Diversity and Exclusion: Confronting the Campus Free Speech Crisis

by Lindsay Shepherd

In 2017, 22-year old graduate student and teaching assistant Lindsay Shepherd was brought into a disciplinary meeting where two professors and a diversity office bureaucrat told her that “one or more people” had complained about the Communication Studies class she led. She was never told how many people complained, nor what the alleged complainant(s) ever said. Lindsay was accused of creating a “toxic climate,” “targeting trans folks,” “spreading transphobia,” and violating Wilfrid Laurier University’s sexual assault and gendered violence policy – all for playing a five-minute clip about pronouns in her classroom and leading a neutral, open conversation on the topic. The game changer? Lindsay secretly recorded the disciplinary meeting and released the audio to the media. In the ensuing year of graduate school, Lindsay staved off university censorship, clashed with the academic-activist cabal that was out to get her, and dealt with going from a nobody to going viral. This tell-all book reveals what it’s like to be the central figure of a national controversy.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Education

253 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 22, 2021

Reviews

[BC Boulderer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I couldn't put this book down. Read it in one evening. Ms. Shepherd pulls back the curtain on the academy's attempts to indoctrinate its students and society into a identity politics/social justice ideology and to muzzle anyone who questions woke dogma. Ms. Shepherd does a masterful job of exposing Wilfrid Laurier administrators and its professors for what they are - censorious, intolerant ideologues. Tragically, wokeness has infected nearly every aspect of life, including education, government, media, and health care (e.g. chest feeding instead of breast feeding). One can only hope that Ms. Shepherd's book will serve as a wake-up call to the rest of us that social justice advocacy - as well-intentioned as it may have been - has morphed into an ugly and frightening authoritarian system hell bent on crushing any dissent.

[Tamara Wilhite · Rating 5 out of 5]

A female academic pulled before a "sexual violence tribunal" for showing debates clips in a media class and not poisoning the well by telling the students that they should be opposed to the "preferred pronoun" speaker.
This doesn't just prove that sexual violence / Title IX tribunals are impacting people far beyond those accused of campus rape - but that academia itself is so politicized it is toxic.
It is this experience and the aftermath that led Lindsay Shepherd to write this book.
A classic feminist, she's defending the concept of free speech. And that is something we desperately need today.

[Malcolm McKay · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author was a centre-left leaning MA student TA at WLU until she had a brush with tenured professors who tried to crush her. She fought back and in the process more or less became an anti- woke radical. A fascinating story.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

2016-17 was when I fully realized the rot in the North American university system. Milo was accosted on stage at DePaul a mile south of my home; Bret Weinstein was run off campus out west, and Lindsay Shepherd was subjected to a 3-on-1 Stasi interrogation by her adviser and others over wholly imaginary complaints because she showed a Jordan Peterson clip that had been aired on Canadian state TV. Fortunately, the struggle session that the cowards in the room had hoped to pressure Shepherd into did not come to pass as they wished.

In the book I learned Ms. Shepherd is from BC, grew up working class, busted her tail working 3-4 jobs at a time in undergrad, and applied for a 1-year grad school program in Communications because she wanted to learn. I get it. One of my degrees was obtained for the same reason. Shepherd emerges from the page as very disciplined and conscientious, dutifully completing her readings and coming prepared as a TA. She even tried to get creative, which is where the Peterson clip comes in, and her interrogators jumped at the chance to push a working class White girl back into line with the university-approved thinking on trans issues and pronoun usage.

This was not a fun read, as I got angry quite frequently, and felt my soul leaving its body while reading the transcript of the session Shepherd so intelligently recorded in secret. However, I felt it was a necessary read, to get the inside scoop on Shepherd's year at Wilfred Laurier, as well as the person behind it.

All to often the punishment is the process, and that was the case for Shepherd as she was subjected to racist attacks by multiple professors, checked at every turn when trying to bring speakers to campus, and falsely accused by an attention-starved fellow student in an attempt to disrupt the end of her graduate program.

I cannot say this story has a happy ending as the two professors who attacked her in the Stasi session just melted away for a year before coming back to their 6-figure jobs, subtracting value as they poison the well of youth with their hate and intolerance. As Shepherd outlines at the end, bullying, firings, and expulsions of any tall poppy or anyone with the balls to disagree with authoritarian 'liberal' thought continues.

For Shepherd though, I like what I've seen in the occasional YouTube video. Looks like she has a nice family life, and that she resisted the MRNA injection tells me she still has that steel spine that she showed in 2017, when so many others would have melted. Kudos to this brave woman. May North America produce more of her.

[Trudi Griffin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ms. Shepherd's testimonial was eye-opening and I appreciate that she shared her experience. My college days were so different and I feel horrible for those who do not get the college experience that offers challenging perspectives. No one grows in "cultivated safe spaces" where you're told what to think instead of learning how to think. This is an insightful read.

[Pari · Rating 4 out of 5]

It definitely influenced my perspective on the importance of free speech and how to protect it by participating in open debates.

[SZ · Rating 5 out of 5]

First to say, I identify as a liberal. I have been following Lindsay for quite a while when I was in a liberal arts college studying social science, and I watched a couple of interviews of her with several right-wing channels.

Lindsay is an interesting character because she doesn't fit in any of the political stereotypes. She supports public transit, affordable housing, cares about climate change, etc. But because of all the right-wing associations, she is labeled a lot of things that she is not.

I'm glad that she gets to write the book about what happened before, during, and after the Laurier affair. I also appreciate how much she puts into the book to talk about her teenage years having several jobs to gain more experiences, her friends and family showing support amid the controversy, and so on.

I got to see so many behind-the-scene dramas between her and Laurier faculty & activists. Wow. All she did in the class was showing a video from the public radio as part of the class discussion. And the faculty turned against her in every way possible -- banned her from using the department community space, uninvited her from a TA award ceremony in which she was nominated, accused her of violating "intellectual property policy" when she screenshotted the native land acknowledgment under the syllabus of a class...

I may strongly disagree with her on many issues. But this is a good read if you want to know where she's coming from.

[Evan Grice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty wild what she experienced. Going to the same university, I found myself hooked quick and reflecting on how education can be perceived and how things can be misconstrued in todays society.