The head of Wilfrid Laurier University has officially apologized to teaching assistant Lindsay Shepherd for a meeting where faculty members dressed her down for showing students a video clip of a debate involving controversial professor Jordan Peterson.
“Through the media, we have now had the opportunity to hear the full recording of the meeting that took place at Wilfrid Laurier University,” says the letter from President and Vice-Chancellor Deborah MacLatchy.
“After listening to this recording, an apology is in order. The conversation I heard does not reflect the values and practices to which Laurier aspires. I am sorry it occurred in the way that it did and I regret the impact it had on Lindsay Shepherd.”
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Shepherd’s supervising professor Nathan Rambukkana also published a letter of apology, saying that “everything that has happened since the meeting has given me occasion to rethink not only my approach to discussing the concerns that day, but many of the things I said in our meeting as well.”
The meeting was called after Shepherd aired part of a 2016 debate on gender-neutral pronouns that had aired on Ontario’s public broadcaster, TVO. The debate included Peterson, who’s become famous for his opposition to being required to use such pronouns, describing them as an expression of a radical left-wing ideology.
Shepherd secretly recorded the meeting, which was organized by Rambukkana and also involved associate professor Herbert Pimlott and Adria Joel, the university’s manager of gendered violence prevention and support. Shepherd was told she had created a “toxic climate” in the class, and it was even suggested she had broken Canadian law.
Both Rambukkana and Pimlott compared airing the clips to exposing the students to Nazi propaganda.
In his letter, Rambukkana acknowledges he mishandled the meeting, and said his main concern was “finding out why a lesson on writing skills had become a political discussion, and making sure harm didn’t befall students.”
He said he failed to provide Shepherd the support she deserved in such a meeting with faculty members. “I should have seen how meeting with a panel of three people would be an intimidating situation and not invite a productive discussion,” he said.
Rambukkana also apologized for his choice of words during the meeting.
“Perhaps instead of the route I took I should have added further discussion in lecture, or supplementary readings,” he wrote. “But instead I tried to make a point about the need to contextualize difficult material, and drew on the example of playing a speech by Hitler to do it. This was, obviously, a poorly chosen example.
“I meant to use it to drive home a point about context by saying here was material that would definitely need to be contextualized rather than presented neutrally, and instead I implied that Dr. Peterson is like Hitler, which is untrue and was never my intention.”
He closes the letter by saying he looks forward to “moving past this and continue working with you as my TA and perhaps in the future.”
MacLatchy’s letter says the university is reviewing what took place, both through an independent evaluation and through a university task force.
She also expressed concern about the effect this controversy has had on the university community.
“I remain troubled by the way faculty, staff and students involved in this situation have been targeted with extreme vitriol. Supports are in place at the university to support them through this situation.”
Speaking to the National Post, Shepherd welcomed the apologies and said she felt Rambukkana’s shows self-reflection. But she also noted the university seemed forced into it, perhaps because of the numerous threats she’d seen from alumni to pull their funding.
“They’re embarrassed, obviously, and they had to do something about it,” she said, adding that she would have preferred a much clearer statement about protecting the right to debate controversial issues.
Shepherd said she hasn’t had a conversation with any university faculty or staff about the controversy since the media picked up on it, despite the fact she’s still a TA in Rambukkana’s first-year communications course.
She also said the outpouring of support — including offers to crowd-fund her, which she’s turned down — has been heartening and shows how much people care about freedom of speech, even if much of the support came from people with different political views than her own.
“Obviously the vast majority are right wing, and that’s fine,” she said. “But my question is, why doesn’t it matter for people like me who are left wing, or left-leaning, but still believe in being reasonable?”
As she’s noted multiple times, she doesn’t even agree with Peterson’s stance on pronouns.
“If someone told me that they have a pronoun that they like to use, I would just use it,” she said.
I have absolutely zero idea of what was being communicated in that article, none whatsoever.
When people become so hyper-offended by every communication that is not a 100% fit for their world view and when others- theoretically in positions of authority- cave to every single complaint and slight on behalf of most people who cannot even begin to fathom what the problem is, you wind up with this kind of gobbledeegook.
Nonsense in, nonsense out.
I agree, that was convoluted at hell.
Jordan Peterson made quite a name for himself with practical minded just turned twenty types. (For what it is worth? I think the term Millennial is about as useful in describing the generation of my son’s peers (academic and social nerds) as Baby Boomer described my own, born in late 1961, far too late to do anything with the ME generation except shake my head in disapproval when I was listening to the gossip at the hair salon with my mother getting a perm.
The University of Toronto threatened to fire Jordan from his position as Chair of Psychology when Jordan very publicly announced that HIS department would not be using any of the new gender pronouns, since it was all just bunk anyway without any real science to back it. They did not fire him, but many college professors have been disciplined for using his online 25 tp 30 minute lectures. They are really very well done.
Most of the time. A few stinkers. Everyone has them.
I think a woman played a video where a guy said he didn’t agree with using made up pronouns. Then her bosses told her she was Hitler and shouldn’t show her students Nazi propaganda. Then a recording of that meeting was released and the Hitler calling people had to apologize. Then the punch line comes in at the end where it is made clear that the woman who played the video and was accused of being Hitler has no problems using whatever made up pronoun people wish to be called.
“But my question is, why doesn’t it matter for people like me who are left wing, or left-leaning, but still believe in being reasonable?”
B-cuz libs are not reasonable you stupid twit. Even when they get smacked in the face, they still don’t get it.
Hypocrites
That wasn’t a half-hearted apology; that was a joke. In the first place, the so-called apology likely would never have happened if the meeting hadn’t been recorded.
In the second place, a sincere apology consists of:
1) acknowledgement of wrongdoing instead of trying to weasel out of it
2) admission of responsibility instead of trying to weasel out of it
3) stating what will be done to prevent a re-occurrence
4) commitment to righting the wrong
None of these are present which indicates that anything left-of-center is a mental illness indicated by their lack or responsibility and incapacity to grasp reality. They whine about the misguided perception of their actions as if they were right and the public wrong. They don’t get it and those mentally ill Libtards never will. What’s truly horrifying is they’re teaching future generations.
“That wasn’t a half-hearted apology; that was a joke…”
Yep. I had to stop reading the whole thing part way through.
The only reason they said anything at all in terms of backing things up was that their disgusting behavior was caught on tape.
The part that hits at the core of these leftist’s mental issues is when he says, ” making sure that harm did not befall the students”.
Hearing an opposing opinion or facts about imperical biological fact is somehow harmful to the snowflakes and they need protecting from it…
The insanity runs deep……
This is why you should secretly record all meetings you have with academic boards- especially if they have power over you. Always record them.
“I tried to make a point…, and drew on the example of playing a speech by Hitler to do it.
I implied that Dr. Peterson is like Hitler, which is untrue and was never my intention.”
I removed a few of the mealy-mouthed, pseudo justifications and just copied the meat of his point.
“I compared Jordan Peterson’s speech to Adolph Hitler’s speech to make a point. But I didn’t really do it and it wasn’t the point I was trying to make.”
These guys are quite the little dissemblers.
I did not say what you thought you heard me say when I was speaking. You misinterpreted.
Why are the professors so outraged at the thought of someone “exposing” their students to Nazi propaganda? Isn’t the whole POINT of education to teach someone HOW to think, and how to spot ERRONEOUS, UNJUSTIFIED and UNSUPPORTABLE thinking to begin with? If they were doing their JOBS correctly, wouldn’t playing Nazi propaganda immediately cause the students to look at ERRORS in Nazi ideas and why they are wrong?
If the professors are so against Nazi ideas why aren’t they against COMMUNIST ideas?
The bottom line is that the only people that are more insane than the trannies, are the people that are saying that trannies aren’t insane. The same people are already trying to sell pedophilia acceptance. They belong in secure psychiatric camps, someplace really isolated. If only Canada had some vast remote area, for such things.
The recording is interesting, if difficult, to wade through. Really, this should have ended with the insane twisted faggot, and everyone else, on the Deviance Enforcement Council (at what once may have been a legitimate university), being fired – along with anyone involved in creating the Deviance Enforcement Council.
It should also be noted that Miss Sheppard was subjected to the very things the Deviance Enforcement Council claims to exist to prevent, by the Deviance Enforcement Council itself.
These people are all government employees making fat salaries btw. I had to move out of Ontario I became so disgusted by this nonsense. Not much better where I ended up but still an improvement.
Any apology short of firing these dumbshits is bullshit.