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  • Hi, everyone.

  • Happy New Year.

  • I've got some things to say to junior high and high school students and their parents about the politicization that is occurring in the public school system and what should be done about that.

  • I have some very radical suggestions, I would say, which I am not putting forth lightly.

  • I think that it is time for public school students and their parents to actively rebel against the indoctrination that is being offered in the guise of education.

  • But before such a recommendation can be reasonably offered or considered by its recipients, some careful argumentation and review of recent events is in order.

  • So please bear with me while I walk through that process.

  • It's important to get these things right and not to rush.

  • About a year ago, actually, on September 27th 2000 and 16 I made a series of videos.

  • One of them criticized a new piece of federal legislation bill see, 16 Bill C 16 is, and I'm reading this directly from the government website and act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code.

  • Here's the summary.

  • This enactment amends the Canadian Human Rights Act to add gender identity and gender expression to the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination.

  • The enactment also amends the criminal code to extend the protection against hate propaganda set out in that act to any section of the public that is distinguished by gender, identity or expression.

  • And you clearly set out that evidence that an offense was motivated by bias, prejudice or hate based on gender identity or expression constitutes an aggravating circumstance that a court must take into consideration when it imposes a sentence.

  • Now you may notice on careful reading that the act modifies the criminal code to clearly set out that evidence that an offense was motivated by bias, prejudice or hate extends the purview of what might constitute hate to a degree, that's, I think, completely unacceptable.

  • But that's the least of the problems with this bill.

  • You can't really tell what the other problems are, though, unless you go read the policy guidelines that were established by the on Terry Human Rights Commission, which already guide interpretation of similar legislation in Ontario and would be used by the federal government's own admission to guide the interpretation of Bill.

  • See 16 now, when I made the videos.

  • I said as much.

  • I said that there were two fundamental dangers to this bill.

  • One was that because the on Terry Human Rights Commission is a radical and dangerous organization bent on producing the most punitive possible policies in the pursuit of its radical neo Marxist postmodern agenda, that the legislation would introduce the possibility of persecution or, let's say, prosecution for so called offenses that should never be considered within the proper domain of legal prosecution Now.

  • I also objected to the manner in which the relationship between biological sex, gender identity, gender expression and sexual orientation was written into the Ontario Human rights commissions policies and therefore essentially into the law, pointing out that the law now demands that we consider those four different phenomena as essentially independent when they are in fact very tightly causally late and as well that the claim that's being made both implicit and explicit.

  • That those four sets of phenomena differ within each strata as a consequence of socialization, in fact is also wrong, but also undermines the primary arguments that transsexual people and gay people used to buttress the reality of the our identity.

  • Namely, that they have a biological proclivity that directs them towards such identities, expressions and orientations.

  • I pointed all of those things out and that we were in danger of legislating compelled speech in relationship to preferred pronounce, which are the pronouns that people who very in their gender identity, hypothetically want to use to be referred to.

  • I pointed out that we were in danger of making compelled speech something required in Canada, so that for the first time in our history and in the history of the British Common law, the government would be able to legislate the content of your speech, which is quite different than legislating what you can't say, which is already something that's very dangerous.

  • There are a variety of consequences of making this video, which were much more dramatic than I presume they might be.

  • Although I did know that Bill See 16 posed a genuine threat to the integrity of our state now.

  • The first consequence was that a very large number of faculty members at the University of Toronto decided that I had made the campus an unsafe place by my statements and petitioned the university to do something about that.

  • And then there were a number of demonstrations.

  • And then the University of Toronto sent me two letters telling me that I was violating their policies and probably the law in Ontario, which was something I had warned about, by the way, because the law was written in such a dismal manner and over inclusive manner to ensure that even criticizing it could be prosecuted under its guidelines, let's say.

  • And then there was a debate that the university held where defenders of Bill See 16 insisted that I was all the terrible things that I had been called and that I was misinterpreting the bill and that the dangers that I foresaw as a consequence of its implementation would never manifest themselves rather than to address himself to the scientific evidence concerning gender identity and expression.

  • And by adopting rhetorical strategies more common to Breitbart news dot com than a university professor's lecture, Dr Peterson goes on to discredit the very constructs on political grounds instead of on grounds provided by scholarly evidence that these constructs are in no particular order leftist, radical and politically correct.

  • On the subject of pronouns and gender expression, Dr Peterson is emphatic.

  • That quote, I don't recognize another person's right to determine what pronounce I used to address them.

  • I won't do it for the vast majority of people.

  • He goes on to say, gender identity and sexual orientation, and I guess he means sex are the same thing.

  • End quote.

  • As for the definition of transgender, Dr Peterson claims that, and I quote, I don't believe that they thes people.

  • These terms stand for good things.

  • I think that these people use these terms as a pretense that they stand for good things as a pretext for them to continue their nefarious activities.

  • End quote.

  • Well, this is hardly the stuff of academic scholarship.

  • And now I should say to the university's credit, by the way, that once they got on their feet after sending me the original two letters, they seem to have come down quite strongly on the side of free speech in the last year.

  • And so that's something positive that's come out of all of this.

  • But and the truth of the matter was that I am none of those things and that I had read the bill and its surrounding policies extremely carefully and what's worse, actually understood them and that what I had done was merely communicate my understanding.

  • And I would say my proper, an accurate understanding of the bill to a public that was actually quite willing to take the time to investigate the issue and follow it carefully.

  • The press initially was very ambivalent towards me.

  • But as some of the leading journalists in Canada, including Christie, Blatchford, Antonella, are too so and eventually Conrad Black and also Margaret went early, listen to the videos that I had made it and then actually read that policies in question.

  • They understood that the bill did in fact pose a threat, just free speech in the manner that I had described and came out very strongly on my side.

  • Now I have some sympathy for the fact that I was tarred with a variety of epithets immediately after having made the video, because I was warning that there was something not good going on in Canada, and whenever anybody warrants that, you should be skeptical of them because Canada has been a very stable and well functioning state for a very long period of time.

  • So when someone pops out of his rabbit hole or comes out of his swamp, Let's safe and says There's something rotten in the state of Denmark.

  • The proper response is no, there's probably something wrong with you and then the next investigative strategies to say Well, here is a bunch of things that are typically wrong with people that have something wrong with, um, bigoted transphobic, racist, etcetera.

  • Maybe you're one of those things, and so we'll throw those at you and see if they stick, because if they stick, then we don't have to pay any attention to the problem and maybe it will go away.

  • But the truth of the matter is that I was and am none of those things.

  • I was fortunate because there was evidence that that was the case.

  • I have videotaped virtually everything I've said to students in the entire 25 years of my university tenure, and so everything that I thought was a matter of public record and I had posted it on YouTube in the form of hundreds of lectures.

  • Not only is there nothing scurrilous and self damning in those videos, it's quite the contrary.

  • People have found the content extremely useful from a psychological perspective, and that's now up into the millions of people.

  • And so it turns out that I'm not the bad guy of the supporters of this bill's imagination.

  • Now, the other tactic employed by the people who have Bean unhappy about what I have been saying is too assumed that I'm an all right or even a far right figure, which is on accusation that has been leveled at me many times in the last year.

  • And there's also a reason for that.

  • The reason for that is that the group of people to the right of the radical left is a very large group.

  • And it includes everyone from Socialists, say, of the classic 19 seventies type all the way to the most far right Nazis imaginable, who are all united in their opposition to the radical left agenda and thus form what you might describe as a group by default.

  • Now, the fact that some of the members of a group by default are unsavory characters does not demonstrate that all of the members of that group are of that type.

  • Now it's very convenient for the radical left and much more straightforward than actually formulating arguments to assume that everyone who doesn't think exactly what they think is some sort of monstrous figure, but it happens to not be the case.

  • There are many reasonable people, in fact, a vast majority of reasonable people who are firmly opposed to the agenda of the radical left, and it's completely unreasonable to lump them in with all right, far right and not see type figures.

  • Part of the reason that the postmodern neo Marxist find themselves compelled to do so is because they believe that they are correct and that they have right on their side.

  • And if it turns out that anyone reasonable is objecting, then the fact of that reasonable opposition would make it necessary for some things to be rethought.

  • And so it's much easier.

  • And I would also say, much more gratifying to an inner sense of resentment and vengefulness to merely tar everyone who doesn't agree with the same brush and the argument be damned.

  • This brings us to the most fundamental reason why there has bean such vociferous opposition generated in relationship to what I've been saying, and that's because I got the interpretation of Bill See 16 and its surrounding policies and the pernicious, postmodern neo Marxist doctrine that gave rise to it, essentially correct.

  • And it's in the best interest of those who are pushing this pernicious doctor and its legislative consequences to do everything possible to discredit me so that the facts of the matter remain hidden from the general public and perhaps even from those who have formulated the doctor in themselves.

  • So I read Bill See 16 and the surrounding policies that would guide its interpretation, as formulated by the on Terry Human Rights Commission.

  • And then I informed the public to the best of my ability about the content of that legislation and policies and its intent, and we've outlined the consequences.

  • Two major questions remain.

  • Is what I had to say to be trusted.

  • And if I was correct in my analysis and diagnosis, what steps should be taken now, if any, to rectify the situation?

  • So let's begin with the question of whether or not my interpretation is to be trusted, and we'll start that with, uh, brief overview and then an analysis of the recent events at Wilfred Laureate University, as you may know, or may not know but should know.

  • At Wilfred Laurier University recently, a teaching assistant named Lindsey Shepherd found herself in hot water because she had the temerity to play.

  • A video clip from TV owes the agenda in the class that she was charged with.

  • Conducted as a consequence of playing the video clip, she was brought in front of a disciplinary panel consisting of three individuals.

  • Nathan, Rambo Cana, Herbert Pimlott and Adria.

  • Joel Rambo.

  • Cana and Pimlott are professors in the communications department at Wilfred Laurier University, and Andrea Joel is an administrator who was hired as a consequence of legislation introduced by Kathleen Wynne to conduct exactly the sort of disciplinary investigation that she sat in on.

  • Now.

  • Lindsey Shepherd had the presence of mind and the fear to tape the disciplinary hearing, and after the story about what had happened was released, Lindsay released the entire audiotape and caused a national and international scandal.

  • It would be interested to see the original complaint for complaints because, like, I don't really have any context like what exactly?

  • Their problem was?

  • Sorry.

  • Sorry to drop.

  • Could I just ask you anything to just provide us with a story?

  • Yeah, I just like to hear the whole like your wood.

  • What?

  • What?

  • What took place so if you just give us Yeah, And then and then sorry, but I just feel that I'm just sitting in Yeah.

  • Okay, So, um, way have to teach about grammar.

  • And in the Pearson book, there was a section about pronouns and using, like, gender language, so I wanted to make it more engaging.

  • So what I did is we were talking about, um, in papers, using hey, as I was, like, a singular.

  • And then we're also talking about, like, his and hers and like, how to construct sentences with that.

  • And then to contextualize that I brought up like a YouTube debate.

  • So debate with both sides during Peterson sides, and this fellow named Nicholas Matt who is also a profit, UT and they did you have a name of you?

  • It was from the agenda with Steve Pagan.

  • What's in a name?

  • Potentially a great deal.

  • University of Toronto psychology professor Jordan Peterson has a fight on his hands after objecting to propose legislation that he says would violate his freedom of speech by forcing him to address transgender people using the pronouns of their choosing.

  • Joining us now to better understand the issue and debate what's at stake in Vancouver, British Columbia.

  • Sharon Meyer, Transgender pundit and Youtuber in the nation's capital.

  • Kyle Kirk, Up, professor of law at the University of Ottawa and here in Studio.

  • The aforementioned Jordan Peterson, professor.

  • Psychology, University of Toronto.

  • Nicholas Matt, Lecturer, transgender studies at U.

  • Of T.

  • And Mary Rogan, whose article entitled Growing Up Trans, is featured in the October issue of The Walrus magazine.

  • Good to have you three here and our two friends and points beyond.

  • We appreciate everybody being on the program for what is, I think, one of the hottest topics in the country today.

  • Professor Peterson, and it's all because of you.

  • And I think before we go any further with our conversation here, I want to give people a sense of how hot this has got, starting on the downtown campus of the University of Toronto.

  • Well, as you can see that your own it's a free speech are capable of making a Lord's inarticulate noise.

  • Free speech is the mechanism by which we keep our society bunch.

  • By doing that, you're pulling going to post this online that you would like people to not to be to be more accommodating of trans people and people of color at your events.

  • In future, I was like, I'm a person of color, and I felt very common here.

  • There have been multiple, multiple recorded instances trans people killing themselves because because they are because they're lobbying, integrated into society.

  • If it wasn't for this law, didn't I ask you to be with you?

  • Why do you have the authority to determine whether or not an individual is worthy of you using their pronoun?

  • Like if I asked you, would you please use the components for me?

  • What?

  • What?

  • It would depend on what you want us to jump.

  • Those are my pronoun.

  • Okay, with indulgence of everybody else on the program.

  • I'm going to start with Professor Peterson off the top here for a while.

  • Because, as I suggested, you thought long and hard about this.

  • You posted ah few things up to YouTube because you had been thinking long and hard about it.

  • 1.5 1,000,000 hits later, Jordan.

  • 1.5 1,000,000 hits later.

  • This has become a huge issue.

  • So let's start there.

  • Why did you post those views to YouTube in the first place?

  • well, there's approximate and distal reasons.

  • Approximate reasons was because I received some correspondents from from from clients of mine who had bean, I would say, persecuted in a variety of ways by people who were politically correct.

  • And they sent me some documentation about Bill See 16 and the Associated Policy Statements on the on Terror Human Rights Commission, which I read and was not very happy about.

  • Um, and also because the University of Toronto decided to make anti racism and anti bias training, so called anti racism and anti bias training mandatory, which I regarded as an inappropriate incursion into the domain of political opinion by the university administration.

  • Have you taken that training yet?

  • No.

  • And I don't have to yet.

  • It's it's the HR department personnel that have to take it if they decide that you have to, will you?

  • No way, Not a chance.

  • And what's the other referred to persecution that friends are clients of yours had experienced.

  • Yeah.

  • Yeah, well, there are lots of places now where the workplace has become, I would say, excessively politicized.

  • And so people who have viewpoints and this also involves includes, I would say, fairly radical leftist, few points.

  • People don't feel comfortable at all in being able to use the language of their choice or to have even opinions about a variety of different things.

  • Essentially, I guess what I'm asking is to lay the case.

  • What what is it you find offensive about this legislation?

  • Well, fundamentally, there were two things that really bothered me, although there have been other things I've thought about since one was that I was being asked, as everyone is, to use a certain set of words that I think are the constructions of people who have a political ideology, that I don't believe it and that I also regard is as dangerous one of those words, those air the made up words to that that people now describe as as gender neutral.

  • And so to me, there, there, there they're an attempt to control language and in a direction that isn't happening organically.

  • It's not happening naturally.

  • People aren't picking up these words in the typical way that new words air picked up, but by force and by fiat, and I would say by force, because there's legislative power behind them.

  • So I don't like these made up words Z and Tzar and that sort of thing.

  • What about they're not all made up?

  • Were quote unquote made up words.

  • For example, they is one of them.

  • Yeah, but we speak to an individual's they right, But we can't dispense with the distinction between singular and plural.

  • I mean, I know that the advocates of that particular approach say that they has been used forever as a singular, and that's actually not correct.

  • It's used as a singular and very exceptional circumstances.

  • So we understand your views and where you're coming from.

  • You decided to lay these views out in some YouTube discourses.

  • Yes, you put them up.

  • The response has been overwhelming.

  • Did you anticipate that you would get this kind of feedback?

  • No, There was no way of anticipating this.

  • And I think you mentioned in the intro.

  • You know that this is a consequence of what I've done, and I don't think that's true.

  • It's a it's a consequence of the fact that I thought about it, and I think the right metaphor is that you know there's a large forest and it's being a hot, dry summer or maybe a drought, and there's plenty of Deadwood gathered and I lit a spark.

  • And you can't blame the forest fire on the spark.

  • There is out there an appetite against political correctness, which is what you have described this as, in fact, your YouTube videos called Professor Against Political Correctness.

  • But let's make sure we're all speaking the same language here.

  • You would define that.

  • How political correctness.

  • Well, I think it's a particular kind of ideological game, and I think the outcome is twofold.

  • It's to make the player feel morally superior and also to take rather serious act swings at the foundation of society.

  • And so the game is identify a domain of human endeavor.

  • Note that there's a distribution of success.

  • Some people are doing comparatively better, and some people are doing comparatively worse.

  • Define those doing worse, his victims defined.

  • That was doing better as perpetrators identify with the victims.

  • Have yourself ah, set of enemies handy to vent your resentment on feel good about it, even though it didn't really require any work on your part and then endlessly repeat Georgian.

  • Let's do one more question here, and then we'll get everybody else into the conversation.

  • You know, of course, that since this story broke, you've been called a lot of things.

  • Yeah, um, one of which is a trans fobo.

  • Yeah.

  • Some people have accused you of using the free speech issue to mask what's really going on here, which is an attempt to deprive other people of what they believe are their legitimate rights.

  • Well, I don't want to give you the opportunity to speak to whether or not you are a transformer.

  • Well, I can tell you that I've received more letters from transsexual people supporting me than opposing me, and I never said anything really about transsexual people about their existence.

  • Although that was the first thing that I was accused of doing.

  • I didn't say that transsexual people didn't exist.

  • I said that gender identity, gender expression and biological sex do not very independently, which they don't and so on.

  • This issue is in some sense only peripherally about about transsexual issues.

  • It's more centrally about gender issues, and then on top of that, and I think it's the biggest issue is is that it's a free speech issue.

  • Okay, let us continue to explore all of those issues that you have just raised and um, why don't we do this?

  • Let's take a moment.

  • We're gonna explain a few basic things here.

  • The issue of so called non traditional pronouns goes together with nontraditional gender identities.

  • New York City, for example, recognizes 31 such gender expressions.

  • In other words, besides man and woman, there are 29 other gender expressions.

  • For example, pan gender, queer gender, gender fluid, cross dresser, bi gendered gender blender and the list goes on.

  • And Nicholas, this is where I want to bring you into the discussion because you teach this.

  • You teach trans study.

  • So if you would give us a brief primer on so many gender identities that, in your view require non traditional pronounce.

  • Basically, it's not correct that there is such a thing as biological sex.

  • And I'm a historian of medicine.

  • I can unpack that for you at great length if you want, but in the interest of time, I won't.

  • So that's a very popular misconceptions.

  • It was like a YouTube debate was one hour long, but I showed about five minutes, and then some.

  • I mean, the students were we're very interested.

  • I could tell that all of their eyes around the screen.

  • And after when we had a debate, there were people of all opinions.

  • And like from from what I could see, it was a very friendly debate.

  • Obviously, this person who had an issue did not express it to me.

  • They just went straight to whoever I don't.

  • I don't really know what happened, so I'm just for some additional contact.

  • So you come you came from you t that right?

  • No, no.

  • Oh, fer.

  • Recipe info from you.

  • Okay, so you worked like one of Jordan's teachers and students.

  • So just to give you some context that George Peterson is, he is, Ah, figure that basically highly involved with the all right.

  • He lectures about basically, like critiquing of feminism, critiquing trends, right?

  • I mean, I'm familiar.

  • Like I prophesy.

  • I follow.

  • Not pretty.

  • You know, the thing is, can you shield people from those ideas?

  • Am I supposed to comfort them and make sure that they're insulated away from this?

  • Like, is that with the point of this is because to me, that is so against what a university is about.

  • So against it.

  • I was not taking sides.

  • I was presenting both arguments.

  • So the thing of it is about fists is if you're presenting something like this, it, uh you have to think about the kind of teaching climate that you're creating.

  • And this is actually these arguments are counter to the Canadian human rights code.

  • Ever since I know that you talked about, um see, 16 ever since this past, it is discriminatory to be targeting someone due to their gender identity or gender expression.

  • So bringing something like that up in class, not critically.

  • And I understand that you're trying to like it was critical, but I introduced it critically.

  • Household like like I said, it was in the spirit of debate.

  • Okay, in the spirit of the debate is slightly different than being like Okay, this is this is a problematic idea that we want what we want to unpack.

  • But that's taking sides like it's taking sides for me to be like, Oh, look at this guy.

  • Like everything that comes out of the mountains B s but gonna watch anyway.

  • So I understand the position they're coming from in your position ality.

  • But the reality is that it has created a toxic climate or some of the students you know how many?

  • It's great.

  • Like how many?

  • One.

  • Yeah, I have.

  • No, I have no concept of like how many people complain like what their complaint was.

  • You haven't showed me the complaint.

  • Yes, I I understand that this is upsetting, but there's also confidential, confident confidentiality matters.

  • The number of people's especial.

  • Yes, yeah, is one or multiple students who have come forward saying that this is something that they were concerned about and then it made them uncomfortable.

  • If this is, for example, a trans student, this is basically debating whether or not Trans Student should have rights within one of their classes.

  • Um, and that's not something that is really acceptable in the context of the kind of learning environment that we're trying to create.

  • It would be the equivalent of debating whether or not, uh, you know, a student of cover should have right so or should be allowed to be married.

  • Do you see?

  • Worried like how this is not It's not something like that's intellectually neutral, that it's kind of up for debate.

  • I mean, this is the Charter of Rights, but it is up for debate.

  • But, I mean, you're perfectly welcome to your own opinions.

  • But when you're bringing it into the context of the classroom, that can become problematic.

  • And I could become something that is that creates an unsafe learning environment for students.

  • But when they leave the university, they're gonna be exposed to these ideas.

  • So I don't see how I'm doing a disservice to the class by exposing them to ideas that are really out there.

  • And I'm sorry.

  • I'm crying.

  • I'm stressed out because this, to me, is so wrong.

  • You can imagine the 100 violence, gender and sexual violence.

  • Yes, please.

  • So, under that, um, it does Joyner violence of just include sexual violence, but it also includes charming folks based on gender s O.

  • That includes transfer Leah bi phobia, homophobia, all those sorts of things I protected under the policy until those are things that Lori has upheld as values as well as the interior human rights coat.

  • And so those are things that we're responsible for, Uh, not, um impacting her students in that way, I'm not, um, not spreading transformed yet.

  • Okay, So what I have a problem is I didn't target anybody who did.

  • I target tress looks how?

  • By telling my ideas that are really out there by telling them that.

  • But Linda, really, it's It's not just telling them in legitimizing this as a valid perspective, as this is another valid perspective, the university of all perspectives are valid.

  • That's not necessarily true.

  • Well, this this is something to think of it in current society, and I don't feel the need to shield people from what's going on in society.

  • Like to imagine that this is happening in university.

  • It's just bad.

  • Okay, so just to give you a context also within all of this is happening.

  • Um, Laurie is being blinded with white supremacist posters.

  • Currently, there's another debate in society, which is whether or not North America should be a set of white nationalist states and that it should be ethnically cleanse off other people.

  • That is also a current debate society.

  • Would you show something in your tutorial that you had, you know, white supremacists and non white supremacists debating whether or not other people should live in North America?

  • Is that something that you would show if that was related to the content of the week and we were talking about right wing see troubles.

  • Maybe it depends on the content.

  • Like I mean, if there's really ideas that are existing out there like that, then I mean, look, the thing is like, I don't see what's transphobic about showing a video during Peterson.

  • He's a real person.

  • He's that he's out there.

  • He's a real person, but he's a real person who hasn't aged in targeted behavior that oh are targeting of Trans students in particular, like like basically docks ing them if you know the term, like giving out their personal information so that they will be attacked, harassed so that death threats will find them, there's something that he has done to his own students has done the other students on.

  • This is also something that the students are aware of.

  • So this is this is basically like playing not too kind of do the thing where everything is time.

  • Compared to that, Hitler was like neutrally playing a speech by Hitler or Milo Yiannopoulos from Gamergate.

  • This is the kind of thing that depart mentally in terms of critical communication studies and in terms of the course of what we're trying to do, is diametrically opposed to everything that we've been talking about in the lectures, faculty and administration at Wilfred Laurier University reacted in the number of different manners to the release of this tape information.

  • I'm going to first read you some excerpts from the independent Fact finding report commissioned by Wilfred Laurie University President Deborah McClatchy.

  • She said, I believe it is time for some clarity around the events of the past few weeks here, a TTE Wilfred Laurier University stemming from the very regrettable meeting that followed the showing of a TV Oh clip by a teaching assistant during a tutorial.

  • There were numerous errors in judgment made in the handling of the meeting with Ms Lindsey Shepherd, the ta of the tutorial in question.

  • In fact, the meeting never should have happened at all.

  • No formal complaint nor informal concern relative to a lorry.

  • A policy was registered aboutthe screening of the video.

  • This was confirmed in the fact finding report.

  • There was no wrongdoing on the part of Miss Shepherd in showing the clip from TV.

  • Oh, in her tutorial, showing a TV Oh clip for the purposes of an academic discussion is a reasonable classroom teaching tool.

  • 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 courts.

  • The ensuing discussion also needs to be handled properly.

  • We have no reason to believe this discussion was not handled well in the tutorial in question.

  • So after Deborah McClatchy commissioned an independent fact finder, Lindsay Shepherd was completely exonerated.

  • I'll put a link to where you can read the university president's entire response to the disciplinary meeting in question.

  • Now this is how Debra McClatchy sums the situation up for those who have chosen to use this incident as an indictment of Wilfred Laurie University or the plight of Canadian universities in general, I say your assertion is unreasonable and unfounded.

  • Well, that really is the question, isn't it?

  • Was this a unique occurrence consequence of the misbehavior, shall we say of to ill informed professors and an administrator?

  • Or was this actually diagnostic of the genuine state of Canadian universities?

  • Perhaps universities in the Western world?

  • We have to review the evidence at hand.

  • First, we have what happened at Wilfred Laurie itself.

  • I would like to point out that the events there were more serious and less predictable even than what I had warned about.

  • When I made my original video, I assumed that people would be could be prosecuted for failure to use preferred pronouns.

  • And I was objecting to that as ah example of compelled speech.

  • But I never imagined that a teaching assistant would be accused of breaking provincial and federal laws.

  • Bill See 16 specifically for daring to show a video about people discussing such issues on a public television station and then also accused of being a transformer, which is, let it be noted now a crime under the criminal code provision of Bill See 16.

  • Furthermore, in the aftermath of her release of this discussion, Shepherd was accused of all of the right wing attributes that had been leveled at me, all of which are also arguably prosecutable.

  • Under the pages of Bill See 16.

  • Now we don't want to under emphasized the importance of this.

  • Remember that these were two factory members and as well, an administrator, Adri Joel, who was hired precisely for this purpose.

  • So that's the first piece of evidence.

  • Next, we might consider the response from others at Wilfred Laurier University itself, as well as professors and pundits outside that university in other departments and institutions.

  • I'm going to start with a letter that was written by 20 members of the Department of Communication Studies at Wilfred Laurier, which is the same department that houses Rambo, Cana and Pimlott.

  • Here's what they had to say about the matter.

  • I'm going to paraphrase a meeting with Shepherd was secretly recorded and sent to the media.

  • Buy that ta This act sparked columns and op EDS that rushed to assess the meeting generalizing from this single event a diagnosis of our program, the university and the state of higher education in Canada.

  • We welcome the widening range of perspectives on this situation that are beginning to emerge in the public sphere.

  • We recognize that the meeting was mishandled.

  • We specifically acknowledged the power imbalance in the meeting, as Dr Rambo Cana acknowledged in his open letter to his t A.

  • In future meetings, where serious matters pertaining to the conduct of th they're under discussion, we acknowledge that students should be encouraged to bring someone representing them and their interests.

  • We would support a graduate student initiative to unionize T A's, which could provide student employees with a grievance process and other forms of support in cases such as this one as we understand it.

  • Doctor Rambo Cana did not operate unilaterally when he called a meeting with his t A.

  • Rather, we believe he acted in response to a disclosure made by one or more students to university office is set up to provide confidential support.

  • Upon being notified of this disclosure, Dr Rambo Kanna as course instructor, understood that he had a responsibility to act in line with university policies, including those laid out in the gender and sexual violence policy.

  • Not going to interject here for a minute.

  • That's a very interesting point because President McClatchy has basically complained that Rambo, Cana and Pimlott and Jule herself acted outside the policies that the university has established.

  • However, the faculty members, writing in support of their colleagues, claim that the reason that Rambo can and Pimlott and Julhas well acted in the manner they did was because they were following those policies.

  • So which is it now?

  • Here's my two cents.

  • For what it's worth, my suspicions are that the policies are written so badly, like Bill See 16 itself and the surrounding policies at the Ontario Human Rights Commission that either of those interpretations are possible.

  • It's convenient for the university to disavow responsibility for the actions of its faculty member and its administrators.

  • And it's convenient for the factory members and administrators to say that they were just following policy.

  • And it's not clear at all that the independent fact finding counsel has settled out to anyone's satisfaction.

  • Either way, it's serious business back to the letter.

  • While the free speech of a single individual has dominated discussions surrounding this situation, academic freedom is also a decisive term.

  • In this context, Dr Ram Buchanan exercises academic freedom as a course supervisor by setting parameters for the multiple tutorials that supplement his lecture.

  • It is within the scope of a supervising professors academic freedom to have workplace meetings with D.

  • A's regarding how coarse material is taught.

  • All right, so I have to interject again.

  • It isn't obvious to me that this meeting with Shepherd constituted a normative workplace meeting with a TA regarding how coarse material is taut, and the fundamental reason for that is the appearance at the meeting of the administrator, Adria Joel, as well as the numerous accusations that were level that shepherd, So I think that that sentences disingenuous at best.

  • We maintain that the use of materials that invite controversy into the classroom need to be approached with pedagogical care and forethought.

  • Public debates about freedom of expression, while valuable, can have a silencing effect on the free speech of other members of the public.

  • We uphold the rights of trans, non binary and queer folk to be addressed in our classrooms in ways that they define those in positions of authority in the classroom.

  • Faculty instructors teaching assistants are not sitting equally around the table with students.

  • Instead, they have a responsibility to foster an environment of mutual respect and critical thinking.

  • One wearing student should never feel that either their grades are their well being could be impacted because of their gender, sexuality, race class or any other facet of their identity.

  • We appreciate that our university has mechanism through which students who feel unsafe, unfairly treated or have experienced intolerance in the classroom or otherwise in the role of students, can make appeals and find support and resources to help them.

  • We also acknowledge that we can do a better job of making students aware of these mechanisms.

  • We're always so grateful when students do approach.

  • Campus office is designed for reporting problematic classroom situations as their courage makes us do our jobs better.

  • We thank you for coming forward.

  • You are such valued members of our community.

  • Charges that are programs shelter students from real world issues or Foster's classrooms inhospitable to discussing contentious issues from different vantage points seem to us simply preposterous.

  • We reject efforts of those who have seized this episode as a strategic opportunity to disparage disciplines and scholars with commitments to improving social and economic equality within universities and in society at large.

  • Commentary on this event in the press and social media has emboldened individuals who see themselves as noble defenders of free speech to intimidate our faculty and students to the point that protective measures have been taken in an attempt to secure their safety.

  • Okay, so another bit of commentary is necessary there.

  • So there was a concerted effort made by the neo Marxist postmodern radical leftist types to paint Lindsay Shepherd as the perpetrator and the faculty members and administrator who were involved in this issue as the true victims.

  • And that's where this spit of conceptualization is coming from.

  • Perhaps the most remarkable of such comments about Shepherd was broadcast on our national broadcaster, CBC TV Sunday Scrum, where a number of journalists Vicky, Mo Shama, John Ibbotson and Susan Riley were discussing people of the year.

  • It was Vicky Mo Shama that made the comments that I've clipped John, who would your pick B?

  • Another young woman, Vincey Shepherd, who we have heard a lot about.

  • She was a young teaching assistant, that Loria University, who was called on the carpet for showing a video of Jordan Peterson.

  • And it was the recording of that disciplinary hearing that went viral and that really exploded the whole issue of the debate that's occurring within the social sciences and humanities on the right, of freedom of expression, the right of freedom of research versus the right of protection, the right to safe spaces, the right not to be subject to aggression.

  • This is a virulent debate that's happening on university campuses across the country.

  • Some of us have written about it in the past, but has to be said, uh, no matter where you are in this debate, it was Miss Shepherd, and that and that tape that blew this entire issue open and made it part of the national discourse.

  • And for that she deserves great credit, disagree.

  • I think that she is someone that exists, and I think a lot of people responded to her for the same reasons.

  • They tend to respond to things, which is that she's a young, crying white girl.

  • But there are lots of moments in which the academic freedom conversation could have been hot and guts has been skipped over serially.

  • And I don't think that she's the appropriate person to have launched this conversation because, as it turned out, she leans hard, right and some of her choices.

  • Well, whether you like machines or not, we're having this debate here on this show now, and we're having it because of Miss Shepherd back to the letter against this politics of revenge, We acknowledge the moral imperative to support and protect our colleagues and students.

  • We urge our colleagues at Lori and beyond to monitor carefully how this event has been framed and taken up another bit of commentary for me.

  • I would also encourage colleagues at Lori and beyond to monitor carefully how this event has been framed and taken up.

  • I guess that's exactly what I'm doing now.

  • We agree with Lorries president that we live in an increasingly polarized world, understanding the forces and discontent driving this polarization, including how they're it, play in this situation and with what consequences is a collective task in which we all have a stake.

  • And 20 undersigned, faculty and affiliate members of the Department of Communication Studies signed this.

  • Although the signatories of this letter admit that the meeting was mishandled, they do not say much about how, with the exception that shepherd was not provided with independent counsel or support.

  • To the contrary, they state that Rambo Cana at all were simply following university policies put in place as quote mechanism, through which students who feel unsafe, unfairly treated or have experienced intolerance in the classroom or otherwise in the rule as a student can make appeals and find support and resources to help them.

  • Thus, although McClatchy and these letter writers both claim in their way that this incident is not Diagnostic of the State of the Quote program, the university and the State of Higher Education in Canada, both the statement from McClatchy and the Department of Communications indicate, in fact, that something has gone deeply and profoundly wrong.

  • Ram Buchanan's calling state that Rambo Cana Pimlott at all did nothing wrong except Shepherd's lack of independent representation.

  • And if they did do something wrong, it was merely because they were following policy, which was laudatory and admirable in its intent, if not in its implementation.

  • Now the Wilfred Laurie, a faculty association, also weighed in on this issue.

  • And here's the gist of what they had to say.

  • I'll put a link to the entire letter in the description of this video, but this is what they considered most worthy of note.

  • To be clear.

  • W L U f a condemns the violent speech and actions that have unfortunately become a daily occurrence on our campuses.

  • In particular, the harm that has been leveled at our trans community and its supporters is unacceptable.

  • W ell you FAA stands in solidarity with r l G B T Q T community as they continue to battle their way through walls of ignorance and oppression, walls that seem to have bean disproportionately fortified in the last few weeks.

  • So that's commentary on the Lindsay Shepherd affair from the faculty association representing all of the professors at Wilfred Laurier University.

  • No comment whatsoever of substance on the nature of the meeting itself, only an expression of concern for the hypothetically and very poorly documented by the way unsafe conditions for factually and students that have arisen at Wilfred Laurier University in the aftermath of the release of Shepherds tape of the meeting.

  • Now I said that I was speaking to junior high and high school students at the beginning of this video, and so far I've only talked about the state of our universities.

  • But I'm doing this in providing this extensive background because universities provide the teachers for our public schools as well as the destination place for the most academically able of the students who come through the school system.

  • Thus, before making my recommendations which I will do with all seriousness, I have to document my discontent thoroughly.

  • I'm therefore going to talk about the response to the Shepherd of Fair outside of Wilfred Laureate University before returning to the point at hand.

  • I'm doing that to demonstrate that the state of affairs indicated by Lindsay Shepherd's tape is by no means unique to Wilfred Laurier itself.

  • I'm going to start with a few video clips featuring Professor Renaldo Wall Caught of the Women and Gender Studies Institute at the Ontario Institute for the Studies of Education.

  • These clips are taken once again, interestingly enough, from TV owes thehe agenda with Steve Paykan.

  • All caught recently appeared on the agenda to discuss the events I'm speaking with you about today.

  • I chose to highlight Wall caught because he's director of the Women and Gender Studies Institute at the Arterial Institute for the Studies of Education and noisy as it's known, is perhaps the most influential educational institute concerned with public school curriculum in all of Canada and therefore an organization whose decisions are of critical importance for determining the nature of what's taught from kindergarten all the way through high school, not only in Ontario but because of its influence all across Canada and perhaps beyond.

  • I firmly believe that Wall Carts attitude is indicative of the ideological stance that characterizes the philosophy that is taught to those who will be the teachers of young people in the public school system in Canada from kindergarten through high school.

  • The incidents that Wilfred Laurier University have certainly provoked a debate within academia and beyond on finding that sweet spot between freedom of expression and respecting the diversity of the student body.

  • Is it possible to satisfy both of those legitimate aims?

  • Let's find out, Can we welcome in alphabetical order?

  • Shannon Day, professor of philosophy, University of Waterloo.

  • Emmett McFarland, professor of political science, University of Waterloo.

  • Thomas Merit Canada Research chair in Genomics and Bioinformatics at Laurentian University in Sudbury.

  • Janice Stein, founding director of the Monks School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto.

  • And Rinaldo Walcott, associate professor in Social Justice education at Noisy, the Ontario Institute for Studies and Education.

  • Okay, so a couple of things one is that I take the long, long view on this.

  • So what we're actually seeing today in 2017 is a long cultural ward had new wage in the university in the sixties, when women's studies and I happen to be the director of women's studies.

  • At the same in the first years, Janice convenience studies and black studies broke into the North American University.

  • It's been a consistent push against them from the sixties until the present.

  • I'm part of this debate around free speech around academic freedom are ways to diminish the fundamental impact that women's studies and black studies and other ethnic studies has had on the university all the way up to having women.

  • That's presidents and women.

  • That's vice presidents in our institutions.

  • I teach difficult material all the time.

  • My students don't have to give trigger warnings.

  • I don't have to do any of that.

  • It's not about what's in your books that's at stake here.

  • It's about a reframing of the university where people like myself, indigenous people, queer people are making a demand on an institution that had hated to previously locked us out.

  • And we're seeing that our voices matter, too.

  • And we're saying that the ways in which the languages of academic freedom of free and free speech have been framed in the context of the university has often provided pathways in particular for a straight white man to say really cruel, harmful, hurtful things on words do hurt, and now we're responding to that, and we're saying, No, this can't happen.

  • This can't happen in our workplaces where we come to where we come to study and so on.

  • This is a cultural War is being waged within a particular institution, and we should be extremely clear about that.

  • This is a push back against the way from which academic scholarship has actually revealed on the opinions of the university as a kind of white supremist logic are stinging.

  • Administrators jump into PR mode, not address what's happening inside university, but to quell the shouting voices largely of the right man outside you.

  • First, I see this every day at my University University, Toronto, with the ongoing Jordan Peterson matter, right?

  • The response has not been to say women's studies, black studies, African studies, thes kinds are studies have been tremendous contributions to the university.

  • Instead

Hi, everyone.

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