She Showed a Video in Class. Now She’s a Hero to Some, a Pariah to Others.

Tyler Anderson, National Post

A lot has been said about Lindsay Shepherd. She’s been praised as a “free-speech hero” who stood up to “PC authoritarian sociopaths.” She’s also been called an “alt-right heroine” who created a toxic, perhaps even violent, classroom climate. She’s inspired an abundance of supporters, no shortage of detractors, and she can’t remember at this point how many interviews she’s given.

All this for showing a video during a small-group tutorial.

At least that’s how it started. Ms. Shepherd, a graduate student in communication studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, in Ontario, is a teaching assistant in a large, freshmen-level communications course. Early last month, during the small-group tutorial she leads, she showed a short video clip from a Canadian current-affairs talk show called The Agenda, in which panelists debated the use of gender-neutral pronouns. Arguing against such pronouns was Jordan Peterson, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, whose outspoken views on that subject and others have made him a controversial figure. Defending their use was Nicholas Matte, a historian who teaches in the sexual-diversity-studies program, also at the University of Toronto.

Afterward students discussed the clip. As far as Ms. Shepherd knew, everything was fine. It seemed, she says perfectly civil, and everyone appeared engaged.

Then she was, to use her word, “summoned” to a meeting with the professor who teaches the large introductory class, Nathan Rambukkana; another professor from the communications department, Herbert Pimlott; and Adria Joel, the university’s acting manager of gendered-violence prevention and support. It was clear that Ms. Shepherd was in trouble. For nearly 45 minutes, the three of them questioned Ms. Shepherd about her decision to show the clip, explained why they believed it was problematic, and suggested ominously that there might be further consequences for her actions.

The questions put to her often began with the words “Do you understand … ?”

She was told that one, or perhaps more than one, student — they wouldn’t say how many — had complained. They wouldn’t let her see the complaint, or tell her what it said, or what exactly the student (or students) had found offensive or perhaps threatening. In the meeting, Ms. Joel informed Ms. Shepherd that she had possibly violated the Ontario human-rights code and the university’s policy on “gender-based violence.” She had potentially caused “harm to trans students,” Ms. Joel stated, by playing the clip.

Ms. Shepherd told the three university representatives that she never let students know her own opinion and that, as it happens, she doesn’t fully agree with Mr. Peterson’s views. But playing the video — which Ms. Shepherd reminded them had aired on Canadian television — was apparently enough to cause harm.

‘A Very Regrettable Incident’

We know what was said in that meeting because Ms. Shepherd surreptitiously recorded it on her laptop. When she made that recording public, the response was instant and vehement. Canadian newspapers published articles with headlines like “Laurier university accused of censorship,” “University bullies student,” and “Thought police strike again.”

Much of that publicity strongly favored Ms. Shepherd. In an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the university’s president and vice chancellor, Deborah MacLatchy, called Ms. Shepherd’s scolding a “very regrettable incident” that “doesn’t represent what we stand for at Laurier.” Mr. Rambukkana, who led the questioning of Ms. Shepherd, posted an 800-word open letter to her in which he apologized “for how the meeting we had proceeded” and conceded that the outcry had caused him to “seriously rethink” some of his arguments. He also regretted comparing Mr. Peterson to Hitler. (Mr. Rambukkana declined to be interviewed for this article.)

But it doesn’t end there. Some at Wilfrid Laurier and elsewhere were unhappy that the university’s president had apologized to Ms. Shepherd. A letter signed by “Concerned Students of Wilfrid Laurier University” asserted that students at the university “have the right to not be exposed to trans and homophobic dogma as we attempt to attain an education that is already prefaced by the dominant colonial discourse.” The signers of that letter, who wrote that they wished to remain anonymous because they feared retribution, wondered why the president didn’t issue “an apology to the students who were harmed by the showing of this video.” An opinion piece in the Montreal Gazette by a trans-rights advocate took a similar tack, describing Ms. Shepherd as “a cisgender white woman who presented respect for trans people as a matter of debate.”

In an interview last week, Ms. Shepherd sounded exasperated with that kind of criticism. Some have accused her of being a tool of the so-called alt-right, and suggested that this whole episode was a stunt, perhaps put on by Mr. Peterson. She said that was ridiculous. “If you say anything that questions the authoritarian left, they will label you without even considering what you said,” she says.

Ms. Shepherd considers herself a “reasonable leftist.” She said she showed the clip not to cause an uproar, but because she and her students were discussing grammar and she “wanted to show the students that something small, like what pronouns you use, can have an effect on society.”

This wasn’t the first time Ms. Shepherd has felt she couldn’t express herself for fear of being called offensive, or worse, she says. She remembers being in a class as a student when high food prices in remote northern regions of Canada were derided as discriminatory against indigenous people living there. She didn’t think bigotry was the root cause. “With the cost of shipping, do you really expect milk is going to be the same price?” she remembers thinking. But she usually holds her tongue: “I self-censor all the time,” she says.

‘It’s Definitely Taken Over My Life’

The whirlwind that has followed the release of the audio — which she said she originally recorded to protect herself, not to release publicly — has been all-consuming. “It’s hard to describe,” she says. “It definitely has taken over my life.” She set up a Twitter account in mid-November to respond to criticism, and at last check she had more than 25,000 followers. She has given a bunch of interviews on the radio and on podcasts; she flew to Los Angeles to be a guest on a popular YouTube talk show called The Rubin Report. She’s been contacted by lawyers offering their services, though she doesn’t plan to accept those offers.

She turned down an interview with Ezra Levant, a Canadian commentator who has gone on speaking tours with Ann Coulter and is the founder of The Rebel Media, a right-wing outlet that calls itself a “fearless source of news, opinion, and activism.” She also declined to allow supporters to give her donations, as some other figures caught up in similar free-speech cases at universities have done. “That’s not why I got into this,” she says.

The reaction on campus has been similarly strong, and often strange. Ms. Shepherd says many of her fellow students won’t make eye contact with her. Certain professors have felt it necessary to acknowledge her presence and the controversy before a class begins. A fellow graduate student took her out to lunch and told her that, now that she was famous, or perhaps notorious, everyone was scared of her.

When there were reports that some classes had been canceled in the wake of the controversy because students and professors felt unsafe, Ms. Shepherd tweeted the following: “Confirmed: WLU is a mental institution.”

Wilfrid Laurier recently set up a task force on freedom of expression that will “seek input from all points of view within the Laurier community.” The university has also hired a law firm to examine what happened in Ms. Shepherd’s tutorial and make recommendations to the president. In a statement, the university said it is “committed to freedom of speech and freedom of expression while respecting human rights legislation and the university’s values of diversity and inclusion and civil discourse.”

As for Ms. Shepherd, she’s still weathering the storm while trying to keep up with her studies. When interviewed for this article, she said she had a six-page paper due for a class the next day but had yet to write a word. Ms. Shepherd started the communication-studies graduate program at Wilfrid Laurier without knowing what she was getting into, or where it would lead, but she thought it might be worthwhile. “I wasn’t sure I wanted to be in academia,” she says. “Now I’m even less sure.”

Tom Bartlett is a senior writer who covers science and other things. Follow him on Twitter @tebartl.