Welcome back to 10 with Ken. I'm Ken Steele.
Last time, we started our annual review of the PR headaches
afflicting North American colleges and universities
with a look at cultural insensitivity and its consequences.
But the two biggest migraines of 2016,
which went on throughout the year and beyond,
resulted from the confrontation of opposing champions
for privacy and for transparency,
for academic freedom and for human rights.
And of course, the stories captivated public and media
attention because they were entangled with sexual scandal
and concepts of gender.
This week, 2016 headaches part two.
Pronouns and poets.
Take a few more aspirants and let's take 10.
One of the biggest PR migraines of the year boiled over
at the University of Toronto last September,
thanks to psychology professor Jordan Peterson.
All Peterson had to do to ignite a firestorm
was to state publicly, repeatedly, and uncategorically
that should a gender non-binary student
ask him to use non-standard pronouns,
such as z or zur, or even singular they,
that he would refuse.
Well, what if someone wants to be called something different
than what everyone else wants to be called?
Not my problem.
It's not a mark of respect for me
to use your damn pronoun.
It's a mark of your massive and massive narcissistic power
grabbing to insist and then put the full force of legislation
behind the demand that I call you anything you want.
It's almost impossible to enumerate
the number of ways that's wrong.
Frankly, things were made much worse
by the fact that Peterson often gets assertive
to the point of hostility.
That's an insane proposition.
And we have to be able to say what we have to say badly,
or we won't be able to think at all.
He also quickly escalates to conspiracy theories
and the specter of totalitarianism.
I studied totalitarianism for four decades,
and I know how it starts.
Human Rights Tribunal is a kangaroo court, in my opinion,
and it should be abolished as fast as possible.
They can search your house without a warrant.
They can use secret hearings.
There are no rules of evidence,
and the judges are unaccountable.
There are things that are at stake in this discussion,
despite its surface nature,
that strike at the very heart of our civilization.
And then he just throws in a side that seemed designed
to alarm and inflame the academic community.
And if you're a left-wing ideologue,
the probability that you're respectable is zero.
Men are higher in intellect,
which encompasses interest in ideas,
and women are higher in aesthetics.
It's the philosophy of a poorly socialized two-year-old.
Peterson calls his opponents
biology deniers and social justice warriors.
They call him offensive to basic human dignity
and transphobic.
Transphobic, transphobic, transphobic!
Peterson recorded quite a few hour-long lectures
trying to clarify his position.
This wasn't about human rights, he insisted,
but about efforts of government to legislate language.
The Ontario Human Rights Code and Federal Bill C-16
were threats to freedom of speech
and academic freedom, he said.
The university reviewed my videos
and they decided that what I said was true.
They decided that the video I made was probably illegal
and that they were responsible for it.
Last October, police were investigating online threats
made against members of U of T's transgender community.
As you might expect,
Peterson's dean sent him a written warning
that his remarks were contrary to the human rights
of those individuals to freedom from discrimination
based on gender identity or gender expression.
As you know, the University of Toronto
sent me two warning letters, right?
And the second one basically asked me
to stop talking about this.
Of course, rather than silencing him,
the administration's concerns inflamed him.
Well, I think that the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal
is probably obligated by their own tangled web
to bring me in front of it.
If they find me, I won't pay it.
If they put me in jail, I'll go in hunger strike.
I'm not doing this.
That's that.
In the interest of free speech,
the university convened a debate on campus in November
that pitted Peterson against law professor,
Maya Moran, and UBC social justice professor, Mary Bryson.
Freedom of speech is not just another principle.
It's the mechanism by which we keep our psyches
and our societies organized.
There's nothing in Bill C-16 that comes close
to criminalizing the misuse of pronouns.
Nothing, not hate speech, not hate crime.
Surely, the deliberate production of ignorance
concerning a precarious minority group
constitutes evidence of the most unethical abnegation
of the responsibility of academics
to contribute to human well-being, collective intelligence,
flourishing, and the survival of planetary life.
There were heated rallies on campus,
both for and against Peterson's position.
Peterson, Peterson, Peterson, Peterson.
Transport, transport, transport.
Conrad Black lamented the attack on freedom of expression
over abstention from the use of contrived jargon
and warned that monstrous idiocies like the Peterson Affair
were routinely inflicted on the innocent
in these supposed cathedrals of learning.
Oisey professor Lee Ayrton launched a campaign
called No Big Deal, encouraging the public
to use a word like they instead of he or she,
and promoting badges to be worn as a silent show of support
for non-binary people.
Unlike most academics, Peterson seems
to be a relentlessly public intellectual.
His YouTube channel has almost 200 lectures
and more than 6 million views.
I mean, I just sat in my bloody office at home
and threw up a couple of amateurish videos,
more or less attempting to articulate my feelings
about a couple of policies.
And it's like all hell broke loose.
We've been trying to keep count.
There's been 140 print articles published
about this in the last two months,
and then dozens and dozens of YouTube videos
and television interviews and radio interviews
and demonstrations.
Millions of people have been tuning into this online.
This controversy has given Peterson
an international stage from which he has delivered
hundreds of media interviews,
and he shows no sign of slowing down.
The university seems to realize that if it attempts
to further silence Peterson, it will only gain him notoriety
and followers.
The pronoun flap at U of T has certainly
been a public affairs headache.
But without a doubt, last year's heavyweight champion headache
was the Galloway Affair at UBC.
It started in November 2015,
when the university temporarily suspended
the head of its creative writing department,
bestselling novelist Stephen Galloway.
The official announcement of serious allegations
made thinly veiled references to campus safety
and advised counseling.
All parties tried to maintain at least
the semblance of confidentiality for months,
but there were media exposés and the rumor mill
generated tales of bullying, sexual harassment,
threats, and more.
You're not able to say whether this involves
sexual matters or whether it involves abuse or bullying
or plagiarism or anything else.
Correct.
We talked only about the allegations have come forward
and we want to make sure that it's not predetermined
in any way by our framing it.
And so it is wide open right now.
UBC appointed a retired BC Supreme Court justice
to lead an impartial investigation.
After five months, her report dismissed
all but one of the less serious charges against Galloway.
Nonetheless, he was terminated for what she called
a record of misconduct that resulted
in an irreparable breach of trust.
Halfway through 2016, the PR headache for UBC
was just beginning.
Donors like Hollywood producer Hart Hansen,
creator of the TV series Bones,
went public with their concerns.
Something stinks in the way this is being handled,
he told reporters.
He insisted he was not taking sides,
but was withholding a major donation
out of concern for transparency.
Award-winning novelist Madeline Thine
wrote UBC insisting that her name be removed
from all web pages and alumni publications
out of concern for the handling of the Galloway affair.
The university has taken a tragedy, she said,
and turned it into an ugly, blame-filled toxic mess
destroying lives in the process.
In a national media interview,
two witnesses said they were shocked
that their anonymity had not been protected
and disgusted by what was left out of the final report.
By November, more than 60 well-known Canadian authors,
including Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondachi,
had signed an open letter to UBC
demanding an inquiry into Galloway's dismissal.
They created a website, ubcacountable.com,
to collect news stories and statements of support.
The ongoing witch hunt prompted
Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wenty to ask,
why don't they just burn the poor guy at the stake
and get it over with?
In the walrus, Margaret Atwood wrote,
the model of the Salem witchcraft trials is not a good one.
Of course, plenty of voices attacked them
for apparently condoning rape, culture,
or silencing victims.
These are real problems to be sure,
but there doesn't seem to have been
any sexual assault in this case.
More than a dozen signatories of the UBC accountable letter
eventually removed their names in response to pressure.
Writers on both sides were worried
about their reputations and careers.
After a full year, details finally started to emerge
in the media.
Galloway broke his silence through his lawyers,
confirming that yes, he had been accused of sexual assault,
but he had been cleared of that allegation
by the investigation.
The one substantiated allegation was that he had had
a two-year affair with a middle-aged student.
It was a violation of UBC policy, but not a crime.
The Galloway case put a spotlight
on one of the most inflammatory
campus controversies of our day.
How colleges and universities handle accusations
of sexual assault and harassment,
how they manage confidentiality,
and whether or not they involve police or the courts.
Ultimately, both sides of this case were outraged
that the process had been flawed and the outcome unfair.
And of course, like most PR migraines,
the resolution isn't quick or clear.
The UBC Faculty Association has filed a grievance
which is expected to go into labor arbitration shortly.
We're gonna hear more about Stephen Galloway yet.
Okay, I don't know about you,
but that's enough headaches for me.
This spring, I've been busy
with several exciting online projects,
including my new service to deliver
virtual campus keynotes using technology.
Thanks to Otago Polytechnic in New Zealand,
I'm finally satisfied that now I can deliver
a truly interactive presentation
with full-motion slides and video clips,
real-time polling, and two-way audio and video.
But we also tried a new experiment for this podcast,
the Ten with Ken team hit the road,
the 401 to be precise,
and went on campus at the University of Waterloo
to find out just what makes
Canada's most innovative university tick.
In the next couple of episodes, we'll share what we learned.
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Thanks for watching, and I hope to see you next time.
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