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Has anyone else been following this story. Great to see a university called out on their freedom of expression policy, that being "our point of view or nothing". Here's a snip of an article from the Toronto Star. Quite telling in the direction that academia is going.

Wilfrid Laurier University may have inadvertently done a favour for anyone who values robust debate in the academic world.

By so badly bungling the case of Lindsay Shepherd, the teaching assistant who was hauled on the carpet for exposing her communications studies students to a discussion of the use of non-gendered pronouns, the university has opened the door to a badly needed debate on freedom of expression.

Shepherd’s ordeal underlines why it’s so important to safeguard the role of universities as places that provide the maximum possible opportunity to exchange ideas and as spaces for those who would challenge conventional wisdom.

None of that was evident in how Shepherd was treated. As has been extensively reported, she played a clip from a debate on the TVOntario program The Agenda featuring two University of Toronto professors debating the use of non-gendered pronouns. One of them, Jordan Peterson, objected to using them; the other, Nicholas Matte, supported it.

For that, Shepherd was disciplined by two professors and a university official for supposedly violating Wilfrid Laurier’s “Gendered and Sexual Violence” policy. She was told she had created a “toxic climate” for students and that exposing them to Peterson’s views was “transphobic.”

The recording Shepherd made of the meeting and made public over the weekend may go down as a classic of how not to handle such incidents.

She was told only that someone had complained, but not how many or even exactly why. She was effectively ganged up on by people with power over her, to the point where at one point she burst into tears. Nonetheless, she managed bravely to defend what should be self-evident in a university environment: the value of hearing conflicting views on a controversial topic.

In response, her supervisors resorted to what is popularly known as the reductio ad Hitlerum argument, suggesting that exposing students to Peterson’s views on pronouns is akin to airing a speech by Adolf Hitler. Invoking Hitler in such situations is usually a sign of intellectual bankruptcy; this case was no exception.

At the same time, those representing the university seemed to give no weight to the value of free debate. In fact, Shepherd’s view that she was presenting “both arguments” was seen as a problem, not a virtue. All weight was put on the possibility that hearing Peterson might create an “unsafe learning environment” for some students.

This is reminiscent of the debates that have raged on university campuses for years — typically between those who uphold the value of free speech and those who see it as a convenient shield invoked by those whose real agenda is safeguarding their privileges.

As in so many similar situations, though, hypocrisy abounds. Too often, free speech is invoked as a matter of convenience, not principle. At Dalhousie University in Halifax last month, for example, the usual roles were reversed when Masuma Khan, an activist and student union executive, was called before a disciplinary committee for supposedly attacking white people on social media and engaging in so-called “reverse racism.”

All of sudden, Khan’s allies on the left were vigorously standing up for her right to exercise free speech — and quite rightly so. Faced with massive pushback, Dalhousie quickly thought better of the situation and dropped the case. The university came out for Khan’s right to speak her mind, constrained only by the rule of law, as it should have right from the start.

At Wilfrid Laurier, too, there has been a change of mind, and hopefully a change of heart as well.

On Tuesday, the university’s president and vice-chancellor, Deborah MacLatchy, apologized to Shepherd for the way she was treated. More importantly, she reaffirmed the university’s commitment to “the abiding principles of freedom of speech and freedom of expression.”

At the same time, MacLatchy said a task force will explore how those rights can be upheld while also respecting values of human rights and diversity. That sounds good, but the proof will be in how that work is done and what balance is struck in the end. At a university, of all places, freedom of expression should not be just one value among many.

Shepherd’s academic supervisor, Prof. Nathan Rambukkana, also apologized personally to her for how he conducted the meeting in which she was rebuked. More significantly, Rambukkana acknowledged that Shepherd was right to insist on the value of airing conflicting and controversial views. Students can’t be made to feel “unwelcome,” he wrote in an open letter to her, but “I believe you are right that making a space for controversial or oppositional views is important, and even essential in a university.”

Bravo! This may not sound like a remarkable statement on the face of it, but in the context it represents a major and very welcome acknowledgement of the value of robust debate.

Rambukkana went further, writing that the controversy has made him rethink his approach. “Maybe we ought to strive to reach across all of our multiple divisions to find points where we can discuss such issues, air multiple perspectives, and embrace the diversity of thought,” he wrote. “And maybe I have to get out of an ‘us versus them’ habit of thought to do this myself and to think of the goal as more than simply advancing social justice, but social betterment and progress as a whole.”

This is a generous admission, and suggests there is a real chance of finding a way past the polarized atmosphere on too many campuses. It also underscores how important it is that those who identify with the left and progressive values don’t let the right claim exclusive ownership of the vital and enduring principle of free expression. That would be sheer folly.

If the debacle at Wilfrid Laurier kicks off that discussion, it may be seen in retrospect as the moment when a much healthier balance was restored in academia.