm this is something hey that's me i'm not the big

speedboat guy i'm the pontoon boat guy i enjoy uh just uh putzing along hey go to rectech power products dot com if you want any more information if you want to see any of the other products you get the point gartner management They're Lloyd-Misterbased company specializing in all types of rental properties. If, you know, you're looking for a small office or maybe something a little different. Giveaway Gartner a call 780808-5025. Let's get on on that tail of tape brought to you by Hancock Petroleum for the past 80 years. They've been an industry leader in bulk fuels, lubricants, methanol, and chemicals,

delivering to your farm commercial or oil field locations. For more information, visit them at Hancockpatroleum.com. She's a former professor of economics, justice, and policy studies at Mount Royal University. She was fired by the university in December 2021 and is a vocal advocate for academic freedom and free speech. She is a co-author of disrobing the Aboriginal industry and author of separate but unequal. I'm talking about Francis Wooderson. So buckle up. Here we go. This is Francis Whittleson and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Today I'm joined by Francis Whittison. So first off, thank you, ma'am, for hopping on.

Thank you for inviting me. You know, I did the deepest dive. You know, it's funny when I listen to a podcast and then like, oh, this is interesting. I should try and find a way to get Francis on. So then you get Francis on, and you're like, okay, I'll go see what I can find. And some people have like, you know, 100 podcasts you can go listen to.

Others have nothing. You, ma'am, have a ton of writing. And so I think my brain is numb from reading a ton of your article. a ton of what's been going on in your world. But I want to start here because there's going to be people that certainly know exactly who you are, but there's going to be a ton that have no idea who Francis is. So wherever you want to take it, and then we'll see where we'll get to. Okay.

Well, I'm an academic, so I have a PhD in Political Science from York University with my supervisor was Leo Panich, which is quite interesting because Leo Panich was one of the most famous socialists in Canada. So for people who are, you know, labeling me as some kind of alt-right figure, it's a bit odd that they're doing that. I worked in the government, before I went into the academy, I worked for the government of the Northwest Territories as a policy analyst. And that's where I developed an understanding of what's called indigenous ways of knowing. and it is also where I met Albert Howard, who has been one of the most formative figures in terms of the development of ideas and a person that I have co-authored and edited books with

and have written many things with as well. I was suspended without pay from the government of the Northwest Territories for criticizing the traditional knowledge policy, which led me to think that it would be a good idea to go into the university system, to be able to share my interesting ideas with professors in Canada. That was much more difficult than I had anticipated because of the beginnings of wokeism, which were beginning to assert themselves in the universities of that time. Things were still quite open, and wokeism hadn't taken hold of the machinery of institutions yet, but it was on the move. And for people who don't know what wokeism is, which I'm sure we're going to talk about a lot,

I should probably tell people what it is. It is an aspect of postmodernism, which is not a left-wing position. It's a reactionary position, which insists that subjective views must take precedence over any kind of attempts of objectivity. So it's a direct attack on what would be considered to be enlightenment values in the academy. And in society generally, it's all over the place now, which are, you know, using reason, evidence, and logic and the scientific method together as human beings to try to understand the world. It rejects that and insists that the subjective viewpoints must be the ones that are accepted. and with wokeism, this position has become totalitarian,

whereby if you do not accept the subjective beliefs of members of groups who are believed to be oppressed, you will be pushed out of the universities, certainly, and you will have problems in many other aspects of Canadian society right now, whether it be, you know, being a school teacher or being, you know, even a member of the RCMP, or anything. anything like that. So this was happening. I managed because Leo was such a principal person to get my PhD, and he stood behind me, even though I, he didn't agree with me at all. We disagreed

very, very strongly with one another, but he was a principal academic and said, well, if you have enough evidence to support your reviews, you know, these matters should go forward and they should be debated within universities, you know. That was kind of the old school academic, which doesn't exist or exist rarely these days. So I got a job, a tenured position at Mount Royal University in 2008. It was a wonderful institution. It was making a transition from the college system to the university system, took academic values very, very seriously at the time,

worked with great people, had a great provost, Robin Fisher, a great dean, Manuel Merton. They protected me. And then wokeism began to take over the institution. And it's been like 2016, we had the indigenous strategic plan, which insisted that we must respect and value indigenous ways of knowing, which I was always a critic of. And then in 2019, I invited Megan Murphy, who you've had on your podcast,

to discuss with Julie Ray Goldstein, who's a trans activist, whether or not trans rights negatively impacted, or trans activism negatively impacted women's rights, that made a lot of people angry. And there's a bunch of other controversies. And then in 2020, with the killing of George Floyd, that's when things just completely disintegrated in the university. and I defended the journalist Wendy Mesley, who had her career ended at the CBC for referring to the Marxist, separatist, Pierre Valier's book title, White Niggers of America, she got her career ended for that,

just for referring to that book title and other, you know, these kind of thing. And when I did that, an indigenous scholar activist who was angry at me before decided to go after me and mobilized an anonymous student group against me and then I spent like a year fighting against that or a year and a half and then because of my attempts to defend myself

from people trying to get me fired I was subjected to a number of harassment investigations which then eventually resulted in me being terminated from Mount Royal University. Okay. I want to take you back a little ways. You know, it's interesting. You've been dealing with, I don't know, I'm going to use my buddy Vance's term,

which is very, it's not a new term, the mob. You've been dealing with, you know, like pushing the button over and over again, and they just keep showing up. When you go back to whether it's getting your Ph.D. or whether it was working for the Northwest Territories and government. Did you fully understand what you were about to embark on when you, I don't know what you did in Northwest Territories, just to criticize the policy, and that was it?

Albert Howard and I wrote an article in the journal Policy Options called Traditional Knowledge Threatens Environmental Assessment. I wrote it as a private citizen, but because it was perceived to violate the oath of loyalty of civil servants, that's why I was suspended for doing that. So it's a bit more, much more difficult in the government, when you're working for the government, to sort of speak freely publicly about government policy.

I still don't quite know where the lines are with respect to that. So I thought, I thought as a private citizen, I have freedom of expression and I should be able to do that. But because I was working on that policy, it was seen as being inappropriate. But I certainly thought that the university system would be very interested. Like I was naive. And things were much different. That's the thing is that things have changed a lot.

This was in 1997 when I started my PhD. And things were still had the ethos of the university, which is that, you know, you should be able to follow the evidence wherever it leads. You should be trying to state the truth as you see it. Like those principles were still there. They were under assault, but they were still there. So I really thought that the university system was going to be, you know, my area that I was going to be able to thrive in.

That was my, because I had a very unusual perspective. Often that really helps you or used to. If you have a unique perspective that no one else has, you can carve out a space for yourself in the university system and be sort of the person who approaches this area from this perspective. That was quite, you know, like that was something that was beneficial in the 70s and the 80s, but then in the 90s, it was starting to become under attack. You know, you mentioned a word that I think at times encapsulates me very well, and that is naive. You know, you talk about going in the university systems. I've listened to, you know, certainly Jordan Peterson has been a guy who I've followed

his work for quite some time, but there's others and they come and go or maybe they get silenced, maybe they get it removed, what have you. So the university system, it seems, has been on a lot of people's radar in the last couple of years. And yet, Francis, I still didn't know your name until, what was that, like 10 days ago, 12 days ago and then I started reading your account and I'm like holy crap like this is in my own province and I don't know you know I'm a bit naive to um you know when you talk about uh wokeism began to take over the institution I'm just curious like uh for all of us I don't know blue collar

folk I don't know if podcasting is blue collar anymore folks but I used to be I used to be um you know it did it just happen overnight or is it just this intercomerment kind of all sudden you roll into University of Lethbridge one day, and there's a whole bunch of people there that don't want you. Like, does that happen overnight, or is this something that's been building? I assume it's been building, but I'm a little bit naive to, like, the entirety of this thing.

Well, it's been unfolding since the 1960s. So it's been happening. When we've had this subjective position, is supposed to be replaced the objective kind of ideas. So objectivity, although you can never realize it, you have it as a goal, that, you know, you and I are trying to figure out the way things are. Not you have your truth and I have my truth and, you know, they'll never be able to communicate because we all have our different perspectives. Like that's not how, you know, the human project of trying to understand things, the enlightenment kind of position, which we've been operating under the last, you know, 300 years is, is. supposed to operate. So that's what destroyed everything. And we didn't realize it at the time

because we thought this would just be kind of one position amongst many. And you could just take this relativist position or not. And, you know, there's going to be a marginal thing in the universities. What we didn't realize is that this was going to take over. Like it, it's, and maybe it's its nature to take over. Anyway, when that began to happen, then it allowed for all these activists to gain a foothold in the institution. And still, everything was still operational because the activists were, you know, to some extent, cordoned off in their own what's called advocacy studies programs. So like queer studies or indigenous studies, these are not academic programs.

They are activist programs. Because of those programs gaining more and more power in the institution and then taking over the bureaucracy, in universities, that is now the framework that is being imposed upon everyone through things like indiginization, diversity offices. So, you know, diversity, inclusion, and equity offices, these sorts of things. They are mandating that everyone in the university must do these things. And so there's no ability anymore to criticize this position. It's become a totalitarian type of force within the institution.

And it is currently destroying all of our universities. It just is a complete shambles. And the speed at which that happened was surprising because it was kind of, it was increasing, but it was doing it at a sort of a slow rate. And then in 2020, because of the killing of George Floyd, and to some extent, COVID, I guess, probably had something to do with it. The forces which were already assembled took their moment and just moved in and started to really, really assert power over everyone in the institution. And I got, that's what my firing was all kind of wrapped up with that kind of change that happened in 2020. Because up until the very end, I thought that Mount Royal would eventually just back down.

Because I would not give them an inch. I said, this is not right. What's happening? And I will fight you to the end. And I thought they would back off because of such a ridiculous situation. But they didn't. And it's because of the institution. And then when we go to Lethbridge, that's a whole new.

that was a whole new level, a whole other level. Because I never seen anything so aggressive and just unapologetic in its totalitarianism. And a whole bunch of faculty members and a whole bunch of students, administrators, the whole thing, just as an indication of how much universities

have just been destroyed. I'm stuck on something. And I want to get to, I want to get to, Mount Royal. I want to get to Lethbridge. But I'm really trying to understand the problem. And some days the brain just picks it up immediately. And other times, I'm pretty dense, Francis.

I'm that student in the back maybe at times. It's going, say what now? And I feel like that this morning. You've got to rewind me at the clock. Rewind the clock, sorry. You said the 1960s, it started there. It was the idea of relativism versus what was the other one? enlightenment values of searching for an objective truth.

Objective. And this doesn't, people think this is fancy words and, you know, this is some kind of esoteric thing. It's not. It's just you and I speaking here, when you say, Francis, help me figure this out, then that's the assumption that we have a common reality that we're trying to understand. And I'm probably wrong on many things. you're probably wrong on some things,

but like the, the whole, the whole project is trying to figure out where we're wrong and where what we think is correct and then trying to help others to understand, help allow others to correct us, like that kind of give and take kind of process, which everyone, like not just university professors,

but like everyone who is part of this humanistic, type of culture understands. That is under attack, under serious attack. And what happens with this wokeism is this kind of subjective, this kind of initial postmodern move, which replaced the idea of a common reality with the notion that there is no reality and it's all just subjective beliefs, that got kind of morphed into, to help people who are oppressed, you might. must accept their beliefs. And if you don't accept their beliefs, you are an oppressor,

you are someone who should be, you know, pushed out of your employment, and probably this is coming, put in jail. Like, that's not far off. And the trans activism that Jordan Peterson has been fighting against, that's the most virulent of all of these forces. Because the pronouns, which is what he was kind of, he got on his radar, which is very, very important because He, he had done, well, other people have been talking about it, but he just drew a large, you know, spotlight to it. They are forcing you through language to accept this kind of intellectual position, which is that, you know, there are not just two sexes. There are many sexes or like infinite sexes depending upon your own. And that it can change on a person's whim.

Yeah. So just, um, what you're talking about. boat if my brain's got this right right now if you're an ethnic minority and you put forth anything me being a white guy probably with a beard and a full set of teeth and a combed hair you get the point i can't criticize it and if i do i am labeled racist misogynistic all these terms that i just can't even ramble on because i'm just like this is i'm i don't know and that's kind of where we're at. I mean, it goes further than that.

To some extent, it's a bit more complicated than that because a very interesting thing happened to Mount Royal, which surprised me. Sure. There was an indigenous scholar whose name is Barbara Barnes, who was teaching in her classes that there were, or it was asking questions about whether they were positive or negative aspects of the residential schools. So she was indigenous. So people are going after me, because I was talking about, you know,

some of the educational benefits that the residential schools brought. But she was doing it. And a number of professors, a student went after her. And another number of professors supported the student in who were not indigenous. So the professors were not indigenous. They were white. They supported the student in trying to take down this indigenous professor. So I'm still trying to figure that one out.

you know, as to, okay, I sort of understood if you're indigenous, everyone's got to just, you know, submit and accept anything you say. But this was different because this was now, it was the residential school's kind of idea that it's genocidal that has to be accepted by everyone. And even if you're indigenous and you take issue with that, you're going to be taken down. So that is a whole new kind of sort of surprising instance. So it's not completely that way, but it's very, it's almost always that way where you have this oppression scale and you add up your oppression types of features, whether you're oppressed. So if I'm a woman, for example, I can, you have to listen to everything I say because I'm a woman. But if there's a black woman, then I have to listen to everything that she says because I don't have the black woman. So it's kind of adding up these different things, arranging everyone on this scale, and everyone who has the most oppressive character, you know, they've oppressed the most gets to speak the most because allowing them to speak more will then enable them to overcome their oppression and make a better world for everyone. That's kind of the intellectual position. But this becomes a very difficult sort of enterprise. First of all, it is.

destroys any commonality that we have. So everyone's just divided up according to their oppression characteristics. As well, people who are oppressed today might not be so oppressed tomorrow. So this is what happened with the trans activist kind of debate, is that women used to be seen as the ones who were oppressed, and they told men to shut up, and they're going to have to be listened to. But then the trans people came along and said, we're more oppressed than you women are, so you shut up.

So that just kind of got everything all kind of disrupted and everything like that. But this is what is sort of the goal, is just to make things like everyone gets all disoriented, everyone gets a bit afraid because, you know, you're going to have terrible consequences if you say the wrong thing. And this allows these, I think Jordan Peterson has called them, you know, Machiavellian narcissists or something like that. people are seeking power who have no interest whatsoever in any kind of truth seeking and common, you know, searching for commonalities. People are doing the kind of psychopathic type of personalities to move in and assert power over everyone within that kind of context, which is sort of the

atmosphere now in, well, I've seen it in universities. It's just, it's amazing how quickly it's changed. But it's because that the foundations of the university were being sort of threatened in the 60s, but people didn't really realize the danger. Like it just seemed like a kind of a harmless intellectual

exercise, not something that was going to undermine the foundations which make universities able to function. What is it, Francis, that you said, did, thought, spoke, I don't even know, that put you under such fire

in the university scene? Well, there was a few issues that I asked questions about. So up until 2020, I was just asking questions about things. And I was becoming, it was becoming, people are getting more, more angry about it. And I didn't realize, about you asking questions. Yes, they were very angry about it. And they saw this as being relentless and asking questions with ill intent. That's what was said.

and for example, asking whether it was possible to question this concept of indigenous science in the universities. So I didn't even say that indigenous science didn't exist. I just said, is it possible to make that argument in the universities? And for that, I got attacked in a meeting by several people. and then although I was the one who was being attacked, it got turned into that I was the one disrupting the meeting. Fortunately, in 2019, this is what makes my case so powerful, is I was told by a colleague that I should be very careful.

Like I was starting to question things that were sacred cows, and I was going to be nailed for this. And I should start recording everything, that I said. So I got a tape recorder in 2019 and recorded things. That saved me on some things, but didn't save me

on others because things are just totally disrupted. Anyway, that was one of the things as an example. There were other issues that were really hot button topics. Islam was one of them. We had Navabi. Armand Navabi was coming to speak about

whether Islam could be reformed. and his talk got canceled. There's a huge uproar about that. And there's also people who are writing kind of anti-Islamic things. And I was trying to figure out whether we're allowed to say those things or not. Not that I would say them necessarily, but are we as a university allowed to see them? At this point, you haven't, all you've done is ask questions

and pose, bring different people into speak. and try and formulate some, maybe not even, I don't know, if it's beliefs or just thoughts of your own, essentially. Yeah, yeah. So that was before 2020. The reason I phrase it that way, Francis, sorry, is up until this point,

Sean Newman has been doing something very similar, right? I try and bring on Francis because I'm like, I don't know if I agree with Francis on a lot or none. I have no idea. I know she's definitely got, has pushed one button, but another guy that's completely different is Jeremy McKenzie. That guy in all of Canada is, you know, he's Canada's number one punching bag right now.

And you go down the line. You've heard of this guy. Oh, he's when it comes to, they assume he's a terrorist, right? Because he's the head of an organization called Diagalong, Francis, where the leader is a imaginary goat who snorts cocaine. It is a figment of his imagination. He's a very crude comic who is military vet. And what's his name? Sorry.

Jeremy McKenzie. He has said some very polarizing things. He's said some things that have definitely put him in hot water, even on this guy's side that I disagree with. But he also is very sharp and has said a lot of right things that I'm like, that makes complete sense. So I sit here and I just hear what you're talking about. And I'm like, oh, this is what I got, I got people that are like, Sean, you need to. be careful. I'm like, well, I don't see how asking, I can't see how asking questions gets anyone in trouble. And yet, here she is. Francis Whittleson sitting in my own province.

Yeah. Asking questions and that has become problematic for the academy. Yeah. Yeah. So that was, so that was what happened up until 2020 as I was asking these questions. Every time, I go to all these events. And it was, the assumption was we've already decided and it's now we're just going to, you know, indominate this truth that's been found, but I could never accept it because we never based our decisions upon any kind of evidence-based process. It was just political. So, I was

asking questions and people were beginning to treat me like a flat earther who was showing up at meetings, you know, demanding that the roundness of the earth be explained. Here she comes again. Francis is coming in the room. Mount Royal at the time, David Docherty, there's a recording that was given to me by a student, Wyatt Claypool, who is basically saying that, that my questions were like, you know, seeing whether the earth was round or not. Like, this is kind of how I was treated, which was totally unfair because we didn't have a very

well-thought-out rationale for why we were doing things. So this was making a lot of people angry at me up until 2020. And then what happened is that with my defense of Wendy Mesley on Twitter and this indigenous scholar activist going after me, I was trying to explain why referring to a book title is not the same as hurling a racial slur at someone. Like these are very, very different things. And if we're at a university, you should be able to refer to a book title. Anyway, this was not understood.

And all my colleagues that I was interacting with just kept on calling me a racist. racist on Twitter. So at this point, I sort of decided that reason was not going to work. And so I did, I started to engage in satire on social media, which was what was my downfall, because that enraged this mob. So they were, you know, they were, you know, already kind of, I was already at a target on me, but when I started to satirize their wokenness, the contradictions of their wokenness that enraged them and one of the funniest thing I did first

was because they were trying to bring in mandatory anti-racism training into the university based upon no nothing had been substantial and like no allegations of rate there's these sort of vague kind of allegations of racism but no one was actually specifying what it was yet we were supposed

to have this whole anti-racism training and we're supposed to have all these resources diverted to anti-racism and so on I did I posted this satirical letter on Facebook where I said that George Orwell had come to me in a dream and he told me that although he knew I was a fan of his, his analysis, he had found out that his analysis of totalitarianism

was no longer correct. And it was postmodern intersectional theory that was the right way. and so then I said after doing a territorial land acknowledgement posting my pronouns on Twitter adding a condemnation of racism to my syllabi and so on I had now decided upon the right path for Mount Royal and although I could not sign this letter that they had created to

for mandatory anti-racism training I had a better system which was an oppression point system and what we would do is we would assign each faculty member oppression points. So if you were white, you'd get one, and if you were cisgender, you'd get one, and if you were male, you'd get one, et cetera. And those with the most oppression points should resign their positions because we didn't have enough room for the BIPAC scholars to come in. And since they were in agreement with like doing this sort of thing, then they should just, you know, take the principal course of action and allow these new

scholars to come into this. This was seen as being harassment by Mount Royal, this satirical. Even though I didn't mention any faculty member by name, I was just making a generic kind of satirical letter, sort of showing the hypocrisy that existed amongst these people. Many of them were highly privileged, you know, full professors, white male, etc. But still banging on about how we should be hiring more BIPOC scholars and so on. And there's nothing wrong with hiring Bipox scholars, but they should be hired on the basis of merit, not on the basis of their identities, but all these people who signed the letter think that they should be hired on the basis of the fact that they're black, not the fact that they, you know, have expertise in a particular area. So that

was the beginning of the, the enragement. And then I turned my Twitter account into a satirical character whose name was Francis McGrath, who's modeled on Andrew Doyle's character, Titania McGrath, which he's very good. Doyle is, he's much better at this than me. But whenever I would see something that was kind of ridiculous, I would satirize it and also attempts to get me fired. So I would congratulate, when my colleagues were trying to get me fired, Francis McGrath would tell them how great.

they were and how they were doing a great job and they should you know they should yes they should do this they should you know fire francis whittleson and so on um anyway this was uh this this this kind of got everyone in a worked up very worked up frothing frothing at the mouth and then that's when i got all these harassment complaints filed against me is because of the francis mcgrath kind of character um but you know they were trying to get me fired so which i don't think is appropriate for you your colleagues to be doing on the basis that you were just defending, referring to a book title. And as well, I thought it was a freedom of, like Mount Royal had been allowing many of my colleagues to defame me for years and didn't do anything about it and sort of gave me the signal that

social media was not a workplace matter. And, you know, what you did on your own private social media accounts was your own business kind of thing. So I was very surprised when I started to get all these harassment complaints about my social media activities. So that was another kind of inconsistency which I got trapped into not

understanding how they're going to apply their policies, which of course they changed their policies specifically to try to get me. That's what happened. But this is all part of this arbitrariness that goes on with wokeism because it's about

subjective beliefs, not about any objective standard. So why should you be surprised when policies are used selectively against people who are disliked within the university? So that's kind of what happened. It was the satire in the end that resulted in me being fired, but it was this long, you know, sort of period of years leading up to it where I was asking these questions, which were not appreciated at all by a number of faculty members and students were getting old. You had an unpopular way of going about things that the collective group did not enjoy, and so instead of debating you in words and thoughts and everything else,

they just created rules around it so they could remove you. When it comes to social media, I mean, Twitter might be under Elon certainly has started to buck this trend, but it was year after year and COVID really showed it. If you had a different thought on COVID, you were off social media. I mean, we can just list the amount of doctors and professors and everything if they spoke out about it. Yeah. Out the door they went. And so this is extended to more than just one thing.

It seems like it's group mentality, group think, if you have an idea that goes against that and it's going to expose them, even done it in a funny way. They can't laugh about it. They got to get rid of that. There can be no humor in this world. No, no. The humor was definitely not appreciated. But I thought, like, I was just reacting to things. So I didn't really sort of understand it would have these catastrophic kind of consequences.

At the same time, however, with the exception of a few things that, you know, I would have worded things a little bit differently. I don't regret doing it because it was. exposing where things were going. Like I think in the end I would have been pushed out. Like I saw two people before me pushed out. So that's sort of what got me really prepared. So I was very prepared.

Who were the who were the two that got pushed out before you? One was a guy by the name of Mark Hect, who unfortunately was a contract faculty member. And he wrote an op-ed in the Vancouver son. in September 2019, questioning, sort of criticizing diversity policies, questioning whether diversity always increases social trust, said that diversity, too much diversity

in certain, you know, groups bringing in different cultures too quickly, can undermine social trust. So as a result of that op-ed, a bunch of faculty members denounced him and privately. They didn't let him let him know who they were, which was really, I thought, was not appropriate. And his field school was canceled because of this.

And because he's a contract faculty member, he's been pushed out of the university system. So that was kind of, that was in 2019. And then a few years earlier than that, I can't mention this person's name because they're very, they're still, they're actually still traumatized by, what happened to them they they did were able to work out their career um they got um uh they were

trying to uphold academic standards in their department and they got uh mobbed by four what i would call gender feminists right who are trying to you know basically assert certain postmodern viewpoints anyway, this person, because he was ganged up on it on like this, he had no way of defending himself and he was like a person who wasn't expecting this at all. He wasn't a fighting, didn't have a fighting personality and so they destroyed his life. Like it was just, it was very, very sad what happened. And the worst part about it is that a group of us who were supporters of him

we never knew about, like universities get you in these secretive processes and they tell you. you, you can't talk about it. And so everything's done to you behind closed doors. And so I only found out about it after everything had happened. So we weren't able to, you know, mount any kind of defense for him. How, how, how, um, you have to tell me about this experience because I just, I find this like fascinating maybe is the wrong word, Francis.

Uh, because it's just like it confuses me. to have colleagues trying to get you fired, colleagues basically undermining you, colleagues like speaking out against you social media, you say an idea, all of a sudden they're attacking you on social media. Like, you have to show up to work with these people.

Do they not realize that? Like, are they saying it to your face? Like, how is it going into a workplace where you, you're just like, well, this is kind of awkward,

you know? Like, you have to tell me about this experience because I, I'm trying to wrap my head, head around it. Yeah, so social media, because that was for many years until 2020,

seen as your private life. So it would be like you were at the grocery store, you know, gossiping about one of your colleagues or whatever and someone overheard you or something like that. That would be kind of the way it was seen. So that was one thing. And I was fine with that. Like, well, I wasn't fine with it.

I would let administration know that some of my colleagues, for example, were calling me a pathetic racist and that I wanted to go and give this talk because I wanted to hang out with white supremacists and stuff. Like that kind of thing, which, and I was sort of going, well, I don't think that's good, but I'm a free speech advocate, so I don't want anyone to be punished and so on for this, right? That was kind of what was going on. So that's what happened until 2020, when then Mount Royal changed this position and decided to go after me because they wanted to defend this indigenous scholar activist. So because of wokeism, she was kind of the prized faculty member

and I was just, you know, expendable to them. So social media was that case. In terms of the other ones, there were these two case which I'm still trying to get these letters through the Privacy Commission, which 30 faculty members signed. They sent a letter to the president of the university with 30 faculty members signing it.

One was about the cancellation of the Navabi talk saying that they thought that it was going to cause harm to people. And I wanted to see who these faculty members were who were making these arguments. And the second was the Marquette letter about Marquette announcing. Mark Hecht and so we still haven't got either of those letters and I'm hoping to get it takes years to get these things from the Privacy Commission in terms of at work like you

rarely will have people say these things to your face they do an undermining of you behind the scenes so that that's generally what happens I for me I don't really I because I'm not I don't I'm not really concerned about how what people think about me. Like I have people who I am concerned about what they think about me, but these are people I respect and people who, you know, their view, obviously I'm going to, if I've done something that they are unhappy with and I'm going to be concerned because I'm thinking, you know, they have thought processes that I think are valid and I'm here, I am doing something. So, but if it's just people who I have no respect for, they can consult me or whatever, do anything. I don't really,

I don't really mind, except I guess it does have an effect on the students, right? If you're, if you have people insulting you like this, then the students see that. And then now they think you're, you're someone who should be complained about. And you are, your position becomes somewhat unstable in the university system. You know, they model, they model behaviors, Francis. So if, if your peers, uh, can, um, cast stones. they'll start picking them up as well. Yeah, like now, like, anyway, so it wasn't something,

but I can see how someone who, and this was this one colleague I was saying, who's still traumatized, is that, you know, he was a very mild-mannered person who never said anything mean about anything. He was just a deer in the headlights who had these people who mobilized against him

And, you know, before he knew it, he was under, in a disciplinary process and he had no protections. And the other thing, which I should mention, which is probably the biggest problem of them all, is the unions. So in faculty, faculty, universities across the country, we are very limited as individuals in our ability to fight for our rights. Because we belong to faculty associations, unions, and we're in a labor-related. framework. And what happens is these activists, these woke activists, because they have a lot of time on their hands, they go and they take over the unions. And so you find yourself being represented and you can't do anything about it.

Like you can go, and that's what is going on with me right now, as I'm going through arbitration, I've gone through 10 days, and I'm going to be going through another 15. throughout the year. And fortunately, the Canadian Association of University Teachers, which is the union that represents all unions, has taken over the legal side of my case. And they are much more competent than my faculty association. And so they are devoting a lot of energy to it

because they do realize the danger. If I go down, then, you know, there's going to be a lot of other faculty members who are going to be subjected to these kinds of tactics. But anyway, with my own union, which have been captured by wokeism, I had terrible times trying to get them to represent me properly. Fortunately, I had two people I knew who really helped me a great deal. And I'm a board member for the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship. So I know a lot of university professors who have been sort of watching things happen for the last 20 years.

So I got a lot of very, very good advice, which then led me to be able to have 10 grievances filed that are all going forward in the arbitration process. So I'm in a very strong position, not because of my union, which was terrible, but because I got some advice on putting forward these, you know, getting the legal things sort of sorted out initially and then having things on paper so that I had a very strong. wrong case, but most people don't have that luxury and they have to rely on their faculty associations for defense. And if your faculty association does not agree with you, they will do a bad job. They'll do a terrible job in defending you and you will be thrown to the wolves. And that's happened with a number of people where they just, they don't get a good defense. And so they're pretty much on their own. And you can take your, if you don't have your outcome, is not proper, you can take your faculty association

to the Labor Board, that those cases are often not successful because you have to have a very high bar of them, not defending you properly. And that's hard to prove. So we're in a very difficult spot now with the unions. And that's going to be one of my biggest kind of targets that I'm going to be focusing on over the next few years is trying to expose the unions.

And Lathbridge, that's going to be focusing on. That was an example of that. Well, tell us about Lathbridge, because that literally just happened, you know, what is it, like two weeks ago. Yeah. Yeah, that was a shocker. I knew there's going to be a bit of heat about it for sure. Like, I'm used to this. So, like, I've been, whenever I give a talk somewhere, there's usually some kind of, you know, muttering that's going on.

Anyway, so Paul Vemnitz, who is a colleague and friend of mine and his wife, Pamela Lindsay, they've both been on my. my podcast, Rational Space Disputations, and Paul and I have been on a few events together, and he's a board member for the Society for Academic Freedom of Scholarship, as I am. He said that, because I was coming to arbitration in January, that, you know, I should come down to Lathbridge to give a couple of lectures for his philosophy class and do a public lecture on academic freedom and so on. So I thought, great, that'll be good. So, About a week beforehand, when we got the room booked and everything, I put out a notice on Twitter that I would be giving this talk on February 1st at Leithbridge, at the University of Leithbridge.

And nothing happened. So, and I knew this was, that wasn't going to last. And Paul was very naive. He didn't know this was going to blow up like this. He thought no one was going to attend and no one's going to care. It's kind of what he thought. And I thought, well, I don't think that's going to be the case. But so about a week before a guy by the name of Kim Seaver, I think his name is, he works for, he does this magazine called the Alberta worker. He's completely woke, right? The Alberta worker, there's nothing like, wokeism doesn't care about the working class. They care about trans people and all this kind of stuff.

Anyway, so he starts by agitating against it. And then that got picked up by the Students Association, and then they started trying to put pressure on the president. And the president acted properly first, right? Not really. Like he did some, you know, he said, he sort of made reference to I was not, like I was, my views were not consistent with the values of the University of Blasbridge, which presidents should not be doing.

Right. The university does not have these values. The university is a forum where people come together to discuss values and what values we should have, right? It shouldn't be like this, you know, right way to think kind of thing. But fair enough, he's trapped in this woke hellscape. So he's going to pander a little bit. But he said, no, talk is going forward because we've got the Chicago principles that are free speech policy. And even if you say something that is harmful or unwelcome or wrongheaded, you should be. able to speak at a university and so it's fair enough so everything was moving ahead and then uh

i was down and left bridge at paul impound's place and and and and i'm going they're not going to cancel the talk like he's already he's going i don't know there's a bit of an opening there with the safety kind of thing and sure enough a couple days before because of the pressure the president caved and cancel the talk. And so Paul asked me, well, what do you want to do about this? And I said, well, I should definitely go to the University of Lethbridge at 430 and give the talk somewhere. Like, I can give it in a public space. I don't want to be pushed out of the University of Lethbridge. I don't want that to happen. I want to go there and I can just do a speaker's corner kind of thing, right? And, you know, if they want to, security wants me to pull me away for whatever, then they can do that.

But still, I'm going to, I'm showing up there. It's like, okay. And then I'll do a Zoom talk because I'm not going to be able to have my slides and the actual thing. I'll do that at seven, but I'll show up at 430 and do the thing. So anyway, so we arrived at left, at the university at 430, and we were not ready for what was going to happen there. I was just, because I knew there was going to be some noise makers and some, you know, I, I knew that was going to happen. But I wasn't prepared for 700 people like this huge, you know, thing. And so I was amazingly calm.

I don't know quite what happened to me, but I wasn't worried at all. I just thought, whoa, this is weird. So I went up to the front and I was waiting there to get my talk. And I'm kind of thinking to myself, how am I going to do this? This is like, you mean, and then they had the drumming and the dance. answers and everything. And I was going, okay, let's just listening and I'll just clapping, whatever. I'll just listen to them and then I'll start by talking. Then I realized that they were just going to continue this indefinitely, the drumming and the dancing. So I thought,

well, I should go and find a place to give my talk. And as I was kind of pushing my way through the crowd, I got asked a question by an indigenous man. And I had quite a long conversation with them, which was very cordial. And we, I tried to correct him on some things that he didn't understand about my work and he way and then he's we both agreed that it was people shouldn't be shut down and we should try to communicate and so on so then i kind of left and because i was looking for a spot to get up high and start to talk and as i was walking down the hall this indigenous woman starts to really go after me and tell me like how why am i doing this and she starts screaming at me that swearing at me and telling me that I stole her land and like all this I was like well as I move

away and I I got up on these risers to give the talk and as I said a couple of sentences then people started chanting you know no hate at Lafbridge or no room for hate and this sort of thing and uh they just wouldn't stop and and so I'm as I was standing there the security had a security came over and said, you know, he was getting a bit worried by the look of the crowd. And I wasn't worried at all. Like, I thought fine. Like, people are venting. I was disappointed that I wasn't able to speak, but I thought it's better that people are able to vent and scream and hate me and whatever than for nothing to happen. Like, this is, we need to kind of say, hey, we got a problem here. But I thought, well, security, I don't want to worry people and I don't want there to be some

stampede or something. So, um, anyway, So they said they would make a safe passage for me and they escorted me into a safe area and so on. And then I left and went home and did the Zoom call, which was very disrupted by all sorts of trolls. And it was like, but still, I got to do that. And then I did two lectures at Paul Deminitz's philosophy class, which are recorded. One of them was videotaped. and that was good because it shows that like this is really not there's no hate there's no racism there's no anti-indigenous rhetoric this is not what's happening they don't like me questioning

their subjective beliefs and they're going to stop me with anything that they can i think their subjective beliefs are wrongheaded and i have reasons why and if they want to argue with me they can, but they should not be able to stop me from questioning their subjective beliefs. And this is what's going on. This is what wokeism is. And this is why universities are being destroyed. What are some of their subjective beliefs that are wrongheaded, Francis? So with the indigenous ways of knowing, so this is what it's called, which I don't like that

phrasing, because I don't, I like more methods or processes. The scientific method, for example. Anyway, ways of knowing supposedly result in knowledge. And so the ways of knowing, there's three, according to Merlin, Grant Castellano, this is the talk I was giving, which is recorded. There's three ways of knowing, empirical observations, traditional teachings, and revelation. So those are the three.

And as I explain in this lecture, the empirical observations, can be a source of knowledge, but they could be unrepresentative. And often indigenous empirical observations are because they're not systematic like the scientific method. So that's one problem. And we got into a big discussion in the class about the polar bear example, the numbers of polar bears. So, for example, the hunters think that the numbers of polar bears are increasing. The scientists during the population counts think that they're decreasing. The elders don't have any systematic way of counting bears, so they could just be seeing more bears that year.

That does not necessarily mean the bears are increasing. So that's the kind of problem with one area. The traditional teachings, you know, that could be, again, that could be lead to knowledge, depending upon what those traditional teachings are. But many traditional teachings, and we have many in non-Indigenous contexts, like, you know, the four humors, and these sorts of things. They're not necessarily correct. So we have to evaluate them on a case by case basis. And then the third one, revelation, is not a way of knowing at all.

Like, you know, sort of appealing to the supernatural to, you know, tell us where to find things or tell us the way things are. This is not valid scientifically. So that is not a way of knowing at all. And that's the revelation is really what I take issue with. And you have things like, and this just, it's a big blow up at Mount Royal, these things called medicine bundles. I'm not sure if you've heard of them. This is a way of knowing.

So you have this bundle, which has a skull and a feathers and very sacred objects in it. And if you want to sort of find out what to do about something or why, you know, for example, why the caribou didn't come near the camp this year, you take out this bundle and you do a spiritual ceremony, and that ceremony will give you knowledge as to why that was the case. Now, it's possible that you might guess right by doing the ceremony, but it just is a coincidence. You know, it's not sort of a verifiable, something that can be, you know, it's just falsifiable. It's not a falsifiable thing. It's not a valid way of knowing. Anyway, this is the big one that indigenous activists really want to be in the curriculum,

is the revelatory kind of way of knowing. And they want me to accept that as being valid. And if I don't, they call me a racist and a hate monger and an anti-indigenous person and so on. When I'm saying, hey, you know, indigenous people are entitled to the same standard of education as everyone else is. And if you're going to have revelation being taught as a way of knowing, and for example, the science classes to indigenous people, they're not going to get a high quality scientific education. So that's sort of my position on it.

People are entitled to their beliefs, obviously. This has got nothing to do with individuals. So if you want to use your medicine bundle and do whatever, then that's your right and go ahead. But don't bring that into the universities and expect everyone to sort of show respect. for that because I have no respect for that. I do not think it's valid and I will argue against it

every chance I get. But of course, this makes the woke people infuriated and they can't accept that. They can't accept me just respectfully saying I don't think that's a valid way of knowing. They won't accept that and they want to push you out at the university

under the auspices. And I believe even now that they're claiming this is harassment, for me, to say that I don't think that's valid. That's harassment and discrimination, according to the woke kind of we have thinking about things. Am I right? And I think what I, is just the way you look at it from a scientific background of this is how are,

I don't know, the university sciences are, this is how we look at problems. And the First Nations view of it is their, deep culture rooted in a medicine bag, medicine bag, correct? Bundled apologies, yeah. And so you just have two ways of looking at something that are just very different. They're just very different. And what you're arguing is I don't want this in our way of deciphering problems or

use the polar bear, right? That doesn't make sense to use on a polar bear. is essentially what you're saying. I'm curious, to take First Nations out of it for a second, because the thing about First Nations is it is so polarizing right now. You can't, like, you can hear me mumble. I'm just like, I don't even know how to dance around this, and here I sit.

Do, do or has, like, the Catholic Church or something of that background, been able to be in the school system in the same way and look at polar bears through a context of religion or church or something. Does that make sense? Has that ever happened? Well, it used to happen. So we got that out of the university system.

So before the 1950s, I guess, religion played a large role in universities. So often universities had religious kinds of governors and so on, and you would have to have that as part of your curriculum. With the secularization process, universities were able to push those religious kind of control, that religious control out of the universities. And now it's coming back in with the indigenous stuff. And to some extent, Islam as well. is coming in in various ways, this kind of respect kind of idea.

You're not able to question. They're not able to do this. And this is done now under kind of an anti-oppression type of framework. So it's the woke framework that it's coming in under. And my own view is that teaching indigenous creationism in the science class is the same as teaching Christian creationism. science class. Neither should be taught in the science class. If you want to investigate it as a belief system, then that's fine. And we do that in anthropology and religious studies and so on. So that's okay.

But you should not be forcing people to say that they think a belief is true when they don't think the belief is true. And this is what wokeism's totalitarian character is doing. And people should be very, very, very worried about this and because it's done under this kind of anti-oppression kind of label they're sort of going oh well you know because I know a lot of people who although they would take great opposition to having prayers and university functions they think it's okay if it's an indigenous prayer because indigenous people have been oppressed terribly historically and this is a way of you know to some extent showing that you making things right making things better but it doesn't make things better because it treats indigenous people

first of all i think it's highly stereotypical to do that because i know indigenous people who are atheists um and what does it say about them if you are going to assume that they are going to pray all the time for everything like it's making an assumption about people based upon their ancestry, which I think is entirely inappropriate. And secondly, and this is an interesting discussion that goes on in the Society of Reckoning Freedom and Scholarship, what does respect mean? You know, and respect is defined in this kind of indigenous ways of knowing thing as, you know, you should pretend that you have regard for this, right?

But I think that's very disrespectful to pretend that you believe something and to be kind of lying to someone rather than saying, hey, you have your view and I disagree with you. And here's why I disagree. And I respect you enough as a person that you should be entitled to hear my honest opinion about this. Now, you might not like it and you might get upset and so on. But I'm not trying to manipulate you. I'm not trying to, you know, kind of have any power over you or anything. I'm just saying, hey, we're two human beings here. I think about this in a different way, and I don't think that's valid the way you're thinking about it.

And here's why I think that your thought process is not as clear as it could be, or something like that. It doesn't have to be insulting. I have many, many things which if people don't correct me, then I'm going to continue on with my erroneous way of thinking about things. So that's what university in its most robust kind of sense can do for people, is to help them to become better thinkers. And what's happening is that indigenous people are not becoming better thinkers because they're being condescended to constantly and being told that what they believe is true when it's highly improbable. One of the best examples of this, and this is to get into a really controversial area, is the Camloops Indian Residential School case.

So in May 2021, it was stated that a mass grave of 21 of 215 children had been found at the Camloops Indian Residential School. That was put forward. And some of my colleagues, an indigenous colleague, was even saying that 215 murdered children had been found. And of course, if you have a mass grave, it's like 215 people died at all the same time. So it's like some kind of horrible thing happened. Either it was a terrible epidemic or whatever, but it's probably a mass murder of some kind. Anyway, this was announced, and a bunch of knowledge keepers are claiming that they have this kind of memories of people being woken up in the middle of the night to bury, you know, to dig graves and so on. Anyway, it turns out that this is all not true.

That what they have is ground penetrating radar, which is found initially 215 anomalies, but 15 of those anomalies. but 15 of those anomalies were found to have been in an area that had been previously excavated. And so those anomalies, although they were thought to be 15 burials, were not, they were some other kind of disturbance. So that's what we have, plus the knowledge keepers kinds of claims. Those are the two things that we have. We also had a rib bone, a human rib bone that was thought to be discovered and a human tooth. But both of those have been, no one knows where the rib bone is, and the tooth was found not to be human.

So those were all just kind of, you know, dangling sorts of bait for people to take this idea. And the AFN, the Assembly First Nations and the band have been running with this ever since to extract various transfers from the government to do all sorts of, you know, great, you know, ground-presentating radar stuff and research. research contracts and so on. Anyway, so I'm just been, you know, Indigenous people get very upset now, because they've really latched on to this 200 children being buried and so on. But if I'm honest, like if I'm honest with them and just say, no, there's no evidence and we have to do excavations to determine whether this is the case or not. If I don't, if I just went, oh, yes, yes, yes, you're right, you know, despite how improbable, I think that hypothesis is, I'm going to agree with you because you're indigenous and it's going to upset you if I don't, if I don't, if I say something, you know,

it's not, it's not a good thing for people to think that 200 of the children associated with this school were murdered. Like, that's not a good thing for people to accept as being true when it's highly improbable that that is true. This is the kind of thing we have to get into and talk about and not have this immediate accusation that you're a racist and anti-Indigenous if you disagree with something that an indigenous person says. It's not doing them any favors,

and it's actually stunting their intellectual growth and ability to understand the world. Yeah, this is about as controversial as it gets here in Canada, you know, when it comes to Indigenous, because I've sat and interviewed First Nation people firsthand that had some really tough things done to them at residential schools. And I'm sure that between the two of us, we've read some literature that talks about some of the stories. And I've had different people on here just talk about some of the persecutions, the First Nations people have dealt. with, you know, in the last hundred years, probably, let alone the last however many hundred years it's gone on. And so to say that in one breath, and then the next breath, be like,

but the residential schools didn't have masquerades and didn't do this and didn't, it's, it's, I don't know, it's hard to spit out, because you know what you're inciting by saying it. You know that it's going to rub people the wrong way because it's what we're being, uh, fed on mainstream media. It's what a culture is telling us, you know, that they had children taken off the reserves, taken away from their families, et cetera. And when you hear those stories,

it's like, well, can you have had people taken in the middle of the night or what have you from their parents, had their culture basically flipped upside down and move on from that, while having all the treaties signed and everything else? It's such a complex subject. I have a really hard time talking about it, Francis, probably because I don't know enough, you know?

But the problem with, then I'll add on to that, I have such a distrust in our media because I, you know, I come out a lens of the last three years. I lived it. And living and seeing what they talk about, it's like, well, I won't shut Francis right down because I know for fact there's some things that have gone on in the last three years that we've all just like slid on by and acted like, oh, it wasn't that big a deal. And it's like, hmm, so this is a very difficult subject. I don't know what to say about a bunch of mass graves. It breaks my heart that there would be graves there in the first place.

But that doesn't mean, you know, certainly that means a whole lot, you know? Like I'm saying word mumbo-jumbo right now as I try and dance this in front of you because I just, I don't know.

I do find interesting the removal of religion or beliefs from the university because if it once was Christian, Catholic, then we had a period of time where there was nothing and now you're starting to see a push back for First Nations,

indigenous, Islam, it's almost like there's a void there and people want it filled. Or is that not the right thought process? Well, I think we are you know, religion had a certain holdover people, and then we became secular. And now we are, we're sort of somewhat at sea in trying to figure out the best future for humanity.

And there's different views. I personally am an atheist, so I don't accept the religious perspective. I have no, like I'm always interested to hear why. people believe the things that they believe and so on. I don't think it's valid. But at the same time, I think people have to have higher ideals that they can kind of orient themselves towards. And the question is, you know, what are those, what should those ideals be? Like, this is, this is kind of an open question now. And we don't have sort of pre-written scripts to try to figure that out. But I think philosophy is part of that process of trying to figure out what these ideals, what are the

ideals that we can sort of. You know, I've been sitting here the whole time and I've been wondering this. I'm like, you know, Francis, mine is certainly the residential school master's thing. I mean, certain people that agree with you aren't going to be a phase by it. Certain people that always get offended by that thought process are always going to be offend by it. But I've been wondering, what is it at the core that makes Francis so. offensive to some people.

And being an atheist certainly will do that to people. Not, you know, for First Nations, they're deep cultural beliefs in the, you know, and there is no coincidence and speaking to the spirits and the Mother Earth and all that, and I don't know enough about it. So I sit here and I'll say that and then I'll say that I don't know enough about it. But that goes, those two things conflict. Same thing with Catholics or Christians or, you know, I mean, you can do any faith you want, Francis. And when you get down to those core beliefs, that's where some interesting conversations lie,

because certainly over the course of the last two years, a lot of people have been turning back to faith. They just have. Yeah, well, I think it's, you know, well, I tend to take Carl Marx's, view on this subject. Religion is the opiate of the people. And if people are suffering, then they look for a better life

in the afterlife. Like it's a way of trying to get justice somehow. If you're not going to get justice in this world, then you look to the afterlife to provide justice. Like that, that's kind of the situation. I think that there's huge injustices that are happening. And I think that's partly

indigenous like i like people think that i'm denying the harm of the residential schools denying the terrible things that were done to indigenous people and i don't i don't deny that at all i just don't think that the way to um you know overcome injustice is to lie to people um we don't we need to be honest with with each other and state what we think is true and if people don't like that well i'm sorry but that's that's i'm that's my ethical kind of position. And I don't think this is going to help things to pretend to believe something, which I don't. And then I could be wrong.

Like, that's the thing is that I'm not saying my view is the correct one. And everyone goes up. You just want to seat at the table to share your views and be allowed to share them. What's happening is that I, people are telling me, like, I grew up in a university environment where people were encouraging me to, to state what I think is true, to put for the evidence upon which that I'm reaching these conclusions, and to argue it out, that was how I was kind of encouraged to enter into the university system. And it's a bit of a shock to now be told by my wonderful University Mount Royal University that shut up. Like, you can be here, but no more questions from you. And so on.

And, you know, fair enough, maybe I, you know, maybe I go on too much. And I, and I, my questions are too insistent, maybe. Like, fine. I'll dial it back and I will reformulate my questions. So they're not as, you know, long-winded and whatnot. But that, I don't think that is what's going on here because in one case, this indigenous scholar activist who took me down. I was at an event in, I think it was March,

and I asked just one sentence. So I should probably explain this, so it's not obtuse. The talk was on indigenous land-based learning, which is an area that I've studied quite a lot. So the idea is that indigenous people have a different kind of learning, It's land-based learning.

You go out on the land and so on. And you do kind of practical activities like hunting and fishing. And through that, you learn things. And that's kind of how indigenous people learn. Well, I think that's a bit of a mischaracterization because I think we all learn things through that kind of process. We're learning by example and so on. But some forms of academic inquiry require more systematic, kinds of approaches than that.

Anyway, one of the arguments that was being made was something about epistemicide and land-based learning and how being separated from the land had resulted in epistemocide. So my question was, this was the question, because I've been working on this so that I don't ask a long question, I ask just a short question,

trying to get at what I consider to be sort of the problems of the thought process that's going on about this. So I'm working at this so that I'm not annoying people with the long nature of my questions. So I said, how is epistemicide connected to the severing of land-based learning? So how does being severed from land-based learning result in epistemicide? That was the question, which I don't really know what the answer to that would be, but I think that that's not going to be very clearly thought out, whatever it is.

Well, I don't know. To me, well, here, actually, I'm going to do this first. Give me one second. But just to finish, just before you start, so when I asked that question, this indigenous scholar activist became extremely angry and said how this was an indication of arrogance and cultural narcissism and all sorts of insults and everything like that. So, you know, in the end, people just don't want these views to be questioned. That's basically what it is. Yeah, I understand what you mean there because certainly I have on a variation of guests. And I say it all the time.

Like, I'm exploring topics because I, you know, I find it very interesting. Like, this really challenges my brain. And challenging your brain is very uncomfortable. So when you ask a question like that, it isn't it isn't especially when you get concise it's like ooh that it isn't just like well the answer's two plus two and equals four and that and that's what it is right and for a lot of people you know especially over COVID geez and the longer this society goes on where we don't actually debate these things out and like like really you know that's when you go back to the universities

the I think the original idea is basically to give a forum to argue wide ideas and let people listen and just continue to attack ideas until you eventually you know, in theory, bubble something up that is a solution. But then, as we know, then the solution gets attacked. And you just, you just keep doing this for, you know, posterity, essentially. And so that you get to whatever the building blocks of society are if you can ever, if you can ever get there. And that works in, in ideas as well as anything. Going back to a, I'd never heard of this before, epistemicide. Epistamicide,

am I correct? Yes. refers to the destruction of existing knowledge. Here, let me. The killing, silencing, annihilation, or devaluing of a knowledge system.

And so when they were saying land-based learning, I, to me, it would be like all of your ancestors for a course of, however many thousand years,

grew up, dealing with land, trees, the world, you know, just in general. Rural living. That's what I would say. And being plucked out of that culture, there is, I could see how that relatively makes sense in that there is something to being outside and in the nature and working with your hands and blue collar jobs or being on the farm or whatever else and feeling like you're missing something. I can absolutely, well, I think I can, like, part of that makes a little bit of

sense. Part of it, you know, seems a little, you know, like as the world progresses, we aren't living in caves anymore. We're not, like how, it just depends on where you want to construct, where you want to go back to. With First Nations, I mean, obviously, until the settlers came over, they were, you know, territorial. They moved around all over the place. They dealt very, you know, I don't know. So I guess it kind of makes sense to me, in a sense, Francis, a little bit, that they want to get back to parts of that life.

Now, does that mean they want to go back and live just off the land and have none of the technologies that we have today? That would be the next extreme because I'm sure you can do that. People are trying to live off of just the land. Lots of people have started to revert back to that and talk about being happier and everything else. And saying that I always go to somewhere in the middle is probably a balance of where you kind of can have the best of both worlds. You know, when you mentioned atheism, I say this a lot right now. A year ago, I would have been as close to an atheist as anyone.

And over the course of my journey and talking to people and following things, I would say I'm no longer that. And that's been an interesting journey. Continues to be an interesting journey, honestly. And so I don't know. I come all the way full circle as I ramble here in that when I listen to you, I just think you want to seat at the table, just like a lot of people do. and if you have a certain view you're no longer allowed a seat at the table and from my where I sit

I want to hear the debate so then I can be like oh I like that idea because I always think the best the best the best answer the truth whatever we want to call it when it gets debated and the truth continues to be revealed

and you have people go back and forth and get better at articulating thoughts and bringing about what's actually happening in our country the truth will rise. And when it does, you'll just be like, oh, there it is, and we can move on. And this is the problem we're all facing right now in Canada is it is being forced.

We have a government that's forcing it. We have a media that is bought hook, line sinker. It's like, if you think opposite of what somebody wants in key areas, you're attacked, you're removed, and they move on. And they're on to their next agenda. And this just keeps happening and happening and happening. And you're not the only one. And as you obviously know that, like it's just, it's over and over and over again.

Yeah. Well, I think, you know, we are suffering from a crisis and confidence in our institutions. Things are breaking down. And we really need to assert the demand that things be evidence-based. And we, you know, sort of recapture the principles of the Enlightenment to be able to progress first. with respect to the epistemicide question, which I find is fascinating. So I think people who are saying things like they want to go back to the land and these sorts of things. And everyone, I think, benefits to some extent from spending some time in nature, slowing down,

not being part of, you know, this kind of frenetic kind of activity of industrial society. But the thing is, is that in order for us to have the amount of surplus that is required, to have computers, medical systems that are of a high level of, you know, our life expectancy is long, you need to have people in those occupations doing doing that kind of work. And that can't be done by going back to the land. So even if you want to go back to the land, you need to have the society intact

producing the things that are needed. And that requires a very high level of scientific knowledge to be able to do that. And that cannot be obtained through land-based learning. So land-based learning has important features to it for all people. And that's kind of what the other annoying thing about this is that people see this as an indigenous thing when it's just people of all ethnicities appreciate going out and interacting with nature and developing a certain amount of knowledge through their interaction with nature. It's got nothing to do with being indigenous or not.

Now, it's true that indigenous people because of the fact that they were in a hunting and gathering culture for much longer, than the settlers were that they became, and that's sort of like some of the conflicts that we're dealing with right now are due to that. But still, indigenous people partake of the industrial society today just as much as non-Indigenous people do. So we all have to figure out a way to have this high level of scientific knowledge and production

so that we can have things like that we all appreciate, you know, hot and cold running water and, you know, medicine and, you know, computers and so on. But at the same time, heat, you know, not be so alienated from our kind of hunting and gathering roots. Like we all have hunting and gathering roots. It's not everyone, every culture historically was a hunter and gatherer. And that forms a very, very fundamental part of the human consciousness. It's not indigenous. It's everyone.

Indigenous people might be more tied to that because of the fact that they were doing this like a few hundred years ago. But still, they now are part of the modern society just like everyone else is. So this kind of needs some kind of, you know, a lot of analysis. And it doesn't help to start looking at it as an indigenous thing or a not indigenous. thing are in all these kind of almost kind of racially based kinds of categories so and the epistemicide the word is pistomicide I take a lot of I opposition to like I think it's a nonsensical concept my view is because you know it's like a devaluing of a knowledge system and that's I don't think that's the correct way to put it it is a devaluing of a belief system

that does not result in the acquisition of knowledge. So, and devaluing, like, creationism in the biology class. If we say, no, creationism is not allowed in the biology class. Does that mean that we are devaluing creationism? Well, maybe we are, but that does not mean that we are devaluing a knowledge system because creationism is not a knowledge system. So it's like setting up these things like, you know, revelation is a knowledge system. A medicine bundle is a knowledge system.

These are not knowledge systems. They are beliefs that people have, but they do not have any evidence to support them. And as an honest person, I am not going to pretend that that's the case. Again, people are entitled to those beliefs. And if they want to practice them and so on, that's up to them. But for non-Indigenous people to be pretending that this is going to be beneficial to indigenous students is completely wrongheaded and will result in a substandard educational system for indigenous students. And that's really what I'm pushing back against is that it's not really going to be the non-Indigenous students who are going to get this kind of substandard education. What we're largely doing is that we're trying to avoid.

the fact that indigenous people as a whole, not some indigenous people are doing fine in the educational system, but a lot are not doing fine. Instead of trying to sort out those problems, which have to do with the difficulties that indigenous people have due to the preliterate nature of the culture, which is hunting gatherers did not have literacy. And so to try to bring literacy into the culture is quite difficult. And the disciplines and everything that you need to that needs a lot of sensitivity. And that's where the residential schools had a lot of problems is that they were very coercive. So they did not really take seriously the disruptions and everything that were happening. And how people did not feel at home within this kind of disrupted environment. But it's still difficult.

And indigenous people, if they are going to participate in the modern society with the computer, and the medicine and so on, which we all need people to be participating in those occupations, then they will need to acquire scientific knowledge just like everyone else does, and they will not acquire that with just bringing land-based learning into the educational system. Land-based learning is a thing that you do with your parents, and it's the thing that you do as partaking of enjoyment and interacting with nature. that is not what is part of the university curriculum. Like you have field trips, that's true.

So, for example, in a biology class, if you're studying seaweeds, then you go out on a field trip and you collect specimens of seaweed and then you use those specimens in the lab to try to get at some of the, you know, to apply the theories. That's a much more systematic thing than what's generally referred to as land-based. learning but land-based learning is a very sort of unstructured thing where people do practical

activities and there's nothing wrong with that because that's very enjoyable and you do learn a lot from that you know in sort of a practical sense but it's not part of the university curriculum because a university curriculum is about trying to acquire abstract knowledge so people can go out and have a good understanding of how bridges are built and how and like that's the that's the practical that's the employment aspect, but it's beneficial from a human standpoint in that it's very important to develop abstract knowledge to have sort of a clear understanding of how the world works around us, these sorts of things. Anyway, this kind of understanding of things is really being seriously undermined because people are afraid to realize that, you know, scientific knowledge

is at a much more developed level than what's called local knowledge or sort of this hands-on kind of thing. It's seen as being insulting to say that. When it's got nothing to do with any groups or anything, all people in the world, Chinese, African, whatever, they all need scientific knowledge. And it's a very specialized kind of process

that's required to be able to obtain it. And we're kind of losing science, of that and that is destroying our post-secondary institutions are losing sight of that. Well, there's a lot there. When it comes to scientific advancements, are there things that we have that third world countries need? Yes. I mean, I think that goes without saying. I wonder if at some point, though, Francis, it doesn't come back to a little bit of a balancing act.

you go too far to the side of, I don't know, like you go too far to the side of focusing so much on that. And then you miss out on the other, the other chunk. Now, for some that's going to be land-based learning or maybe their culture is, you know, being at one with the Earth, sorry, you know, and really connecting and that type of thing. but in our culture we don't put any value on it. We put next to zero value on it, I would say. And that was not always the case. As we speed up and we get further away from it. And it feels like there's a pull by society to go back to it.

Now, if that's activism, maybe, but I feel like there's a bit of a pull to bring that more in line with where we're headed. I wouldn't disagree with you on that, but I think there's a bit of a confusion that's happening is that the universities are not going to be where that's done. So by all means, and we have this in many ways, people go, you know, go camping, go out in the wilderness, do these things. We probably need more of that as humans. We've separated ourselves too much from that kind of basic kind of interaction with things. nature, you know, and that includes all people, indigenous people, non-Indigenous people. Well, but I don't think we need to bring race into it. I, I, when you, when you talk, I'm like, that's what happens, though, is that it's kind of made,

the argument is made specifically for indigenous people when I don't think it is, it's more, we have hunting and gathering roots, uh, humans do. And if you separate humans completely from their hunting and gathering roots, I think you, you, you see anxiety and things develop in people. because they don't have that feeling of when you're in the woods and you're just, you know, you're not, you're not dealing with the city and all the kind of the noise and everything. You're able to sort of lose yourself in that kind of, you know, sort of original kind of state that is very helpful and, and to some extent, soothing for people to do that. But the university isn't, that's not where that happens. The university is where we develop abstract knowledge,

and you need special skills to be able to do that. And by constantly encouraging people, indigenous people, to do the land-based thing, instead of giving them the tools that they need to participate in the university system, we are depriving indigenous people of the ability to have that aspect of their lives be part of them. And it's not to say they can never go into the land-based learning system like that should be cut off from them.

They should do that as much as they want to do that. But what we're doing is we're forcing the university to accept that as part of the indigenous curriculum. This is what's being argued for when I don't think that that is helpful to the university system because that's not what universities are geared towards. universities are geared towards that high level of abstract knowledge that you need a lot of background to be able to do. It's not just like you snap your fingers and all of a sudden you can become a biologist. Like it takes years of absorbing the theoretical elements which are based on a huge amount of sort of specimens that have been collected looking at You know, this is just in terms of plants, which, you know, I have some knowledge of, you know, looking at all the parts of the plant and being able to properly identify them, looking at the evolutionary context, all these kinds of things. That takes years of training to be able to do that cannot be absorbed through land-based learning.

And we need to have that time devoted to that and to kind of shunt indigenous people. off into this substandard kind of area is a huge disservice to them. And everyone can do the land-based learning and everything on their own, or you might even want to set up different kinds of things for that to happen. Well, actually, you almost want what you're taught. Well, I think, and maybe you can tell me if I'm kind of on the right track here, what you're talking about is what the university was originally designed for was to essentially attack ideals in kind of an abstract way and get to some knowledge that takes

time and focusing on things and not being told what to think, actually being allowed to really read some things and then really attack it. Then you got a second portion of the land base, which almost should be almost separate, maybe, where people when they go into it know exactly what they're getting into, and they're two kind of separate entities. I keep putting my hands up here, and nobody can see it. Anyways, and there should be real emphasis on the importance of it, just that they're two separate things. Am I getting that right?

Well, one is less, you know, I don't quite don't want the language to use, but it's less developed than the other. So the scientific, and this is talking about the science, is not necessarily the humanities, but the sciences, scientific knowledge comes out of what's considered to be the local knowledge. or the land-based learning kind of area. So it's more developed. It requires much more abstract training to be able to master scientific processes than the land-based learning stuff. The land-based learning stuff is more in the realm of, you know, recreation or practical life kind of stuff. Like that's generally it. It's not in the area of, we're talking about with the university's progress in knowledge.

So how do we develop a better understanding of things in an abstract way? So in biology theory of evolution. So there's all sorts of debates that are going on about what the mechanisms are of evolution and so on, and how the different species are related to one another and so on. This is all being done at a very abstract level. That's not going to change because of land-based learning. Like land-based learning is going to be things that people get enjoyment from. They get practical kinds of sustenance from all these sorts of things. But doesn't it use, sorry, doesn't it use the tools, a bunch of the knowledge you're talking about?

Land-based learning. I just, sorry, I come from a rural background. I think of feeding the world. I think of farming, cattlemen. Those two really come to mind, just talk. And they take tools that come out of institutions and implement them into what they do. And it is very much needed for feeding the planet. And, you know, I mean, that's what part of the world I come from is a background in farming.

And we take so many different ideas that are argued and disseminated or distilled from different people who go to institutions and dig deep into bio. technology, chemistry, you think of all these different disciplines. They take those and then they go out and it's a healthy interaction. I don't know if it's one or the other. To me, it seems like it's both. And I actually don't think it's, for the most part, one is a higher ideal or another. To me, there's probably multiple different people on the planet. One is very much drawn to exactly what you're talking.

And the other is very much drawn to maybe, you know, we keep saying Lambs, based learning, I just, to me, I think if it is the farmers and different people of that, that cloth. And they just, if they, if we find a way to get them to work together, we all benefit from that because there's a lot of, there's a lot of ingenuity and creative, smart people that never go into university or go into a discipline such as biology or chemistry again. and really impact the world. Well, it has nothing to do with the individual people themselves and intelligence of individuals.

It's just, and the thing you're talking about in terms of farming, and that's a good example, because for thousands of years, farming would have been kind of land-based learning. That would have been the original farm. Sure. It would have been land-based learning. And everything that we have done is built upon that. So it's not to diminish the huge kinds of foundation, the foundation upon which everything rests. But now with farmers, we have people going to university to learn all sorts of abstract things,

which now they, which becomes various technologies and so on, which then is taken back into the farms to increase productivity of those farms. So antibiotics or fertilizers and these sorts of things. Now, there's an interesting argument about, and this is to do with capitalism as it's done in a capitalist context. So profit is now sort of the driving force of this. And it's possible that we have exceeded our ability to live within the kind of the ecosystems because of the attempts to massively increase productivity. So that's like another kind of problem, which is now on the horizon, whether we've, you know, because we're using fertilizers and antibiotics and so on to increase yields, we are now like basically destroying the soils and the animal population.

And so that's now got another kind of level of scientific kind of examination. to what extent are we over exceeding our capacity? And should we really be kind of reducing productivity more and having more sorts of organic types of things? But this is now completely within the scientific realm. The land-based learning was at the roots of it, but now we are taking the scientific understanding and applying it to the farms.

So I'm not arguing against land-based learning, based learning because I think it's an important part of human history and something which is very meaningful for people to do. It's just if you are going to increase knowledge, have a better understanding of things, land-based learning is not going to make that possible because it's not systematic and in order to say that we really know something, like does this antibiotic really, really, you know, have this effect on a disease or not, right? You're not going to be able to determine that through land-based learning because you're not going to be able to have the controls put in place to be systematic enough where you're

going to be able to become to a definitive answer about it. So it's just a matter of trying, like, people are trying to use our universities for all sorts of purposes, which is really, you know, sort of detracting from their intellectual and academic character. Like, this is the problem. And universities can't be all things to all people. They have quite a, like a specialized kind of role that they play. And that is being destroyed as we speak, as we saw at the University of Lathbridge. like that that was that was I'm still

I'm still having a hard time believing that that occurred and that every like the press all a whole bunch of people are saying that was a good thing like I see a lot of people daily saying how that was really good I just read some I just watching listen to a podcast last night with shamma wrong walla who's a professor from York and I think his name is Duncan Kinney who's a works for this supposed journalistic thing called press progress. Anyway, they're celebrating the fact that Francis Whittleson was, and this is their words, owned.

I was owned by the students at the University of Lafbridge. They think that is a correct way to think about this. When here I am trying to just provide my insights, as to why the university is being destroyed by wokeism. And they, in true woke fashion, celebrate the further destruction of the university because of their woke kind of position. It's like, I don't know if this is a true thing that happened historically, but where someone is playing the violin, well, Rome is burning.

you know, it's just like, oh my goodness, like this is just, this is kind of catastrophic what's happening. So like, anyway, but I think in how I approach all these things is that I'm always very, like I have my ideas, obviously. You probably noticed that that I have. Yeah, but at the same time. But I'm not dogmatic about it. I'm not saying, you, thou must accept my position. I'm saying, this is the thing. I don't know what.

I don't know what the listener is going to think of it, but I don't feel, I don't know, talk down to. I don't know what the right way. Like I don't. I'm trying now, I have a few kind of prongs of attack. One of them is the faculty associations, which I think is probably the biggest problem that I see in the professional sense.

But then there's talking to the public. And I think the public has a great suspicion of universities and sees them as a bunch of snobs who, you know, think that the working class is a... Well, that's what you think, isn't it? It's uncouth and whatever. Like, when I, like, I love talking to people who are not in the universities because it's my way to say, look, the universities have something to offer everyone. They're not, they shouldn't be exclusionary. They should be a human heritage where all people can go and find out some new things about the world. And you don't have to be some kind of egghead, brainiac.

It's just people who are trying to figure things out. And the universities have some tools to help people think more abstractly, which is beneficial. but they're not very good at other things, which should be, they shouldn't be taking over. They should be leaving that up into other realms for people to kind of find out things in other ways, in other contexts, you know. So that's kind of the challenge. And if we lose the universities, like the universities are the bulwark against totalitarianism. and if universities can't do it,

we are going to be heading down an absolutely horrible path. What comes after losing the universities, Francis? Fascism. That's what happened in Nazi Germany is they went into the universities and took over the universities. And so there was no kind of intellectual kind of break on this kind of assuming autocratric autocratic control over people. So we are heading towards fascism. Unfortunately, it's being, like it's taking on a bit of a twist

because wokeism is pretending to be anti-fascist. Like, they're going to beat down on my head claiming I'm a fascist. So to bring about an anti-, according to them, anti-fascism, when what they are doing is fascistic. So that is the kind of frightening. thing. You know, I'm hoping we have, you know, I can still talk about these things because, you know, we're not putting people in jail yet for having thought crimes, but it's not far on the horizon. So people should be very, very worried about it. University is going to be the,

universities are going to be the first thing to fall, and they are falling. They are disintegrating. So we need to take this very seriously and not just see it as, you know, a bunch of whiny eggheads who are losing their great jobs and, you know, whatever, like, like, they're going to self-interested kind of stuff because the universities have a much, much more important kind of role to play publicly than is real-y-law. What do you think of different professors? Jordan Peterson certainly comes to mind, but there's a few different ones that are starting to offer, like, online, essentially university courses so that you don't have

to go to these institutions. Yeah. Is that a way around this? I think it's just an avoidance of the problem, you know. So, like, we need the universities. We need them to be public institutions. We need them to have, like, occupy physical space. Because online stuff, although you can learn quite a lot from it, you know, people need human contact.

People need to have gatherings in lecture halls, like, to have public talks and things like this. This is very, very important for the human condition. And by just kind of giving up on it, you know, we just kind of, we've just kind of, we just, sort of we're going to follow it down. We're going to follow the ship down. Instead of trying to repair the terrible situation, we're going to just kind of give up on it. And I haven't given up.

I understand why people are giving up on it because it's so frustrating. And it's easier just to. Well, and you go face. You know, Jordan Peterson is a celebrity. And I have a lot of respect for him. I'm not trying to, you know, but he's got a much better life going around. talking to crowds and so on, then trying to duke it out in the university.

But I myself am demanding to be reinstated at Mount Royal. That's my demand. There's no reason why I shouldn't be reinstated. It's ridiculous that I've been pushed out. And if I'm not reinstated, universities are over. Like this is how big this case is, and everyone's trying to encourage me to, oh, you know, go just take. your money, like go and get a big settlement and go off and do your own thing. Well, no, then I've

abandoned my institution, which needs me. I know it doesn't think it needs me, but boy, oh boy, it needs me because I'm the only one who will stand up and see what I think is true. As George Orwell says, great, because Orwell is one of my key figures that I follow. He says, if liberty means anything at all, it means the ability to tell people what they don't want to hear. That's a very poignant saying. I am going to tell people what they don't want to hear. And universities used to protect me in being able to do that. And so, you know, it's easy to be, it's not easy.

Like, you know, like, it's not like anyone's offering me huge, cutting me huge checks to become some celebrity or something. But I want, I really want to resist that. And I want to go back into my institution and do some of the things that I was doing before, which were very successful. I had a group called the Rational Space Network, which, which had about 20 members. And we used to hold events. We had the Megan Murphy event. We held it, a critical thinking series. And it was something great to offer the university and the students and the other faculty members.

And we need those sorts of things to be happening in universities. But if everyone jumps ship and just goes into the easier online route, there's going to be no one left in universities to save what is really there, which can work. But in order for it to work, we need to restore the Enlightenment values and kind of rein back the activists who are running roughshod all over everything in the institution. Yeah, you need people to stand up. But in order to stand up, you've got to face the mob. And the mob... I face the mob, and I faced 700, well, they weren't 700 angry people.

But I faced a couple hundred angry people, and I was as cool as a cucumber. I don't know. What is it about the 700, Francis, that they, they, well, they misunderstand about you. Yeah, well, they don't, because they were obviously sold. None of them have read anything that I've written, none of them have listened to anything that I had done.

In fact, they were proud of the fact that they hadn't. So it's just unbelievable arrogance of people who don't think that they should have to listen to any, you know, contrary points of view, you know. And it's not their fault. The fault is squarely on the president, President Michael Mon, who should be hanging his head in shame

for what he did, not only in originally doing it, then cowardly backing down. And then after that horrible thing happened in Lathbridge, applauded the students for doing what they did. The man is just is not fit to lead an academic institution. And even worse, the Faculty Association, because we expect administrators to be, you know, of this kind of ilk, because that's how they get their positions as being, you know, pandering to all sorts of,

you know, activist types. But the Faculty Association, which is supposed to be protecting academic freedom, Paul Vemnonz, who invited me, his access to a fair use of resources, a university resources was denied by having the talk canceled. His academic freedom was violated. The University of Lathbridge Faculty Association did nothing to protect him. That still hasn't done anything. and instead express concern about people being exposed to hurtful ideas. Yes, it's funny. I've been attacked on here for having, you know, different people.

I'm sure at some point somebody will be upset that I had, Francis. I would have said. And I'll go, oh, did you listen to it? Like, what did you think of what she said? No, I didn't listen to it. well then that's just a non-stop like it just stops it well if you haven't listened to it you got no point in saying anything

how about you go listen to it and then come back to me with what you think of the ideas so I find it think about that imagine being and just imagine showing up somewhere to protest something but you don't know what you're there to protest it's the idea that

if Francis starts speaking she's so compelling that we will start to believe everything she says so she can't speak. Like that, that's a crazy idea. Here's the thing about, here's the thing about my audience that I love is they smell bullshit a mile away, and they will tell me about it over and over and over again.

So have you said things they disagree with? 100%. Have you said things that they totally agree with? 100%. And that is life. I mean, I don't, I don't,

I, there's no way to be perfect in that, especially when you do two hours, France is talking back and forth about honestly some of the most it's the complex ideas that I've heard you know in a while I'm like this is absolutely bizarre and yet here it is happening in Alberta happening in Canada not only Canada happening across the world um at an accelerate accelerating rate that is very concerning and uh I mean I don't know how much we can talk this back and forth, I'm appreciative of you giving me some time and being, you know, like, once again,

I haven't felt like you got your sword out and you're trying to jam it through my eye by any stretch of the imagination. I think we've, you know, I'm going to have to probably go back and listen to it because, you know, sometimes it takes a second time around to sit and listen to some ideas and think about things to really start to frame one's perspective. But either way, I've really enjoyed our chat today of sitting and going back and forth and hearing some different ideas. And I don't know, anytime I see people that are being protested that much, I'm always like, what are they saying? Because I'm kind of curious now. You have me just like, hmm, like what is Francis doing?

Because here you sit, this calm lady talking things that aren't that, you know, sure, are certain people going to take some irrationalities out of it? sure. But overall, it's like, this hasn't impacted my day one bit. I'm going to move on and I'm going to enjoy the rest of it. And I always enjoy getting my brain pushed on a little bit because that's, oh man, there's some, there's some just gems in that, right? Expanding your knowledge and and trying to discuss really difficult ideas. But yeah, I'm going to be following this a lot closer. I'll tell you that much. Now that I know exactly who you are and I've heard your story, you know, hand. Yeah.

Well, I have to go through six more sessions of arbitration between now and December. And what is arbitration mean? Sorry, Francis. Yeah. And this is a good thing to tell your audience, because this is the most important academic freedom, freedom of expression case in universities that has happened for quite some time. And it is very, very important that everyone be watching it.

I wanted it to be public. That was my demand. I was kind of lobbying for that, but because the university doesn't want it to be public and the arbitrator wants it to be, like to have control over the process, then it's been secret. So I'm under an arbitration order, and I can't talk about what goes on in the arbitration. But I've written extensively about it, my case, before I got put under the arbitration order. on and it's been released on the website www.wokecademy.info. And I also have written nine articles about my case for a publication associated with the National

Association of Scholars called Minding the Campus. And there's nine pieces on there, which people can find quite easily. So what happens is when I was terminated in December 2021, I had 10 grievances that had been filed with the faculty association and the faculty association to determine whether I was fired with cause. It's gone over by an arbitrator who is appointed by both the faculty association and MRU. So they both agree on an arbitrator who is supposed to be a neutral figure who looks at all the evidence and makes a decision about whether I was fired with cause as well the arbitrator makes a decision about whether I should be reinstated or not those are two separate things just because just because I was I and I think it's highly likely that

I'm going to win the case about being fired with cause because I think Mount Royal's case Mount Royal has no case they've just changed all their policies to try to push me out and that's going to be found out through looking at how I was treated and so on So I think I'm going to win that. The problem is going to be with reinstatement because Mount Royal is going to try to argue that because people don't like me at Mount Royal and because the students are really upset with, you know,

what I've said and all the sort of thing, that I can't really be a, like a positive force in the university, which I think is totally untrue. You know, like, first of all, not every, I have a whole bunch of supporters at Mount Royal. Like, they're not vocal because they're... Yeah, because they're afraid of what kind of. I'm afraid of being taken out.

But so there's a lot of supporters. And then there's a lot of people don't really know what to think about it. And then there's like an activist element that's trying to mobilize the student against me. But they're doing so because they don't like me asking questions about various things that have to have questions asked about them if we're going to have an academic institution. So if we're going to say that I shouldn't be back at Mount Royal, we're going to say that Mount Royal is no longer an academic institution. where you can ask questions about matters that have huge public importance. So that's the situation. So the arbitrator, once I go through these additional probably 15 days of arbitration,

where what you have is you have like Mount Royal calls witnesses, and then they're cross-examined by C-A-U-T, which is the legal side that's representing me. And then after that, C-A-U-T presents its case as to why the collective agreement, which is the kind of the things that govern what should happen in terms of my employment was violated. They're going to make the case as to how that happened. And then the employer is going to cross-examine all the witnesses with respect to that. And then after all that's done, which takes a long, long time, the CUT, my legal side and MRU's lawyer writes up submissions,

basically summaries of everything that's happened. And then the arbitrator looks at everything, and decides whether I was fired with cause and whether I should be reinstated at Mount Royal University. And that's probably going to go to about June, 2024. Yeah, so they're hoping the long game just takes you out. And it won't. It makes me more determined. So if Mount Royal is listening to this, you know, just reinstate me now.

I'm happy to work through some ways to, you know, make my question. questions less, you know, relentless and, you know, whatever. And the social media, I've already taken the direction on the social media that I won't direct my social media activities at any member of the MRU community. Let's save the Alberta taxpayer millions of dollars and just allow me to have my rightful space at the institution that I love, that was a wonderful institution until about 2016. I hate to break it to you, Francis.

I don't think they're worried about taxpayer money. I don't think they're worried about what Francis thinks. I mean, they probably truly believe time is on their side. They do, but it's not. Because I am going to keep on

beating this drum, and I am going to show how universities have, you know, gone away from their men, you know, what their mandate should be, which is helping to educate students and help them to understand more and developing knowledge so that that can be a benefit for the entire society. And if the university is not living up to those goals, then it doesn't deserve to call itself a university. And I'm going to continuously sort of state why I don't think it's living

up to those ideals, which the public is funding. So it is accountable in the end. to the public and it has failed miserably in this regard and that's why I've been pushed out is because I am trying to hold them to account and they don't want to be held to the standard which to which they should be held to. Well, what I wrote down is I've got your wokeacademy. info. That's certainly I found that. And to the listener, if you want to do some digging into some of Francis, writing her story more of, you know, what she's been going through.

that I'll put the link in the show notes. That way they can just click on it and go see what everything's about. Either way, I appreciate you sitting down with me here for today and having this discussion. I want to end with the Crude Master final question. If you're going to stand behind a cause, then stand behind it absolutely. What's one thing Francis stands behind? The pursuit of truth. I'm chuckling.

Sometimes I ask that question. at the end, I'm like, well, she's pretty much talked about it for two hours now. I think people get it. Francis, this has been a morning. That is for sure. You know, I walked in and I got three young kids and I was kind of dragging ass a little bit. And you've certainly spurred on today. And it's been a very interesting couple hours. So I appreciate you giving me some time. And like I say, I'm going to be paying attention here as your arbitration continues to roll on here over the next. I mean, like you said, the next year. So, yeah, thanks again for hopped on. Thank you very much for having me on.