Why are we killing critical thinking on campus?

Nov 18, 2017 by

Globe and Mail editorial:

Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont., says in its mission statement that “intellectual inquiry, critical reflection and scholarly integrity are the cornerstones of all universities.” It further claims that those words apply to itself.

And yet, based on a recent incident in which a grad student was disciplined for exposing her tutorial students to two sides of a debate, Laurier has lost track of its mission. If the disciplinary action is not reversed, Laurier will have abandoned “intellectual inquiry, critical reflection and scholarly integrity” and replaced it with ideology and bogus censorship.

The grad student in question, Lindsay Shepherd, teaches a tutorial on language to first-year communications students. When the subject turned to the current debate over gender and pronoun use – wherein people who don’t identify along traditional gender lines request to be referred to by the pronoun of their choice, including newly created ones such as “ze” – she did what any good teacher ought to do: She exposed them to both sides of the argument.

To do so, she showed the students a clip from a TVOntario show that featured two University of Toronto professors debating the question.

The one opposed to the idea, Jordan Peterson, has been a sharp critic of a proposed federal bill that would amend the Canadian Human Rights Code and the Criminal Code in order to ban discrimination based on gender identity, and protect it from hate speech.

He has also made a name for himself as a deliberately provocative critic of a prevalent campus culture that focuses on identity politics, and which he believes is silencing politically unacceptable viewpoints.

He is, in short, a pariah in the current academic world. Ms. Shepherd was hauled into a meeting with two Laurier professors and a university official, at which they allegedly told her that showing the clip was “transphobic,” and that she had created a “toxic climate” on campus.

They also told her that there are not two sides to the debate about pronoun use, that the issue is settled, and that exposing students to Mr. Peterson’s views was the equivalent of letting white supremacists speak to them, or “neutrally playing a speech by Hitler,” according to a recorded transcript of the meeting.

Read here

Read also: Wilfrid Laurier University insults our liberty, Toronto Sun

 

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