Lindsay Shepherd | Free Speech & Victimhood Culture

so that's where things stand at this time and I thought we'd invite Lindsey Shepherd here to continue with her story all right hi everybody so today I want to talk about the top four things that I have learned as a campus free speech advocate I think my experience with this is interesting because prior to the events of November 2017 free speech was not something I really cared about and it was not something I really thought about whatsoever so before I started my master's degree at Wilfrid Laurier University where I got in trouble for showing a clip of Jordan Peterson and one of my tutorials and being neutral in regards to his stance on gender neutral pronouns I was someone who believed that those who advocate for free speech or start free speech clubs are people who have really vile opinions and just want to be able to spew them I didn't think about free speech beyond that that's how I know that people whose opinions are quite Orthodox and mainstream are generally not going to be the ones that vocally defend free speech so that brings me to the first thing I learned that there is a conscious effort to get people in line by associating free speech with white supremacy transphobia racism and other forms of bigotry the politically correct totalitarians genuinely view free speech as a gateway to those things and so they try to push this idea that you would have no reason to defend free speech unless you are secretly a racist or a trans folk or an islamaphobe so in other words if you're a good person you don't need free speech anyone who does stand up for it must have an ulterior motive just the other day I saw a professor tweet that about how free speech is just to cover for upholding white male dominance this goes back to the idea that most people don't think we have a free speech problem at all I was one of those people one year ago back in March 2017 my mom showed me a news article about Jordan Peterson and how he was speaking at McMaster University and his speech was drowned out by air horns and chanting of protestors and I didn't think it was that big of a deal because at the time it didn't resonate with me that these people are stifling and suppressing speech and moreover they think our heroes for doing that the second thing I learned is that our universities specifically the humanities and social science departments are ideologically homogeneous if you have a genuine and honest commitment to free speech it generally means you have a commitment to truth seeking and in order to seek truth a free and open exchange of ideas is required so if you start to say that some topics are off-limits some topics are not up for debate you're limiting the truth-seeking process so I was told for instance that the issue of gender-neutral pronouns is not up for debate because by discussing the grammar of gender-neutral pronouns so using VAE them in the singular using Z and xur you're actually questioning the existence and the lives of trans people and that is hate therefore some things can simply not be discussed because they are too controversial of course this is fundamentally counter to the mission of the university which is to explore and evaluate different ideas when the message gets across that there is a right way and a wrong way to think you're gonna get university students who feel that they must ideologically conform and conformity obviously stifles people and their abilities the third thing I learned is that safe space culture on university campuses is economically motivated so when I first looked into this phenomenon of safe spaces and notice how so many people are saying that university campuses and classrooms must be safe spaces I just kind of thought these people are losers because by safe space they don't mean a place where you are physically safe they mean a place where everyone is oversensitive no one challenges each other's ideas and no one brings up anything that other people might not want to hear so you know and I think this idea does have value in some circumstances so take like an LGBTQ Center people who go to that Center don't want to be confronted by someone who's gonna come in and say I don't think you should have the right to get married same with an abortion clinic you know a woman who's about to get an abortion probably doesn't want to have a robust pro-life versus pro-choice debate while she's waiting in that clinic right but the university classroom can simply never be a safe space because there needs to be an allowance for open inquiry and free expression in classrooms we need to be able to debate and discuss things that some people might be offended by however the safe space phenomenon is actually a little bit more complicated than that Canadian universities actually advertise that they are safe and comfortable learning environments and I'm sure I don't need to repeat the platitude that universities are businesses therefore if students are demanding safe spaces the universities will recalibrate campus culture in order to accommodate that in addition the idea that we should always be affirmed and our self-confidence should never be tested is starting in the elementary schools so the idea that we must always be comfortable never be confronted with anything we don't want to hear this will be the atmosphere that children grow up with and they will come to expect it not only from the universities but from their workplaces and from society at large as well the fourth thing I learned is that free speech is becoming a partisan issue which I find very unfortunate when my case went public in November the leader of the Conservative Party Andrew Shearer he brought it up in Parliament and asked the Liberals to denounce what had happened but they didn't instead one of the ministers said something vague about how free speech is good but hate has no place in Canadian society so I'm afraid that the Liberals the NDP and the Greens they're buying into this idea that the only people who care about free speech are bad and scary people because they will barely touch the issue and in the recent Ontario election we saw the Ontario Progressive Conservatives claim that they will promise to protect free speech on campus however I emphasize that it's really not in anyone's interest for only one side of the political spectrum to champion free speech because it really is everyone's issue after all it is one of the fundamental freedoms in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms thank you so these are obviously generational things cuz when I arrived at the University McGill University the Chancellor had a major assembly gave a speech and said look to your right look to your left one of you isn't gonna be here next year and another one isn't gonna be here the year after that making clear the point that competition is important that you have to work hard you have to fight for your place it's not a comfortable place it's a place you have to earn and then a class after class after class we were informed that being at university meant that everything you believed in was likely to be challenged and here we are a couple generations later everything is on its end so now that you've begun your crusade tell me are you mobilizing any measure of support or are you alone dboys i think i'm mobilizing support i mean i've started a group called the Lory society for open inquiry we're hoping to bring the culture of open and great back on campus because you know I read a book recently it's called speaking freely by Keith Whittington and he says it's not a crisis yet but we really need to focus right now on bringing back these liberal values right well when you read about this idea of safe places and of trigger warnings and microaggressions you think where is a sling it just needs a little satire doesn't matter all right it's lovely to see and thank you for coming I know you're very much [Applause]

Channel: ideacity

Views: 516,009

Keywords: ZoomerMedia, ideacity, IdeaCity, big ideas, technology, arts, science, lectures, Toronto, moses znaimer, moses, znaimer, freedom of speech, victomhood culture, lindsay shepherd, wildrid laurier university, wilfrid laurier, WLU, free speech, Lindsay Shepherd

Id: 6xdb7nlkzPY

Length: 8min 59sec (539 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 26 2018