SIO96: Franken Must Go; What Happened At Laurier University?

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:29 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode number 96. I'm your host Thomas Smith. A Thanksgiving special. I have made a point in both my podcasts to make sure I still release podcasts over holidays. I just know that for me personally, when my favorite podcasts are not released, it really upsets me because sometimes when you're with your family or you're stuck traveling, maybe, or that kind of thing, it's the best time to have podcasts. Podcasts, they'll all abandon you. So I wanted to not abandon you, I'm on the regularly scheduled time. And if you don't have time to listen, then you're not listening to this. So by definition, I'm only talking to people who are probably happy to have an episode right now. So there you go, a little deduction for you. All right, I've got some things to talk about. First off, we're going to talk About Laurier, this university, it's the latest in the free speech snowflake war.

But I'm going to, I ve looked into it, just like I try to do everything, look into it with an open in mind, and you might be surprised at the results. So I'm going to talk about the Laurier situation.

But before that, I have some loose ends to kind of clean up as regards the sexual harassment, sexual assault, Me Too stuff, and some of Monday's episode, simply because right after that episode dropped, and wouldn't you know it, it would have to time out this way, right after it dropped, when we were talking about Al Franken in a certain light, literally like hours after that was done, Another accuser came out. Her name is Lindsay Menz, and she says that in 2010 at the state fair, when posing for a picture with Al Franken, that he grabbed her butt essentially during the photo. She also says she told her family, and it seems as though her family corroborates that. No reason that I can think of to doubt this. In my mind, I think this does change it quite a bit. I think there is a difference between a comedy context in 2006 and when he was actually a senator and abusing that power as a senator. I do think there's a fundamental difference there. I wouldn't be surprised if Al Franken is willing to grope a total stranger if more accusers didn't come out.

0:02:44 Thomas: I would be surprised. So I think this makes it quite a bit different. I think that he likely should resign. I just don't think he will, but I think he should resign, but furthermore, there's a lot going on in Congress right now, and I think it all needs to come out. Back to that in a second. Hold that thought, because there's something I wanted to talk about, which is there was a tweet. This was very interesting. I saw a tweet, and it was actually retweeted by Jake Tapper, so it got a lot of of play. A lot of people noticed it, was cycled around the usual suspects who wanted to find a feminist to target and to laugh at and to mock and to make fun of. And it came from someone named Emily Linden. And I wasn't familiar with her before, still not terribly familiar with her, but just looking at her website, it's something called the unslutproject.com.

0:03:35 Thomas: It says we're undoing the dangerous slut shaming and sexual bullying in our schools, community, community, media, and culture. Certainly sounds like something I would be in support of. But anyway, she tweeted, it's now gone. The tweet is gone. So from my memory, it was something that sounded bad. And indeed it did look bad. It was something like, here's an unpopular opinion about the recent sexual harassment, something or other. I don't care if men are falsely accused. It was something to that effect. And Jake Tapper retweeted this. I thought, boy, that looks really really bad. So I clicked on it and it turns out that it was meant to be the beginning of a, of a thread, which I think is a little different. Certainly that's a mistake. The mistake is on her for not announcing that she was doing a thread, but she goes on in, in the Twitter thread to explain, you know, here's what I mean.

0:04:24 Thomas: I mean that overall the balance has been largely tipped in favor of, of men getting away with this for, for forever. And she was, she clarified that she, she wasn't saying she wished for men to be falsely accused or that she didn't care about that issue, but that that wasn't a reason to stop pursuing this because a lot of people are throwing that resistance in that we get, this is a witch hunt, we got to stop this, you know, and she is saying, well, no, I don't care about the fact that some men will be be falsely accused as a cost possibly for what's happening, because overall there's a net benefit there. Now, here's what's interesting. I retweeted this and I said, I read this and this looks bad, because that first tweet does look bad.

0:05:11 Thomas: I mean, to say, I don't care if men are falsely accused, that's a bad thing to say. I would never agree with that. But I said I read the entire thread and it seems reasonable to me. And I opened myself up to quite a bit of Twitter scorn on that. A lot of people saying exactly what she went on to later say in the thread. And I emphasize, read the entire thread. People still came at me with, she wants people to be falsely accused. And so I had to tweet again and actually retweet the part in the thread where she clarified. The reason I'm talking about this, there's a couple of reasons. Reason number one is I actually, I think she's pretty much right on. Now, I totally agree that Emily Linden needed to phrase her tweet better or announce that, hey, I'll explain. This is a Twitter thread, you know, that kind of thing. She made a mistake there, for sure.

0:05:58 Thomas: But I think that largely her view is correct. And here's the thing. To cut to the end of the story, her tweets are now protected. She got so much harassment for this that she went offline on Twitter. It says only confirmed followers have access. This. I think she got, if what I got for merely retweeting her was any indication, I imagine she got a lot more being as, as how she was retweeted by Jake Tapper and then everyone else, by the way, she retweetED by Rubin, other anti-feminists. So she, I think, she got a deluge and decided it was no longer worth it. Despite the fact that she tried to explain herself, she even said in one of the tweets, she said, hey, I'm sorry that I worded that badly. Thanks for the feedback. Back. I see the parts that I missed. She really went out of her way to say, yeah, I messed up now.

0:06:44 Thomas: Here's what I meant. But people still wouldn't have it. They're still tweeting me about it right now as I speak. But anyway, reason number one I bring this up is I think she's right. And I think there's something that maybe people aren't seeing that I want to emphasize. I actually think I heard this best articulated by Ezra Klein on his show, The Ezra Kline Show, that's affiliated with Vox.

And he said that right now, a big problem is that we're trading an invisible cost for a visible cost. So right now the current system, and I say current, I mean, let's say a year ago or so, or before this really started blowing up, when most of these things would be swept under the rug, this harassment or assault or even rape, the accusers would be doubted. The alleged perpetrators would largely get away completely free. Not always, but largely. There were a lot of invisible costs to that. And we saw that in the Louis C.K. case and even in his apology, which some people didn't like, but he at least acknowledged the worst part of this, he said, was knowing that a woman might have quit comedy because of him. And that happens all the time. When women face harassment at the workplace, they very rarely report it. And of those who do report it, a high percentage report that they face backlash for it. An EEOC report in 2003 found that 75% of employees who spoke out against workplace mistreatment face some sort of retaliation. There's other studies that back that number.

0:08:16 Thomas: And that's, again, that's already of the low percentage who decide to actually report it. Most women don't report sexual harassment because they They just don't think it's worth it. So we have a current system that really disincentivizes reporting it. There's a backlash. Women are scared to do so. And also, women will leave their job when this happens. A lot of women, when they face harassment, because of what I just talked about, the backlash, the stress, the fact that HR favors, usually favors the harasser. They usually favor trying to make the situation go away because HR doesn't want a lawsuit. Because of all that, think of how many careers of women have been ruined.

0:09:02 Thomas: It's sort of an invisible cost that no one really talked about and that we aren't factoring in. So we traded an invisible, very steep cost to women. We're trading that, hopefully, if all goes well, to a cost that's actually more visible. So we see it when a man is falsely accused, and that's bad. I want to be very clear. False accusations are terrible. They should not happen. We should do our best to try to parse that out. I mentioned it in Monday's recording. I think there are ways that we can try to suss out when it's simply a one-off case that sounds kind of random or potentially motivated by something else versus when there's a repeated pattern. Like I am as certain as I get in life that Roy Moore is a predator.

0:09:47 Thomas: When you have that many women telling stories that share that many details, it's just so beyond belief that they all decided to face this horrible situation of going public with this, because it is not fun to go public with this. It's not fun at all. So I think we can draw some distinctions there. And there is a risk of careers being ruined based on false accusations. It is true that there is a risk, but we aren't factoring in the careers that are already being ruined when women get harassed. We aren't factoring that into our calculus. So some people are seeing, oh, there's this new cost of this moral system, which is false false accusations, and they're thinking that that's being added and nothing's being taken away.

0:10:36 Thomas: Well, on balance, what's happening now is good. More people being held accountable for harassment and abuse is good, we need to be careful to do all we can to mitigate the cost, of course, but that's the point that she was making, and I think it's a good one, it's very valid one, that this invisible cost that no one has talked about is so pervasive. Seriously though, Keep in mind that the system, the way it was, allowed Harvey Weinstein to get away with just disgusting things for decades. I mean, how many careers did he ruin? How many women, talented women, did he just completely scare off and derail? So I think that's a very good point overall. I think this tweet thread makes sense to me.

0:11:23 Thomas: I would be curious if people still disagree. Now, we can 100% agree that her first tweet was bad, and it was good that she clarified, and she even apologized, but that wasn't enough. And I want to talk about this because I just saw a tweet from Dave Rubin talking about how he's not even worried about government censorship of free speech. He's worried about self-censorship. And I wanted to talk to him about that. I want you to point out that the free speech warriors have come and harassed this woman into turning off her Twitter for something that she clarified later and apologized for. So the people who will go all out defending Sam Harris when someone takes his quote out from his book where he suggests a nuclear first strike might be warranted, they'll argue that until the cows come home.

0:12:10 Thomas: But when a woman tweets something that seems a little inflammatory, but then follows up with a Twitter thread that's like, here's what I mean, and it's actually pretty reasonable, that that's not enough. I think this is frustrating because it really goes to show that the free speech excuse is just a go-to when you want some unpopular speech to be okay because you agree with it, but then once it's speech that you don't like, the same thing doesn't apply. I mean, now you want self-censorship, now you're trying to get this person to delete their Twitter. I mean, it's, it's frustrating because my view is that self-censorship is okay. I mean, if you have really bad beliefs and you change your mind, or you face so much social backlash for saying racist or sexist things that you no longer want to try to say racist or sexists things, that's okay with me.

0:13:01 Thomas: So to me, it's consistent. If people who have outdated or disgusting views want to self- censor, in general, that that's good. I'm glad that they will want to stop saying racist or sexist things due to social pressure. But then the defense is, well, what next? I mean, now that's a threat to free speech. And then lo and behold, when it's someone they disagree with, that doesn't matter. So I find that frustrating. Let's talk about another aspect of the system as it currently stands. And this is what I said to put a pin in when we're talking about Al Franken. This has to do with how Congress handles sexual harassment claims. It is absurd. I don't know if you're familiar with this, if you've heard this. Turns out, actually, I simultaneously heard from different sources, because I'm in Sacramento, California, as you know, that the process is actually very, very similar, if not identical, for the California Congress.

0:13:54 Thomas: So this is stupid. It's borderline criminal to me. I mean, I'm sure it technically isn't, otherwise it wouldn't still exist. But But the way this happens is ridiculous. So let me describe this system. I've got a good article from Bustle.com, but it's sourced. This just breaks it down nicely, makes it convenient. I'll link it in the show notes. Step one, you have to file a claim. So after sexual harassment takes place, an employee must file a claim with the Office of Compliance. And so, so far, okay, fine. You need to file claim. That's pretty normal. Now, you only have 180 days to do so. So, there's a very quick time frame to get that in. Now, I don't support that at all.

0:14:39 Thomas: I think you should have as much time as you need to file a claim. Then after that, there is a mandatory counseling period of up to 30 days, and counselors consider the information provided and give victims information on their workplace rights and the administrative procedures under the CAA. And then step three is to make a decision. So, following that counseling period, victims have up to 15 days, again, pretty quick, up to 15 days to make a decision on whether or not they want to pursue mediation, which is an intervention led by a lawyer in an attempt to resolve the dispute. Now, if you don't want to do mediation, you have no other options. That's it. So, your decision is do you want to go through with it or not? So, here's mediation. Quoting from the article, "Those who opt for mediation are bound by confidentiality agreement." According to the OOC, this means all parties participating in the mediation must keep confidential all communications, statements, and documents that are prepared for mediation.

0:15:37 Thomas: The Congressional Accountability Act does not, however, prohibit victims from discussing the underlying harassment with others, though some alleged victims have argued that the confidentiality agreement effectively equates to a gag order. During the current process, victims continue going to work each day while there's no attempt to change the workplace environment or to notify others of an alleged sexual harasser. So, in essence, the victim could continue working alongside their alleged harasser. And then, here's a final note on it. A lawyer representing the congressperson's office, one paid with taxpayer money, oversees mediation. Victims, however, don't necessarily have their own lawyer. So there you go. A potential harasser, an alleged harasser, has access to a government-funded lawyer to work them through this process.

0:16:26 Thomas: The mediation is with the harasser. So it's the person who's been harassed, along with their harasser. They still have to work for that person the entire time during this mediation process. And then step five is settle. So those who reach settlements, it says, will likely be subject to a non-disclosure agreement and therefore unable to warn other staffers about the harresser or even speak to their own therapist about it. If they don't settle, they have to wait a mandatory 30-day cool-off period before they can file a lawsuit or request a hearing. And it says here, it's really funny, a spokesperson for the OOC says the Congressional Accountability Act does not specify the reason for the cooling-off, but it does give an employee time to consider any settlement proposals and or prepare for litigation.

0:17:11 Thomas: So then you can try for litigation, and as we all know, it's very difficult to win on these things in court. One of the many things that I find appalling about this process is if there's a settlement, taxpayers are paying that. So in essence, we are funding our Congress people to be able to harass people and then pay them off. And in some ways, whoever's the victim of harassment, a portion of their tax dollars is going toward funding their their own settlement. So when someone says, look, I'm not concerned about innocent men's lives being ruined as a reason to stop trying to do this change, this is where they're coming from. They're coming From a position of the current system sucks. And there's a lot of invisible costs that you're not seeing.

0:17:58 Thomas: It's terrible. And yes, it's bad when people are falsely accused. No one will ever say that it's good. It is horrible. I think that false accusations are terrible. They can ruin lives. They are bad. People should be prosecuted if they falsely accuse someone. I agree with all of that. But to try to stop what's happening here, to try to stop the changes that are needed in the system because you're worried about people being falsely accused is to try and maintain the status quo, which has horrible costs that you're not seeing to mostly women every day. As I was recording this, news just broke of two more Al Franken accusers. I am absolutely done with Al Franken. I do still support the idea that it's possible that there could be someone who made a mistake once and has apologized and changed, and I will still be open to that the next time there's a situation where it looks like someone, you know, 11 years ago made made a mistake.

0:18:58 Thomas: I personally, for one, am open to that idea that someone could make a mistake, and I think, especially as liberals, we are open to the idea that anyone who's even a criminal can change, can reform, can be better. I'm, in general, open to it. I don't think it's the idea of someone could have made a mistakes 10 years ago, but when three more accusers come out, that becomes no longer a mistake when one more accuser came out in my mind, that became no longer a mistake. That sounded like repeated behavior. Sure enough, as I was recording, two more just came out and said Al Franken did a similar thing with them. And I think there's even a very damning quote here that I want to read you because it really sums it up.

0:19:43 Thomas: Both the new accusers are anonymous in this Huffington Post article that just broke, but there's a quote from one saying, people are saying that this is a right-wing conspiracy. It's not. I'm a liberal person. I voted for him after this happened. And that really sums it up. I mean, this is not a liberal, a conservative conspiracy, no more than it's a liberal conspiracy about Roy Moore. Al Franken, you need to go. This is a repeated pattern. This Is Bad. You got to go, and also, I will say this. We need to get this all out there. Let's get this all out of Congress. No more of this confidential payoffs with taxpayer dollars. There's some proposed legislation called the Me Too Act, and surprise, surprise, it's mainly women who are driving it, and it wants to make this process more transparent and make a lot of changes to it.

0:20:38 Thomas: I'm not going to go into it, but needless to say, that's something I would support. Let's get this all out there. Let's give all these accusations out there and get them in time for the 2018 elections, and let's replace a bunch of sexual predators with non-sexual predators. That's what I think we should do. We need a clean house. But here's something else. Also in today's news is this Joe Barton thing. A picture is being circulated that he apparently sent to a woman. It's a full frontal nudity picture. It's been posted. And I want to say this, that is wrong. That is revenge porn.

I mean, mixed in with this Me Too stuff, which is very good, mixed in with accusations being brought to light of actual predators, it seems as though a consensual photo that this Republican Joe Barton sent an adult woman, which you have to specify now because of how many Congress people or potential Congress people have preyed on children, but he is saying that it's a consenual photo he sent. He said, here's this quote, while separated from my second wife prior to the divorce, I had sexual relationships with other mature adult women. Each was consensual. Those relationships have ended. I'm sorry I did not use better judgment during those days.

Look, if this was a consensuel relationship with a non-child like it was with Roy Moore, if this is a consenual relationship, by the way, just a note, you can't have a consentual relationship with the child, obviously, just to make that crystal clear.

0:22:11 Thomas: If this was a consensual relationship and he just sent a naked picture of himself, I, he doesn't, he shouldn't be the one apologizing. Whoever spread this online should be apologizing, and by the way, should face legal consequences. That's not okay. That is revenge porn. I'm proud to see a lot of people I follow sticking up for him in this. Now, who knows if the facts will change? By the way, if it turns out he sent this to an unwilling recipient or something like that, or multiple, multiple unwilling recipients, then that completely changes the situation. And I believe, as Andrew discussed on Opening Arguments, I think it does change the revenge porn laws. If you send it to someone unsolicited, I don't think they are bound by those same laws. I'm not a lawyer. Don't take legal dick pic sharing advice from a podcast, but that would change it.

0:23:00 Thomas: But if the facts are as he presents them, then I really, I mean, this is the kind of thing that shouldn't get mixed in with people sharing their very real accusations of sexual predation and harassment and abuse. So I have to say, I think this is a case where this person is getting lumped in, and unfortunately, naked pictures of him are being circulated now online. That's highly embarrassing. That's wrong. I mean, we can't allow that to happen. That shouldn't be something we do. Now, I will note that this is a Family Values Republican. Republican. So it is appropriate to critique and say, hey, if you are all about family values, you are not living up to your family values. That is valid. But not sharing naked pictures of him, not sharing revenge porn of him.

0:23:48 Thomas: That does not valid. That doesn't the ends don't justify the means. You don't just get to do something disgusting and horrible just because someone is a hypocrite. All right. So I'll leave it there in terms of the cleanup from Monday, Day, as well as those developments and further arguments. Still, of course, more to go on that conversation, and we'll keep an eye on it. But I really think that this is something to factor in when voting. When statistically 90 or 95 percent of perpetrators of harassment and abuse sexually are men, odds wise, the average woman is more qualified than the average man because they're not going to run into these issues. I mean, is there any logical escape from that?

0:24:34 Thomas: If there is, let me know. But with how rampant this abuse is by specifically men in Congress, is that not a reason to, all other things being equal, let's say all other things are equal, we've got two equal candidates, one is a man, one is a woman, is that not reason to favor the woman in that case? I, I think you would have to factor that in if you want to be a good, empirically minded voter, you would have to factor in the fact that there's far less danger of a woman being an abuser and a harasser than a man. This seems like an inescapable conclusion, especially, by the way, to all the same people who are arguing at me that the disparity of gender in tech is, it's all about choice. You can't come back to me and tell me then that this isn't also valid, that the overwhelming, overwhelming evidence is men in positions of power are the ones who perpetrate these.

0:25:27 Thomas: Doesn't mean it's every single man, but it's a shocking percentage of them. And that for women in positions of power, there's virtually no danger that they're going to be wasting our time and government money on settlements for sexual harassment. Now, I hope that this calculus can change. I think that right now there's almost a background assumption that there's a lot of harassment, like a ton of sexual misconduct that we don't know about. Now, if our society changes to one in which this is always reported like right away, hopefully, that as much as possible, that an environment that fosters the ability to report this and doesn't discourage it, doesn't victim blame, doesn't do all those things.

0:26:13 Thomas: If we can change our society so that it's pretty much assumed that if, if someone is guilty of a bunch of sexual misconduct that we will know about it, then this calculus changes a little bit. But right now, it's pretty unsafe to assume that we know about all the sexual misconduct that's going on. We probably know about very little of it, and we need to change that. This needs to all get out in the air, and we need to use it to vote in 2018 if people don't just leave office before then. We need to use it. We need to know, we need to replace these people with people who aren't going to do this, and I can't help but escape the conclusion, I don't see any way to escape the conclusion that you're better off voting for women. Do it! Get women in office. You don't have to deal with this crap. Well, now that I've opened that can of worms, I'd say it's time to transition over to the latest explosion in the free speech debate, and that is this Laurier University incident.

0:27:29 Thomas: What's a Laurier, you ask? Well, I'm here to tell you. Laurier is a university, and what recently happened is a graduate student used Jordan B. Peterson, a debate that he had on some Canadian television show over gender pronouns, as an an example in a class. Now, she was a TA in this class, and apparently one or more students in the class, we don't know if they were trans students or otherwise, one or More students was made uncomfortable by this, sent a complaint to the actual teacher of the class. So that the actual teacher of The Class, you know, does the big lecture with all the students, and then there's some number of these smaller class sessions with the TA.

0:28:14 Thomas: She's the TA, someone complained to the a teacher. So they went to have a meeting to talk to her about it. And some other people wanted to sit in on the meeting. And for some reason, this TA, graduate student, decided to surreptitiously record it. That's a little odd to me, but she did record it and the audio was released and it has caused an uproar. I'll link the full audio on SoundCloud. I've listened to the entire thing almost twice through actually, but definitely once through. And then I went back for some highlights. And first thing to note, I have to point this out because, of course, this is a personal thing of mine. I have not seen all of the Sargon-esque fans saying that as soon as this grad student became emotional, she lost the argument. I'm assuming they're there for consistency, right?

0:29:01 Thomas: Because whenever you become emotional, you lose an argument. Is that right? So I'm assuming they're all there, and I'm assuming they're consistent. So everybody on the free speech center right or whatever you want to call it, I'm sure all of them chimed in and said, well, you know, she became emotional. She lost the argument. What? That didn't happen, you don't say. No, nobody, when someone on their side becomes emotional, it's painted as some sort of bullying by the authoritarian left. And so it's okay to become emotional in the face of the authoritarian right. I just have to point that out. But I also want to note that it is okay that people become emotional. And in my judgment, her becoming emotional says nothing about her argument. It could be wrong or it could be right. So I just want to emphasize that I think emotions are okay.

0:29:50 Thomas: She was in a stress situation. That happens. But I would like to note how often when it's the other way and an alleged SJW is crying, that is ridiculed and looked at as proof that these snowflakes can't handle it. So I just want to point out that hypocrisy, but I do want to emphasize that I don't want to adopt, and this is very important. This is something I see a lot.

We're hell-bent on pointing out inconsistency in each other to the point where oftentimes people will take on the opposing moral view in order to use it to then criticize the other side. It's very confusing. I plan on doing more work on this, but it's something that happened a lot in my debate with Carl, Carl, and happens a lot, is people take on each other's like moral views to try to criticize the other for not being consistent, and then you lose track of, wait, who's arguing what here. I've been thinking a lot about this ever since I insulted Godless Spellchecker on Twitter after what I thought was a really horrifying reaction that he had toward Eli becoming emotional when we spoke to the Missus Milwaukee people. I was very upset by that. And I insulted him.

And now he has called me a Twitter abuser, even though he's previously on record of saying that tweets can't be harassment. So he sort of adopted a different moral view just to criticize me because it's like he views it as hypocritical, but then it sort of gets lost. What gets lost is, okay, then what do you actually believe? Do you agree that people can be abusive online?

0:31:24 Thomas: Because if you do agree, then we're talking about a whole different thing. Similarly, I just want to emphasize that I think that her becoming emotional does not signify either way, whether she was right or wrong in her arguments, independent thing. So the way she explains it in the recording, and you can listen to it if you want, it's pretty long, but the way he explains it is there was a unit, this is a communications class, and I think what what class it is, is actually highly, highly relevant. I think it's vital. And I went so far as to track down the actual course, track down the, I couldn't find a syllabus, but I could find a course description. And I think that's important because I've gone both ways on this. I've gotten either way. I've done back and forth on this issue. The free speech right wing, of course, just views this as an authoritarian threat to free speech because these professors, Professors, the people in positions of authority at Laurier, told her that her bringing in this Jordan B.

0:32:19 Thomas: Peterson clip uncritically made an unsafe environment in the classroom. The grad student, who is named Lindsay Shepherd, says, well, I presented it in an objective way, not taking sides, as an example of how language is important in our debate. So gendered pronouns became a thing of debate. As we know, this is true. It has become something of debate, she says. She presented the argument that gendered pronouns for trans people can mean their dignity or not, and rejecting their choice of pronoun can be rejecting their dignity, she says, as she presented that. And she is really baffled in the recording at how simply presenting this video, which was a debate, could be creating an unsafe environment.

0:33:09 Thomas: And the professor and the other people use a lot of SJW buzzwords that has people like Michael Shermer and that libertarian free speech, in quotes, loving crowd, really, really just mocking and scorning. And I have to say in some cases they're right. I mean, the idea that showing a video like this in and of itself creates an unsafe environment or is akin to showing a Hitler video, or some of the quotes, there are some bad quotes in this recording, it wasn't done well. So regardless, I'm going to come out and say that how the professor handled it was not quite right. He definitely went too far. And I think that I want to remain consistent because in the case of Weinstein, Brett Weinstein, I said that I hold teachers to more account than students, and I will stick with that principle and say that I hold the professor to more count than the grad student.

I think it was his responsibility to communicate better and to not be so kind of oddly authoritarian in this recording. So for the, the time being, let's put aside the question, we'll come right back to it, but let's putting aside the question of whether it was appropriate to bring in this Jordan B. Peterson video, let's say we're agnostic on that question. I will, I want to say, and I'm sure the, the people on the other side, the non-SJWs, will love this regardless of that, like we're just setting that question aside. Even if it was inappropriate, we'll say, uh, the way the professor and the other people in the recording handled it was not good.

0:34:47 Thomas: Their arguments weren't particularly good, and they were unnecessarily harsh on this grad student, I think, and that's bad. So they've received condemnation and, you know, I obviously think it's gone way too far because the people on the free speech side have to use these little examples of college alleged free speech. They have to wring them out for all their worth. Of course, this grad student is already booked on the Rubin Report. She already has 10,000 Twitter followers, even though she just created a Twitter because of this and is not even active on it, really. And, you know, that's going to happen. They are making everything they can out of this. And people are being very, very harsh on the professor.

0:35:35 Thomas: I think they deserve some criticism in how they handled it. And as always, it'll get blown out of proportion and, and that sucks, but what can you do? So they deserve some criticism, and the professor and the president have apologized. I actually want to read the professor's apology because I think it's important. It is a bit long, but I'll try to get through it. "Dear Lindsay, I wanted to write to apologize to you for how the meeting we had proceeded. While I was not able to do so earlier due to confidentiality concerns, including your privacy as a grad student, now that the audio of the meeting is public, I can say more." Side note, she was pretty upset that it took the recording being released for them to apologize. I think this professor has a valid point that in order to keep confidentiality, he couldn't do so until it was publicly available.

0:36:22 Thomas: You can judge for yourself. Anyway, while I still cannot discuss the student concerns raised about the tutorial, 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. First, I wanted to say that when I was made aware of the concerns, I was told that the proper procedure would be to have an informal meeting to discuss it. In the process of arranging this, others indicated that they should attend as well. This is one of the facets of working at a university, that meetings can often become de facto committees due to relevant stakeholders being pulled in. My main concerns were finding out why a lesson on writing skills had become a political discussion, and making sure harm didn't befall students. However, in also not prioritizing my mentorship role as the course director and your supervisor, I didn't do enough to try to support you in this meeting, which I deeply regret.

0:37:16 Thomas: "I should have seen how meeting with a panel of three people would be an intimidating situation and not invite a productive discussion. Had I tried harder to create a situation more conducive to talking these issues through, things might have gone very differently, but alas, I did not." So that's like the first few paragraphs. There's actually a lot more, but that was the most relevant part for me. So he's apologizing. I think that's a pretty decent apology. And I want to note that this is the immediate result of the public outcry, was both the university and the professor involved offered a full apology. Now, that will never be enough for Jordan B. Peterson, who is going to make an issue of this for the rest of his life. He will cry foul and victimhood over this.

0:38:02 Thomas: And we can look into that. We can try to judge and evaluate. Well, no, we can't really. I was going to say we can try and make a judgment on systemically how big of an issue is this. Okay, so in one university, when someone tried to play a Jordan B. Peterson video in a course that they were a TA for, they were pulled into a meeting and told that created an unsafe environment.

So we can try to judge how big of a problem this is, although we don't have the data. It's not as though we know this is going on everywhere or nowhere or how many places, cases. So basically what I'm saying is, if we wanted to actually be skeptical and scientific about the extent of A, like how much this is a problem, and then B, like how pervasive of a problem is it, um, you know, there's a lot of data we would need, but at the very least we can evaluate what's going on in this instance. And you know, we can, if you are someone who comes down on the side of this is a big problem in this university, which, you know, I think the way they handled it was bad, so we can talk about that.

But then it's up to you to decide, well, how representative is this of every different department in every different university? And I don't know how much we can judge that. And I think we can make a guess, but it is my firm view that the guess that most people are making and the judgment most people are making is strongly tainted by how much of an agenda the, the people who cover this have.

They, they want there to be a battle against free speech in universities, and they want it to be universities and college kids gone amok, because then they have their bogeyman and they can cover that all day on Fox News.

0:39:45 Thomas: But now I want to go back to this question. Was this inappropriate? And I, I, um, I mean this sincerely, like I, as much as you guys know, I don't like Jordan B. Peterson. Uh, I can see scenarios where this would be appropriate and and where it wouldn't. So, let's take a few obvious examples of each. If this is a class whose description, which description is, you will look at controversial opinions on both sides of the spectrum and discuss the arguments, well, then I think it's fully appropriate to bring this in and discuss it. That's no big deal. If there's a class that's a little bit more controversial, this is some unrelated class where someone is just trying to shoehorn in a debate about about gender pronouns, that could be inappropriate. It could be inappropriate, especially too, by the way, if the professor says, hey, I don't want this in my class.

0:40:37 Thomas: You're my TA. You are supposed to be teaching what kind of I want you to teach. Don't put this in there because I just don't think it is worth it. I mean, that is an appropriate response as a professor. Now, I want to keep in mind, regardless, I think the professor handled this badly. I think no matter what situation we are talking about, he handled it badly. He deserves criticism. There you go. Anti-SJWs. I agree with that. I think he didn't handle it well, and I'm glad he offered the apology that he offered. So let's talk about, was this appropriate? Well, I think it really depends on the class. And I have seen the Jordan B. Peterson right-wing sources, because this is pretty much exclusively being covered by right-wing sources. I did a search. I did a Twitter search for just Laurier and I cannot find a single person defending Laurier.

0:41:27 Thomas: Like, universally everyone is on the same side of this that, and it just goes to show that this is being paid attention to by the right-wings who don't want to talk about stuff like sexual harassment right now and all that, because there's a predator in the White House and all, all that, but also it's a Canadian issue. So it's Canadian sources and it's right-wing sources, but I couldn't find anyone defending the school. So when we're looking at how pervasive of a problem this is, I think that's notable. It's not as though there are a bunch of other professors in other universities saying, no, no, hold on, this is totally right, and this is how we do things. It is actually the opposite. Several professors came out and said, you know, that that wasn't appropriate. But anyway, uh, let's look at the course.

0:42:13 Thomas: So some, as I, as I started to say this conservative source that I'm seeing for a lot of this, which is the national post. Now I'm not Canadian Canadians feel free to clue me in, but from what I'm seeing, they have a conservative Ben. I'm not saying they're Fox News or Breitbart. I don't really know. But they endorse the conservative party here and there. They seem to have at least a slight conservative slant. They are very, very concerned with what's going on at Laurier and the free speech argument. So that's what they seem to be focused on. But at any rate, in various places I've seen this reported that she was teaching a critical thinking class. She was not teaching a clinical thinking class, I think that is an attempt by some people to make it a more open and shut issue.

0:42:59 Thomas: If you say, yes, she's teaching a political thinking class, then, and of course, it's absurd to say you can't show a debate in a critical thinking class. So it was not a critical thing in class, it's a communications class. And based on the letter that I just read, the professor's letter, it sounds like it's some sort of writing class. Now, this is why it's been a little bit of a roller coaster for me, because if this was merely a writing class and she sort of hijacked in and shoehorned in a debate about, trans, trans people to a place where it really shouldn't have been, I could see that being inappropriate. And I could say the response, which again, I'll say for like a third time, I think the professor botched, wasn't a good response. The response could have just been, "Hey, I'm the professor, I don't really like what you brought into this writing class."

0:43:47 Thomas: It doesn't seem appropriate to me. There's really no reason to bring a debate about gendered pronouns into this class. It makes trans people a little uncomfortable to have to all of a sudden be exposed to someone who has shown some biases against trans people. It's just not really an environment I want in the class that I'm teaching, so can you please just not do that in the future? It seems to me that would have been a reasonable way to handle it. But you know what?

In researching it, it's actually, it's not a writing class either. So I've really pinballed back and forth as to whether or, or not it was appropriate. I found the class. It is CS 101, Canadian Communication in Context. And I've gone to the description here, and it says, "An introduction to the key issues in Canadian communication studies from a variety of perspectives," including topics such as social history of communication in Canada, public policy, and politics, and popular culture. Now, that seems entirely appropriate to me. Honestly, I was surprised to read that. I'm surprised that the professor wouldn't have seen this as appropriate. If your course description is variety of perspectives, including topics such as social history, public policy, I mean, they just had a C-16 debate within the last year. That seems entirely relevant. And I come down actually firmly on the side of this grad student who decided to present this. She didn't present it as Jordan B. Peterson was right or wrong. And what the professor said is, well, you should definitely describe him as problematic.

0:45:27 Thomas: And I don't know that he's right. I think that as much as I don't like Jordan B. Peterson, if your course is about the social history of communication in Canada, it seems to me entirely appropriate that this would be an issue you would talk about. So I think the grad student was okay to do this. I thinkthat the professor would have been within his rights to say, hey, I just don't really want to talk about this in my class. You know, he can determine his syllabus. This. So had he taken that approach in critiquing her, had he said merely, hey, I just don't really want to cover this because it's just unnecessary, kind of inappropriate in some ways. If he had taken that sort of approach, it might be a different story.

0:46:14 Thomas: But he didn't. He took a weird approach that was just this creates an unsafe environment. And I think he's wrong. I think that if your course is about the social history of communication, public policy, politics, all that kind of stuff, and this seems very relevant. She played a debate that had two sides and she didn't present it with any sort of bias. You know, I think she was in the right and the professors were in the wrong. I think that what's likely is that these, the people, when you hear them in the recording, they don't like Jordan B. Peterson and they don't really think he has has any place in a classroom. And I actually agree with them on that. I think Jordan B. Peterson is terrible and his views are stupid and not. And there's points where I disagree with the grad student, little points.

0:47:01 Thomas: And of course, I largely disagree with how this has been embraced as a free speech question. I don't think this is a free speech question at all. This is merely a course syllabus question. I mean, if it's a math class, then she shouldn't do this. If it's a writing class, if its merely a class where you're supposed to be teaching certain rules of writing or something, then I also don't think you should do this, but if it is indeed what it turned out to be, which is Canadian communication and context, talks about different perspectives, I think it's appropriate. It has nothing to do with free speech. If she she just decides to start showing pornography in this class. And the professor says, what are you doing? Don't do that. That has nothing to do with free speech. You know, I don't know why this is always lumped in with a free speech issue.

0:47:51 Thomas: This isn't just like a citizen presenting an opinion and then the government stopped her or something. This is someone who is teaching a class who has to stick to a syllabus, loosely speaking. I mean, apparently they seem to be allowed to branch off. But that, I've seen that that varies. Some TAs are required to stick to, you know, whatever, just whatever they're supposed to do, whatever's in the syllabus, whatever is in the plan, the lesson plan that the professor had. And, you know, others I'm seeing, and it looks like this might be an example where they're sort of allowed some academic freedom to bring in things they want to bring in. It looks like this grad student was in that situation, but still had she decided to bring in something totally irrelevant, the professor would be fully within his rights to say, hey, just don't bring this in because it doesn't apply to the class.

0:48:41 Thomas: Like, this is not, I don't really want my students to be learning about this in this class. It doesn't imply it wouldn't have been a free speech issue. It's not a free speech issue. It was these people don't like Jordan B. Peterson. They didn't really like Jordan. They didn't really want him brought into this class. And I think it was a case of being too sensitive to the student complaints in this case. Because I, it seems to me this was an appropriate thing to bring into the classroom. I'm curious if other SJWs will disagree with me, but given what the class was, I think it was, it was fine. It was something that was broadcast on Canadian TV, you know, I mean, it would be, it would be quite protective to say, no, this is such a threat, something that appeared on Canadian television that, you This is such a threat to student safety that we can't show it in a classroom.

0:49:34 Thomas: I think that does go too far. Now, back to the part where I said I disagreed on some things, and I do. There's a part in the recording where she said, I thought the point of a university is to present both sides. And the professor says, well, that's not really necessarily true. And he's right. It just fully depends on the class, what course you're taking, what major you're to... I mean, you're not required to present both sides of biology. You're not required to teach the controversy. That's actually not what universities do. And it's not really a requirement that a professor present both sides of an argument with no bias toward either one, depending on the context. Actually, that's not what universes are there for. Universities are there to provide you with the education you need in whatever field you are getting into.

0:50:24 Thomas: They're there to provide you the relevant information. They have to do a certain amount of filtering through the nonsense. There are infinite bad arguments that you could present. If your duty as a university was to present all arguments, you could never finish because you would be presenting everyone's terrible arguments about a given issue. You definitely, as a university and as a professor and as an department, you have a duty to teach good information. You don't have a a duty to teach all sides of every issue. That's just not true. And I think he was right when he said that people mocked him for that, but I think she's right. I don't know where this idea came from that the point of a university is to present all sides arguments. It's not. I mean, it's one thing if you want to say, okay, an individual course is going to...

0:51:14 Thomas: The point of the course is going be to present debates on certain things. I mean, maybe it's some sort of humanities course, maybe it's a debate course in communications, whatever it might be. Sure, I could conceive of a course where the point might be to present both sides of some arguments, and that's totally fine. But in general, that's not what a university is for. So I reject that notion. Like in economics. I mean, it's true that there was mainstream, there still is a mainstream view that trickle down economics is a good economic theory. Well, I took economics and in that course, they presented that argument, but they were not required to present it with no opinion. It's not as though, oh, because there's an opinion in the world that trickle-down economics works, therefore you are bound because some people believe it, you have to present that view and you can't be critical of it.

0:52:06 Thomas: No, that's actually not how it works. It was presented and then they said, you know, there's not really any evidence for this. It's kind of a bad view. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. People want it to be true, but it's not true. You know, you're required to teach what the best academic data is, you know, what the, what's the best, depending on the field. I mean, it is certainly in science. Of course, you are going to teach with the best science is it gets a little different in humanities where it's not just merely scientific questions that there's a firm answer on. So I will say that I think it's weird that she recorded this proactively. I don't, I mean, I would like to ask her, it's not worth it because this is just not enough of an issue because I don't think this is some global catastrophe. And again, when we're looking at the scope of this problem, it is noteworthy that every single person on Twitter, if you search this, no one defends the university, the university president and the professor have publicly apologized.

0:53:04 Thomas: Other professors at other universities are critiquing them. That's a good sign that this isn't some victim narrative. This isn't some pervasive thing that's infecting all universities. They recognize that they were in the wrong here. And I'm all for keeping that in check. Like, I don't want things to go too far the other way, where if a single student complains about a class, no matter how reasonable that was, that the teacher is scolded and censored or whatever. I don't want that to be true. I mean, I want there to be plenty of sensitivity toward not creating a hostile environment for students, but that's on a case-by-case basis. You can look at what it is, you can evaluate the facts, and in this case, the facts say this was fine for her to do.

0:53:50 Thomas: I think some of the things she said in the recording were wrong, but I stick to my principle that I have more criticism for the administration than for her. I think they were in the position of authority. They were in a position to speak to her in a better way. They had the responsibility to act better. So I do think that she was more in the right than they were, definitely. And I think they made a mistake, I hope they changed their behavior.

And it looks as though they're still receiving nonstop condemnation after the apology and all that. So we'll keep an eye on it, I suppose, if there's any other developments. Uh, but I think that's important to note, it's not as though every university backed them up and said, no, no, this is the right thing to do, we're universities, we're neo-Marxist, whatever buzzword BS, Jordan B. Peterson things, uh, that hasn't happened. The only people I see speaking up on the other side of this is the LGBT group of Laurier, and their view is that we don't take into account the hostile environment there is for trans people enough. And I'm sympathetic to the argument, but I also think this just wasn't particularly hostile. Now, it would be nice if we also had a recording of that class. We could evaluate, like, did she say something? Did someone else say something in?

It's possible that that could be true. It's possible that it could have been unintentional, and despite maybe this grad student's best, best efforts. It could have been a hostile environment. I would be open to that possibility, but based on the facts described, it doesn't sound like it was.

0:55:30 Thomas: And it sounds like she presented something that was in line with what the course was doing. So that's my take on Laurier. I know it might not have been what you expected. I think it's entirely dependent on what the course was. As I said, the course wasn't what it seemed to be, so that's what I think. My take on it, let's not give Jordan B. Peterson things like this to cry foul at forever. He will milk this to no end. I'm sure his Patreon just bumped up to a bajillion million, bajillion, million dollars. He makes, what does he make? Half a million dollars on Patreon. I'm Sure that's only set to go up when the, uh, the cultural Marxists at the universities are taking over and banning him from the classroom. So I don't think we should give him these kinds of opportunities to play victim. So that's where I come down on this one.

0:56:17 Thomas: Alrighty. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you have a very fine Thanksgiving and I'll have to see you on Monday. My intention is to have a discussion with a Trump supporter. I thought it would be an interesting thing to do, like a Thanksgiving theme. You know, everyone has to go talk with their, their uncle. I saw a tweet that was kind of funny. That was, does everybody's uncle say, oh man, I have to talk to my open-minded niece or nephew at Thanksgiving? I thought that was funny. Like the inverse of the racist uncle. Like they always think, ah, a non-racist niece or nephew or whatever. Uh, but anyway, in, in along those lines, I'm going to attempt to have that conversation. I hope it happens, it's, it's scheduled, but we'll see, you never know.

0:57:02 Thomas: And I think that'll be kind of a, a good tie-in to, like, how did everybody's conversation go over Thanksgiving with their Trump supporting family or something. So good luck with that, everybody. Have a good holiday. I'll see on Monday.