You're Next | Dr. Rima Azar | The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - S4: E28

[Music] hello everybody we've got something a bit more topical today i'm going to be speaking with dr rima azar who's associate professor of health psychology at mount ellison university co-founder and co-director of navi care swans navi and a former holder of a canadian institute of health research new investigator salary award in developmental psychoneuro immunology she's co-scientific lead in the three-part leadership of the new brunswick strategy for patient-oriented research network a provincial network including 120 stakeholders under the leadership of two researchers two clinicians and two policy makers she's a former canadian institutes of health research advisory board member for the institute of human development child and youth health at the canadian institutes of health research mount ellison university where dr azar teaches is a canadian primarily undergraduate liberal arts university located in sackville new brunswick it's been ranked the top undergrad university in canada 21 times in the past 29 years by mclean's magazine a record unmatched by any other canadian university in february of 2021 dr azar ran into some trouble at her university because of views she expressed on her blog while commenting on news articles in the media so this is part of my ongoing discussions about or everyone's ongoing discussions about the state of today's universities thanks very much for joining me today dr azar thank you for having me it's unbelievable that i'm on your show well it's too bad it has to be under these circumstances yes indeed so how long have you been at mount ellison uh since 2008 so about 13 years and what's it been like what department are you in and what has it been like for you psychology and it has been amazing uh since day one uh working with my colleagues the students my colleagues across the campus the community my good relationships with everyone the administration the students the union i've never had any problem uh at all until sure so you like mount ellison you like the community you're happy to be there absolutely and how what undergraduate courses do you teach uh i teach uh courses at all levels so intro to psychology so first year we have sections and i teach 206 students uh health psychology the second year i teach a course called perinatal health psychology third year and a seminar in my area of psychoneuroimmunology or advanced health psychology and you've enjoyed your teaching as well as your research oh yes absolutely and what kind of research do you do i do research well my lab is called the psychobiology of stress and health lab and my research is i'm interested in stress in coping and resilience now currently in relation to families of children who have complex care needs um i work with colleagues at 20 st john it's it's just amazing what we can do uh while being at mount elson university so working in the community here working across new brunswick across canada etc and where did you do your undergraduate and graduate work uh undergraduate at the university of montreal um i i did something called sico education which is a developmental psychology it's a it's a more clinically oriented program where we can practice i did a master's in it um so i have that clinical background but i do research stress research clinical research and i did my phd in developmental psychoneuro endocrinology again university of montreal i moved to toronto and i did my postdoctoral fellowship at the university of toronto university head network and yes are you originally from montreal originally from montreal but originally originally from beirut lebanon so i've lived 15 years in montreal i arrived when i was 17. yes and i did my seed jet college that exists in quebec i did a year of college and the university so you moved to canada with your parents or did you come up yes at first with my parents but then they moved back so i chose to stay and i always joke saying i represent the azar family in canada it's uh so my parents are very attached to canada they are canadians but they they they live in baywood uh and i live here uh okay so you immigrated to canada and you lived in montreal you went to school in montreal and then you ended up in new brunswick and you've been teaching there you said since 2008 so it's been 13 years yes so and what happened you have a blog tell us about that yes i'm gonna tell uh the story of how it happened not like of course what is going on um internally but what is in the media that i can speak to but if you allow me first i want to say that it all started with the blog but then there have been an invitation for complaints about the blog and um i wanna clearly and firmly say and state that i deny those allegations that are circulating in the media against me so that's clear i'm someone who strongly believe in respect and human relationships and i think uh if we have that respect toward others said first but toward others it's the best antidote to racism discrimination mistreatment of others so i'm against discriminating against anyone uh including myself of course but against anyone so that for me i wanna get it out clearly please so tell us about the blog when did you start writing your blog in july 2019 and why did you start to do that you mean you have your research career you're an undergraduate or you're you're a teacher as well um you're working in the community you have a full life what what compelled you to to start a blog i love to write uh and i think it's it's a reflex that i have from war so i used to write my my diary in arabic and in french and i have them with me that came from with me in a box and went across three provinces so i love to write so uh in july 2019 i didn't have the chance maybe to say what i wanted to say on a platform so i decided to have my own blog and just write for the pleasure of writing i write about lebanon maybe half of the time i write about canada quebec here i just write uh and express uh views in relation to what is happening in canada and in the world and i think i'm seeing something very worrisome and maybe that's part of why maybe i'm writing because i'm seeing that we are uh in times where we can't talk about things like look what's happening in my story like we people are afraid they may think things um when they are at home privately but they may not express them publicly or maybe because of you know political correctness or whatever i'm not that type of person like when i write or bambi the name of the person writing is actually the meaning of my first name rima it means a little deer in arabic and bambi is that deer so bambi's afkar are bambi's thoughts so i i what i write is actually who whom i am what my own thoughts uh privately and on that blog i sometimes write maybe you know personal things about birthdays of loved ones or whatever it's a blog right so that's it and what kind of audience does your blog have well at first i thought it had maybe 10 people maybe first myself i was writing for myself but i thought family family members and then when that story happened uh i for once i searched i usually don't have the time to do that and i thought it was like really getting 2 000 on one day and then like i don't know what another day i checked 500 something like that i thought oh my goodness like i was really thinking i'm writing you know i'm using uh during the pandemic my in-laws or my parents sometimes with some submissions or writing about the beirut explosion i interviewed friends about what they are going through the financial crisis you know things like that right so it had expanded beyond the small number of people that you had assumed were reading it absolutely and what what were you okay so tell me about your thoughts about people's inability to speak what have you been thinking or experiencing prior to this this explosion of interest in your particular case what had you been sensing and was was that the culture at large was that mount ellison what had you been experiencing that was worrisome to you that is at large you know when we hear stories about people um being um being silenced in one way or another or or uh when we see that people are being i don't know if that's the term in english but disreputable i mean being made into uh jabulizing them you know uh saying words you know uh this or that racist or that just because having the reputation attacked yes exactly and uh so that and that is actually it's ironically a contradiction with where i come from where we don't we have a powerful group or or more powerful than other groups but we have lebanon has issues but people still express their opinions there despite stories or you know extreme stories of you know kidding here and there you know but i mean uh they can teach uh freely they can criticize freely and i do criticize things there um and i have never imagined in my whole life that my problems would be from canada and not like coming from from where i come from but you see what i mean so what did you write about that got that caused trouble and and for how long to tell us all about that it's very hard to know precisely but i but um you know some of the things it's public information i'm not uh saying anything that was that that went in and emails or in in social media from the university so or or went uh in the media actually if you read the stories of being accused of being racist of being you know that all these terms like encouraging sexual violence uh um so what those were the accusations against you they were accusations of racist racism they were accusations that you were promoting sexual violence yes um what else what else were you accused of it seems odd to be promoting sexual violence but it's but i can explain why perhaps perhaps people maybe younger people think in black and white and don't don't see the nuances and i can understand that when we are young sometimes it's like that but i i try i think i try to bring some perspective by comparing you know places worse than canada you know canada has issues of course like all the countries but canada is not as bad as we think had it been that bad i would have not immigrated here my family would have not i would have not chosen to stay so so maybe i may have said uh us in wars war times or under certain radical groups you may have a rape culture and i by no means i meant to be saying uh minimizing the experience of people going through uh through horrible things like rape and then that sexuality so that's absolutely not the case but um i think it's all about the blog in all honesty all what we hear in the media is not the main thing is the blog is it it's disturbing uh and exactly exactly what happened to you so you were you were living what i would presume was a pretty comfortable and and happy life as you've described being a teacher and a researcher you spun off this blog on the side and then what happened one day you were notified by the university tell us exactly the story i can tell you but i want to say yes i'm extremely happy even in the pandemic even despite the beirut explosion and everything like i'm finding my ways of you know living coping with new brunswick is amazing um for canada but but we're also lucky to be in the semi-rural areas where even the pandemic did not hit us as hard as toronto or bigger places in montreal so in that sense um it was all okay until that february 22nd where i can tell you that story because it's my story that's my part so and and it's in the media actually i was um i'm i was having symptoms of actually like covet 19 i wasn't sure and i was very very very sick and not i usually run fast and jump and go on the stairs and i couldn't take the stairs i would stop you know couldn't breathe and uh so on that day the monday where it happened i went for testing was finally negative but i went came back did my work day and then and at the end of the day i was lying on the couch thinking that i was resting i got a phone call from a kind former student telling me dr azar you're uh you need to know what is happening and i thought are you okay what is happening was worried and he said no i'm fine you are in trouble in big trouble so the story started in the social media i'm not on social media myself um so for me i chose that blog because it's what suits my personality what i you know writing and having an enough space to write and so anyways i enjoy reading social media and i do but i i'm not on it so so i went i read quickly and i thought okay uh it's you know it was there and this was where this was on twitter this was all happening on twitter or where was it i don't know if it was happening on on elsewhere or facebook i guess but i saw the twitter myself and then an email got out of the university publicly so not on twitter on facebook um or the public channels of the university saying um you know it's public so i'm not saying what is not public um trigger warning that blog we dissociate ourselves from it and and you know uh all and encouraging complaints okay so what people what were people saying on twitter and who who was it that would say it and how many of them were there do you know a lot uh and like it was it was a big thing on social media like um and and there has been also at one point you know a threat of violence on social media and things like that so it was it was then i don't to forget that part when the the there were three student organizations asked for my removal from um my position at my university and also affiliations uh elsewhere like university of new brunswick invested in moncton as well so it got really okay so i want to zero in on this so there's there's some students primarily on social media on twitter primarily and they're complaining about your blog and they're students who are part of student organizations and do you and then the student organizations themselves three of them are contacting your the people that you're working for or with suggesting that you're not the sort of person they should be associating with and asking for your removal exactly you said there were lots of of students doing this and i'd like to get something an estimate of something like a number so does a lot mean 500 or does it mean five so in between maybe i don't know precisely the answer well the reason i'm asking is because one of the things i'm curious about is just how many people have to complain before complaints are taken with some degree of seriousness now i've dealt with ethics boards for example at my own university and they have a policy that every complaint should be investigated thoroughly and i'm not very fond of that policy particularly because there are a lot of people who cause a fair bit of trouble for absolutely no reason and it seems to me that complaints need to pass something approximating a reasonable threshold before they're dealt with let's say seriously and so you know it's striking when you're talking about this that you don't know how many people actually came after you because they came after you on on social media and it's certainly not in the hundreds it's unlikely to be and correct me if i'm wrong it's unlikely to be in the dozens is it is it 10 is it 15 and were they students who were actually in your classes or were they just people who read your blog and and what were they objecting to in your blog exactly what did you say that was in principle or do you even know what it is that they're upset about what i've read is that you made some claim that canada wasn't systemically racist that wasn't the right way of looking at the country and is there so and to me that means now is that the case now that at a university if i stand up and say that i don't believe that the lens of systemic racism is the proper way to analyze canada especially compared to other countries that now i'm so reprehensible that i deserve to be suspended if a couple of people object is that the situation that we're looking at or am i being too hard on the university well i think it's hard to answer that question i know the numbers that i know uh of now i know them because of what happened and how many people but before i didn't know anything i personally found it amazing that my university my employer that i that i love and respect you know did not call me to tell me what was happening that that i learned in that did your union my i my union is doing what needs to be done and i'm very grateful but uh but i didn't know about that i knew it this is how i knew it and then after that first call friends from nova scotia amherst nova scotia called hearing in the news and the radio it was all everywhere um i have to admit uh i may be wrong but there may have been a flavor for that during that month so like it was like like my story was sort of scapegoat for something that is much bigger than a deer a simple deer a silly deer sometimes we can we're not allowed to write serious things or silly things or be wrong or change our mind so what precisely i don't know but i do i personally am allergic to identity politics given my background so i i um may have written things about that or or about uh you know what it's hard to tell but you're still not sure you're still not sure what it is that okay so you're not sure exactly who you offended or how many of them there are and you're not exactly sure why you offended them and you're so unsure that what you say is that as far as you're concerned you can't safely write down what you think despite the fact that you have your opinions given where you came from given the fact that you've immigrated here that you can take a look at canada from the perspective of an insider and an outsider you're not sure what your crime is no but now because it's in this in the media i can talk to that i'm so i'm um said that i'm not respecting the confidentiality of the process of the investigational report it's in the media there is an allegation well you get it you get the chance to defend yourself in any case i mean you've been suspended correct in the fall okay and you said your university didn't even call you when all this blew up which is typical in my experience of the way institutions are reacting to this sort of thing so an unnamed number of students made comments that you have views that are in some sense reprehensible even though you don't know what they are and the response of your university despite the fact that you have tenure that you're an accomplished scientist that you're a popular undergraduate researcher that you have tenure the response of your university was to not eat call you but suspend you for the fall what pending an investigation an investigation into what exactly have they told you what you did wrong of course i i saw those complaints um and i can tell you i think that part i can say it is most of them are related to the blog and that's fine people have the right not to like what you say what i say what anyone else is saying that's fine but when we get into uh false allegations um it's a different story there's also a difference between having the right not to like what you say on your blog and aggregating behind your back and conspiring to contact all your employers and to insist that you be removed because you're reprehensible and hypothetically a danger to the let's say the safety of students and to have you removed from your position and have your reputation dragged through the mud and have you exposed in the media i mean that's not merely not liking what you said that's an all-out attack and it's amazing to me that the this handful of students an unspecified number has the power to move the administration to produce such a dramatic response and you and you you keep um wavering in some sense as to the nature of your crimes you said you think it might you think it's likely the blog but i guess there are allegations that go outside the blog as well have you ever had trouble with your students in classes that have resulted in complaints never all those who know me personally who can guess who i am in the blog because i think it shows a little bit that you know i write i write or write a lot so you can guess you can see you can make links you can see so for example i may criticize uh a certain politician in one one blog but i can say thank you on another one for doing something good you know i'm writing because we cannot comment on art media articles um many times you know the comment section is closed right so for me it's my way of doing it so if if they well it doesn't seem to me that it's something that needs to be justified i mean first of all you're a citizen of a free country you have a right to express yourself any way that you see fit second of all you're a tenured professor and your thoughts actually protected to a fair degree and it's protected broadly so that you can think broadly and the fact that this has happened despite your tenure well i guess part of the question that people who are watching might be asking is why the hell should they care about this and the reason i believe that people should care about this first of all is that what happens in the universities ends up happening everywhere else very very rapidly and if it can happen to someone like you it seems to me that it can happen to anyone at any time and any place and this this this unbelievable cowardice that our institutions show in the in the face of unwarranted allegations as long as they're the right flavor is something that should be tremendously worrisome to everyone now in your situation is also particularly peculiar i might say because you don't seem to be the right sort of target for this sort of targeting you know because you're using the terminology that i don't appreciate in the least i mean you're female you're an immigrant you're you're at least in principle part of the communities that the people who push this sort of nonsense are hypothetically trying to protect so why is it because you are in one of these victimized categories and you dared to say something that wasn't in accordance with the necessary moral uh ideology that you've been targeted so let's let's find out this you came to canada from beirut okay what's your experience of this country this racist oppressive systemically biased country what's your impression of this place it's a prestigious university i mean i love my university i did my all my studies at the great universe i work with greater all the universities so i'm saying if canada was that racist with me at least because some people would say that's your story it's not the story of others i'm not the only one who speaks like that you lived in montreal yes for how long for 15 years okay what was it like i've lived in montreal i know what montreal is like what's montreal like montreal because people are open-minded people are people respect you you know they they you can say what you wish you could have it's it's a quebec is sometimes mischaracterized sadly but i defend quebec i don't know if there's something that bothers other some people so i'm not just from beirut uh lebanese canadian i have i'm canadian first and foremost but lebanese canadian uh i'm quebecer i lived in quebec i love ontario when i visit vancouver and the west part of the country i told myself oh why didn't my family be great there it's fascinating you know every place is beautiful uh in canada and so when i come back to what may have bothered them i think you put your finger on it um maybe they want it if you read the about of the bambi's vlog you see that that deer does not want to fit in any group and say and put in a box so i'm supposed to be racial you know be a poor me i don't have food i don't i don't like to be victimized personally in my life even now with what is happening to me i am i think i'm a dignified person uh so so so in that sense um i like the term invisible minority visible minority you know the terms that used to be used in quebec my time when i immigrated i see myself more in them and then like like put us divided into your this group that group and and um you know sectarianism or or not like right so you're supposed to be first of all you're female so hypothetically you're oppressed because you're female even though the evidence for suppression of females in academia is very very uh it's actually females dominate over males in terms of numerical proportion in most disciplines it's not the case in the stem fields but everywhere else it's the case not only especially in terms of graduates produced it might not be the case at the highest levels of distinction in the academic hierarchy although that's changing pretty rapidly so you should actually fit into at least two oppressed categories female and an immigrant right and and so and so the rule here is that if you're in both of those categories victimized by the intersection between those two categories that there's a particular political view you better have or else and or else in your case is everywhere else you get suspended because a few people complain it's what the hell is going on with the administration i don't understand what they're doing i really don't understand i can't understand why they didn't have the courtesy actually i can understand why they didn't have the courtesy to call you because the sad truth is is that as soon as a few people complain everyone who isn't directly involved runs scared and looks for someone to sacrifice yes i can how can i say it when you i wanna reply to the women part my own sister is a is um a journalist and and defends women's rights and in their root and uh you know there you know that women have a long journey right for equality and yet my sister does not use terms like you know that does you know toward men and that that i don't know how to say it but in a constructive way she does what she doesn't baby may have had a post actually on that um so so that's one thing the second thing is you're right there is there is scapegoating maybe but there is fear people are afraid and i don't just well the way the way to deal with fear isn't to offer someone up as a sacrificial victim and then to run hiding into the closet that's not the way to deal with fear that all that does is feed the mob as far as i'm concerned because now they've managed to go after your job successfully i don't understand like what sort of message is that sending to the to the students who went after you to begin with what the message is as well if you organize yourself into a little mob and bully like mad then you can make major administrations count out to your political will despite the fact that it massively disrupts someone innocent's life well that's a hell of a message for an educational institution absolutely and it's not just my life my family my small family my larger family and in lebanon like it's it's like people are traumatized by that story and uh there is a silent majority of students or or not yeah like 97 yes who are uh who are like you who think what is that and unlike me but me i i'm calm i take things calmly and i think try to how to solve things and strategically and what to do what not to do so but i see around me how much people are affected uh and i am of course affected but i mean i'm trying to fight for me who was it exactly that sent you the note signifying your suspension well it's not a secret it's two administrators um but the two particular persons but uh for me it doesn't at that stage is it's all public so all what i'm saying is not that i'm saying something that i'm not supposed to be saying it's all public and those names well it isn't it isn't also it also isn't clear what you're supposed to be saying and what you aren't supposed to be saying i mean you have every right to let people know what's going on in fact i think in some sense you have an obligation to let people know what's going on right and because look at this isn't right this isn't this isn't appropriate especially given that you're protected by tenure it's not appropriate anyways but it's particularly not appropriate because you're hypothetically protected by tenure and so on what grounds were you suspended i still don't understand what you did what where's the evidence that you did something so reprehensible that a suspension was the appropriate response why didn't they say at minimum well you can continue your teaching and we'll take a look at this but given your stellar record and your loyal service for the last 13 years continue what you're doing and you know we'll take a look at this but we're on your side given your past behavior is there anything that's lurking back there that makes you nervous about your performance no but let me tell you something what happened at mount ellison university and is happening elsewhere but particularly here is a symptom of what is happening in our country or or maybe beyond actually so i take it like that it's a symptom that we do have a serious problem as you said like tenured professors not being able to express ideas debate ideas challenge students with ideas we do have a big problem well not only ideas these your what you claim is not only what was commonplace is commonplace among the vast majority of people in canada but was completely uncontroversial five years ago it's not like you're pushing forward some radical ideas to question the idea that canada is systemically racist let's take a look at that a little bit so when you move to montreal you're an outsider you're an immigrant what's your experience there what did you make friends right away were you shunned were you prejudiced against in any particular way what happened to you in montreal it was an amazing experience of course sometimes you may meet someone who may may say a word that may sound like being raised so i say so what like it's great racist have the right to exist in a so-called races like myself have the right to exist in a community or in a society so what i'm trying to say is that it is normal in a society to have people who are truly for racist or is or radicals or or but the problem is when radicals start imposing their views instead of accepting that not everyone thinks the same like i am i consider myself as a classical liberal historically i thought center left but i don't like to put words so essentially some people would say why are you talking to dr peterson some people most of the people i know would be jealous of me to be talking to you in all honesty but some people would say uh why are you talking you know being perceived as being too you know right left things i don't care about science uh i am going to tell you something about me and identity politics when i moved to montreal it's full of people of the same background as me so if you take a cab driver chances are the car driver would be either of haitian origins or lebanese origins so sometimes um when i open my mouth in french they can guess my accent or we realize we're both same background start chatting they ask me where are you from and i can see the religious symbol in the car it's actually i share that same religion but i would answer from beirut i am from beru this is general they will say where exactly in beirut i know where they want to come to and it's not because they are mean because it's curious it's built in them they want to know which religion and me i say oh the green light near the green line sorry green line you know what i mean like between east and west beirut so that so for me my religion is her personal my my whatever part of identity it's no one's business so it's like it's it's identities are complex right we have multiple identical i don't know what i mean um but so so that is how i've always approached things and now that i'm seeing that if we say if we denounce these things in our society we are being called races or being called radicals like it doesn't make any sense to my sense so your experience when you went to montreal it was a positive one and you enjoyed living in the city and and then you went off you did well in cjep in in the upper echelons of high school and then you went off to university of montreal and you were successful there did you encounter anything that you regarded as systemic racism while you were in montreal no not in montreal not in toronto not in new brunswick personally um of course we know the history and history of canada and pockets of residual things that you know unfair unjust but you know i think systemic racism or whatever we want to call it or diversity or things we have to be careful not to be saying slogans and empty slogans for me diversity i live it i i live it because i allow myself to think uh this will change my mind my spouse is not of the same background as me absolutely not uh and so so that's that's diversity right uh uh diversity is i i tolerate i think you you can be of that trend of we call it walkism why not as long as you don't impose on me or if you see what i mean or you can be um you can be even to think of religion now not just muslim but islamists if you're not doing something with it um if you see what i mean to to society or realize so my point is we have the right to think whatever we wish in a democratic society in a free society especially in universities as you said the lighthouse of of knowledge of exchange of ideas and if it's there it's it's getting dark how how would it be elsewhere have you been have you been able to face any of your accusers do you know who they are were they were they former students who were in your classes are they people who are hell-bent on pushing an ideological agenda who virtually know nothing about you i mean do you do you have any ideas not speak to that part but maybe i can say in general that some name some may not many not a man you know but i will i will just say that um it is just so unfair absurd uh it's there is no word that i can describe uh it's not because it's happening to me surreal yes siree and that's the words yeah surreal no one should go through that no one for whatever reasons think you know okay so so let's talk about that for a minute so back to that day that you knew that something was afoot exactly what happened so a former student alerted you that something was up and you checked out twitter and you saw accusations about your character and about what you've written flying around on twitter and the the the people who were producing these accusations were parts of student organizations what kind of student organizations were they part of i think i can stick to that part because it's in the media um so divest was one of them that was mount a another one was uh black student association and the other one ironically was um the rose campaign it's about the massacre at polytechnic and i it means the world to me polytechnic is university of montreal right so every year i i commemorate i i you know i participate so that that one group was that group um saying that i encourage gender violence sexual violence and through my writing on the blog um so and that was because you because you were pointing out that that such activity is not part and parcel of the central culture in canada but an aberration i was perhaps talking about i don't know um honor killing in some places you know so i read a media about a a certain young woman who was killed and i put a candle you know you know her memory and i wrote something you know comment about that so that's because i didn't it it's like and how is it that you're glorifying sexual violence by doing that exactly i have no idea i wish i could answer but i um okay so that that particular um uh accusation not only i've been thinking lately that there are about about deception the use of deception and you know there are lies that are just about true but they're just sort of they're not quite true and so you sneak them by because they're close enough to the truth maybe to pass but then there are lies that are the antithesis of the true antithesis of the truth right they're they're anti-truths and it seems to me that the accusations that you're glorifying sexual violence fall in the antithesis category of untruth not only is it a lie it's the opposite of the truth yes but when it's about the blog i can understand i can understand uh because they don't like it they're emotional about it i write that i can understand but when we come to talk about a behavior a situation an incident that has never happened that is a different story and how how do you separate out those two i think it all came in the context of the complaints and the the the situation of the blog and and i but i don't know for sure because i remember i didn't know how it started at the beginning but in but logically it came when through that you know the process of the i call it speed mobbing because it was like speed dating uh it was so fast so uh um it felt like uh how can i say it with all respect like having bar king dogs coming at you all at once yeah so how about we call this assault yes yes absolutely look i've watched lots of people respond to twitter mobs over the last four years and my experience has been that being mob by 20 people on twitter especially when an administrative organization then climbs in that's enough to seriously damage someone and most people climb back and apologize as fast as they possibly can and it's no wonder because it's very unnerving and destabilizing yes and so you you're someone who who is obviously deeply opposed to such things as sexual exploitation clearly and and assault and the use of arbitrary violence and nonetheless you're targeted by precisely that kind of behavior and then it's encouraged in every possible way as far as i can tell by the administration who immediately fold in the most cowardly of possible ways and so i just this is just it's outrageous and yeah i can't understand why there isn't more noise about it i can't you're the wrong target clearly thank you i can't speak for the motivation but i can speak of not standing up for me what i see i saw the whole canada stood up for me like the people writing uh amazing comments on the gofundme people donating people like that like like i i'm overwhelmed by that i see people standing right right and i'm still into the thinking thinking and i want to thank them if they are listening because i didn't have the time to complete or my personalized thank you no too okay so so 10 000 people support you and 20 people complain and yet the university suspends you so like what the hell's up with that exactly i mean how come there's no proportionality of response if the if the overwhelming body of the population is supportive of what you of who you are let's say and what you've done which is nothing that that deserves the kind of treatment that you've been through why isn't the university as sensitive to the public opinion supporting you as they are sensitive to the hypothetical public opinion damning you do you have like do you how do you understand that well you said this was surreal and i want to delve more into that so let's we'll deal with the public opinion issue in a bit so let's go back to that monday so this is starting to unfold you see this twitter mob developing there's these student factions um including people who are supporting causes that you support so that's the the there was a massacre of six women at at in montreal about 20 years ago and that's commemorated every december 6th and that's one of these student organizations you say you commemorate that as well so you're actually there's no reason for you to be perceived as someone who's antithetical to that particular cause all right so these students are organizing do you even know if they're students i don't know if i can answer that question uh but they yes i think okay okay okay okay well it's it's still stunning to me that you don't exactly know who your accuser you don't know who your accusers are you don't know how many of them there are and you don't know exactly what it is that you've done wrong and so what are you supposed to be doing in the interim are you supposed to be like re-examining your life don't you have to take diversity inclusivity and um um equity training uh i think it's in the public so i can say it's yes and the media so that's mandated it was written so that's i'm not talking about something that is internal i'm expecting all what i should be respecting confidentiality of the process but it's in the media so i can say yes that is something that went to the student in an email in the stuff okay so despite the fact that you haven't been like say convicted of any wrongdoing you're required to take diversity inclusivity and equity training and that's despite your background let's say so what exactly first of all are you going to do that and second of all what exactly are you supposed to learn by doing that what behavior do you think it is that or attitudes are you supposed to uh mend and and alter i'm gonna tell you a story from my past when i was 14 and you can guess if i'm gonna take it when i was 14 14 i think yes i was the delegate of the class in beirut and and a group of armed men heavily armed you know kalashnikov in children came and said we should go to the students to applaud to a certain politician and i'm not maybe it doesn't matter and i forgot whom um so i stood up and i said no we are students our place is here not to go for you know political ideology we're not going and they they insisted actually they took all the students of all the schools around and a friend of mine that i recently met in beirut told me you know what lima do you know why you you did not go i said she reminded me of the story i went to hide in the washroom i did not go with them so i so they were heavily armed and i did not go with them um i think i'm also i think i'm a reasonable flexible person had that been at the beginning uh i would have perhaps considered perhaps going and listening okay or perhaps but after all this does it make any sense um that's all i'm gonna say it's like it's uh i know that let's not just talk about my story because it's the symptom it's happening uh across um it's like okay and and it's insulting to people who um do not need to be taking such things into the impose yeah and you might say that i mean you you're a highly educated person it's not easy to attain a faculty position it's actually quite difficult and only a minority of people manage it you have to be smart and you have to be curious and you have to be at least a decent teacher and you have to be a good researcher you have to be able to work with people your co-authors your peers you have to be efficient it's a hard job and then and it's also a job that requires and you also have clinical background so you're actually technically social socially skilled and and highly trained and then the question is just exactly who the hell would be teaching the diversity inclusivity and equity course so that'd be someone in all likelihood with a master's in social work who's going to lecture you on your ethical duty to others and assume that you are in a position that requires exactly that kind of education despite the fact of your advanced training and that speaks to the motivation behind this sort of thing as well especially when it's forced and be because by forcing that on you and having you accept that that's that's essentially an admission of your guilt and the necessity that you've come to realize for yourself that you need to be retrained by someone who holds those particular political opinions and that level of training there's no evidence whatsoever you likely know this as a psychological researcher that any of this diversity diversity inclusivity and equity training any of this implicit bias retraining has any positive effects whatsoever there's no evidence that the implicit association test that purports to measure implicit bias is a valid test it certainly isn't accurate enough to be used for the purposes that it is being used for it's turned into a political weapon there's no excuse for it whatsoever and the human resources departments that are pushing this sort of thing it's reprehensible right to the core and i can't believe that institutions are falling prey to to the blandishments of those who are pushing this that's a pure power play to speak to motivation so and it puts you in your place which is exactly what's being uh hoped for whatever that place is since it's not even clear what it is that you did absolutely i still don't know what it is that you did but that the thing that's so frightening it doesn't really matter okay so back to monday so a twitter war is developing there's student groups who are sending complaints about you to who uh supposedly to the university to oh yeah there's a anti-racism policy and they email i'm not saying something and i'm not so to be saying it's uh anti-racism response okay so there's an administrative branch at the university set up to deal with anti-racism let's say so it's a political branch it's a politicized branch and their job is to do exactly to you what they did do to you and so those were the people who were complained to what about your your your department you mentioned political honesty it's a policy it's an internal policy like harassment policy and entertainment yeah yeah and there's an administrative bureaucracy that's associated with it and this is a this is a this is an expression of their ability to fulfill their mandate let's say given that they're searching for things to do and you're the sort of ant you're the sort of racist that they've decided to target which shows you exactly how much useful activity there is lying around if you're the sort of person they're going after the racists at mount ellison must be in relatively short supply yeah i i would say yes i agree because if it's like and i told you classical liberal and the center you know if that is not tolerated how can we tolerate someone to the real right whichever have the right to be right right but real right or so like it's it's it's too much like we i don't know what to say because you can look at it from different angles there's that political thing the freedom uh academic freedom definitely but also free expression in the world because uh societies look up to universities as as a uh for for that so if professors cannot or talk uh cannot uh communicate and and and debate i don't i didn't see any student from my university writing on the blog i saw someone who wrote and i replied um but not from the university but no one like why don't they challenge that bambi and write and say it doesn't you know when it the story happened it didn't happen it's it could have been a platform for debate uh for uh you know uh exchanging if you if you buy the line that people aggregate themselves into groups based on power and pursue their own selfish in their own selfish interest within that group there's no space for free debate between individuals that's not part and parcel of the entire doctrine it's not like it's not like there's no free speech within the confines of doctrines like that that the notion doesn't exist because there's no sovereign individuals there's no exchange of rational information there's no place for debate so the whole issue of free speech is moot there's just power and the expression of power between different groups and there is fear because when you silence or try to silence someone or isolate someone people around are afraid yeah well i can't i can't help but think that those who claim that social institutions are predicated on the arbitrary expression of power are precisely those who predicate their social behavior on the on the principle of power and they misread everyone else and i don't think there's any evidence at all that well-socialized people who are functioning productively and cooperatively in society are basing their social interactions on the arbitrary expression of power that isn't my experience with people unless they're unless there's something wrong with them and then they default to power in all their relationships but there's no place for rational debate in the in the in the on the ideological front that insists on such things as systemic racism okay so monday back to monday again how long after these complaints arise are you sanctioned are you are it how long is it until you're told that you can't teach in the fall uh i think i'm not talking about the details but there has been a process of course the investigation and the report and uh and and after that the decision was that uh from i'm suspended without pay from now until uh december the first and it's without pay as well without pay and did the report suspending you without pay detail your hypothetical crimes report the decision made based on the independent report and who who was who made up this independent who generated this independent report maybe these things i can't talk about because it would be part of arbitration and all that but i it's not that i don't want to chat with you uh but i know i understand it's funny that the privacy of the people that are doing this to you is protected and your privacy isn't i actually don't think that's funny at all and i suspect they're doing just fine with their continual uh salary payments and their lack of suspension over the next few months so it seems like a pretty one-sided power play to me you can't say anything you're suspended and yet they're protected yes and and the media the same story that is false has been repeated and recently has been repeated so yes definitely you're absolutely right what's the false story the false story i think because of the media i can talk about it the fourth story is that i uh when you maybe and just on that topic that the student is saying is that i did not i did not want to use the pronouns of the student and uh and that i said the student is brainwashed and uh from what the discussion chat so far you had with me or what you've read or what of my values what i told you about respect would i ever tell someone these things in those terms um uh it's um it's i don't know how to say it's uh well we already decided that it was surreal it's real yes no no and okay so can i help something myself yeah yes you can say anything you want it's actually about that story of the pronouns um you know some people like to be called with pronouns some people don't like to be called from some people have pronouns after their name you don't i don't uh some people and it's fine you know when we want to be respected yeah it's not fine if it's insisted upon and the punishment is that if you don't use them you lose your job that's actually not the least bit fine i'll tell you more than that then you're i'm happy you said that because when when your story came out um i listened carefully and i would i with my heart and actually when we spoke about yours your book at one point and and the attempt to try to cancel it and so so i listened i listened to people's the opposite they were angry at you and all that on tv and i thought okay what is going on here and i told myself i think he's seeing something we're not seeing you know something when you talk about imposing control i could see it because i come from a place where i could see these things happening so i saw it at one point i stepped back and i said but is it a big deal to refuse to resurrect always i had that thought no yeah well believe me i've had that thought many times you were right now i can tell you my story is the evidence of how much you are right i'll tell you why because i didn't even say it even so it can happen to you even without saying it if you see what i mean i see what you mean it's the same slouching monster that i saw five years ago it's not amusing it's not fun to see i don't find it i don't find it uh what would you say reassuring to be right i would rather have been wrong i could see a power play and i could also see a corruption of the idea of identity it's not that identity isn't merely what you feel you are at any given point an identity is something you negotiate with others you have to negotiate it with others because they have to know what the rules are if you can change the rules and make them arbitrary at any point then how can anyone play with you and maybe if you're setting up a game that no one can play you're doing that because you're the one that has the problem with power just maybe and so maybe that's a club that can be then used on people if you're of the sort of the nature that wants to use a club it's like why the hell are these people after you you don't seem particularly harmful to me as far as i can tell thank you you know i mean your research is devoted towards helping people you're an educator who's obviously um what would you say motivated by the desire to teach young people and to bring them forward not to exercise your arbitrary power over them and yet you're targeted by this so what's this done to you and to your family my what breaks my heart the most is my family in beirut that's what breaks my heart the most but um of course my spouse as well and all the friends and everyone but my parents they are in their 80s they went through the beirut explosion they survived it there's the financial crisis uh there are implications uh a lot of ambitions to many people and and people who are just sad to see this happen it is sad it's sad yeah it's sad it is sad and why sad why do you say sad exactly and the people that are responding to this what's sad about it i mean you guys had your share of trouble in lebanon because we are at that stage in canada it breaks my heart maybe the the most to think that like well i tell you the effect one friend childhood friend when she read the news about it and it because it's all everywhere it was in spanish written somewhere i don't know she called me they were thinking of immigrating to canada and she said i'm scared now maybe i should wait a little bit maybe lebanon situation will get better she said that and i was like uh i said some period of time history try pass you know i don't but i said it's true that it is un it's unimaginable like um in lebanon we look up to the canada to the to the western world if you want or by extension like we you know uh people value democracy people get killed sometimes when it's extreme because of their thoughts but uh when people can say whatever they wish on facebook social media um i critis i i don't know how to say it but i criticized uh one powerful group but not only everyone but that powerful group so many times and and yet i did not get that treatment from that powerful group there and so what what what do you what do you pla what are your plans now your life has been thrown up in the air i mean you must have been going through your teaching career with a fine-tooth comb trying to figure out you know if you did i mean what's really horrible if if something like this happens to you if you're a decent person is that you torture yourself to death about what your guilt might be yeah but you know as i said like my um people around me are losing sleep i i i'm not yet i don't know what's gonna happen but not yet because you know what i think when we know ourselves we know the truth we it like no matter what you're gonna be reading about you this is not you like you are you dr peterson i know you i from really and i hear about you you talk to me it's not what people would say you know nasty things sometimes you went through difficult times some people would say he he deserves that like i i i i get out of my mind when i see someone saying that to anyone but particularly to you for all what you did and went through and all that so i'm it's just sad again i'm saying we got to that stage in canada where we don't want to listen like why can't i say what is the meaning of let's say systemic racism because you mentioned it what does it mean you as a scientist we uh define you know we measure we chat about concept we write reviews like concept analysis we talk to stakeholders literature all that so why can't we say okay what are we talking about here where does is it coming from where is it imposed on us from uh you know uh i i think i have some hype this was not my expertise but i just know that it's why can't we say it like it's is it a dogma is it an idea is it what is it why why why can't we well i think it's a claim i think it's a claim the fundamental claim is quite straightforward i think i think the claim is that people who hold positions of authority first of all there aren't positions of authority there are positions of arbitrary power and though the people who hold those so all hierarchical societies are based on positioning of arbitrary power and that power serves that hierarchy and the people within it it exploits those at the bottom of the hierarchy it exploits those on the outside of the harker if you hold one of those arbitrary positions of power then you got it through ill-gotten means and that's the fundamental claim of systemic racism or that's what's underlying it it's not the fundamental claim of systemic racism exactly it's more like the fundamental claim of the ideology that generates slogans like systemic racism and it's part of the assault on the idea of merit so i was writing about that today i mean the things that you can tell me what you think about let's look at hiring practices at canadian universities for example okay so my sense has been this i've said on many many hiring committees the first is is that they're extremely merit-based so the first thing that the typical committee does is they rank order candidates and there's like 100 candidates for every position that's awarded so there's a plenty of people to choose from they look at publications quality of publications because as a professor one of the things you're supposed to do is generate publications so if you're a graduate student and you generated many high quality publications that's a good predictor that you're going to do the same thing in the future they look at teaching ability that be secondary at most places especially if they're research oriented be more primary at a teaching oriented university so teaching ratings from students so the stakeholders have a have a a say in that that's a powerful say um and then also evidence of interpersonal ability so you look at letters of reference and so on documenting the candidates ability to be a good colleague and to get along with people and not to be a troublesome thorn in the side let's say for for arbitrary reasons and so those are perfectly reasonable hiring criteria they have nothing to do with the maintenance of the power of any particular group and then there's even more than that because once the candidate pool has been winnowed out the probability that a university hiring committee is going to give preferential treatment to someone who's qualified within that pool but who shows who's let's say a member of a group that's been historically disadvantaged to use all this bloody terminology the probability that that person is going to get more than a fair shake is very very high and that's been the case for at least 30 years and it isn't clear to me that that's always been for the best but nonetheless that's the situation so to think about those institutions you canadian universities american universities too for that matter as somehow being predicated on arbitrary power is it's not again it's not a lie it's an anti-truth it's exactly the opposite of the real situation and you know you might say you look at canada i know one of your crimes was suggesting that among countries rather than among the hypothetical utopian visions of ideologically adult students canada does pretty damn well by historical standards and by current world comparative standards you know and you might say well there's still detrimental behaviors that are embedded within the culture but in the case of university hiring committees it isn't obvious to me how they could possibly be more fair than they are they they strive so hard to be fair that they bend over backwards at least to some degree in the opposite direction and so so okay so you didn't detain your position as a consequence of some arbitrary expression of power you're actually qualified to to do the job that you have and yet you're going to be mandated to take diversity inclusivity and equity training you know i've been thinking for a long time where the line is that divides the reasonable left from the unreasonable left and it's certainly equity conceived as equality of outcome when you push that line that's too far but i think the whole diversity inclusivity and equity slogan mantra people who mouth that and push it they've gone too far that's the line right there and you can tell that because it's being imposed by fiat on people like you i agree um it's actually it breaks my heart that the left has been the beautiful laughter i know hijacked type of thing but that that movement that is radical insane it's realistic i don't know that but i don't think it's just the left i think it's it's spreading but i mean that left that i i would think you know the rights of workers the rights of you know immigrants like like i'm thinking i thinking that that whatever movement is using that's my personal opinion and uh maybe that would get shot at for saying it but um well you've already been shot at so now you can say what you want yes so i think that it's it's how can i say it it's not because someone is of my same uh background precise uh place where i came from religion whatever that that person would represent me better than someone else who is more competent as you said who makes more sense right well that's an insane part of this doctrine to begin with the idea that that these arbitrary groupings your your gender your sex your race me means that you have something more profound in common for example than with people who share more different differentiated elements of your character your ambition your values more importantly yes and i'll tell you uh in lebanon they have quotas of based on religion i get obsessed with religion for to be a president you have to be christian marine to be prime minister sunni muslim et cetera et cetera uh so i cannot be a president there and not write for a specific part of whatever not prime minister you know so all this is that the people of lebanon right now are saying no to sectarianism they know it didn't work it was unfair they don't want it whereas here we are trying to bring that to us here uh there is a reason why our all our collective agreements protect merit right on merit and you said merit based hiring and all that i do believe personally that it is insulting for me to tell me that i'm gonna get a job because i am lebanese or i am this or that well it's particularly insulting if you're qualified absolutely so so it is particularly insulting if i'm qualified definitely and uh so so to come to tell me that let's say if we're gonna talk about one part of the identity you mentioned gender but could be let's say skin color right so what does someone from palestine who happens to have a black skin have in common with the president of the united states a former president who happens to have do they have in common like or or someone uh from haiti driving a cabin montreal like no there's culture there's language look as social scientists we could agree that one of the factors that might give people some similarity of experience would be race or ethnicity right i mean it but it's one factor among many yes and if i was writing today about what predicts success in complex western organizations okay so what predicts success if you look at it psychometrically so you break down all the attributes of people and you decide which measurable attribute would be associated with socioeconomic position let's say well the best two predictors are general cognitive ability which is basically ability to learn and to deal with complex abstractions and that predicts performance in high complexity jobs and high complexity jobs involve a lot of change and necessity for learning so ability to learn an ability to solve complex problems predicts success in jobs that require the ability to learn and the ability to deal with complex situations and that's measurable sats measure that gres measure that the lsats measure that and they don't measure it perfectly but they measured better than anything else we know and the other thing that predicts universally in some sense across job categories is conscientiousness and that's hard work essentially industriousness orderliness but industriousness predicts better so amount of hours put in the ability to formulate ability and willingness to formulate and maintain social contracts so there's honesty and integrity associated with that so the research literature indicates that the best predictors of success are ability to learn and conscientiousness it's like well come up with a better definition of merit than that if you dare because you can't now openness to experience which is a creativity trait predicts entrepreneurial ability and creative creative ability and extroversion predicts sales ability and agreeableness predicts say nursing and the capacity to take care of people there are there are other personality attributes that are relevant but those are the main ones so how is that not just dead set evidence for the existence of as functional a meritocracy as we've been able to manage right i mean it's distorted by power claims it's distorted by deception and bad hiring practices and nepotism and all the things but that's not central or core to the system i don't know any reasonably well functioning organization in in the west that's that where that isn't the case businesses as well bend over backwards to be more than fair in their hiring practices and you know they want competent people and you can define competence and you can define and measure merit of course and like i think what's at the basis of all of this radical critique is an assault on the idea of merit itself it's and i can understand that you know because talents are unfairly distributed and in the end it will lower the standards of the society well that's the thing you know if you look at this maybe you're cold-hearted and you look at this purely from and imagine you you even manifested a critique from the left you really think that corporations aren't concerned enough about their own survival to do everything they possibly can to select the most competent people obviously they're going to do that and it's actually of benefit to everyone else because what's the alternative random selection if you're put in a position that you're not qualified for you're going to fail that is not very positive for you it's no mercy to put someone somewhere where they're going to fail absolutely that's not helpful we see all these selection processes now being subject to critique universities are abandoning standardized tests they don't know the literature the people who are doing this they're going to replace them with selection mechanisms that are far more pathological i was talking with one of my colleagues for example so among the universities that abandoned the gre the graduate record exam for graduate student entrance what happened was that those students who came from elite universities had a much higher probability of being accepted than they did when the gre was part of the package because the gre actually equalized across universities so you throw it out and what happens is those who had the fortune to go to a prestigious university have a much bigger advantage that's exactly what's going to happen when we throw out valid measures of of of competence i agree with you on that and and we'll have a like a sort of hyper inflation of grades like like with some currency we'll get to that maybe uh like what happened in lebanon hyperinflation here we may get inflation uh at one point i guess uh but for the grades as well uh i i understand the reflex of some to say oh it's the pandemic to head but um help thinking that it would help my point was during war in lebanon and twice i had to do two years and one so we'd have seven chapters of math at once five of physics and to catch up like two years and one never ever they did what we are doing here you know like removing the grades doing something it remained sorrow 15 years of civil war and uh so that was my experience uh but um of course it's a decision group decision although i'm not talking but i'm saying that my what i think about that i agree so so now you're in limbo like what faces you now what's what's in the future for you is it a tribunal like how are you going to be tried for your crimes the arbitration um so i saw the arbitration process and um whatever other processes so so it's i can't answer that because i right now i don't know it's developing fast you know it's it's so it's uh so you don't even you don't know the process by which this is going to be remediated oh i know of course the application like right but so what does that mean practically speaking exactly what what what do you have to do and what's going to happen to you i we will see but i know that whatever step that is being done that is not right uh there has been a grievance for it that's all i can say because that i can speak to but not the details so so okay so is your union is your union supporting you yes and i'm grateful okay well thank god for that so they've decided they'll support you on what grounds um i cannot speak for the jesus that may be harming the arbitration without knowing but i can tell something that really anyone reading that blog and thinking like how is that like it's it's it's there are so many angles to it uh but definitely like the blog the freedom the academic freedom but that i i can speak to because that's what i i think so as well but there are other things that i would not be talking about right now and when does this arbitration process begin and i mean you're you're you're on the hook at least till january of 2022 december the first uh yes december the first for the suspension part um and also well that didn't go public uh but also like how am i going to you know like suspension but also not being able to be on campus for example so so can you not be on campus no maybe that's what i would have it's it's not secret but it's i'm sharing so are you forbidden to go on the campus well it's part of the things that you're suspended from being paid or not on campus yes okay what happens if you go on campus do you know well we had um municipal elections lately and i joked to myself saying what if had it been on campus what do i do it's a legal problem i guess or whatever problem it is but so what are the grounds for not allowing you to be on the campus i guess i'm toxic maybe or maybe that part of it's because you presented danger they enter unsafety right right so that makes sense so now you're an unsafe person and so you can't go on the campus because of the threat that you might pose to students yes how are your colleagues responding to this well again i can't speak for them but i can speak in general i can say in these situations when they happen some people will come forward some people will be afraid i understand that people are afraid i i totally understand because we're different right we react differently we may come forward to support me or do something but some people will not because they have family family children yeah well not coming forward is not going to protect them if this can happen to you like the lesson here there's only two lessons here either you're a bad person and you got exactly what you deserved or this can happen to anyone and so look the hell out i absolutely i agree and i i tend to stand up for people now i stand up for people from real life but also on the blog i write when something isn't right like for example um i'm talking about quickly of a situation maybe dr matu bokuty in in montreal whenever he has stories like being cancelled or trying to attempt or or maybe doctor got side again from montreal i know you were friends i said bravo to the to the jewish public library library yeah because they they uh and and um even the prime minister of quebec i may have had a post saying bravo um the university of laval as well you know saying that academic uh freedom um must be protected academic i mean it's protected um so that's i mean i was a real commitment to it if you see what i mean well look at the academic the bulk of the abstract intellectual work in our society goes on at universities so that's where the cutting edge is it's not the only place there's it happens in many places but it's one of the main places it's certainly the main place where training for that is still instituted apprenticeship for that is still instituted and so if that comes under assault if that's in danger then what's to protect the same thing in the rest of the culture if if it if it goes where it's paramount if it if it's threatened where it's paramount it's going to be threatened everywhere and that's why people should pay attention to what's happening to you and and and should put as much pressure as they possibly can on the administration at mount ellison to reverse their insane decision and to have some courage instead of cow towing to a tiny minority of students who don't even represent the communities they purport to represent you know my guess is if we took those and they'd be easy enough to find out but no one will do it if we surveyed these student organizations presented them with your story and surveyed them i suspect that the vast majority of students within those organizations organizations themselves would be appalled at what's been done to you so there's a handful of students who say they represent a tiny proportion of students but who actually don't who complained bitterly in the background and used deception to bring administrative force to bear on someone like you and somehow that's okay and despite the fact that thousands of people express their support for you the university won't change its mind and for what to to indicate their commitment to what to this insane um ideology that purports to be anti-racist you can see how fair it is in your case you know we're we're matching an actual injustice against a bunch of hypothetical injustices yes and my take on it was at the beginning that okay they chose whatever path i've never i i but now i'm i am like um the target because of all of all this if you see what i mean like you're a target not just a target you've also been hit you're not just a target exactly you've been successfully hit exactly like my career like when you are a researcher uh when you are a faculty member doing your research or services across the province and the country your reputation even if you want to go find another job somewhere else your reputation is all what you have right your reputation is done look i the other thing is i'm on you're on hiring committees i've said on hiring committees so here's another rule about hiring committees and so given that there's a preponderance of candidates and that there's a preponderance of qualified candidates any and all candidates who show any sign whatsoever of scandal are immediately removed from the pack because the the hiring committees won't tolerate the risk so as soon as you've been brushed with scandal and then here's another question for you because i've had to think this through and i'm still not exactly sure what to make of it i could go back to the university of toronto what about my graduate students what bloody chance do they have on the job market it doesn't matter about their publication rates so let's say they come out with a stellar publication but they're associated with me it's like are they going to find a job well the answer to that is perhaps not and so what am i supposed to do with that as a moral person am i supposed to not go back to the university because merely being associated with me is enough to increase the probability that my qualified students won't be acceptable to any hiring committee these shots are unbelievably effective even if you can manage them and it's not obvious that you can manage them i mean you're still going through this you have months to go without gainful employment you know and the doubts creep in when you're accused of this sort of thing because anybody with any sense pays attention to accusations right if you're psychopathic to the core you don't care what other people think but if you're a reasonable person you're modifying your behavior all the time as a consequence of the effect you have on others so you say well i'm reprehensible enough so an institution that i admired deeply yeah and the whole canada right but i want to say something you know some people believe what they read and they do not you know question or apply say let's listen to the other side let's see what happened some even you know friends would call my spouse and say what well even if it has been said it's too much but my spouse will say she has not said it like so so they thought because it's written in such a way that is uh um yeah well you know what they say where there's smoke there's fire exactly but let's assume like some people are saying even if like the the met the how can i say the punishment or the discipline or is is beyond uh is is surrealist disproportionate disproportionate yes and severe which it certainly is yes so what do you do now what are you doing i mean how have you been structuring your life in the aftermath of this i've never imagined that we can be working as hard as that without having uh you know being suspended without pay like i'm i'm i'm very busy you know working doing what i need to do replying to emails thanking people strategizing doing things um working basically on that so like all that time i'm not putting it on my research i'm not uh putting it on future courses if i'm still here or on so it's i'm i'm living day by day uh but uh i am fine in the sense that i know i know who i am i know my values i know the value of freedom a free free expression for me academic freedom slash they are related right um that i know for sure one of my friends once said the truth doesn't matter anymore because it has this has been a narrative but luckily there has been amazing journalists who have had more i'm not gonna be naming what everyone knows help more more than i can very imagine like i felt that like you know those articles fell on me from heaven so the narratives has shifted uh and if you see what i mean yeah yeah well i was fortunate enough to have some of canada's preeminent journalists you know take a second look what i was doing and actually think it through and you know come out in support of me thank god for that yes and and that was definitely a lifesaver um repeatedly over time so so thank you know that absolutely it's thank god there are people who still want to know what the actual story is so well is there anything else that you let's let's talk about your colleagues again you said that have any of your colleagues in the department of mount ellison made a public statement of support for you um public statement i'm not yeah public statement sorry to put you on the spot but you know this is an important question it's a very important question if the people right next to you who know you and who have worked with you are so afraid that they can't say this is not right collectively which is what they should have done they should have come together as a group as a faculty and said you go after her you go after all of us but that isn't what's happening and so this divide and conquer strategy works just fine because you can single someone out of the crowd and go after them and no and everyone else shies away very good question but i think part of it they must be shocked right now part of it is how you know actually i'm not talking about the university of my story universities these investigations are are private they're confident so so like no one knows and and me without things being confidential i tend to be discreet i do not talk or bad talk about people my colleagues know know very well it's not my style i focus on my task i do what what i need to do my family they know i don't i don't like blah blah blah like you know i tend to be more aggressive so directly when i have to if i have to like now you know that fight uh but um not when i don't i'm like how can i say it so i don't do that passive aggressive and talking and all that yes i got um kindness indirectly but without it being said and throughout like the work that we have we are doing all that work and all this but they didn't know what i was going through probably or maybe they knew or i don't know there's fear definitely not at my institution there is fear in the province yeah well you know fear is fear is justified as far as i'm concerned but you better bloody well be sure you're afraid of the right thing and you know it's one thing to be afraid of making a public statement say in support of you and to be afraid of the consequences of that although if every single one of your faculty colleagues did that the university would buckle instantly and apologize to you so but if they okay so they're afraid of doing that and they're afraid of spirit each of them individually is afraid of spearheading that but why aren't they more afraid of ending up where you ended up well the the logic is well she she was in cautious she wrote her blog she said things that a sensible person shouldn't say so that means that now they're doomed to only say those things that a sensible person would say under such conditions which is to say absolutely nothing about anything uh controversial ever again in their entire careers well why not be afraid of that instead exactly and it comes down to other situations where let's say someone is a victim of sexual harassment or something where we can blame the victim or saying oh the person was wearing something maybe you know what i mean so maybe it's a way of saying she did it to herself because she's yeah well that's the only other alternative yes but definitely if it happened to be it may and it could and it would happen to anyone not just at my institution um it's uh definitely and no one should be going through that not you not me not anyone no one anything else i want to say thank you for that platform i you know i think so highly of you um and as i said some people would say why did she talk to dr peterson maybe she should talk to someone i want to thank everyone who went public uh that i'm reading to to say something i want to thank people that i didn't have the chance to already send my thanks they know i made a post about that but thank you to everyone yeah well you know the other thing about who you choose to talk to in situations like this is that you choose to talk to people who will talk to you exactly and then you find out pretty damn quickly who will talk to you and who won't and so people might ask why you would come and talk to me but part of the answer to that is because i'll actually talk to you and so you know you you find out who supports you and who doesn't and why they do and why they don't and so and then that any criticism of that just becomes a further excuse to maintain silence when silence shouldn't be maintained like i'm appalled at your colleagues to speak frankly i'm absolutely appalled at their silence on this issue if they had an ounce of courage they would unite together and they would tell the administration to back the hell off right now or else and the fact that they won't do that is it's it's appalling and if they think that that's not going to come at a cost then they've got their head buried in the sand in a way that requires a fair bit of intellectual gymnastics to manage a fair bit of avoidance of the topic avoidance of thinking it through it's like look what happened to rima oh well she probably asked for it you know she wasn't as cautious yeah that's the conclusion you're going to draw hey you think that's not going to have an impact on your own behavior if they if they banded together behind you this would be over right away the university would buckle and the people who sanctioned you would be fired which is what exactly what should happen there's no excuse for what happened to you whatsoever you know and i've counseled a lot of people in my clinical practice who've been accused of all sorts of things and one of the things i've learned is that it's very very difficult for people to mount their own defense you know especially decent people because they get accused of something and then they they don't attribute to themselves the innocence that our legal system demands right innocent until proven guilty it's like well you try to apply that to yourself if you're accused you'll find it's not so easy you know and i would say in your case well not only are you innocent but this is an anti-truth campaign it's not like well you sort of did some things wrong and maybe you should be more careful in the future it's like no you had a blog you said some things on it that you had to say they weren't reprehensible things you have every right to do that and maybe you even have an obligation to your creative spirit and to your desire to communicate and to formulate and clarify your thoughts right in a pri in a in a in a public dom in a public forum where you can get some feedback and share your ideas with others which is what you have to do if you're going to think and so you're not just innocent you know you're targeted in a manner that that speaks of the true motivation behind the targeting which is to take people like you down and that's what's happened exactly and your their your colleagues they should hang their head in shame and so should the university it's absolutely appalling that one of canada's finest undergraduate institutions should have been participating in this bloody awful witch-hunt charade can i add something uh a final thing is i totally agree with you but um that's bambi or miyarima defended uh people i don't agree with like on some topics like for example someone a great professor of law and i would name because you can read it if you want dr amir ataran he talks about quebec in some words that i'm not very fond of but i defended his right and i thanked uh mr trudeau for having said you know quebec bashing whatever so that story but i i may like other posts he does um and i i read him if he's listening if he will ever listen i do read his twitter i read i read all i learned that from war uh i used to read all the news on all sides and not saying i read only this because you'll be become you know like it's a brainwashed type of thing if you want during war when you're only reading your side and you're not reading the other media the other side so that was one way of coping that i did is learning to read ever and and build you know my own thinking and this is what i do now i i read those whom i don't agree with before reading those i agree with i um i defended maybe uh politicians who are not very liked because they have been silenced on social media i may have said no one should be silenced no one um not any politic no politician no scholar no no citizen no if you can only defend those who you agree with who are you going to defend exactly you don't even agree with yourself all the time you change your day from mind to mind you change your mind from day to day that's what i know so exactly so it's it's of course unacceptable but i do uh understand that people are afraid sometimes because they may have you know kids or it's a pendulum yeah they should be afraid i agree with you rhema i agree with you but the issue is what should you be afraid of should you be afraid of defending your colleague or should you be afraid of the arbitrary power handed to you know half with student mobs hell-bent on bullying and destruction who are presenting themselves in the guise of moral avatars like those are the people you should be afraid of and cowardly administrators who kowtow instantly to any complaint no matter how groundless because they don't want to appear as sensitive as they might those are the things to be afraid of so fear actually isn't a defense because the fear justifies a kind of willful blindness that is not going to help us in this situation now well i hope that you find the continuing courage to be outraged on behalf of your innocence and to go after and to not merely defend yourself but to do it in an aggressive manner and to bring the people who've done this to you to something approximating justice and that might include the students too because it isn't obvious to me that they deserve to avoid sanction as a consequence of their actions everyone why in the world should they be allowed to destroy someone's life no everyone must we we all must be held accountable for our actions so those actions have consequences what they did to me is this is as we said so realistic let's leave it there but i totally agree with you and all all options should be considered in a in a battle like that i would say so if people want to write letters of support for you who should they go to the chairman of your department the who who should they be sent to i think maybe everyone maybe the higher administration maybe the union copying the union copying everyone a copy air um i i got copies of letters a lot of letters uh from day one in february and right now uh even uh you know someone a childhood friend from lebanon on her own she how many letters do you think have been written to the university in support of you oh i am i i'm still into the thinking and replying and um a lot i'm still seeing my emails but who knows so is it hundreds i can't put an accurate number but um but a lot maybe maybe maybe maybe because some things are being done also uh without it's being lettered right but like trying to push with uh other organizations or so so there are things that i'm hearing about people saying that they are doing them or from other universities i'm hearing there is a big movement and that fundraising campaign um and uh so i'm overwhelmed by the support and again i want to thank everyone uh i wanna you discover probably it happened to you discover people you know you you know your friends of course but you discover people that uh you would never imagine they would have that courage to do what they did um it's it's an amazing experience let's say to say the least well we'll put the relevant links for want to be letter writers in the description of the video so that they can do that yes and you do discover that's the thing you know you discover the pervasiveness of fear first of all and the fact that so many people and perhaps the majority of people allow misplaced fear to silence them in the short term and pay and pay and pay and pay for that in the medium to long term and that's a terrible thing but you do discover that there are people who have so much courage you can hardly believe it well i wish you the best of luck dealing with this thank you so much for having me and please keep doing what you do and i'm a fan i follow you thank you well that's probably not in your best interest but i do appreciate it i don't care remember i'm not politically correct so i'm i i do read you and i do listen and i appreciate thank you thanks very much it was painful but very good to talk to you take good care thank you [Music] you

Channel: Jordan B Peterson

Views: 258,853

Rating: 4.9197516 out of 5

Keywords: Jordan Peterson, Jordan B Peterson, psychology, psychoanalysis, Jung, existentialism, dr rima azar, rima azar, diversity, cancel culture, free speech

Id: cIw8mH7ZpFY

Length: 103min 26sec (6206 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 07 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/letsgocrazy]

On Season 4, Episode 28 of the Jordan Peterson Podcast, Jordan is joined by Dr. Rima Azar. Dr. Rima Azar is an Associate Professor of health psychology at Mount Allison University, co-founder and co-director of NaviCare/SoinNavi, and a former holder of a CIHR New Investigator salary award in Developmental Psychoneuroimmunology.

Dr. Rima Azar and Jordan sat down to discuss the importance of free speech and what happened with the recent controversy surrounding her blog, as well as what led to her suspension at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick.

Find more Dr. Rima Azar on her blog at https://bambisafkar.ca/

SJW #Diversity #FalseAttacks #CancelCulture #FreeSpeech