The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - Deconstruction: The Lindsay Shepherd Affair

Episode Date: January 5, 2018

In November 2017, Wilfred Laurier University teaching assistant Lindsay Shepherd was called to a disciplinary meeting by two professors (Nathan Rambukkana and Herbert Pimlott) and one administrator (Adria Joel) to discuss her screening of a video clip from TVO's The Agenda with Steve Paikin during a class she was conducting. Shepherd taped the proceedings (http://bit.ly/2mMPvok) and released them, causing a national and international firestorm of outrage over the manner in which she was treated.

Welcome to the Jordan B. Peterson podcast. You can support these podcasts by donating to Dr. Peterson's Patreon, the link to which can be found in the description. Dr. Peterson's self-development programs, self-authoring, can be found at selfauthoring.com. I'm here with a couple of professors from Wilfred Laurier to talk about the Lindsay Shepherd scandal and what happened with Professor Rambo-Kanna and Pymlaught and administrator, Adri-A-Jol, right? Adri-A-Jol, who I think is the unsung, what would you call it? The unsung villain in this entire process

because she seems to have escaped relatively unscathed, even though I think her role is more reprehensible than anyone else's. Anyways, why don't you guys introduce yourself and talk about what you've been doing at Wilford, Laurie, and also just let everybody know why we're meeting. Yeah, well, I'm Dave Haskell, and I'm a prophet, Laurier.

I'm in the faculty of liberal arts. This is my colleague. Well, how do we come into this whole thing? Like this didn't just happen with the Lindsey affair. Like, well, to background, we support maximum freedom of expression. And we've really found each other along with a few other professors who feel the same way that we do that free expression and free inquiry is the core value of a university.

But how do we run into each other? I'm from business school. So my exposure to faculty arts is minimal, and I've been really sheltered from this professionally. But watching what's happening in the US, watching what was happening to you at the U of T. I'm a grad did my PhD here. And it was in January that our University leadership sent out an email explaining to the faculty how to think about the Trump travel ban and declaring its commitment to diversity equity and inclusivity. And I was really offended by that that they would see fit to pronounce on a political issue in another country.

Offended why? I got a PhD I'm able to reach my own conclusions about whether these things are good or bad. I don't need my administration preaching to me about the right way to think about an issue, a political issue particularly. And so why do you think they did that? And what do you think they were thinking when they did that? Because that sort of seems self-evident, right? It's not the administration's role to dictate a political stance to the faculty. That's just clearly not their role. So what do you think they were thinking?

It seemed like a manifestation of Trump derangement syndrome. It seemed like just the same reaction that the Democrats in the US were having, that they lost to this horrible person and they couldn't understand why and it was so reprehensible. And here was yet another terrible thing that he was doing. And we must all agree how bad it was.

Well, I mean, even if the funny thing is, even if you can make that case, say, personally and even socially, the idea that you could make that case and then be University Administration and then tell your faculty to think that way. I mean, that's taking it in a whole different, that's taking it to a whole whole different level of presumptuousness. Did that come from our administration or from the diversity and equity of the administration from the leadership, the university leadership? Is that where the CPAM? I remember the, it's confusing because I remember we also got an email from the diversity

in equity office when Trump won and they said that they've created a safe space and they were going to be open for extra hours in case anybody needed to go and find comfort. Right, that happened a lot in the United States, hey. But you'd think at least the Americans have some justification for it given that it's their country. I mean, we need safe spaces because a conservative was elected in the United States, but you'd think at least the Americans have some justification for it, given that it's their country. I mean, we need safe spaces because a conservative was elected in the United States, not even in our country. It does seem to be a little bit on the absurd side. Well, it's just to me, you know, they didn't send out an email when Justin Trudeau won.

And I have to imagine that there were some students who were offended, like there's got to be conservative students at Laurier, but it's very much a one-sided conversation when we talk about administration, when we talk about the diversity in equity office. They talk about diversity, but they really don't mean it because they do not want those students who are ideologically diverse. They talk about inclusion, but they purposely will exclude those students. And an email like that is proof positive of that kind of exclusion. But didn't you? Well, that was that was a thing that just got me hopping mad. And I was

emailing back and forth with a colleague of Queens. And we were talking about the importance of free speech. And this had outraged me. And and he sent me a link to a star article that David had written. This is now maybe a month later in February or March about this guest speaker. Oh, Daniel Robota. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that she couldn't speak. And was she, was she, um, commissioner, she's lawyer? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So merely because she served as a defense lawyer for someone, she was pilloried. Well, this was another, like, when people look at the Lindsey Shepherd affair, this is not an isolated case at Wilford, Laurier.

This is something that is, it is a regular occurrence, and now it isn't always as high profile, but whether it's students in my office saying, I can't speak, whether it's my colleague sometimes saying to their students, who believes that they're stifled and every hand goes up. And there have been cases of that. Colleagues have come and told me, but we've got these other examples. Like when Daniel Robotye came to speak at the Bramford campus of Wilford, Lourier, and some students agitated until she was forced not to do so. And, and my, my president, right, we should provide some background.

So that was the Gameshi case, right? And so Gameshi was a CBC journalist who was accused of sexual assault and sexual misbehavior by a number of people who was immediately let go at CBC who was dragged viciously through the press, I would say, and then was found innocent in the courts. And he had a defense lawyer,

and the defense lawyer had been invited to speak. Yes, she was part of the defense team, she was going to speak, and she wasn't going to speak about the Gomeschi trial, in fact. She was going to talk about what it's like to be a high-power, powerful lawyer in the big city, in Toronto. And I mean, that would have been really valuable

for the criminology students. But the students who were agitating against her really with the support of several professors, they were saying, well, no, if she comes on it will trigger students. It will mentally harm students. And so that was used as justification for the action. It's interesting, too, to me, to see that these claims

of harm and so forth are generally put forth by people who have no clinical expertise whatsoever. And their idea is that the way that you, first of all, that the way to aid people's mental health is to protect them, and there's no evidence for that whatsoever. And the second is that in your attempts to protect them, the best thing to do is to shelter them from exposure to ideas that would be challenging or frightening, which is precisely the opposite of what a clinician does when he's trying to, or she is trying to deal with someone

who has excess anxiety. What you do in a case where someone who has excess anxiety, even as a consequence of a trauma, let's say, is you get them to voluntarily expose themselves to increasingly larger doses of exactly what frightens them. That's the curative root. So not only is it advice that's being disseminated, say, by people who aren't clinicians,

it's actually advice that's being disseminated who are promoting the opposite of what an informed clinician would do. And that isn't my opinion. That's as close to a consensus as anything you could reach among clinical practitioners. One, the rules for clinical improvement is get your story straight, something like that, talk about your past, sort it out, and expose yourself to the things that you're afraid of that you're inclined to avoid.

That's the pathway to resilience and more robust mental health. Okay, so tell us the story a bit. You guys have an inside view of what's happened on the Wilford-Laurie campus since the Lindsay Shepherd affair broke. I should just say that, you know, after this rubber tie event, I read David's piece and immediately emailed him and just said, and that's how we, Kendrick's soul, right. And we met and we had lunch and just talked about, free speech in the Chicago State, and then how can we get it implemented in the university, but we just couldn't see it anyway forward and really felt. Right, so that's another thing we wanna discuss.

You guys have rewritten the Chicago statement, right? So that it's more appropriate in a Canadian context. Right, we call it the Lourier statement for freedom of expression. Okay, okay, and you've been trying to convince or you're trying to be trying to communicate with the university authorities to have that ratified, essentially, adopted as a state under principles. And have you had any success with that or what's the consequence? They deferred to a task force that's going to be held. And we can certainly...

Okay, is that in the aftermath of the shepherd affairs? Is that going to be part of it? We really do anything over the summer just because it just seemed too big a mountain. And there seemed to be no way to introduce the idea of catalyst for it. Now you've got your catalyst. And Lindsey Shepard becomes the catalyst. Oh my goodness. Now you've got your catalyst. And Lindsey Sheppard becomes the catalyst. And, you know, what object lesson in what goes on at Laurier, but also what an object lesson in how you handle these free speech opponents. She's really given a model that other students I hope will follow. But it was through this robotai thing

that we got to know each other and a few others. Yeah, there's a couple more of you. That's right. And so about five, I think you told me. That's right. So the robotai incident really brought us out of the woodwork. We started a chat and say, you know, we see this problem on our university.

We don't know what to do. And then when the Lindsey Shepherd scandal broke, we all immediately were emailing as it's happened again, is essentially what we were saying. We said, we've got to do something about this. I already, I was out on a trip and I came home and I said to my wife, where are the newspapers? This was November 12th when the story broke, Christy Blatchford's story. And I said, wife, where are the newspapers? This was November 12th when the story broke, Christy Blatchford's story. And I said, honey, where are the newspapers? She said, I can't let you see them. I said, why not?

She said, you can not read the papers. And of course, it was because Christy Blatchford's article was in there. So as soon as I read it, I was beside myself. I thought, it's happened again in this time. This is really terrible. They've attacked a TA is what they've done. So I contemplated with the full force of the administration, right?

And claims that she had done mental harm. Yeah, broken two laws, two laws, federal and provincials. I was sincerely worried that they were going to railroad this young lady. So they could have easily taken her to the Ontario Human Rights Commission. They would have had field, what was going to happen? I contacted Christy Blatchford. I said, can you put me in touch with her? She was kind enough to do so. I got in touch with Lindsay and I said, I know that this is a terrible time, but you've got a professor who supports you. I knew that these

gentlemen also would. And then quickly as quickly as I could, I wrote an op-ed for the Toronto Star that week just again saying, this is happening, the world needs to be aware of it, but it was really after that Monday, after the story broke on the Saturday, we started to talk, and how can we assist Lindsey? And how can we... Well, the op-ed helped. And the fact that the star ran it was quite remarkable as well.

So, hooray to the star. The star really does want to do its best to champion free expression. Yeah, well, you'd think journalists would actually be concerned about that, because some of them are. Well, and I think they are. Like, one of the things that's happened to me in the last year is that, although the press coverage

of what I did, and just to remind people, so last year I made a video about Bill C.16, which was the Bill whose provisions, Lindsay Shepherd theoretically transgressed against, just to be clear about that. And when I first made the video, I was accused by all sorts of people, including journalists of, well, first of all,

making unnecessary noise and being unnecessarily alarmist, which were the minor accusations, and then the more major accusations were that, you know, I was all the things that you'd expect a far right agitator to be, a bigotot and a transphobic racist and all of these things. And so, but what was interesting was that the journalists, by and large, especially the main journalists, turned around on that issue really quickly. It was probably within three weeks because what happened was a couple of them actually went and read the policy documents that I had referred to on the Ontario

Human Rights Commission website, which are still there, and which are still appalling, and have led exactly to this situation with Lindsey. And as soon as they read what I had been outing, let's say, in my video, then they started to understand that this, that I wasn't just bringing a bell for no reason at all. It was actually reasonable, I think, of people to go after me to begin with, because Canada is such a safe and peaceful place, and our political situation, and economic situation, is being so stable that when someone comes out and says, look, we're in danger of making a major error, the logical first response should be, no, there's something wrong with you. It's like, we're fine.

There's something wrong with you. Right, exactly. And so it's reasonable. I think it was reasonable for me to be hit hard in the aftermath of doing that, because, well, generally speaking, whistleblowers in Canada or alarmists in Canada have very little to be alarmist about. But this, this, okay, so now, so fine. So this thing happened with Lindsay. What have you seen happening on the Will for Lurie campus? Well, things that I'm not particularly proud of, I would say. I mean, I knew that Will and some other colleagues were going to come to the aid of Lindsay.

But I was thinking that once her recording became public, that we would just have a flood of professors coming to support our cause, which is we had a Laurier statement for freedom of expression, modeled on the Chicago statement. We thought that immediately people would just say, of course, we need to reinforce

that this needs to be the primary mission. Free expression, free inquiry, needs to be the primary mission. But we got that pretty fast. We really did. In about 10 days. And got it on change.org, and then I was emailing everybody that I knew

and trying to get people interested. And I would say out of 50 emails I sent, I got 15 signatures from personal relationships. So even with personal relationships, you could only get a 30% hit rate. So what do you think stopping professors from signing that say or clamoring on board, especially in the aftermath of the shepherd recording, which we should point out, you know, and this is one of the things that's very interesting, is that outside

Wilford-Lorier and perhaps outside universities that are in the same boat. The reaction to that recording was universal, right? And national and international and uniform, and the reaction was, what the hell? This is scandalous. There's nothing about this that is acceptable, right? And so what struck me as so remarkable is that even though there's been international outrage over this and very, and not an outrage of a sort that's only been disputed by a very small number of people, at least to begin with, Wilfred

Laurier responded on Mars, let's say, as if this was somehow debatable. You know, as if there were two sides of the story here, let's say. And I thought, well, I thought Rambo-Kana and Pymlaut, who were the professors, did what they did. I thought was appalling for in upgrading her and in the manner in which they did it and in the language that they used. But I thought what was truly terrifying was the presence of Adriageol at that inquisition because she was an administrator who was hired specifically to do exactly what she was doing by legislated necessity on the part of the Ontario Liberal Government, right? Because it wasn't just the university that was involved in this. Her position was set up because of

legislative necessity, which is something also to keep in mind when we're going after the universities. Okay, so you had a hard time getting faculty on board. How many faculty members did sign it? 59? Yeah. Out of how many faculty? 550. 550 full time.

Yeah. And now, and so you say, well, what's going on with them? Well, I think that some, maybe, I know this is hard to believe, but maybe unaware, even now. I think there's a big proportion that are unaware. I, I, it's unbelievable as I think that's something. Okay, well that's its own mystery because I, I don't know where you'd have to have been in the now last month to not have noticed that this is happening.

People perhaps in the sciences, the computer sciences, the math, they, they've got their head down and they're, they're doing their research. Yeah. And so, and so I don't think there's anything diabolical there. I think that what we... Business as well, I've got very few signatures from the business faculty. Meet some, but a lot of people just aren't engaged. It's a bit of a commuter school a little bit.

So I think people are just getting on with their research and their teaching, maybe not aware of the power. Well, that's an interesting thing in and of itself, because I think part of what's led to the occupation of the university, let's say by the radical postmodern types, is the proclivity of the scientists in particular, but also I would say the more serious scholars to be focusing narrowly on their field of inquiry, which is essentially what they should be doing, and not paying attention to any of the broader contextual issues, which is actually a perfectly fine strategy when things are going well, but a terrible strategy when they're not. And what you also see, so we've got these people who might not be aware, and we've got the few who are aware and are supporting maximum free expression, but then you've got these other people who are convinced that maximum free expression,

free inquiry is not a good thing for a university. And those people are definitely congregated within the arts and the humanities. And they justify it because they are applying a social justice lens or what they would call a critical theory lens to this entire issue. And how about a quick summary of critical theory? Well, critical theory, I mean, in a nutshell,

it's an idea that came from the Frankfurt School in Germany. It transfers over to Columbia University. It is some German scholars who are Marxists. And what they are saying is that Marxism as an economic unit or as an economic philosophy really doesn't work. It doesn't transfer very well, but let's change it over to a social theory. And it's a theory of oppressor and oppressed, and it's very bifurcated. You are either one or the other, and if you are the oppressed, you're good, and if you're

the oppressor, you're bad. And it's as simple as that, there's no nuance. Or okay, I'm being as bad as they are. So I'm giving you the really broad strokes on this. But essentially, it does set up the villain and the victim. And it is the idea that we must do everything to silence the villain, the oppressor. And to center the oppress. Yes, and, and to center the oppress.

Yes, and then we will elevate the oppress. And the same thing happened essentially with the French deconstructionists in the 1970s. Yes, so this is the motivation behind it. But when you hear them talk about critical theory, it is not critical thinking. There's a big difference. And so parents will hear, well, they're teaching critical theory. Isn't that a good thing? No, because critical thinking means I'm going to show you both sides of this argument. Critical theory means I'm going to deliberately

give you one side of the argument. I'm going to tell you who's right, and I'm going to tell you who's wrong. There's an oppressor and an oppress. the oppressor is the bad guy, the oppressor is the good guy, and it's a very manipulative way of thinking. So, there's, let's say, two reasons why people wouldn't sign the petition. One is, they're doing something else, and they're just not interested in it, and fair enough, even though I think that's dangerous at the moment. The second is that they're actually philosophically or ideologically opposed to the propositions. And so, to what degree do you think the latter is the determining factor behind the relatively small degree of support that you guys have been able to draw up?

That's a big thing. The group of faculty signed an open letter to the University complaining about the violence and that the administration needed to make the campus safe. Safe. Yeah, they did the same thing with me after I made my video. I made the campus unsafe and 200 people signed a petition. What does unsafe mean? I mean, this is the problem. I mean, this is the problem. The left, the far left, are taking words that have a traditional meaning, a traditional definition, and they're blowing that definition completely away. And at one time, harm meant that there was an inflection of damage that would have lasting effect, and it would compromise the appearance or the function.

We can think about damage to a car, right? Lasting and affecting the appearance or the function. That's what harm is, but they stretch that definition so that it becomes meaningless, that an objectionable idea becomes harm, that when you show a video, you've made a place unsafe. And that's the language of trigger warnings and safe space. But it's disingenuous. There was a trans rally, and one of the speakers said that letting, I hope I can quote this

probably, letting Peterson's views be heard in the classroom is violence. It is violence. Yeah, right, right. You know, certain, yes, you can react with violence. Yes, well, that's often what I think that I've thought a lot about one of the tenants of postmodernism, less so I would say of critical theory, but particularly of postmodernism, and it's more Marxist variance, is that the only motivation for the construction of hierarchies is power. And you think, well, that's, no, there's lots of reasons for producing hierarchies, right? There's hierarchies of confidence, there's hierarchies of interest, there's hierarchies of aesthetic quality. Like, there's all sorts of wherever you can make a qualitative judgment, you make a hierarchy.

So there's the idea that power is the only driving force between behind the construction of hierarchies is absolutely preposterous. So you think, well, why in the world would anyone make that claim that it's only power that exists? Well, as far as I can tell, at least one of the reasons is that it justifies the use of power. If you have your position because of power, which is basically tyranny, then I'm fully warranted in my use of power against you, that's all there is. So I think it's a great justification for it. Okay, so how many people signed the petition stating that the campus had become unsafe? That was like 79. 79, just like that.

Okay, so you've got more people signing a petition claiming that what Shepard did made the campus unsafe than you did getting some... Okay, so that's interesting people signing a petition claiming that what Shepherd did made the campus unsafe than you did getting some, okay, so that's interesting because one of the things we're going to address later is the president's letter as a consequence of the inquiry into the Lindsey Shepherd fair. And one of the things she says, people who've tried to downplay what happened

at Wilford, Laurie have said basically two or three things. One is that, well, the shepherd is not to be trusted, and she's really like a subtle arm of the right wing. That's one, and that she's a reprehensible character. Yes, yes, their Peter said, I know, they directly went after her. I'm quite sneaky that way. The second is that Pymlaught, I'm quite sneaky that way. The second is that Pymlaut, Rambocanna, and Joel misinterpreted Bill C-16, which I think is absolutely preposterous. I think they interpreted exactly the way

that it was written, especially if you consider the surrounding policies. And that's what I was warning about last September. And the third is that this was an isolated incident and doesn't truly reflect the reality either of Wilford Laurier or other campuses. And that stated explicitly in the president's letter. And so that's one of the things I wanted to discuss, because I don't buy that.

I think this wasn't an anomaly. This wasn't people stepping out of line. And I think the proof of that is not what Rambo candidate or Pym Law, because we could say, yeah, yeah, they're ideologically committed professors and they're not very professional in their administrative abilities and they went after a TA, unprofessionally and stupidly. That's bad. That's not really bad. What's really bad was that there was a paid administrator at the meeting who was hired to do exactly that. And so the fact that she was there is the proof to me that this is not only not an isolated incident. It's actually a logical and inevitable consequence of legislative moves that made these bureaucratic positions necessary.

And the practical reality that these administrative positions do exist on the campuses. So there's no isolated incident issue there. Now, how do you think Lindsey's been treated at Wilford-Laurier? What's your impression of her personal situation there? I think that, so on the positive side, there have been students who have rallied to her support. And that's been really encouraging to see. It was some

students on campus who are dedicated to freedom of expression. They mostly are coming from the conservative clubs, whether it's the conservative political club or other conservative groups, although definitely invitations have been extended to other groups of other political stripes or other, they really haven't rallied to Lindsay, sadly. So those students have, to a certain extent, befriended her or brought her under, and I'm just going from what I've seen, I follow her on Twitter. So I see what's been going on there. Apparently, you know, and I don't think this is inaccurate. The other grad students are being quite scared.

Yeah, yeah, that's that's what I've heard from her and from her tweets is that at least they're cold at minimum they're cold and the professors as well, including the one who told her that she couldn't use her laptop in class because she didn't want to be recorded. I mean, you couldn't script this level of idiocy. But my thought is students always ask me, Dr. Haskell, can I record what you're talking about? I say yes. Yes, the answer is yes. The answer is yes, because you know what? I don't say anything in my class that I wouldn't publicly say,

and I want to be accountable. I want people to know what I'm saying in my class. I want them to know I'm fair, I'm balanced, I present both sides of the argument, I'm not afraid of that. I mean, why are people afraid of accountability? That's beyond my understanding. Well, that's a very good question.

So, okay, so I think what we'll do now is go through this letter, because what happened yesterday, I guess, is the president had appointed a third party fact finder to look into what happened with the Lindsey Shepherd affair, and there were concerns about that, because many people, including Christie Blotchford, were concerned, and the lawyer that's representing Lindsey Howard Levit was concerned that the person who

was appointed to do the third party investigation wouldn't be neutral, because he had tweeted his agreement with a variety of, let's call them politically correct issues quite publicly. But it does look like he's done a credible job. That's what appears to me. Anyways, the president who is very closed mouth or aciduously neutral about this whole affair has released a report. And I thought we could go through it and talk about whether or not we think that it addressed the issues

reasonably. So because I think it did in some part, but I think it didn't in others. So this is from McClauchy, Debra Maclatchy, PhD, who's the president and vice chancellor at Wilford-Lorrie, and relatively new at it. So I mean, she's really being raked through the coals. That's for sure.

But she was the vice president academic, which is the second most senior physician for the last five years. So she's accustomed to this. Okay, okay, it is, I believe it is time for some clarity around the events of the past few weeks here at Wilford-Laurie University stemming from the very regrettable meeting. So that's an interesting turn of phrase to begin with, that followed the showing of a TVO clip by a teaching assistant during a tutorial.

As the newly appointed president and vice-chancellor of this incredible 106-year-old institution, I'm here to set the record straight and announce some important changes. The issue has highlighted some deficiencies, but as importantly, it has created opportunities. Yeah, well, to me, that's a kind of marketing double speak. It's like, we could just go with the deficiencies issue for now. Opportunities for Laurier to improve our own performance,

to lead a broader discussion on academic freedom and freedom of expression and opportunities to work together as a community to demonstrate the strengths we have as an institution. When the issue first broke, I erred on the side of caution. As a person and as a president of as the president of Laurier, I am sensitive to the viewpoints and concerns of our students, staff and faculty. As an employer, I am cognizant that the four people who were in that meeting room are employees, and one is also a student. All four are entitled to do process. I did not want to rush judgment. Rather, I wanted to ensure we were able to objectively assess the facts and make sound decisions flowing from that assessment. That seems reasonable enough. And I would say the events that have transpired

probably justified her approach, although I had taken issues with some of the things that she had said and not said when she was on the agenda. But whatever, we hired an external fact finder with expertise in human resources issues. I have received the report and we are taking decisive action to ensure these events will not be repeated. The report, along with what we already knew, has led me to the final conclusions, following

conclusions and actions. There were numerous errors in judgment made in the handling of the meeting with Ms. Lindsay Sheppard, the TA of the tutorial in question. In fact, the meeting never should have happened at all. Okay, that's probably the most damning statement in the entire report, I would say. And then she says, no formal complaint, nor informal concern relative to a Laurier policy, was registered about the screening of the video. This was confirmed in the fact finding report. Okay, so we could take that apart a little bit. No formal complaint.

Okay, so Rambo-Kanna claimed that one or more students had complained. He wouldn't say how many and he wouldn't say what the nature of the complaint was. Now what this document seems to indicate that is that, well, if there was a complaint, which it leaves vague, there was nothing that would constitute a genuine complaint in an administrative sense. And that's why the meeting should have never happened. So I guess one question would be, what if any appropriate disciplinary action should be taken against Rambukhana and Pimlot? And I don't know the answer to that because, you know, they're not administrative experts and I don't think faculty can be. But by the same token, I don't feel like I understand exactly what happened to bring

about the meeting to begin with. Do you guys know? I mean, whatever we do know, we've had to piece together from different media reports, because as has been said, our president is not releasing the findings of this. Like this is going to be, this is a secret, the independent investigation, we will never know what it actually says. We don't know what all the recommendations are.

I think we can take her at her word that she's telling us what's gonna happen. So why is she making it secret or keeping it secret? Is that this concern with what do you call it? Confidentiality that seems to be the camouflage behind which these things are always hidden? That seems to be implied, or even said explicitly, but I've seen other cases where there's been disciplinary measures, and we get more details than this, right? So I don't know the level of confidentiality that is required under law, but what I can say, and I'll let Will talk about

what the disciplinary actions can be. Let's keep in mind that when Ram Bukhanna said that there had been a complaint, and it says here that there wasn't, he then echoes that in his apology to Lindsay. He then says, of course, and I'm paraphrasing here, so I'm not being completely accurate in terms of what he exactly said, but he said something like, of course, there are things I can't discuss because of the complaint that was made by a student. So he's echoing what seems to be

an untruth. And, well, this is about as close a statement as you might imagine, in a statement like this, stating that it was an untruth. I mean, he said, she said, no formal complaint, nor informal concern relative to a Laurier policy was registered. I mean, that's, that's, huh. That's as close as you can get to coming right out and saying that the statement that there was a complaint was a falsehood. And I just want to follow that thread for a second. So here we have a controversy that was started on an untruth.

And it seems to be that this is part of the whole modus operandi here when we hear, and there's been harm. And it's unsafe. Daily violence. Daily violence. Although, again, when the media, global national news, global mail checked in to see if there were any police reports related to any harassment or any threats, no police reports had. So, so at some point point don't we have to say there's a boy who cried wolf hmm well this is even this is more egregious even though then claiming harm I mean because you know maybe people were getting nasty tweets and so forth and I suspect they were but the thing is is that Rambo

Khan and Pimla directly claimed that there had been a complaint right and so that's a big problem that isn't thoroughly addressed here. Well, and either somebody heard about the tutorial, and the fact that Appearance and Video was shown, or Ramooka found out somehow, but he decided that was unacceptable. And that the right way to approach it was to claim that a student had complained, because it's not a problem that he found it.

It's not such a big problem that he found it unacceptable, let's say. It is his class. He has a right to talk to his TA about what's going to be shown and what's not going to be shown, even though he handled it, I think, reprehensibly in that meeting. But he could come out and say, look, that isn't what the sort of thing I want to be discussed in my class. I don't agree with Peter, and I think he's at jerk. And here's the other things you should be concentrating on.

But to come out and say, a student complained, and then to buttress that with the accusation that she had violated federal and provincial law, as well as the universe. It was a bring-in Edmonds Jules. And I don't understand why Jules was there without some sort of formal paperwork or evidence of a complaint. Well, I think that the reason for that is that the positions that people like Joel occupy are so ill-defined and so fundamentally reprehensible in their organization, in their aims, is that this is exactly the sort of thing that you would expect. And so I thought she didn't say much in that little inquisitorial recording, but I thought the thing she did say were spectacularly

concerning. Let's put it that way. So what is the discipline? What is the discipline? Do you have any sense of this? Like I can't speculate. I don't know. Communications or? Well, what happens when somebody lies or when somebody brings, you know, forth a complaint that wasn't a complaint? Well, that is, that, well, that's one of the things this document does not address. Like, it's a big problem.

It's a big problem if there was no complaint and the reason she was disciplined was because there was a claim that there was a complaint. Like, that was disciplined was because there was a claim that there was a complaint. Like that's, well, we can, we don't have to be that to be that. What about if there's a claim that there's harm? What about if there's a claim that the campus has daily violence? What if there's a claim that such an area has become unsafe? Does that need to be proven or should we be seeking disciplinary action against people who are making those claims? Well, that's a very good question. Okay, so that's a problem that isn't addressed in this report.

It's a big one. Okay, and I mean, the president is obviously not happy with this because she also says the errors in judgment, okay, no formal complaint, no informal concern was registered about the screening of the video. This was confirmed in the fact-finding reports. So, they're not beating around the bush about this. They're state-knit very clearly. The errors in judgment were compounded by misapplication of existing university policies and procedures.

Basic guidelines, basic guidelines, and best practices on how to appropriately execute the roles and responsibilities of staff and faculty were ignored, not just not understood, ignored, or not understood. Okay, that's a pretty damning statement there too. So, I don't even know all the particulars here. I heard Howard Levitt say that she was entitled to some sort of represent, Lindsey was entitled to some representation. Under the bylaws of our university,

she was supposed to have had that and that nobody offered that. Right, so that's an administrative follow-up at the level of employee, employer relationships to say nothing of the academic issues at stake. We don't have policies and procedures about how to carry out an acquisition. That's not what she's saying. I think there's a medieval document that you can use. But one thing, Jordan, I want to point out here, is that the errors in judgment were compounded by misapplication of existing university policies, misapplication of existing university policies. At the end of this document,

she's going to say that our gendered and sexual violence policy needs to be reviewed. So which is it? Was it an error in application or an error in policy? And that's, this is confusing. Yeah, it is. Because my suggestion would be the policy is terribly flawed. We have a colleague who's one of the free speech proponents at our university, Dr. Andrew Robinson. He is an expert in human rights law

and he went through our gendered and sexual violence policy with a fine tooth comb and he says, this document is unworkable, it makes thought a crime and he wrote an op-ed to that effect. So my point would be, and who did he, what organization is he part of? It's glorious. Yeah, but which sub, which, which human rights and human diversity.

Right. I mean, that's exactly it. This is his field. Yes, exactly. And, and so when he looked at this, he says, this goes beyond what the Ontario government was even asking for. And it gets to the point where it actually makes, you can be guilty of thought crime. You can be guilty of transphobia without any intent.

That's the same in the Ontario. If someone says, I've been harmed mentally, that is enough for conviction under this particular policy. It's the same with the Ontario Human Rights Commission's policies. Intent doesn't matter. So this isn't misapplication. I'm saying, did Ad Joelle actually get it right? And so is it a miss application or do it be interesting if the university does discipline her if she gets legal

representation who claims that she was actually applying the policies correctly because that is the question right. So but it could be two things it could be the policies are flawed and and this is the consequence, and they were misapplied. We don't know, but there's definitely ambiguity here, and that's a crucial issue. I think Lindsay was guilty under the gender and sexual violence policy, and she was, Adria was right, and accusing her. She was wrong about C-16. It would have been an untary human rights code violation, but GSD, she was right. If there had been a complaint. Right.

Right. This is the point. Okay. And how many angels can dance on the head of the page? Right. Okay. Procedures in how to apply university policies, same issue here, and under what circumstances were not followed.

The training of key individuals to meet the expectations of the university and addressing such an issue as such as this was not sufficient and must be improved. Okay, the question is, who are these key individuals? Do they mean Rambo-Kana, Pimlaud and Joel? Is there, are they putting all three of those in there? And then the next question would be, how are they going to improve the training of key individuals? Because that actually worries me as a faculty member, right? Because whenever the administration decides that it's going to engage in some

additional training of faculty members, then that raises the hair on the back of my neck. Like, is this unconscious bias training? Is that what they're talking about? Which has been, well, I think I can't remember. I've just read recently. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no recently. Nosec himself, who developed the IAT, just published a review paper stating clearly, stating clearly that attempts to reduce unconscious bias by explicit training.

There's no evidence whatsoever that they have any positive effect, and that was Nosec himself, who helped develop the IAT. Because the little codery that developed that test, the chair of the Harvard Psychology Department, I'll remember her name in a minute, Greenwald, Anthony Greenwald, and Nozek, what's her name? Mazarin Banagee, three of them developed it. They're starting to fragment a bit because the thing has been pushed way too hard, right? It's not a test that's valid for the purposes that it's being put to, and they know it perfectly.

Well, even though they're consulting about it and have made quite an enterprise out of It's not a test that's valid for the purposes that it's being put to, and they know it perfectly well, even though they're consulting about it and have made quite an enterprise out of it. But Nozek is, you know, it seems to be a pretty credible scientist and he's actually looking at the data and it's clear that these unconscious bias training programs have zero positive impact. There's some evidence that they have negative impact

because of course people don't like being accused of being unconscious racists, right? So I'm wondering, is that the kind of training? And there's nothing in here that says this, but this is the problem that it says there will be training. And unconscious bias, is that the same as systemic discrimination? Well, it's the neurological equivalent of systemic discrimination. So imagine systemic discrimination

is built into the structure of the system, right? Unconscious bias is built into your perceptual structures. So even before you act or think, you're biased towards against the members of an outgroup. That's the claim. And not only biased against the members of outgroup, which is a different claim than biased in favor of your ingroup, which of course, almost every human being is, especially if you think about your family, but that implicit bias also manifests itself in behaviors

that would essentially be categorizable as racist, at least at a low level. And there's very little evidence that the implicit bias that this test hypothetically measures manifests itself in measurable behavior. So, we went through a thing in the summer where they ran a regression on salaries at Lurea and found that women were paid a little bit less than that by about 4% and so they gave all the... Did they include age? Did they include age as a covariatevariant? Uh, the answer to that would be no. The model was, uh, it had, um, rank, uh, and I don't know that it had e.

It only had four categories of professor, though. It had a faculty, a rank. When this has been done at University of Michigan, for instance, because I looked at Comparables, they had 21 categories of professor, uh, or 21 departments. And at ours, we had four. So you were comparing people, for instance, within the business school,

who might be in marketing versus someone who... Technology. Yeah, well, I know from setting up regression equations, ad nauseam, that the covariates that you include in the equation determine the outcome of the equation. Well, the conclusion they reached. The explanation for the statistical significance of the genocopation was systemic discrimination. Right, right, of course. Well, that wasn't the conclusion they reached. That was the conclusion

they stepped into the inquiry with, and they jerrymandered the statistics until they found a regression equation that supported their initial claim. So that was, that's not an inquiry. But so there's, what I hear you saying is there's really no scientific basis for this idea that there could be this unconscious bias that could drive all this. Well, there is evidence that we're full of unconscious biases. I mean, we couldn't even see if we didn't have unconscious biases because we have to use shortcuts and heuristics to just process the world. The issue is what measurable impact does that have on behavioral? That's the first thing, and it's

minimal at best. First of all, it's not easy to distinguish between racial bias and novelty avoidance, right? Because what you'd have to do is you'd have to find a person in a racial group, say a white person, who is just as familiar with black people as with white people, and then show that there was a bias because otherwise you can't distinguish it from a novelty, novelty aversion, and people are characterized by novelty aversion. You already have developed a preference for that top over this cup. I mean, it happens that quickly, and it's that it's that subtle and great and grand,

let's say. So, the first issue is we can't really distinguish unconscious bias from perceptual habit, let's say, or from stereotyping from categorization for that matter. And that literature has been under assault in a major way in the social psychology literature. But even assuming that an implicit bias does exist, which you might, there might be grounds for by noting that people do have an in-group preference, say, for their family members and props, even for their racial members, although it's hard to distinguish that from novelty or from familiarity preference. Putting all that aside,

which you can't, there's no evidence that these courses that are put in place to reduce that bias have any effect whatsoever on the bias. It's complete, even the people who are pushing the IAT and the idea of implicit bias are willing to say, well, all these things that we're doing to try to reduce it have absolutely no effect, or if anything, a negative effect. And again, we don't know what the training is gonna be. I guess where we went down this rabbit hole was,

we don't know what the training is gonna be. Right, we don't know. And we have no evidence to assume, we have no reason to assume that the training is going to address the proper problem. And every reason to be skeptical that it won't. Okay, so next, there is also institutional failure that allowed this to happen. Well, we don't know what that means because I'd like to know what the institutional failure was.

But that's a pretty broad, and she says, when there is institutional failure, responsibility ultimately starts and ends with me. Well, that's a nice statement, and okay, she's taking responsibility for it, but unless it's specified what the institutional failures are, it's just hand-waving. Going forward, we will implement improved training

and new procedures and engage in a very specific administrative review. Details would be nice to strengthen and enhance confidence in what students and employees can expect at Laurier. Specifically, there was no wrong doing on the part of Ms. Shepherd in showing the clip from TVO in her tutorial. Showing a TVO clip for the purposes of an academic discussion is a reasonable classroom teaching tool. Well, thank God for that given that TVO is a publicly funded, uh, middle of the road, left leaning liberal news media establishment, a credible one for sure.

I wish that early on, immediately following this story breaking that administration had said exactly that because remember, for more than a month now, the public, the Canadian public has wondered, can you show TV Ontario videos in classrooms at Laurier? Right. And I'm not joking. Yeah. Like this was,

Right, well, that's the question. And there has not been an answer from administration on that very basic question. And so people who are thinking about sending their kids to Laurier are thinking, is that the place where they didn't know whether or not you could show public television in a classroom? Is that the place where it took

a independent investigation to come to the conclusion that it's okay to play a clip from the agenda. That, well we still don't, yes exactly. It is the place where all of that was in doubt. That is Wilford, Laurie. It is the place where those things were in doubt. And so they're not quite as in doubt, but we also still don't know what else is, what else is still in doubt. Right? Because if that can be, you wonder, well, you know, that's pretty damn innocuous. Okay. Any instructional material needs to be grounded in the appropriate academic underpinnings

to put it in context for the relevance of the learning outcomes of the course. Yeah, well, the question there is, any instructional material needs to be grounded in the appropriate academic underpinnings to put it in context. The question there is, who decides what the appropriate academic underpinnings to put it in context are? Because that's supposed to be the, that's supposed to be the Bayleywick of the professor, period, right? And with some leeway for the, for the teaching assistants and so on.

But I worry when I hear about context, because I've seen opinion pieces from some of my colleagues who tell me that the appropriate context is within the frame of social justice or within the frame of critical theory. Well, that's what Rambo Kahn has said to Shepherd was that while part of the reason you were wrong was because you portrayed it neutrally. If you had contextualized it essentially if you had contextualized Peterson as Hitler, which was Rambecona's statement, then it would have been perhaps appropriate to air the video. And that is equivalent to leading the witness, right? And leading the witness is when we have a lawyer, an authority figure, telling the person on the stand what to say, taking my ideas and putting them into that person's mouth. Right.

Well, that's how you produce unconscious bias. But my point would be, so I'm not saying that this is in here, but we really need clear perspective. Yeah. Well, that's a sentence that doesn't, that I'm not happy about. Appropriate academic underpinnings to put it in context for the relevance of the learning outcomes of the course. Jesus, it's just administrative double speak the whole way through.

You present in class, you know, what are the criteria for evaluating that? Right. I show videos all the time in class. Yeah, I don't know if they have the adequate underpinnings. Yeah, well, that's the question is who decides that. The answer to that, there's a simple answer to that. The professor. That's the answer. There's a simple answer to that. The professor. That's the answer. There isn't another answer.

There's no board. There's no higher authority. There's nothing else. And I do show clips from Hitler in my class, in my personality class, when we talk about orderliness and totalitarianism, I show clips from the triumph of the will. And I show this other documentary called Crum,

which is about an underground cartoonist from the 1960s named Robert Crum, and it is an absolutely shocking documentary. Like, if you ever want to know more than you want to know about rapists and serial killers, that documentary will tell you. It's really, it's a tough, it's a tough watch, you know, and I can't, I can't imagine a, like a committee reviewing my teaching materials and allowing those things to go forward without challenge, it could be a disaster. Okay. The ensuing discussion also needs to be handled properly.

Yeah, well, we have no reason to believe this discussion was not handled well in a tutorial in question. Okay, so whatever handled property means, Lindsay Shepherd managed it. Which I think is a good sign here, because if we take that as the model, Lindsay did present the information neutrally, and she was not taking sides. And if that's our model model that's a good sign. Okay, that's good. So that's acceptable. So I'm a bit troubled by this because we're going to, and for paragraphs find out that we need

enhanced training for TA. So did she handle it properly? Why do we need the training? Yes, that's, that's, and again, who's going to do the training? Because it's not going to be the faculty because the faculty don't have time or the inclination for that matter to run that kind of training. Is it going to be the diversity inequity? Yeah, right. Well, that's the question. Who's going to do the training?

I have apologized to Ms. Sheppard publicly as has Dr. Rambo-Kanna, who's supervising professor. The university has conveyed to her today that the results of the fact-finding report, to make, the results of the fact-finding report, to make sure she understands it is clear that she was involved in no wrongdoing. Yes, well, for someone who was involved in no wrongdoing, she sure bloody well got raked over the colds for the last month. So, the university has taken concrete steps to make changes to ensure this doesn't happen again. Yeah, well, good. It has made it clear to those who were ensure this doesn't happen again. Yeah, well good. It has made made clear to those who were involved in the meeting with Ms. Shepard that their conduct does not meet the high standards I set for staff and faculty. Well, that is a big question

there, right? How has it been made clear to those who were involved in the meeting with Ms. Shepard that their conduct does not meet those high standards? Because we don't know. Does that mean that the president talked to them? Is there being disciplinary action? Like, because if it was, I don't even know what would be appropriate. But I would say that not knowing what was done is not appropriate.

So. And I think it deserves specifics. I mean, that's what got me into this. Was you, the, the, Christ's what got me into this was you, the Christie Blackford's article was, was very accurate because she already had the audio. But then when we heard the audio, it was so appalling what was done to her in that room.

It was such horrible bullying. And, and just such a violation of whether the university should stand for, that's what co-alast all of the anger. I mean, in Canada, the devil's in the details. So it's the same with the how it has been made clear to those who are involved. So because I don't, I mean, maybe this is something we could talk about too. I don't know what would constitute appropriate disciplinary measures as a consequence. I mean, you have here three people acting on a non-existent complaint who produced an international scandal that damaged Lindsey in a real sense, although it might have also made her stronger, but it certainly didn't have to, because a lesser person would have

crumbled. I don't know if she would feel that she, I think she might take exception to that. She certainly has not claimed any kind of victim status through this whole thing. And I think that's, no, but that's more a testament to her character than anything else. Because I mean, she was subject to the kind of attacks

I would say that would have snowed under a lesser person. Yes, but she has risen to this challenge. Yes, definitely, definitely. Well, and thank God for that. But then there has been real harm done to the university as far as there. I don't know how you would quantify that in financial terms, but I suspect it's substantial, but reputational terms.

I mean, now I would say internationally, this is what Wilford Laurie is known for. So maybe that's an overstatement, but I don't think so. As these are individual employment issues, I cannot go into greater detail on any individual case. Well, that could be. But know that the University has, and is taking action to rectify the situation

and send a clear signal that this cannot and will not happen again. That sounds pretty forthright, yeah, it is. One key improvement highlight is the need to enhance our faculty and TA training. Yeah, well, like I said, as a faculty member, whenever I see that, I don't see the role of the administrators at a university to train the faculty.

That's not their role. Their role is to move paper around for the faculty, fundamentally. It is the responsibility of course instructors to develop around for the faculty, fundamentally. It is the responsibility of course instructors to develop guidelines for the roles and expectations of their TAs. Fair enough, the university also has high expectations of professors as TAs supervisors. We recognize the need to intent is to enhance the training and support for both TA supervisors and teaching assistants making these mandatory and standardized. That's my favorite part. Jesus, dismal.

So my suspicions as a skeptic are that the making of training for faculty, mandatory and standardized will do more harm than this scandal has done over the long run. So we don't know what the training is. We don't know who's going to do it. We don't know what it's going to be about, but the one thing we do now is it will be mandatory. Yeah. Mandatory and standardized, right? Yeah.

Mandatory and standardized. Be interesting to see how they'll do that too, because it isn't so easy to make training mandatory for faculty members, right? You can't just do that by fiat, because they can generally tell you to go to hell and should gendered and sexual violence policy. It has become clear to us that managing the new gendered and sexual violence policy. Now, that's the one that's mandated by the provincial government. So it was Bill 163, the provincial bill that said you need to have a policy

on gendered and sexual violence. Right. According to our colleague, Dr. Andrew Robinson, he says we go way beyond what the province even asked for, to the point where it becomes unmanageable and you have instances of thought crime. So that's what we have like this, like this. Yeah, where you can claim that somebody is transphobic for simply showing a video. Can I read you the definition? Is this from the gendered?

Yes, it is. This is from our policy. This is from our policy. It is an action that reinforces gender inequalities, resulting in physical, sexual, emotional, economic or mental harm. Okay, so what's the first part of that again? Yes, you got lost, don't you? It is an action that reinforces gender inequality. Okay, so let's start with that. An action that reinforces gender inequalities. Okay, so the first thing we might point out is that no one knows what the hell that means, right? It's a box that you can put anything in. So, actions, that's a problem. Because what it isn't obvious what constitutes an action or an inaction for that matter.

So, I mean, and then that reinforces gender inequalities. Right, so that's the sort of sentence that only someone who's ideologically possessed to the maximum would create, because you can't parse it. Gender inequalities. Like, what does that mean exactly? I don't, well, anyway. Discrimination, sex or gender,

doesn't talk about discrimination. It talks about inequality, right? I don't, well, anyway discrimination, sex or gender, it doesn't talk about discrimination, it talks about inequality, right? Which is, which is, it would be different if the phrasing had included the words discrimination. Okay, and the next part is resulting in physical, sexual, emotional, economic or mental harm. Right, right. So it's as broadly construed, both clauses are as broadly construed as they can be. And the reason for that is to allow maximum scope for interpretation, which is exactly what happened with Adrian Joel. Well, mental harm, again, mental harm. And as you pointed out, mental harm is not backed up by the empirical evidence, apart from post-traumatic stress syndrome. Like cognitive behavioral therapy would suggest

that you actually can do mental good by exposing someone to objectionable ideas when they've in moderation in order to help them become less mentally fragile. Scott Lillafeld out of Emory University. Very, very credible scholar. Well, he is one of the masters, he's written several textbooks on psychopathology, right? He knows his stuff.

And just this year, he put out a paper where he explored the empirical evidence around microaggressions. And he did all of the literature. And microaggressions are, of course, these innocuous actions that are deemed to be bigoted or somehow sexist. Well, they are actually showing a video from TVO is what a microaggression is. And what he said was, there is absolutely no evidence. There's no evidence that microaggressions, these objectionable ideas, lead to mental harm.

He also said that the concept itself is extraordinarily ill-defined, which is also a big problem. Which we can see, right? That was the beginning of our conversation. Everything is ill-defined. Yeah. And while that, if you make the box big enough, you can put anything into it. And what you see in this gendered and violence policy that Will is reading from, they're actually going to say that this can include heterosexism. Like, your mental crime could be heterosexism. So what if I said something in class like the empirical evidence strongly suggests that raising children in a two-parent family leads to better outcomes?

Which it does, by the way, like it, like, and seriously it does. So, then, then you should... Well, so that's the question. You've transgressed. Well, arguably, right, arguably, I've transgressed that policy. Now, here's an interesting thing, too. So, it has become clear to us that managing the new gendered and sexual violence policy has led to a confusion in its application, right? Okay, so this is back to the issue we described earlier. Is it a confusion in the application or in the policy? Now you just read the damn policy.

Now it seems to me that there's no way you could apply that policy without confusion. So it's not a confusion in its application. It might also be that, but it's a confusion in the policy, written right into it. Okay, so that's of crucial importance. That's why the war of governors. Right.

In fact, the interviews conducted by the fact finder confirmed that the rationale for invoking the GSVP did not exist. It was misapplied and was a significant overreach. Yeah, I'm not so sure about that because I know that these kind of policies emerge from the same sort of policy framework that characterizes the Ontario Human Rights Commission. emerge from the same sort of policy framework that

characterizes the Ontario Human Rights Commission. It's the same people doing it. And the Ontario Human Rights Commission policies are written so that they can be broadly misapplied with no significant overreach. So, okay, so that's a problem. To provide clarity of the policies intent and to strengthen accountability, we will engage in an administrative review with the goal of finding the appropriate structure to oversee and execute the GSVP and its accompanying procedures. We will also undertake a full review of the policy and its procedures. Okay, so good.

So there they're saying, well, it might have been misapplied, but maybe the policy itself also has some problem. I think this is really good news. And we had a meeting with our colleague Andrew Robinson today and we said, you know, what do you think about this? And he was pleased. He said, you know, if some good has come out of this controversy, this is one of those good things. Because definitely the gendered and sexual violence policy we have at Laurier isn't workable. It is prejudiced against certain people and certain ideas. And so it needs to be reworked because at this, it is not an inclusive document. It excludes.

And so it needs to be fixed. So this is a good thing. Well, and it's also a canary in the coal mine for similar policies at universities all across Canada would say and maybe broader because one one thing you'd hope is that the Lindsey Shepherd affair has produced enough negative repercussions to set people back on their heels a little bit and make them dig into these policies because I can't imagine that there's another University in Canada who would enjoy partaking in a scandal of equivalent magnitude? What I would hope, and on that point, Jordan, if someone is a student or if someone is a faculty member, ask for the evidence. That's what I've learned from this.

There are a lot of claims out there, mental harm. Our campus has become unsafe. The ideas that are contained in the gendered and sexual violence policy, I'm saying, okay, what is the evidence that proves this? Because this is what a university is supposed to be based on. From the Enlightenment to today, we are supposed to be able to say, here's the evidence for why we do this. And the further we get away from evidence and the more we embrace ideology, we completely remove what the mission of a university is supposed to be.

Well, and the idea of evidence, we remove the idea of evidence, which means we remove the idea of knowledge, because there's no distinction between knowledge and evidence. Right, right. So, so if you are a student and you want to say, what can I do, say, what's the evidence of mental harm? What's the evidence that this, that I'm transphobic? What's the evidence? Well, so partly what you're also saying, there is a restatement of the old presumption of innocence idea.

It's like, okay, you're accusing me of something. Prove it, I'm innocent, buddy. Prove it, where's your evidence? Yeah, I know we do it. I know. Well, part of that's tied up with this, with the sexual harassment issue, because increasingly, and this is, this is, this is started, I think, most particularly in the United States. We're moving towards a preponderance of evidence standard instead of an assumption of innocent standard.

That's especially true with these sexual harassment policies that are being derived from institutions and administrators concerned with such things as the gendered and sexual violence policy. And that's related to the comment you made earlier about the lawyer who wasn't allowed to speak, right? Because she had the temerity to offer someone who was accused of a crime, a legal defense, right? When apparently what we were supposed to do was just assume that the people who were making

the accusations were right because they claimed that they were wronged. So, to be, I mean, we always have to do our caveats, don't we? We say, I know that we want to protect people who are victims. Like, each of us would agree, but it can't be done by sacrificing truth. Well, you don't protect people from being victimized by undermining the rule of law, quite the contrary. This is, because ultimately it comes back

to bite you in the behind. Yeah, that's for sure, and very, very rapidly. So, okay, in the interim, we will ensure access to the existing support and complaints procedures by providing management and oversight through the Office of Dispute Resolution and Support. Okay, I'm not sure what that means. Well, it's actually very good news. Okay, okay, it means that the oversight of this is being removed from the Diversity and Equity Office

and put under the president's direct control. So she doesn't think that they're responsible. And I'm very worried about diversity and equity office overreach. This suggests that the president as you should be. It suggests the president is also worried about the diversity and equity office that she has said we're not. I imagine why. But the fact that she has done this is really a strong sign that she is aware that that office needs to be, it needs to be raining right, or at least that she's concerned enough about the reputation of the university so that she's not going to let the same mistake happen

again. Which is a good thing. Like, I don't care why she's doing it particularly, but it's a good thing that it is being done. Okay. So fine. So that's a, that's good news. This has the added benefit of improved accountability as that office reports through to me as president.

Yeah, okay. Well, you can see in those lines that she's not particularly happy about what's happened. I wonder what sort of financial hit Wilfred Laurier took because you could imagine that while the donors are gonna be a lot more conservative than the professors and the administrators and the students. Well, we have, we've been contacted by a group of alumni who have now organized.

They haven't yet released what would be their press release, but slowly they've been reaching out to other alumni and it's the Laurier alumni for free expression. And what they have said is their mandate is one, to withhold all donations, until Laurier accepts the Laurier statement for freedom of expression. And I haven't checked in. It was just someone acting on her own. She's a Laurier alumni. She has, I guess, contacts within the alumni association.

And she just sent us a contact information and said Here's what I'm doing wanted you to know I support your efforts and I'm I'm working on this I'll let you know when I'm ready to go and so that was really encouraging I have a colleague who does a survey of Chief Financial officers quarterly to gauge their optimism about the economy and started down at Duke and he's starting at now for Canada. And he got responses from two because he sent out an email to shortly after this broke. He got responses from two alumni who just said, you know, why should I participate in this? Why should I help you? This is not so. I don't have any respect for you. These are alumni of of of World

from Luria University. Yes. Well, I can imagine too that enrollment is going to take a pretty vicious hit. You know, our business school is quite excellent. We have a great car program. We in the finance area, I've tracked a lot of very strong students, and we compete for top tier students in Ontario, the entry averages like 89 or something. And we really could be for what we call the high flyers.

Yeah, and they can choose any school in the province. Right, right. Yeah, well, it doesn't take much of a hit to a reputation to give people And they can choose any school in the province. Right. Right. Yeah, well, it doesn't take much of a hit to a reputation to give people who have options the reason to go elsewhere. Right? And then you lose the best people.

And that's when things really start to fall apart. And what you might begin to see, and I would say that this is something that the general public might look at, watch what happens to the entrance averages in the arts and humanities. So, so, so we might not take a hit, but let's see if the averages take a hit. Because suddenly, and currently, the entrance average to get into our general arts program in communications, let's just talk communications,

is mid-70s with an average of 60 in English. So I don't, I mean, which is basically a failing grade, right? Because if you hand in an essay in high school, you'll get 60. You really will. Right, so it's basically, the grading basically runs from 60. It goes zero. You didn't hand it in.

60 to 100. You handed it in. And let's keep in mind that the tutorial that Lindsay was running was a grammar tutorial, the content of which looked a lot like grade six curriculum. Yeah. Well, that gets us into a discussion of the schools in general, but we're all right. I'm thinking that maybe it's not a good idea to lower standards anymore. Right.

Right. Okay. So, academic freedom and freedom of expression. For those who have chosen to use this incident as an indictment of Wilford-Laurier University or the plight of Canadian universities in general, I say your assertion is unreasonable and unfounded. Well, we better stop this interview.

Yeah, yeah, well, you can say that all you want. I would say instead that what happened at Wilford-Laurie is a precise manifestation of exactly the sort of rot that both produced Bill C-16 and that I was warning about last September. And so I don't think the assertion is unreasonable and unfounded at all. And here's one piece of data.

80% of humanity's papers are not cited once. So. So, so let's just translate that for the viewing public. Yes. That means that they're producing scholarship that nobody looks at. Yes. That that even their friends don't look at and because, okay, so what a citation is is I read someone's paper and I find a good idea in it.

And then I use that idea to boxress an idea of my own or to riff off or to criticize even for that matter. And then I cite them. I say who they were and when they published it. And then the paper, there's a huge bureaucracy that keeps track of citations. And it's a major indication of academic ability to be cited. Right? It's like, it's academic payment to be cited, right? It's like it's academic payment to be cited.

Okay, so 80% of humanity's papers don't get cited once. It's absolute failure, absolute failure. As a game, if someone wanted to play a game, I would suggest that they go and they look at the publications of the professors in a particular area and see if the titles all sound the same. And if they all say something about intersectionality,

colonialism, and these other various social justice words, you might wonder, am I gonna get taught the same course again and again by every professor in this program? Because it seems to me that all of their research is very similar. And how can that be when there's such a broad base of knowledge in the world that we can have such similarity between every publication, which then goes on, why do I need to read my colleague's stuff when it's exactly like my own, which we see.

So just as a baseline, Jordan, how, what would you say is someone who's doing some good research, how many citations would they be receiving? Maybe collectively. Like, what are we looking at? Thousands. Thousands. Yeah, well, a good, like if you write a good paper,

then like a great paper will if you write a good paper, then like a great paper, paper will get you 100 citations, right? An outstanding, overwhelmingly outstanding paper will get you 1000 citations. 10 isn't none, you register with 10, but zero is, that's failure. It means your work had zero impact. It means your work wasn't worth the paper it was published on.

And this brings us to a kind of interesting little issue with regards to the rot in the universities, which Deborah McClatchy says does not exist. It's like here's how the game works, is that we set up a little ideological garden, right, the ten of us play in. And then we all publish in the same journal and we peer review each other's articles and we just publish them. There's no critique or very little.

So the barrier for publication is very, very low when it should be very high. Like a good journal, a good journal will reject 90% of the papers that are submitted to it. Right? So rejection rates really matter. of the papers that are submitted to it. So rejection rates really matter. So the question is, why do these papers get published since no one reads them and they have nothing to offer?

And the answer to that is very straightforward. The journals are extremely expensive, are way more expensive than they should be. So just to buy a single paper online for the ordinary person is like $40, which is more than a hardcover book. That's just to download the PDF. And so the journal itself, the libraries are full of them, are very expensive, and the subscriptions are very expensive.

And so what happens is the professors pressure the university libraries to buy the journals, and the library funds the publisher. And so the publishers will publish anything. Rowtlidge is a good example of that, much to my chagrin because they published my first book, and they used to be a great publishing house, but they'll publish damn near anything. And the reason for that is that the libraries are forced to pay radically inflated prices for the publications that no one ever reads. And so people write to publish in journals that libraries have to purchase at inflated prices to produce knowledge that no one will ever read. And that's the little scandal that plagues the humanities. I think it characterizes the humanities more than

plagues them. So the idea that there's no systemic rot, let's say, in the universities, especially in the humanities, is just not okay. Well, this is just far too general. There is rot, let's say, in the universities, especially in the humanities. It's just not true. Well, this is just far too general. There is rot, and it's not everywhere. And this just reveals that I don't think she's that familiar with the situation she's in. And I've been listening to some of your work and Jonathan Hayte trying to understand what's been going on over the last two years in universities, protect it as I am in a business school

and starting to realize that it's not everywhere. It's social justice perspiration. The STEM fields are fine so far. Yeah, and the business schools, although there are moves into the business schools, but they're still doing all right. Philosophy is not doing too badly, like there are disciplines that have still remained untouched.

And mostly what's happened so far is that if the discipline has a strong economic or scientific footing, it's proved much harder to corrupt. Empirical. Yeah, that's right. That's right. For my part, so I play in the playground of sociology of religion, but all my stuff, well, most of my stuff is quantitative. So I actually, I wasn't familiar with what was going, I don't, I go to conferences

where everybody has to have strong empirical evidence. I publish in journals that are international journals that are the scientific study of religion is what we do. So, you know, I'm familiar with Foucault and that stuff, but that's not where I play. So I wasn't really exposed to what's going on. And you don't really think, well, they can't. Well, there's no reason to be that concerned about it. You talk about three years ago. Well, this is it. But then I'm trying to get into the head space of some of my colleagues. So I got out a textbook. It was called Race, Class, and Gender. And it's an anthology that's

used in cultural studies courses, in women's studies courses. And it's sort of the go to text so I'm told and I'm reading it and I turned it and I I would turn to page 14 and I can tell you it's page 14 because I was so astounded by what I found and it said We that oh it says objectivity as found through rational thought is a Western and masculine concept that we will challenge throughout this text. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah. And I said, it's too bad. It's too bad that you're shocked by that because the PC types have been saying exactly that since the 1970s.

That is exact. Make no mistake about this. This is why McClouchy is wrong. This isn't something they're secreting in. This is the dead statement. Oh yeah, it's that the whole notion of logic and coherence and empirical data for that matter. Evidence. It's a very major evidence. Let's question the definition of evidence. Because the underlying idea, remember the underlying idea here, is that all higher arches are predicated on power. So if the reason that I put forward something as evidence, isn't because it's evidence. It's because it's evidence that I get to have that position of power.

And so if you're a postmodernist and you say, well, I'm going to question your evidence, what you think you're saying is you're going to question my claim to that arbitrary power. The whole idea that there's evidence outside of claims of arbitrary power, the postmodern is dispensed without the 1970s. That's dareda. That's exactly what he said. And all this time, I've been trying to get samples of thousands so that I could say, you know, this is a little bit...

We can say something... That just in generalizes. No, no, that just demonstrates how thoroughly entrenched you are in the reigning patriarchal ideology, I guess. And I was just hoping to get beyond anecdotal. There's no beyond anecdotal. That's become a methodology. That's auto-experience.

It's called auto-ethnography. There's a technical term for it. And auto-ethnography is the publication of a, of a private diary private diary essentially in a hypothetically reputable, reputable academic journal. It's only because of in the last three or four years that these things have been happening. I say, well, where do they get this? How do they how do they find these thoughts? Yes, well, we don't want to fall into the mistake of making the assumption that this hasn't been thought through.

People are not just misunderstanding what evidence is. That isn't what's happening at all. When they say they want to question the definition of evidence, that's exactly what they mean. When they say we want to question the definition of evidence because the definition of evidence, because the definition of evidence currently supports the scientific power structure in chemistry, say, and that's fundamentally dominated

by let's say white men. We can go after the definition of evidence itself, and that's how we're going to bring it down. And so the next people on the hit list are going to be the biologists. They're already under attack from the source. I just thought the paper that said that mathematics is whiteness. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. I didn't know that mathematics could have a race.

Yeah, but this thing, the thing is there's nothing illogical about these claims once you accept this central axioms. The axioms are straightforward. The world is a battleground of power hierarchies. That's what it is. There isn't anything else outside of that. And each power hierarchy generates its own internal narrative, including rules for what constitutes evidence, that support and buttress the structure of that hierarchy. And because the hierarchies exclude, then it's in the best interests of the people who are excluded to invert the hierarchy. And of course, they also regard that as just, even though that's part of the incoherence of the entire argument. That's where they have to turn to Marxism. But make no mistake about it. This isn't accidental.

It isn't people misunderstanding what constitutes evidence. Not at all. Now, I've been listening to some of your lectures on this for the last year, and thinking you sound a little deranged. Well, I might be a little deranged, but I'm not deranged about this. And then this whole episode of Lindsay Shepard just proves that every dimension of this is about power. The double speak, the changing of terminology from harm, the exposing people's ideas could be violent. The circling, the changing of terminology from harm, that the exposing people to ideas could be violent, the circling, the sacred circling around the victim group. Well, look at what happened at Wilford, Laurie, one of the things that was so bloody interesting,

that I thought was just fascinating, was the unbelievably strategic attempt to transform Shepard into the perpetrator and Rambecana and Pimlaught into the victims, especially Rambukana and Pimlaw into the victims, especially Rambukana as a professor of color. So what happens, the reverse narrative was, well, Lindsay Shepard was using something like her white privilege and her white tears to harass a poor professor of color, untanured professor of color. Yeah, yeah. And that and there was every attempt made on the part of the people who were going after shepherd to make that the narrative.

So, well, and they started accusing everyone of being transphobic just right out of the blocks. Within days of this, we were all tired with that epithet. The labels have been just flying and without any regard to the intent of the person, and even the content here, here's something interesting about the transphobia issue too. So I've had at least a number of discussions with trans people, by the way, but also a number of letters from trans people over the last year, about 40 of them as a matter of fact, which is a lot of letters because there aren't that many trans people. And every single one of them, I think I got one letter from a lot of letters because there aren't that many trans people. And every single one of them,

I think I got one letter from a trans person who wasn't happy with what I was doing. But every single one of the other letters said the same thing. We are sick and tired of being the poster child for these activists who claim to speak in our name. Because that's another thing that we should be very aware of is just because an activist comes out and says,

I'm a member of this minority group and therefore I speak for them. It's like the first claim might be true, but the second claim is not only unjustifiable. It's actually, I would say it's not racist exactly, but it's groupist because it's predicated on the assumption that just because you happen to be the member of a class, that you're a representative member of that class. That class is so homogenous that everyone in it is the same enough so that all the members within it can speak for all the other members, right? You used to call that racism when it was applied to racial categories. Absolutely, but Lindsay has been very good to point out, and so of some of the media, that there have been transgendered students at

Laurier who have spoken out in support of Lindsay. And we have to keep this in mind that this is not a transgendered issue. No, and neither was my comments on Bill C16. Because I mean, I know that Lindsay, as she even said, she is not transphobic. She supports the rights of transgendered people. This is, she's unequivocal in that. And I think that that was just-

That's just cover story for her true right-wing beliefs. Well, and there are transgendered students who have come to her support and at great personal cost to themselves. Like, those are some brave people there, right? To break with that group, the hostility in that group is real. In the activist end of the group. On the activist end of the group. You bet. They were so quick to take over this issue as their own

and claim that the debate itself was violence. And that it was just cover for this transfer of a climate that existed. And it has nothing to do with transgender people. Well, you know, it's funny too. You saw the same thing with Ronaldo Walcott when he was on the director of the Women's and Diversity Women's and Gender Studies at the at Oizee at the University of Toronto. He claimed that he claimed like four times in that interview that the University of Toronto was a white supremacist organization. And I thought, I just don't know what to make of that. Like I traveled down to my office about a week after that that that interview. And I happened by some students who were standing outside waiting to write an exam.

So there's about a hundred of them may. And like this is particularly true at the University of Toronto, I would say that you couldn't look at that group of students for more than two seconds and think that that was a white supremacist organization. I mean, it's so ethnically diverse. If you think that the University of Toronto is a white supremacist organization. Then what that essentially means is that the most tolerant institution in the most tolerant city, in the

most tolerant province, in the most tolerant country, in the world, is white supremacist. So it's like, well, then, well, I don't, I don't, I don't even know what you could, especially when you say that as someone who's a full professor, I don't know if he's a full professor, who's a professor at that institute, it's like, where's your evidence for this? That same professor was using racial slurs against Lindsay. Oh, yes, the white tears thing. They're also misogynistic, because it's white girl tears. I could never.

Ever. Do something like that. To any student of any race. I just don't understand how the people on the far left can rationalize that kind of behavior. It just, it's... Well, I think they can rationalize it with power. But in terms of civility, just in civility,

in recognizing the humanity in every person, how can you resort to those kinds of racial slights? I don't understand how you can say, don't be racist, and then you make racial comments, terribly racist comments. I just, I don't know, do people... Well, no, there's the idea there is straightforward. You cannot utter racist comments against the dominant group.

That's the rule. If there's a dominant group, so once you identify them as oppressors, you can say anything you want about them, because by definition, this is axiomatic in the ideology. You can't say anything racist about the oppressors. That's like a rule. It's a rule of discourse. So here's where I go with this. For self-interest, do you not realize when you say, I don't care about your effin white fragility? No, that was not Waldecott. Is that it? Did I get his name right? No, no, no. Walcott. Walcott.

He didn't say, but others, other pundits have said that. And it's appeared on Lindsay's Twitter page where they've assaulted her there. Or that's too dramatic, where they've made insults there, insults are there. But my point would be, even in your self interest, do you not realize that you are giving ammunition to the real white supremacists?

Do you not realize that there are really dangerous people on the right who are looking for that exact kind of comment to rationalize their behavior? Well, if you're trying to burn something down, what makes you think you're gonna be so careful about how it burns down? And I really mean that. Look, I mean, I have interactions

with the right wing racial supremacists online. They're not very happy with me. And it's because I call them out for the same sort of behavior that the leftists manifest, which is like, I'm not impressed by your manifestation of group identity, Uber all, let's say. But I understand that the radical right wingers are playing the same game as the radical left wingers. So you might say, well, understand that the radical right wingers are playing the same game as the radical left

wingers. So you might say, well, why would the radical left wingers play into their hands? I would say, well, if you're trying to, if you're trying to burn the whole damn house down, then why not inflame the people who are most likely to do it? And you might think, well, no, that's not in anybody's best interest. It's like, it's the stated aim of this ideology, right? They want to invert the, they want to invert the patriarchy, essentially. Well, what's the patriarchy? Well, it's the white supremacist University of Toronto. So Who cares if you're handing your opponents weapons? You're hoping that it will escalate that the people on the left as well as the people on the right.

They're too escalated. Yeah. It's the right. It's a dismal point. It's a little bit of its power because this is the same thing that happened to Debra Green State. And the whole justification there was racism. I know, and they went after Brett Weinstein, who is about his, I mean, Brett is a Bernie. He's a Bernie supporter, right? Exactly. They eat their own.

Last week from Mike Paris, who is the only colleague of his that publicly defended him. And he emails me and he says, I've been following the story closely and I just want to reach out and just, you know, Commissory with you and wonder is there anything we can do or talk about together? And I thought, no, you're from Evergreen State. You know, that's a nightmare. And I thought, we're not that bad, are we?

But it's the same pattern repeated. It's not about transgendered people and their rights. And it's just the victim. Oh, yeah. No, the transgender people, as far as I'm concerned, were like sacrificial animals on the altar of Bill C. 16. The activists have a new group that's oppressed to wave the flag for it, to push forward their ideology.

And as they said, the consistent message I've got from transsexual people is, I wish they just shut the hell up. And quit putting us out in the public eye and that, guys, because all they're doing is making our life more difficult. It's like, well, it doesn't matter. We're trying to tear down the patriarchy. Who cares if your life is being life more difficult. It's like, well, it doesn't matter. We're trying to tear down the patriarchy. Who cares if your life is being made more difficult? It's like, you don't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.

We want to keep that in mind. Okay. Laurie prepares our students and instructors for difficult discussions. Yeah. Probably not. We support our teachers in navigating complex and divisive issues with care and confidence. That's a more credible statement.

I mean, especially given the outcome of this. I just want to take you back to the last sentence of the previous paragraph. Luria has a clear commitment to academic freedom of freedom of expression. Well, that's unequivocal. Perfect. Yes, except that they won't adopt the Chicago Principles. And something else to keep in mind that, I think this is the first time anybody's talked about this, when we were established in 1973, the Wilfred Laurier Act says specifically that

this university will be dedicated to research and teaching in the spirit of free inquiry and free expression. That is the establishing act of our university. This is charter statement. And that is what it says is our mission. So in fact, we are breaking the law by not standing behind maximum free expression and max free inquiry? Because it is right in our very founding principle, our very founding charter. In the fact that we are so hesitant to just embrace that and say, we know that it's within this contest of ideas that the best facts come forward and knowledge is advanced.

Why are we afraid of that? Why are we afraid what's made every university a great university? Because we're doubtful about the integrity of the institution. Like this critique that whose claim is that our institutions, our patriarchal institutions, are fundamentally corrupt and oppressive is sufficiently, what would you say, makes people sufficiently guilty, so they're perfectly willing to circumvent their adherence to charter policies like that. I just think that at some point you have to say,

this is why you were created. Maybe we should get back to this, and maybe, I mean, maybe there's someone who is in the provincial parliament who's going to say, I'm kind of upset that you've actually rejected the very founding charter. I would hear, well, there's no one in the current legislature that would do that. Certainly not in the current government, not by any, not by, not, no chance at all. Okay. We support our teachers in navigating complex and divisive issues with

care and confidence. We are leaders in ensuring our students, faculty, and staff have the necessary supports and tools to help those who have experienced marginalization and discrimination to engage fully. Okay, so now you see the reversal, right, right away. Here is, and this happens every time now that a modern university, virtually every time that a modern university comes out with a statement in favor of free speech. The next thing they do is bring in this competing set of claims like the, to help those who have experienced marginalization and discrimination there, then you know that that postmodern ethos has what has manifested itself within the confines of the document. Properly grounded academic debate at Laurier occurs every day and encourages critical thinking and civil discourse.

Yeah, ideas that one finds objectionable should be challenged and debated. The common good of society depends on the search for knowledge and its free expression. Hey, fair enough. Free expression in academic university, academic freedom at the university require accompanying responsibilities and accountability to be met by members of the university community. Well, even that statement is not so bad. I mean, okay, faculty members have responsibilities,

and they should be accountable. I think that university should be a civil place. I think that it should be civil, right? Yes, definitely. And I think that there should be tolerance. But tolerance is very different from an embrace and complete embrace of what diversity is now defined as. Or equity is defined.

Tolerance means I disagree, but I'm going to let you speak anyway. And that really is the goal of the university, so anyway. Yeah, okay. We will continue to ensure that we are protected against, protecting against, and dealing with hate and intolerance. These have, those have no place in civil society. See, that, I'm not so sure about, that hate and intolerance have no place in civil society the problem with that is hate hate and intolerance is not defined here That is the problem and and I keep hearing

Hate speech is not free speech and then when I ask well, what do you mean by hate speech? Yes, that is the problem Well, the other thing too is I'm actually allowed to hate you It's okay. You might have done something that makes me hate you, but there are limits on what I can do as a consequence of that hate. And that is not so, there's two problems, right? The first problem is this is a big one, who defines hate. That's a major problem.

And the second is, well, you don't limit hate. You can't limit hate any more than you can limit anger or aggression, but you can limit the manner in which people conduct themselves when they're motivated by those emotions. And let's be clear. There is really a clear definition of hate when you look at the criminal code under sections 318 and 319. It says, you cannot advocate physical violence against an identifiable group. I am totally on board with that.

Like, let's be clear. You can't say, go and hurt these people. I got that. But that's really clear. Where's that definite? Well, I just want to see. Well, the issue there is something we discussed earlier is, well, then we can gerrymandered the definition of hurt. Right. Well, I'm talking physical, advocating physical violence. Yes, yes, yes. Physical. I throw that physical in there because the criminal code also does. And I think it does it in such a way to say, we can harm. What is harm?

Again, harm is long term inflection of damage that compromises your ability to function or your appearance. Right. It's a pragmatic definition. It's grounded in common law. So we actually have a history of defining it. So that's safe. And let's not move away from these definitions because they're the thing that allow us to have

conversations that are uncomfortable but needed. Okay. Good. These have no place in civil society, let alone on a university campus. They will not be tolerated at Laurier. Yes, well, we saw an example of that, not being tolerated with the Lindsay Shepherd case. I remain concerned by the way faculty, staff, and students involved in aspects of this situation were targeted with such vitriol.

Now, now things are starting to get out of hand. I remain concerned by the way, faculty, staff, and students involved in aspects of this situation were targeted with such vitriol. Vitriol, that's acid, eh? So, you think she's talking about the tweets that Lindsay has received then? Is that faculty, staff, and students?

So not just Lindsay, but I just wonder, does this apply to those who have been advocating free speech? And I'm just pointing it out there. I mean, all of us who have come out in favor of maximum free speech have been subjected to a lot of vitriol, both emails. And it's always anonymous emails. It's always from people who will not say who they are.

So, but my point would be, I, unless there was something that simply said, I am threatening your life, I just, I delete it. That's what I do because this is what happens. I mean, I wish people were civil, but they're not. There's no discussing hard issues without conflict. Like, that's just not happening. The question is how you limit the conflict.

And you can't limit it to none because then people can't have a conflict. They can't solve a problem. So what you do is you limit it, well, as we've limited quite successfully in our country to date, right? We use the definitions of violence that have prevailed throughout the establishment of English common law, and that works just fine. My concern about that paragraph is that she's cow-towing, let's say, to concerns about the way that the people who actually, let's say, perpetrated this event were dealt with by members of the general public.

So, okay, members of the university community must be supported to work and study in an environment free of discrimination and harassment. That's a tougher one. And they have my commitment, we will continue to make this a university priority. Yeah, that's a sentence that worries me. In an environment free of discrimination and harassment. And they have my... The problem is, it's so difficult to distinguish that between real dispute. You know, I mean, if you're committed to a line of argumentation, you've staked your whole life on it, say, your whole academic career,

and you're engaged in a dispute with someone else who holds a contrary viewpoint, there's going to be heat and sparks generated by that exchange. There has to be. Because otherwise, you're not talking about anything of any importance. Yeah, if we all agree, we don't need free speech. I mean, that's the standard.

Yeah, that's the thing, right? But when I read this line, members of the university community must be supported to work and study in an environment free of discrimination and harassment. And I just wonder how equally that idea has been applied at my university so far, because certainly we know that our president has sent out letters of support to the LGBTQ community, which she was right to do if they are feeling harassed.

I have no problem with that. But at the same time, there are official bodies at our university, the Women's Center, and other bodies that are under the auspices of the diversity and equity office, if I'm correct, that are petitioning to have, there's a pro-life group on campus, and they are petitioning to have them defunded and shut down. Right, so did Deborah McLeod see send out a letter to all the people who are supporting. Lindsey Shepard, to say, well, we're really sorry about all the harassments. This is my point. This is my point.

Our president is aware that there's a group on campus that are marginalized. Yeah. These are the pro-life students. And I don't care what your position is pro-life or pro-choice. Whatever your position is, you bloody will have to admit that there's at least a debate. There is a debate, and the point I would make is here truly is a marginalized group of students who have received no support from our university. None. And I know my president is aware because early on in this controversy, I said, and another matter is that these students are being attacked, or I'm sorry, I don't want to use hyperbolic language, these students are being harassed.

And they are being harassed because they're being threatened with having their funding removed by official bodies of the university. Yeah, well, the pro-life students are real canaries in the coal mine as far as I'm concerned, regardless of what you think about what they're doing. They really represent diversity. It's ideological diversity, but we're not seeing any reception of these diverse students. Do they, are they being included in this diversity

and inclusion? No, they're being excluded purposely by actual offices of my university. So I'm saying, that's that standard practice I would say on campuses across the country. It's just uneven. It's uneven. And I think that what we need to see is just a policy that applies to all students and not just those who smell right or are orthodox to the social justice or those who are in what we do call acceptable class of victims.

That's right. Okay. It bears repeating in the current context that Laurier's support for our lesbian gay, bi, trans, queer, and two-spirited campus community and transgender people in particular is unwavering. It isn't obvious that it bears repeating in the current context, because the issue here fundamentally is that Lindsay Sheppard was subject to an administrative inquisition despite the fact that she was 100% innocent by the university's own standards. And so it doesn't bear repeating in the current context that Laurie's support for our LBGT2LGBTQTSCampus community and transgender people in particular is unwavering. It actually isn't about them. It's not about them at all. It's about the fact that she got pilloried for doing something that she was actually right to do.

So, I'm not happy with the fact that this paragraph was inserted into here. I think it's an indication of exactly the kind of administrative weakness that allowed this sort of event to occur to begin with. Now, this is the theme, though, of the Justice Warriors, is that this is the victim group. They've repeated over and over that there's been violence, harassment, vitriol. Everybody's picking up on that. The Union president said that it was daily occurrence. The president's repeated. She's issued a campus-wide email in response to the open letter

saying we're gonna make this a safe campus. She's repeating it here. So the validation of their narrative of victimization, emerging from the Lindsey Shepherd event without evidence. We actually sent an email to our faculty. The union president, and we said, we're concerned about this daily violence on campus. Could you please supply us with evidence of this? And she wrote back and she said, what did she say? Well, something,

as I'm telling everyone in the press, no. Yeah, because it would inflate, didn't she say, because it would inflame the, it would inflate in a situation even further with something like that. So how in the world providing evidence that something like that, but more members of the union, we are paying our fees just like everyone else.

And we just, we wanted substantiations to these claims that there was violence as a daily event. Well, the whole premise is that there's injury happening, and that's why we can't speak about these things. So, if they can establish the violence, then maybe we're sympathetic to the argument that the speech shouldn't occur. But that's susceptible to bogus claims. If there's no substantiation, you can't build policy that way.

Yeah, not without getting into the kind of trouble that's already emerged. In light of recent events, we have added measures to improve campus safety. Well, it is by no... See, that actually seems to me to be the one sentence in this article so far that's actually a mistake, because by going forward with what practices that are going to improve campus safety, then the president is validating

the claims of the people who claimed that this occurrence produced an unsafe environment on the campus. So I think that that was weak. We will ensure that all students, staff, and faculty know exactly what our commitment to academic freedom and freedom of expression means in the classroom. That would be good. To that end, we have established the task force on freedom of expression to take input from our community,

which we should point out, which won't include Lindsay Sheppard, because she asked to be part of that task force. In fact, I believe that they offered it to her. I'm not exactly sure about that, but she was, some grad students nominated her, and it was prior to the revelation being made that it would be, the position would be filled by the president of the Graduate Students Association.

Who, and I think this was poor form, just before that announcement was made, the president of the Graduate Students Association put out a statement where, I'm not sure if it's a he or a she or I'm not sure of the gender pronoun used, but they were standing 100% behind the trans and LGBTQ.

Yeah, and the fact that they were going to sit on the task force would indicate that all students would be represented properly. But it's just, they showed this incredible bias and then they said, and we're going to be sitting on this. I just don't know that that does a service to all the grad students who they represent. All right.

Look at best practices beyond Laurier. Hey, they could look at Chicago. That'd be good. And develop a clear tangible, and you never know. Maybe they will. You never know. And develop a clear tangible set of practical, implementable guidelines that will bring clarity to this issue for our own classrooms and will have the potential to serve as best practices for others.

Well, that's exactly what you guys are recommending. That is my commitment to you. Well, and it's not like the University of Chicago is a lightweight. And it's not just the University of Chicago, over 30 universities, many of them Ivy League have adopted the Chicago statements to great effect. Right, right.

And so this is something that has worked, that is working. Yeah, it's clearly something that should happen in Canada. It would be a wonderful thing. It would be a wonderful thing. It would be. It would be a wonderful thing. So it's not like we're trying to institute this policy that hasn't worked and that hasn't been accepted by really prominent universities in the US.

And it doesn't involve US law or legalese. It is simply a statement of philosophy about what we want, and which is maximum free expression and free inquiry, within the bounds of the law. And I just think this task force is going to be a disaster, because the justice advocates aren't interested in free speech. They want to forbid certain forms of speech.

It's just a question of which topics and who's going to control the last. Well, there might be enough public scrutiny. Like I don't think interest in Wilford Laurie, I'm sure that the president would be real happy if this went away. But I think the probability that it's going to go away is very low, because I think Wilford Laurie is now being watched and being watched by very many people to see what the genuine outcome of this will be. And I think that even if it was ignored by the mainstream media, which it might be, it's

not going to be ignored by people on YouTube. And the people who've been generating content associated with Lindsey Shepard. And the magnitude of that content online is absolutely overwhelming. I don't know if the Wilfred Laurier administrators know because people older than 40 usually don't know much about online media, but the amount of commentary this has been generated, this is generated on YouTube is absolutely beyond belief. Like it was a major scandal. Back to the task force though, and will you've said this in the past,

the freedom of expression proponents, we already are the compromised position. a major scandal back to the task force, though. And will you've said this in the past, the freedom of expression proponents, we already are the compromised position because we are saying we want you to be able to articulate whatever position you have. We want you to be able, like, we are the compromised position. We're not saying we wanna shut down anybody. Whatever your position is, let's hear it.

That's that, that is where we are. So, we're already in that compromised position. Within the boundaries of the law. Within the boundaries of the law. In terms of the outer respect of the University and its operations, of course. So, so we're already saying we want all these sides to be able to be heard. I don't understand. It's already a pro-diversity of opinions. It is. It is. And so, what I have to look at is many of the colleagues that I have who are on the left and are hoping for restriction of free expression are really, to a certain extent, linguistic imperialists. That's exactly why I objected to Bill C. 16. I said that I wasn't going to let the linguistic

imperialists take control over my voice. I said that I wasn't going to let the linguistic imperialists take control over my voice. The fact that it happened to be about transgender pronouns was, well, that was just how that problem manifested itself at that period of time. But that, what did you call them linguistic imperialists? That's exactly right. And these ideologues on the radical left

who are so good at neologisms are unbelievably good at grasping the linguistic territory. I mean, the propagation of words like cisgendered is a perfect example of that. So yeah, it's just, I don't understand how they can be so against colonialism and imperialism and then want to do that in the sphere of language. Put it in an authoritarian structure, which can only be abused. Well, that's part of the weird, see, there's this weird marriage between postmodernism and Marxism, right?

Which makes no sense, because you actually can't be a postmodernist, and I guess you can be a critical thinker in a Marxist, but you cannot be a postmodernist at a Marxist at the same time. Because the postmodernists, hypothetically, are critical of grand narratives, right? They don't believe that they have any universal validity. Of course, the problem with that is that without a grand narrative, you can't act. But they sneak the Marxism in through the back door. And then the justification, I think, is for these authoritarian positions, is that well, it doesn't matter as long as the right people are being hurt by them. And the right people would be the people who are in positions of power now who have no justification

for being in those positions of power, right? Because they don't- The stable solution. But you're making the assumption that what's being sought after is a stable solution. And I think that's a dangerous solution. And I think that's a dangerous assumption because I think that the university activists mean exactly what they say when they say that we should be flipping over the patriarch. They've put no counter-proposal forward throughout this, right? It's like they don't have a solution. They're not even talking about a list of forbidden topics and who's going to adjudicate it and what the appeals process is going to be.

No, that's always done post-hawk. That way you can keep the level of fear, the hot you can keep adding to the list as well. Yes, definitely. That would because it's way better, it's way better. If you it's way better, if you want to exercise power over people to never let them be sure which policies they are violating. And I think that what happened to Lindsey Shepherd is an excellent example of that. So it's a canonical example of that. It's the Orwellian idea.

Freedom is the ability to say two plus two equals four and they want to keep avoiding the ability to say two plus two is four by creating new answers and moving on. But you know, you see just went through this whole process. Yes. It came up with a statement on free expression. And goes on for paragraphs and paragraphs. And then the last, nearly the last sentence is,

freedom of expression does not trump all other rights in the university community freedom of expression can only thrive constructively when accompanied by other rights, including the equality rights of equity, diversity, and inclusion. There you go. There you go. That's right. And so now you no longer have free expression.

Now, that's the snake in the garden right there. So we're eating that. Yeah, so there's this, but how, I mean, those, those are so complicated. There's individual rights and group rights. There's positive rights and negative rights. And they're all in this salad with no guidance as to how you're going to trade them off against each other. It's like you say it just ad hoc as we go forward. We'll. We'll. We'll. We'll. Well, it's so funny to produce an entire document talking about freedom of expression and

then to put a sentence like that in as a codicillit. And by the way, also this, it's like wait a second, it's not also this. It's that little admixture of poison destroys the integrity of the entire argument and to put all those words in there, diversity, okay, what the hell do you mean by that exactly? Inclusivity, that's a word that really, that's when I really have a trouble with, because it's very difficult to understand even what that means and equity is equality of outcome.

And so that's an impossible goal to begin with because it multiplies in difficulty as you add number of measurement dimensions, right? So, and that's the intersectionality problem, so to speak. So, all right, well, that's the task force. The interesting thing is, Will didn't want to sit on it because having looked at what had happened, I suppose it was the experience that UBC that- Well, I just saw a big argument happening with no possibility of a

constructive outcome. And so- But I was more hopeful and I understand Will's position completely, right? Yes, well, it's easy as a faculty member to get pulled into interminable administrative duties that have no positive outcome whatsoever. In fact, it's pretty much part for the course. Well, he makes the, I mean, your most compelling argument. Well, two, one, look what happened at UBC. And two, we're already the compromised position. You mean, what more can you want?

And I get that, but I have, let my name stand, for nomination. We'll see this week, I guess, whether or not I, I don't know if I'll get voted. Well, one of the things we should find out and publicize is whether any people who have a strong free speech orientation will end up on that task force. Yeah, I mean, that's a, that's of absolutely critical,

import. Well, they'll certainly get their work done quickly if no one from the free speech side is on it because they'll just say, right, but maybe they'll have to create a list of their own about what can't be talked about. Right? Who knows where that will go? One thing that strikes me though is just the disregard for history.

People who are marginalized or would be considered in the marginalized group, if we look at how did they get the rights that they have today? Right? How did that happen? It was because of free expression, right? Actually, the easy case to make for free speech is left wing. It's like powerful people don't need their free speech protected. They're powerful, they're rich, they can say whatever the hell they want.

It's people who are precisely marginalized and oppressed who need all the protection of the law. Of course they want to wait it against and yes, we want to have people without power to have the freedom of expression. But let's make this a quicker process by making sure those that have power can't speak. Whoever, those who have power is. Right, well that's the issue. Not to say, well, you know, you could say, well, wouldn't it be wonderful if those who had unfair power weren't allowed to speak? It's like, well, maybe it wouldn't be wonderful. But who the hell is going to decide who has power and who has unfair power? Like the devil's in the details there. So the

only fair application of this principle is to let everybody have equal opportunity, right? Not equal to who come, by the way. Well, that's the free market solution, right? Because you can't determine these by central fiat, because it's technically impossible, which is actually something postmodernist should know, because that's actually one of the logical consequences of their philosophy, right? Things are too complicated to decide by fiat in some sense. But things are too complicated to decide by fiat in some sense. But all right, is there anything else that you guys want to say that you've observed as a consequence of this Lindsey Shepard affair or that you're hopeful about or pessimistic about?

What's the, how do we solve this? Just the way we're solving it. This is the way to solve it is to have, I think this is a textbook case of the utility of free speech. Shepherd was able to make her case publicly. There's been a huge debate about it. There's been some moves made on the part of the university that look positive. We've got ample opportunity. Everyone has ample opportunity to have their voice heard.

This video we're making tonight will probably be watched by 150,000 people. It's like, and we had a perfectly reasonable discussion. I think we gave credit where credit was due with regards to this document, and are jointly hopeful that something positive will come of it, and made some pointed critiques about what it does contain and what it doesn't. But we don't want to underestimate the utility of doing these things. It's useful. I think the fact that you guys have this little cabal of people at Wilford Laurier,

who were willing to speak, I was shocked when you wrote that op-ed and when Toronto star published it. I mean, nothing like that from an academic happened in relationship to me last year in Bill C.16. We've seen such uniformity of outcry about this from all the newspapers, globe, star, sun. Which really just shows you the disconnect between what is happening in the academy. Right. It's a disconnect of staggering magnitude. People outside the academy say, well, how can you believe that?

What they've been saying is, really, this happened, this actually happened. That's the universal response. And the response on the campuses is, well, yeah, it happened. And we were right. I have a solution. I have a solution. I mean, it's not a solution, but it's, I call it an inoculant, actually. So yes, let's get the Laurier statement for freedom of expression at our university and

similar statements at all universities. Why the federal government is not tying funding to this? I know that the conservative is meant to be. This is a suggestion that I made to the conservatives. Well, this is this is what needs to happen. But in addition to that, I think that young people and parents of young people need to look at what's happening and they need to start educating their their kids at home. And they need to start educating their kids at home. And they need to start, and I've written several op-eds where I've said, people ask me, what is the solution? I say, start watching the videos of Jordan Peterson. Start watching the videos. There's Jonathan Height. Jonathan Height. You bet.

Look into the heterodox academies. They know what they're doing. Who definitely are scholars of repute, they are moderate in the incredibly civil. There are also some people outside of academia. There's a fantastic YouTuber. My name is Josephine. She's a Canadian political science student who is at U of T. Moderate, really well spoken,

articulating classical liberal ideas. My name is Josephine, okay. Yeah well spoken, articulating classical liberal ideas. My name is Josephine, okay, okay, I'll have to remember her. She's actually been at the reason that I know she knows you. She was at one of your rallies. I saw it in a video, there she is in the background. There are another young lady, sorry woman, who is, her name is Roaming Millennial. Yeah, I know Roaming Millennial, I've been on her show.

Oh, fantastic, yeah, yeah, you bet. You bet, yeah. Yeah, I don't Roaming Millennial. I've been on her show. Oh, fantastic. Yeah, you bet. You bet. Yeah. And she's a tough cookie, that girl. She's a tough cookie. You bet. And I would say, start watching these people.

Yeah. Yeah, well, the young people are watching them and drool. She has a big following, Roaming Millennial. And I'm grateful for that, because in fact, when these students go into the university classroom, if they choose to go into the arts or the humanities, they're going to go in with knowledge where they can, I realize it's tough to challenge a professor.

But start a Facebook group and say, hey, did you know that there are other ideas too? Do you know that there's an opposite side to this debate? Well, we should also encourage parents who might be listening or students thinking about going to university who might be listening to this is that check to see

where the university stands on free speech. And if they dampen down their support for free speech and for your inquiry with statements about diversity, inclusivity, and equity, then go somewhere else. It's a worry. Another thing, and this is just beginning in Canada, we have a society for academic freedom and scholarship

that professors can join. If a professor has joined the society for academic freedom and scholarship, you can be pretty sure they are going to be wanting to give you both sides of the story. So that's not a bad check either. Yeah. Where do they have to do their research though,

the students to do diligence? Well, that's good. It'll educate them. Right? I mean, Lindsey Shepard definitely got educated over the last two months. She should give her the degree. Yeah, I have no kidding. No kidding. She's got her PhD thesis in communication, pretty well demonstrated.

There is an auto-ethnography for you. Yeah, I caused an international scandal by just revealing what had actually happened. Yeah. All right. Good. My pleasure. Thank you guys for coming. And also for, it's not common for faculty members, well, to talk to me, first of all, like this, certainly not on record. And it's certainly not common for them to be writing and speaking openly about such issues. So I don't know what the hell got into you guys. It's really good that's happening. It will for glory too. We're, we're, we realize we're finished now

by being associated with you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I said, uh, earlier, good of you to offer yourself on the sacrificial altar. I, you've got to look your kids in the eye eventually. Yeah. And, uh, how are you going to say that you need to stand up for truth if you actually don't stand up for truth.

That is a problem. Yeah. Yep. All right, guys. you.