A somewhat shocking finding has been uncovered in an issue which made major domestic and even international headlines. The incident involved university attitudes toward freedom of speech, academic freedom, and transgender concerns.
An independent inquiry into the incident at Ontario’s Wilfrid Laurier University has revealed that the alleged complaint or complaints that triggered it, were completely fictitious.
Earlier this year a teaching assistant, Lindsay Shepherd, was severely chastised by her supervisors for showing a brief segment of a previously publicly broadcast debate to her first year communications class.
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The broadcast debate involved the obliged use of gender-neutral pronouns involving internationally renowned psychologist Jordan Peterson who is against the invented words.
Shepherd was then ordered into a meeting with her supervising professor, Nathan Rambukkana, the head of her programme, Herbert Pimlott, and Adria Joel from the university’s Gendered Violence Prevention and Support Programme. They claimed a student or students had complained that she had created a “toxic” environment for transgendered people and added some strong comments about her action because she did not preface the showing of the video clip by clearly stating the Peterson was in the wrong.
Subsequently she released a secret recording of the encounter, and the university made what Shepherd has described as a not particularly credible apology.
The university also called for an independent inquiry. The findings now reveal that there was in fact no complaint made. Shepherd was surprised at this news, telling PostMedia that the meeting therefore “was total abuse”.
A statement by Wilfrid Laurier University President Deborah MacLatchy regarding the findings seems rather equivocal according to the Toronto lawyer representing Shepherd pro-bono.
Howard Levitt says he is concerned that although clearly stated that the teaching assistant did nothing wrong, the letter immediately follows with this statement, “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 course. 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”.
He says that statement and others would seems to imply that although not “wrong” Shepherd’s action was not necessarily something the university would agree with and so closer supervision and therefore “control” is called for, saying “One key improvement highlighted is the need to enhance our faculty and TA training. It is the responsibility of course instructors to develop guidelines for the roles and expectations of their TA’s”.
At no point are the three staff members pointed out as being clearly in the wrong.
WLU president MacLatchy also says in her statement, “For those who have chosen to use this incident as an indictment of Wilfrid Laurier University or the plight of Canadian universities in general, I say your assertion is unreasonable and unfounded. Laurier has a clear commitment to academic freedom and freedom of expression”.
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