Let me set this up for you. [Or you can go straight to the video. It's not hard to figure out what it's all about. Ed.] There's been quite a kerfuffle in the World's Most Diverse, Inclusive and (above all) Liberal Democracy (= the Great No-longer-white North) over a TV debate on the issues of "transgender pronouns" -- "ze", "zer", "zis" etc -- and compelled speech.
Lindsay Shepherd, a graduate student in communications (!) at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo ON, showed a discussion group a video extract of a debate between Jordan Peterson, one of Canada’s most brilliant, courageous, and rigorous academics, and transgender advocate Nicholas Matte, both of whom are professors at the University of Toronto. For the heinous offence of presenting both sides of a current public controversy, Ms Shepherd was the subject of complaint, official harassment, and a disgustingly biased kangaroo court at which she was told, in no uncertain terms, that it was "inappropriate" to expose naïve university students to the utterances of people like Prof. Peterson -- racists, sexists, homophobes, fascists, the whole lot of them!
Indeed the actual words "racism", "white supremacist" and, yes, "Hitler" were used by Ms Shepherd's accusers to indicate the seriousness of her alleged transgression. You can see where we're going with this, EH. The antifa bullies managed to reduce Ms Shepherd to tears. Fortunately, she remained composed enough to keep recording the entire "hearing". After about a week, she released the tape to the media, which gave it wide and sympathetic play, and, somewhat surprisingly, took the side of Ms Shepherd... and free speech.
Conrad Black wrote in the National Post: "Once the rock was lifted on this process and the force of public opinion could be detected, the WLU leadership wobbled and crumpled in a familiar display of instant capitulation by university administrations at the first indication of headwinds. It appears to be the modus operandi of that university in particular to surrender at once to any adversity, but it is satisfying that the university at least caved in the right direction this time, to a justly aggrieved complainant and not to the totalitarian spirit of those who arraigned her."
One of the WLU disciplinarians, Prof. Nathan Rambukkana, issued a public apology to Ms Shepherd last Monday, and WLU President and Vice-Chancellor Deborah MacLatchy followed along with her own act of contrition a day later, telling the CBC that the university regrets how the meeting between Ms Shepherd and her professors was conducted. "The issue was how — the format of — the meeting [that] was held and the discussion that went on about a question that had happened in the tutorial," she said, adding that she was "shocked" [not "shocked, SHOCKED!"? Ed.] at how Ms Shepherd was treated.
Vice-Chancellor MacLatchy went on to say that WLU is... wait for it... putting together a task force to provide an updated statement on how it should handle a situation like this. It has also launched a third-party investigation. What does Ms Shepherd have to say about this? In an interview with CBC News last Wednesday, she said she's glad Prof. Rambukkana and Ms MacLatchy have apologized, but doesn't think they had any other option. Indeed. And now to the video.
No comments:
Post a Comment