And what happened with Professor Rambo Cana and Pimlott and Administrator Adri?

A droll Adrian.

Right, Adria Joel, 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?

It well for glory.

And also just let everybody know why we're meeting.

Yeah, well Ah, I'm Dave Haskell, and I'm a prophet.

Laura, I'm in the faculty of liberal arts.

This is my colleague Will.

Well, how do we come into this whole thing like this is this didn't just happen with the Lindsay affair.

Like well, to the 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 sort of How do we run into each other?

Isn't school s Oh, my exposure.

The faculty arts is minimal, and I've been really sheltered from this professionally.

But watching what's happening in the U.

S.

Watching what was happening to you at the FDA, I'm a grad.

I did my PhD here.

And, um, it was in January that our university leadership sent out an email, um, explaining to the faculty how to think about the Trump travel ban and declaring its 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.

Uh, offended Why I got a pasty.

I'm able to reach my own conclusions about whether these things were good or bad.

I don't need my administration preaching to me about the right way to think about an issue of political issue, particularly so why do you think they did that on DDE?

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 rule to dictate a political stance to the faculty.

That's just clearly not their rule.

So what do you think they were thinking it would seem like a manifestation of Trump derangement syndrome.

It seems like just the same reaction that the Democrats in the U.

S.

Were having, that they lost to this horrible person and they couldn't understand why.

And he was so reprehensible.

And here was yet another terrible thing that he was doing.

And we must all agree how bad it waas.

Well, I mean, even if the funny thing is, even if you can make that case and 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 presumptive presumptuousness.

Did that come from administration from the diversity and equity from the administration from the leadership, the university leadership?

Is that privacy?

I remember the It's confusing because I remember we also got a knee email from the Diversity and Equity Office when when Trump won and they said that they've created a safe space and they were gonna be open for extra hours in case anybody needed to go and find comfort right that happened a lot in the United States.

Say what you 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 in the 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 one.

And I have to imagine that there were some students who were offended, like there's got to be conservative students at Lori, but it's It's very much a one sided conversation when we talk about administration, when we talk about the diversity and 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 email like that is proof positive of that kind of exclusion.

But so well, that was that was the thing that just got me hopping mad, and I was e mailing back and forth with a colleague Queens on.

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, uh, this guest speaker.

Oh, Daniel Robitaille.

Yeah, Yeah.

And that she couldn't speak.

And when she was she, um Gomes, She's lawyer.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, eso Merely because she served as a defense lawyer for someone, she was pilloried.

Well, this was another like when people look at the Lindsay Shepherd affair, this is not an isolated case.

It Wilfred 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 their 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 Robitaille.

I came to speak at the Branford campus of Wilfred Laurie 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 commission case, right?

And so Ghomeshi 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 court's down.

And But 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 Ghomeshi trial.

In fact, she was going to talk about what it's like to be, ah, 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, We'll know if she comes on, it will trigger students.

It will it will mentally harm students, and so that was used as justification for the eye.

Interesting to to be 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 access, 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 route.

So not only is it, um, 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 it isn't that isn't my opinion.

That's that that's is close to a consensus is anything you could reach among clinical practitioners, right?

One rules for clinical improvement is get your story straight.

Something like that.

Talk about your past, sorted out and expose yourself to the things that you're afraid of that you're inclined to avoid.

That's the pathway to two Brazilians said more robust mental health.

Okay, so tell us the story a bit.

You guys have an inside view of what's happened on the Wilfred Loria campus since the the Lindsay Shepherd affair broke.

I should just say that, you know, after this rubber tie event, I read David's piece, immediately, e mailed him and just said, And that's how we 100 right?

All right.

And we met and we had lunch on, uh, in just talked about, you know, free speech in the Chicago statement.

And how can we get it implemented the university, But we just couldn't see anyway, forward and really Right.

So that's another thing we want to discuss.

You guys have rewritten the Chicago statement, right?

So that it's more appropriate in the Canadian content.

Right?

We called the lorry a free Laurie.

A statement for freedom of expression.

Okay, Okay.

And you've been trying to convince or or you're trying to be in trying.

You've been trying to communicate with the university authorities to have that ratified, essentially adopted as a statement of principles.

And have you had any success with that or what's the consequence?

They deferred to a task force.

That's that's, ah, going to be held on.

We can certainly.

Okay.

Is it is that in the aftermath of the shepherd affair, is that going to be part of it, really do anything over the summer just because it just seemed too big a mountain on?

There seemed to be no way to introduce the idea.

Right now, you've got your catalyst and Lindsay Shepherd becomes the catalyst.

And you know what?

What object lesson in what goes on it, Laurie.

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 it was through this robot I 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 he told me That's right.

So?

So the rope Italians incident really brought us out of the woodwork.

We started to chat and say, you know, we see this problem on our university.

We don't know what to do.

And then when the Lindsay Shepherd scandal broke well, immediately we were emailing it.

It's happened again, is essentially what we were saying.

We said, We've got to do something about this.

I'd already that I was out on a on a trip and I came home and I said to my wife where the newspapers, this was Ah, November 12th when the story broke Christie Blatchford story And I said, Honey, where the newspapers?

She said, I can't let you see him I said, Why not?

She says you cannot read the papers.

And of course it was cause Christie Blatchford articles in there.

So soon as I read it, I was beside myself.

I thought, it's happened again, and this time this is really terrible.

They've attacked a ta is what they've done.

So I went with the full force of the administration and claims that she had done mental harm broken two laws to laws.

Federal and provincial was sincerely worried that they were gonna railroad this young lady or they could have easily taken her to the on terror Human Rights Commission.

They would have had field.

What was gonna happen?

I contacted Christie 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 Ah, and then quickly I as quickly as I could.

I wrote on 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 that Monday, after the story broke on the Saturday we started to talk.

And how can we How can we assist Lindsay?

And?

And how can the our bed helped and you and and the fact that this star ran it was quite remarkable as well.

So a raid to the star, the star really does want to do its best to champion free expression.

Yeah, well, you think journalists would actually be concerned about that to some degree?

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 See 16 which was the bill Who's 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, um 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 bigot and a transforming a racist and all of these things.

And so, But what?

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, read the policy documents that I had referred to on the on terror Human Rights Commission website, which is still there, in which are still appalling and have led exactly to this situation with Lindsay.

And as soon as they read what I had being what what outing?

Let's say in my video.

Then they started to understand that this that I wasn't just ringing a bell for no reason at all was actually reasonable.

I think of people to go after me to begin with, because Canada is such a safe and peaceful place in our political situation.

An 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 flying.

There's something wrong with you, right?

Exactly.

Well, then then 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 world for Gloria?

Campus things that I'm not particularly proud of, I would say I mean, I knew that will end.

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, ah, Lori a 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.

And we got that a pretty fast.

We really did in about 10 days, uh, and and and got it on change dot organ men work.

I was e mailing everybody that I knew and trying to get people interested.

And I would say, out of 50 e mails I sent, I got 15 signatures from personal relationships.

Eso Even with personal relationships, you could only get a 30% hit rate.

So what do you think?

Stopping professors from signing that, say or clambering on board, especially in the aftermath of the shepherd recording, which we should point out.

You know, this is one of the things that's very interesting.

Is that outside will for Gloria 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?