The Daily Signal - Defend Free Speech, Urges Author Who Faced Repercussions for Teaching College Students About Pronouns

Episode Date: May 17, 2021

Canadian author and columnist Lindsay Shepherd's message to Americans is simple: Defend free speech or risk losing it. In 2017, Shepherd, then a teaching assistant at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, Canada, played for her class a series of clips in which psychologist and author Jordan Peterson talked about personal pronouns and transgenderism.  Afterward, Shepherd was called into a meeting with her supervisor and a representative from the college's Diversity and Equity Office. She was accused of creating a toxic environment for students and threatened with punishment if she did something similar again.  Shepherd, our guest today on "The Daily Signal Podcast," recorded the meeting to protect herself and later leaked it to the media.  “I wanted people in Canada and abroad internationally to know what's happening inside our universities," Shepherd says. "I saw it as a bigger issue than just me having an encounter in this disciplinary meeting." Shepherd became an activist dedicated to free speech and academic freedom. Her book, called “Diversity and Exclusion: Confronting the Campus Free Speech Crisis,” recounts her experience and offers advice on how to protect free expression.  “Don't try to cave into leftist ideas just to try to prove to them that you're a good person." she says. "You don't need to prove anything to them, because they're always not going to like you." Also on today’s show, we read your letters to the editor and share a good news story about the crowdfunding website GiveSendGo, which is raising money for Georgia small businesses affected by Major League Baseball’s decision to move the All-Star Game from Atlanta.  Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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This Black Friday, you've got a whole month to catch all the exclusive offers waiting for you. See your local Nissan dealer or nissan.ca for details. Conditions apply. This is the Daily Signal podcast for Monday, May 17th. I'm Virginia Allen. And I'm Doug Blair. On today's show, I talk with Lindsay Shepard about her experience at a Canadian university where she was punished for showing a Jordan Peterson video on transgenderism to the class she was TAing

and how free expression is under fire in North America. We also read your letters to the editor and share a good news story about how the crowdfunding website GiveSEN go is raising money for Georgia Small Businesses, affected by the MLB's All-Star Game, Moved from Atlanta. Before we get to today's show, Virginia and I want to tell you about another great Heritage Foundation podcast called Heritage Explains. Heritage Explains is a weekly podcast that breaks down all the policy issues we hear about in the news at a 101 level. Hosts Michelle Cordero and Tim Desher mix in news clips and music to tell a story, but also

bring on heritage experts to help break down. complex issues. Heritage Explains offers quick 10 to 15 minute explainers that bring you up to speed in an entertaining way. You can find them on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. We even put the full episode on YouTube. Now stay tuned for today's show. Coming up next. Like I said, it was in the spirit of debate. Okay. In the spirit of the debate is slightly different than being like, okay, this is like a problematic idea that we want to unpack. But that's taking sides. It's taking sides for me to be like, oh, look at this guy. Like everything that comes out of his mouth is BS, but we're going to watch anyway.

Okay. So I understand the position that you're coming from and your positionality, but the reality is that it has created a toxic climate for some of the students. Do you see where it's like how this is not something like that's intellectually neutral that is kind of up for debate? I mean, this is the Charter of Rights and Freedness. But it is up for debate. But, I mean, you're perfectly welcome to your own opinions. But when you're bringing it into the context of the classroom, that can become problematic. And that can become something that creates an unsafe learning environment for students.

But when they leave the university, they're going to be exposed to these ideas. So I don't see how I'm doing a disservice to the classroom. class by exposing them to ideas that are really out there. My guest today is Lindsay Shepard, a Canadian free speech activist and author of the new book, Diversity and Exclusion, Confronting the Campus Free Speech Crisis. Welcome to the show, Lindsay. Thanks for having me. Great. So you entered the spotlight back in 2017 after an incident at the school that you

were TAing at, which was Wilfred Laurier University in Canada. You were showing clips of psychologist Jordan Peterson and accusation. of transphobia and bigotry started to come up, and that's actually the subject of your new book. Can you give our listeners and viewers a brief summary of the events that happened just for some context? Yeah, for sure. I'll try to make it as brief as possible. So I was a master's student at Wilford-Lorea University in Ontario, Canada. And when you're a master's student, you also are a TA or a teaching assistant for an undergraduate class. So I was the TA for Communication Studies 101. And in one particular class one week, our theme was grammar.

And so I thought in addition to doing the typical common grammar errors, we'll go over some common grammatical errors. But I also want my students to think about grammar in everyday life. And so to demonstrate that, I wanted to talk about pronouns and how a grammar issue, you know, like using they them to refer to one person or using alternative pronouns like jie jure, how that could be a grammar issue in everyday life. And so I found a great clip on YouTube and it was from a public television show in Canada called The Agenda with Steve Paken, very highly regarded show.

Like I said, public television, taxpayer funded, it's airs on TV. And Dr. Jordan Peterson, who is a University of Toronto professor, He was one of the people on the panel. And I showed two clips from that panel discussion episode where, you know, Peterson was arguing against, you know, alternative pronouns, mostly in the sense of being against compelled speech. Because in 2016 at the time, there was a law being introduced in Canada, which is now law, which he saw as compelling speech, compelling the use of pronouns. And he said he didn't want to give in to radical leftist ideology like that by being forced to use the language of the left. But then, you know, on the other side, there was a professor of transgender studies at the University of Toronto. And he was saying, well, we have to use pronouns, alternative pronouns, because that is recognizing students, dignity, and respecting them.

And so I aired this. And I thought it was a great class. You know, my students were very engaged. It was an interesting discussion. But then I get an email from my supervising professor telling me that there were some concerns from the class. And so I go into a disciplinary meeting the next day with that professor, as well as my master's program coordinator and a diversity office bureaucrat. And they tell me that that class I had held had created a toxic environment. I had targeted trans students.

I had violated the university sexual violence policy, and I had also violated the Human Rights Code and, yeah, various laws in Canada. I mean, that's just such an incredible story. It's kind of hard to believe. We actually do have that Peterson clip that you showed in class, and I would love for our audience to give it a little listen. So here it is. What is it you find offensive about this legislation?

Well, fundamentally, there were two things that really bothered me, although there have been other things I've thought about since. One was that I was being asked, as everyone is, to use a certain set of words that I think are the constructions of people who have a political ideology that I don't believe in and that I also regard as dangerous. What are those words? Those are the made-up words that people now describe as gender-neutral. And so to me, they're an attempt to control language and in a direction that isn't happening organically. It's not happening naturally. People aren't picking up these words

in the typical way that new words are picked up, but by force and by fiat. And I would say by force, because there's legislative power behind them. And I don't like these made-up words, Z and Zer and that sort of thing. Okay, what about... They're not all made-up words, quote-unquote, made-up words. For example, they is one of them.

Yeah, but we... as they. Right, but we can't dispense with the distinction between singular and plural. I mean, I know that the advocates of that particular approach say that they has been used forever as a singular, and that's actually not correct. It's used as a singular in very exceptional circumstances. Like, if your child wishes to bring a book to school, they're welcome to do so. That's just grammatically incorrect. Well, it is also, there's some debate about that, because they is used like that sometimes, but it's never been used as a singular replacement for he or she. And so it's not a tenable solution.

And that's the best of the solutions. So interestingly enough, your story actually ended up on that same show. It ended up on the agenda afterwards. And it was a discussion about free expression on college campuses, specifically focusing on this capacity for students to be exposed to things that they might not agree with. And one of the things I kind of, when I was reflecting on my college experience, was that I was kind of hoping to be exposed to new points of view and different ideas. that I maybe wasn't totally comfortable with.

So I guess my question for you now is, what do we lose when we kind of have professors saying, you're not able to listen to this, you're not able to hear this, they're trying to shield students from toxic ideas. What do we lose from that? I mean, I know that I feel that when everything I'm learning is politicized, I wonder, what is the truth?

What am I being taught and what is the truth? And it makes it hard to trust anything. because, you know, I feel like maybe I'm not getting the full story. And, yeah, I mean, it's harder to seek the truth. When we censor, it's harder to relate to one another, when we feel like we can't talk about everything openly. You know, I mean, the university is supposed to be an environment where we can talk about anything.

And, you know, it's very stifling when you see that the university is actually somewhere where certain topics are apparently forbidden. and if you bring them up, you get, you know, pulled into the diversity office and you get disciplined. And, I mean, I should mention the only reason I think I got off relatively unscathed in this encounter is because I secretly recorded that disciplinary meeting I was in and I released it to the media because I saw this as a public interest issue. You know, I wanted people in Canada and abroad internationally to know what's happening inside our universities. I saw it as a bigger issue than just me having an encounter in this disciplinary meeting.

So, yeah, I mean, that's how this came to light. And unfortunately, things haven't improved in those four years since that happened in 2017. It's only gotten worse, I would say. I think that you're probably right that this idea that, you know, we're going to censor opinions that we don't like and we're going to protect, quote unquote, our students from these toxic ideas. I think that idea is proliferating. And we actually did play at the top of the show, some of the recording. that you took with your supervisor.

One of the things that really struck me when I was listening to this was this insistence by the supervisor that you were, quote, creating a toxic climate for the students. And then, as you said, your response was that it would be a disservice to the students not to expose them to different ideas. Seeing as we kind of are both on the same page that this is an issue, how do we counter this idea? Like, what do we need to do to get this idea that students need to be protected from ideas they dislike out of our universities? Well, I think universities shouldn't be infantilizing students. That's what a lot of it came down to for me was I don't want to be treated like a child who needs to be protected from the truth. I'm sure my students don't want that either. And unfortunately, that's the way I felt even in graduate school was that, you know, it was just an environment where I didn't feel like it was a free marketplace of ideas. So, you know, I should say I'm a really big defender of universities. I love the university and what it stands for. But unfortunately, we're kind of seeing the same problems come from the same kind of discipline. So, for example, my graduate program, which was

full of critical race theory and postmodernism and social justice and just kind of empty content, like there just wasn't really a lot of substance to my graduate program. I do hold a degree, by the way, but it was in cultural analysis and social theory. And, you know, you also see it with things like there actually are programs called social justice studies or, you know,

critical rate, there are degrees in critical race theory, critical race studies. You know, you know, just those kinds of key words like justice, social justice. Those programs, unfortunately,

they are, they're just social justice programs. that, yeah, are promoting ideological conformity, and they're not helping anyone academically. They're not serving much in our society. And so we probably honestly do want to defund those programs. And I say that as someone who loves the university. And I think you're definitely hitting on a point

that a lot of people would agree with, that the university system in terms of education and learning more going beyond is definitely something we should strive to be doing. As a populace, we should be looking to become smarter, become more educated, become more informed. But you're definitely pointing out that there are these programs at these colleges that really aren't enriching their students' experiences.

It's more along the lines of, well, we're just going to teach you to be an ideologue, and we're not going to actually teach you to think critically. Yeah, exactly. And it's, you know, not even only in the academic programs. I know at least in Canada, almost every single university has a diversity and inclusion office. And when you first hear that, you think, oh, okay, they're probably doing some good work. You know, including people is nice. But when you actually look at what these offices are doing, they are offices of enforcing ideological conformity.

That is their purpose. Their purpose is to make sure that everyone on the campus has the same opinions on. on the pressing social matters of the day. You have to be pro-choice. You have to believe that Canada is a systemically racist country. You have to believe that trans women are real women. And they are there to make sure you have those opinions. And if you don't, then they're going to intimidate you and threaten you

and try to get you out of there if they can't change your mind. I think you're definitely hitting on a very important topic where it's like these diversity offices are really only, ironically existing to promote conformity, not really diversity. My question then kind of follows along that logic. If there's this school of thought that says speech needs to be compelled, speech that we disagree with is violence, speech that we don't like is something that needs to be curtailed, is there really any way to reach common ground on issues of free speech with people who believe that? Or what do we do if that's sort of the camp that we're against here?

I don't know if there's any common ground, no. So something you'll see is, you know, maybe a free speech club will organize an event with a controversial speaker. And, you know, even if you don't agree with that speaker's opinion, if you are pro free speech, you should be, you know, just saying this event needs to happen. You shouldn't be advocating in any way for it to be shut down. And if that is your stance, then you are a pro free speech person. You know, you don't have to agree with the opinions. being expressed, but it's just a matter of not shutting anything down once, you know, a speaker has been invited. And so I think we need to have, you know, in order to bring back that culture of free speech, we need those kinds of events to happen. We need people to realize that, you know, you're not when you're, when there's a controversial event happening, you're not endorsing the specific speaker. You're just endorsing the principle of free speech in general. And I think just recognizing that value at large is really important. I think that's a really good point. I know we've seen in America, there are certain kind of hot button speakers that will come to college campuses like, you know,

Ben Shapiro or Jordan Peterson. I recall when I was back in college, Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court was almost booed off of campus, which I thought was a mind-boggling event that a Supreme Court justice who maybe you don't agree with him, but he still has a lot of. lot of knowledge to share. I actually want to go back to something that we had discussed a little bit earlier. During the discussion about your experience at Wilford-Loree, the idea of offensive content versus offensive style came up. So there was a speaker who basically made the point that there is something that content is inherently offensive or it's only delivered in an offensive manner, i.e., it's not the content itself that's problematic. It's the way that you present that

information. In your view, is there a difference between offensive content and content that's presented offensively? And is there a possibility that content can be okay, but just presented in a way that's an issue? No, I think comments like that are kind of used to dismiss something. You know, like in my book, for example, I make a case that being a provocateur is not necessarily a bad thing. You know, if the worst thing someone can call you is a provocateur, then you probably aren't that bad of a person. So, you know, I think they try to use that, you know, as a way to dismiss someone and as a way to kind of, as a cop out. That's an interesting point that, you know, if the worst thing that they can call you is somebody that says something provocative, I mean, that's not

really saying too much. It's basically saying, like, you've said something that made people think. I recall reading some of the commentary about your recording and one of the things that the supervisor said was they compared Jordan Peterson to Milo Yanopoulos, and Milo, obviously, being a very famous sort of firebrand, very famous provocateur. We are running out of time, but I did want to let you kind of take the last word. If there was something that you want our listeners to take away from this, what would you want them to take away? And then what can we do as advocates for free speech to make sure that free speech is protected? Well, something that I learned at university was it's important.

to band together and, you know, create those, you know, free speech groups, whether it's a student club or a community group, what have you, and, you know, find like-minded people who value free expression and who want to organize community events. You know, the club I had on campus, our mandate was to air unorthodox viewpoints, you know, non-mainstream views. Because, you know, the university, they're only going to sponsor events that center around themes of social justice and critical race theory, postmodernism, you know, all the rest. And, you know, we want to hear something else because we've heard that for over four years of university. So, yeah, it's grouping together and don't be intimidated. And another thing is don't apologize if you don't

don't feel that you've done anything wrong. You know, I was thinking a lot of people who may have found themselves in my position, their instinct would have been to just apologize, to say, sorry, I hurt those trans students. I'm so sorry. I will comply. I'll apologize publicly. And I'm so sorry. Like that would have been the inclination for a lot of people.

But at no point did I feel like I had done anything wrong. And so when people were asking me to apologize, I was just like, why? Even the Rainbow Center on campus, which was a, you know, the LGBTQ center, for the whole year I was at school, they had a sign outside their door after the controversy erupted. And it said trans students deserve an apology. And, you know, it was always just kind of like, for what? What did anyone do to you? So, yeah, don't, you know, really analyze. do you feel like you need to apologize?

Well, then don't. And also, I think a lot of, you know, leftists or the mainstream media, whatever, they'll try to make you feel like a bad person if you don't go along with their kind of leftist ideology. And I think you just need to have those self-talks and realize you're not a bad person. And don't try to have to prove to them that you're a good person. You know, don't try to cave into leftist ideas

just to try to prove to them that you're a good person. You don't need to prove anything to them because they're always not going to like you. Those are fantastic things to keep in mind. That was Lindsay Shepard. Her new book, Diversity and Exclusion, confronting the campus free speech crisis is available now for purchase.

Lindsay, thanks again. Yeah, thank you. Virginia Allen here, I want to tell you all about a great way you can stay in the know on all the news The Daily Signal covers. Social media. The Daily Signal has,

has an active presence on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. We are constantly posting news stories, clips from interviews, videos, and more across all our social platforms. Follow the Daily Signal on social media so you can get all the latest content from Reels on Instagram to video clips on Facebook and political commentary on Twitter. Thanks for sending us your letters to the editor. Each Monday we feature our favorites on this show. Doug, who's up first? In response to the Daily Signal piece, Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson explains why it's not racist to require ID for voting. Brian Riggert writes, Dear Daily Signal, I was greatly encouraged by North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson's remarks.

It is incredible to see that some politicians and activists say it's racist to require a free ID to vote when IDs are required in so many other activities of American life. As Mr. Robinson stated, it is insulting to suggest anyone could not get a free ID. And he is on the money and saying it is about power and narrative. And in response to Matthew Dickerson's piece, Biden's business tax hikes would be a self-inflicted mistake for America. Charlie Wilcox of Mobile, Alabama, writes, thanks for Matthew Dickerson's commentary, which is the very first insightful, accurate portrayal of the so-called American Rescue Plan. It's just another example of Washington not shedding a light on legislation before members of Congress, vote. I'm 80 years old. What happened with the American Rescue Plan is very similar to 2010, before passage of the Affordable Care Act. When everyone wanted to know its contents and House Speaker

Nancy Pelosi said, we have to pass the bill so that we can find out what's in it. Nothing has changed. Your letter could be featured on next week's show, so send an email to letters at daily signal.com. Hi, I'm Virginia Allen. I want to tell you all about an awesome Heritage Foundation resource called the Index of Economic Freedom. The Heritage Foundation Index of Economic Freedom ranks nearly every nation in the world according to its level of economic freedom. Whether for personal, professional use, or for school research, the index is a wealth of information. You can learn why it's easier to start a business in Switzerland than it is in

France and where America falls on the ranking. So go ahead and visit heritage.org slash index to explore the newly released 20, 2021 Index of Economic Freedom, which features interactive maps, country rankings, graphs of data, and much, much more. Virginia, you are kicking off our Monday with a good news story. Over to you. Thanks so much, Doug. A Christian crowdfunding platform is stepping up to the plate to help Georgia small businesses affected by the move of the All-Star game. The MLB announced they were moving the All-Star game from Atlanta to Denver after Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signed new election legislation into law. Unfortunately, the move of the game is a big blow to Atlanta businesses that were banking on hundreds of thousands of tourists flooding into Georgia for the sporting event in July. But the crowdfunding site Gives Send Go is hosting a campaign to raise money for Georgia's small businesses who will be directly impacted by the MLB's decision to move the big game.

I recently had the opportunity to talk with the founders of the site, Jacob Wells and Heather Wilson, and asked them why they decided to support Georgia small businesses through a campaign on their website. We're just starting to get the word out and saying, hey, here's a campaign. If you recognize the plight of what's happening in Georgia, you want to support the Georgia businesses that are affected by this situation. And B, this is the great thing about crowdfunding. campaigns is that they are people, they're used by people from all over the world to share, to take part in something bigger than themselves. And so it was an opportunity for us to say to our larger audience and then also to try to get out to an even larger audience through the media,

hey, here's an opportunity as a campaign to donate a couple dollars. And if a lot of people do that, then we can help bring some relief to this. situation and how we're going to do that is through like a grant program that small businesses can apply for and reach out. We'll have a page for them to make an application and let us know how they were affected and how we make monetary determinations based upon how much money we raise and stuff like that. Gives and Go hosts about 1,500 campaigns every month to raise money for Christian missions, nonprofits, families seeking to adopt a child, emergency medical needs, and much more. Ultimately, Heather says she hopes this campaign will be an opportunity for Americans

to come together and support business owners. Together, we can make a difference that as much as social media and the media that we watch on TV and on the computer, it feels like it's trying to divide us. We don't have to let it. And so campaigns like this, where it's helping small businesses, It shouldn't be, it could be political because of the reasons and things, but it doesn't have to be. Those people that are down in Georgia, those business owners, they're not all Republicans or all Democrats or all independence. They're all just people making, trying to do their best in their corner of the world. And together, if we step in and say, listen, we're going to help, again, we're going to share help and we're going to share hope because we don't want you to feel alone. And that's really what America is about.

And we see it, you know, whenever something major happens, America tends to pull together. And we haven't, it's been very rocky for the last couple years. And we want a campaign like this to say, no, we should America, let's reach out and help these business owners and make a difference. And it doesn't take one person doing a lot. It takes a bunch of people stepping in and saying, I'll each do a little. And together we can make a difference. If you would like to make a donation to the GiveSango campaign and support Georgia business owners, visit givsango.com slash speakup for Georgia.

That's givsengo.com slash speakup for Georgia. And we'll be sure to also put that link in today's show notes. Virginia, what a great story. Thank you so much for sharing. We're going to leave it there for today, but you can find the Daily Signal podcast on the Rikishay Audio Network. All of our shows can be found at DailySignal. com slash podcast. You can also subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or your favorite podcast app.

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