By Madeleine Kearns
Friday, June 29, 2018
You may remember hearing about Lindsay Shepherd, a former
Master’s student and teaching assistant at Wilfrid Laurier University in
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Well, she’s been back in the headlines this month
after filing a lawsuit of $3.6 million against Nathan Rambukkana, Herbert
Pimlott, Adria Joel, and Wilfrid Laurier University.
Shepherd came to international attention in November 2017
after she was interrogated by the aforementioned Laurier panel for showing her
class a TV clip of a Jordan Peterson debate, as part of a discussion on grammar
in Canadian society.
In the course of the interrogation — which Shepherd had
the foresight to record and make public — Rambukkana likened Peterson to
Hitler, lied by saying that a student complaint had been filed, and further
suggested that Shepherd had violated Canada’s human-rights code. The incident
became a global free-speech scandal. The university released several official
statements, including open apologies to Shepherd.
The president of Wilfrid Laurier wrote, “Let me be clear
by stating that Laurier is committed to the abiding principles of freedom of
speech and freedom of expression. Giving life to these principles while respecting
fundamentally important human rights and our institutional values of diversity
and inclusion, is not a simple matter.”
Rambukkana also admitted wrongdoing. He wrote, “I believe
you are right that making a space for controversial or oppositional views is
important, and even essential to a university.” (Even essential!) He also wrote, “Maybe we ought to strive to reach
across all of our multiple divisions to find points where we can discuss such
issues, air multiple perspectives, and embrace the diversity of thought.” Maybe
indeed.
But despite these statements, the university seemed not
to have learned its lesson. Writing about Shepherd’s lawsuit in the Toronto Star, David Haskell, also a
professor at the university who has defended Shepherd throughout her ordeal,
explained:
Why then did Lindsay finally feel
pushed to take legal action? Because the university allowed an internal action
to proceed against her. And, upon threat of severe academic penalty, they
forbade her to discuss the details publicly.
What can be said is that the action
is a harassment complaint filed by a grad student in her program with ties to
the faculty who have opposed her. Lindsay’s lawyer calls the claims in the suit
“inherently incoherent” and suggests the university itself is acting in “bad faith,”
given that it allowed the complaint to proceed even though coursework in the MA
program has ended and Lindsay and the complainant are no longer on campus
together.
Through this entire affair, Lindsay
has tried to play by the “old” rules of the dignity culture. She bore the
insults of others with a thick skin and was willing to fight her own battles.
But with this last straw, she’s realized that to survive a contest with the
university she must play by its rules, the new rules.
Jordan Peterson also thinks the university needs to be
held accountable. With the same lawyer as Shepherd, Howard Levitt, he’s adding
his own $1.5 million defamation lawsuit.
Levitt told National
Review that “the University accepted a frivolous complaint against [Shepherd]
by a student from the ‘rainbow coalition’ and advised her that she would be in
trouble if she spoke about that complaint to others or tweeted it, etc.”
Shepherd herself cannot discuss the grad student’s harassment claim for legal
reasons. However, she told NR, “I didn’t want to [sue]. I really didn’t want
to. I thought it’s going to look like I’m out for vengeance which I’m not. And
I also don’t really care about the money.”
Shepherd says that if her suit is successful, she will
donate money to the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship and to
Heterodox Academy.
And here’s what’s so chilling about the entire affair:
This was not some conservative student on her soapbox. Shepherd’s politics,
such as they are, remain largely unknown. This was a moderate student who
simply tried to live out the university’s objects according to its own
mandates. She tried to practice academic freedom only to find out it didn’t
apply to her.
It’s hard to decide which is worse about the ugly
ideology so hell-bent on pursuing her — its viciousness or its hypocrisy.
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