And lo, it came to pass

Nov 23rd, 2017 | By Ophelia Benson
Category: Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: Laurier University

Behold Nathan Rambukkana’s open letter to Lindsay Shepherd:

Dear Lindsay,

I wanted to write to apologize to you for how the meeting we had proceeded. While I was not able to do so earlier due to confidentiality concerns, including your privacy as a grad student, now that the audio of the meeting is public I can say more. While I still cannot discuss the student concerns raised about the tutorial, everything that has happened since the meeting has given me occasion to rethink not only my approach to discussing the concerns that day, but many of the things I said in our meeting as well.

First, I wanted to say that when I was made aware of the concerns, I was told that the proper procedure would be to have an informal meeting to discuss it. In the process of arranging this, others indicated they should attend as well. This is one of the facets of working at a university, that meetings can often become de-facto committees due to relevant stakeholders being pulled in. My main concerns were finding out why a lesson on writing skills had become a political discussion, and making sure harm didn’t befall students. However, in not also prioritizing my mentorship role as the course director and your supervisor, I didn’t do enough to try to support you in this meeting, which I deeply regret. I should have seen how meeting with a panel of three people would be an intimidating situation and not invite a productive discussion. Had I tried harder to create a situation more conducive to talking these issues through, things might have gone very differently, but alas I did not.

Second, this entire occasion, and hearing from so many with passionate views on this issue from across the political spectrum, has made me seriously rethink some of the positions I took in the meeting. I made the argument that first-year students, not studying this topic specifically, might not have the tool kit to unpack or process a controversial view such as Dr. Peterson’s, saying that such material might be better reserved for upper-year or grad courses. While I still think that such material needs to be handled carefully, especially so as to not infringe on the rights of any of our students or make them feel unwelcome in the learning environment, I believe you are right that making a space for controversial or oppositional views is important, and even essential to a university. The trick is how to properly contextualize such material. One way might be through having readings, or a lecture on the subject before discussion, but you are correct that first-years should be eligible to engage with societal debates in this way. Perhaps instead of the route I took I should have added further discussion in lecture, or supplementary readings. But instead I tried to make a point about the need to contextualize difficult material, and drew on the example of playing a speech by Hitler to do it. This was, obviously, a poorly chosen example. I meant to use it to drive home a point about context by saying here was material that would definitely need to be contextualized rather than presented neutrally, and instead I implied that Dr. Peterson is like Hitler, which is untrue and was never my intention. While I disagree strongly with many of Dr. Peterson’s academic positions and actions, the tired analogy does him a disservice and was the opposite of useful in our discussion.

Finally there is the question of teaching from a social justice perspective, which my course does attempt to do. I write elsewhere about reaching across the aisle to former alt-right figures as possible unexpected allies in the struggle to create a better more just society for all. But hearing all of the feedback from people and looking at the polarized response I am beginning to rethink so limited an 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. 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. While I think that such a pedagogical approach must still work not to marginalize some students, I think the issues are too complex to leave as a binary with protection of students on one side and protection of speech on the other. We should be striving for both, which is why I look forward to participating in Dr. MacLatchy’s task force looking into these issues at Laurier, and I hope perhaps you might consider doing the same so we could together work towards an even stronger institutional future.

I’m sorry this came to pass the way it did, and look forward to moving past this and continue working with you as my TA and perhaps in the future.

Yours sincerely,

Dr. Nathan Rambukkana

The first thing that strikes me?

That is such terrible writing.

It’s so dead, so airless, so dull, so institutional.

Yet his field is Communication.

Bread and roses. We need bread but we also need roses, god damn it. We need justice and we also need beauty. We need equality and we need play. We need fairness and also humor.

That guy’s got no roses at all.

The substance? Well, take this sentence for a start:

I should have seen how meeting with a panel of three people would be an intimidating situation and not invite a productive discussion.

Come on. He couldn’t have not seen at the time how intimidating it was. You can hear it in her voice every time she speaks. You can hear it in their smug voices every time they speak, the three of them. Hello? “Communication”? Don’t try to tell us that a communications scholar was completely in the dark about how intimidating that setup was until well afterwards. Shorter: give me a fucking break.

Then take this half-sentence:

I’m sorry this came to pass the way it did…

Ah no you don’t. It didn’t “come to pass”; it was an act performed by agents, principally Dr Rambukkan himself. “Communication”?

I give it a D, and that’s being generous.

7 Responses to “And lo, it came to pass”

#1
Rob
November 23, 2017 at 10:13 am

But it’ll play well to administrators, who certainly won’t care about roses, or the lack thereof.
#2
John
November 23, 2017 at 10:52 am

Withheld for the sake of anonymity

on November 22, 2017 at 11:41 am

As an employee at Laurier, I feel relieved that the public is beginning to know the horror of working in what has come to feel like an indoctrination camp run by Thought Police. As far as I am aware, everyone at this university has been forced to attend a workshop, led by two young women, who introduced us to the Newspeak: gender neutral pronouns. We were told that those who reject this approach to pronoun use are transphobic. In other words, the old pronouns are an “unapproved thought.” Continued use of the old, gender-specific pronouns was not open to discussion. That, apparently, would be a subversive line of thinking. Note that some of us have years of acquaintance with the English language and advanced degrees in linguistics; note that many of us know how fickle language can be. Nevertheless, in the interest of holding on to our jobs, we suppressed this Thoughtcrime.

Everyone in attendance at this workshop was also forced to select a pronoun of introduction and announce to all present how we wished to be addressed. Some of these pronouns implied a transgender identity. That this might be considered a forced “outing” for some didn’t seem to cross the minds of the workshop organizers. Another idea that hadn’t occurred was that some of us might feel it was invasive to be forced into a workshop to discuss our gender. Like all good tyrants, Wilfrid Laurier believes that it knows what is best for its minions. It believes it should have control of all aspects of our lives. Thank you, Big Brother.

As an intellectual, and as someone acquainted with the history of the Chinese cultural revolution, this workshop – or should I say brainwashing session — sickened me. I suppose that my lack of enthusiasm showed, because afterward, my program manager took me aside to make sure that I was “on the same page” as the university. For fear of losing my employment, I smiled and made some noises about an upset stomach. I’ve learned through bitter experience that it’s better not to rock the boat with critical thinking here at Wilfrid Laurier.

I came to learn this lesson not long ago. I’d made the rash decision of allowing some of my co-workers to “friend” me on Facebook. One of my so-called “friends” on Facebook reported me to her supervisor, and also to Human Resources. Apparently, my private support for a particular political movement made her feel “unsafe.” I found myself called into a meeting in Human Resources, where I was told that my Facebook post had caused a complaint (although they refused to tell me the identity of the complainant). Moreover, they told me that even though my Facebook account is private and was directed toward no one, my Facebook post amounted to Harassment. I was presented with the university’s Workplace Harassment policy, and was advised that I was guilty of workplace violence. Only through consultation with a lawyer (at my own expense) did I discover that this was untrue and that it amounted to bullying.

Altogether, Wilfrid Laurier University has become the handmaiden of political correctness, vitriolic social justice warriors, greedy special interest groups, and reactionary anti-intellectuals. We have become public flagellants, not intellectuals; we have become witch hunters, and screed writers. By my estimation, it’s only a matter of time before the book burning begins.

https://thecord.ca/editors-note-reserving-judgement/#comment-2093
#3
Ben
November 23, 2017 at 12:24 pm

Language is fickle, yes. More to the point, there’s no reason to believe all the just-so stories people tell about language: The presence of these pronouns causes this or that belief. The absence of this vocabulary or grammatical structure is responsible for this or that societal institution. Most of those arguments are pretty silly.

(When the people in this self-criticism session were told to state which pronouns they preferred, were they allowed to say “he” or “she,” if that was the pronoun they preferred?)
#4
iknklast
November 23, 2017 at 5:52 pm

John, that’s sort of similar to an experience I had at my college (in a deep red area of a deep red state, no less). We had a meeting about “bathroom policy”. Now, I realize that the bathroom issue is problematic, and that many individuals need to be able to use the proper bathroom. But the bathroom policy stated is that under no circumstances are we to question someone who appears to be in the wrong bathroom. There was no discussion, nothing, and the tone made it obvious there was no tolerance of discussion.

The problem is, what if you see a male-bodied person in the woman’s restroom, and you are a woman with PTSD from being verbally, emotionally, physically, and sexually abused by men? What if you are a student on the campus who has suffered sexual assault? And how does this square with the fact that most campuses are struggling to get out from under the problem of sexual assault on campus?

It seems to me that there must be some intermediate solution that would respect the rights of transgendered students/faculty/staff without violating the rights of women who might have a true emotional response that is unapproved, even though that student may not be transphobic. Being scared of men in spots where you are vulnerable is NOT the same as being transphobic.

I am one of the more fortunate ones, because I happen to work in a building that has a bathroom that is one toilet and can be locked. If there is a problem, that bathroom is available for use. Most of the buildings on campus do not have that as an option (which seems to me like the obvious solution; provide at least one bathroom like that in every building, then women who have these issues don’t have to bathroom with people they can’t tell are women because they simply say they are women without changing any of the ways they present – without being labeled transphobic, to boot).
#5
Acolyte of Sagan
November 23, 2017 at 5:52 pm

Not wishing to pull a Dear Muslima here, but is pronoun use really what people should be getting worked up about.

I remember when people protested things. Now, if you ain’t cutting the grass, get off of my lawn.
#6
quixote
November 24, 2017 at 11:27 am

And yet, contra AoS, there’s also a real issue around pronouns. Women have been erased forever by use of male-default pronouns. Man invented cooking. Man invented agriculture. Man invented spinning and weaving. Man discovered fire. Are you seeing a woman in any of those sentences? And yet you probably should.

That nonsense changes people’s feelings about themselves and their worth. And it’s been almost lost in the precious snowflake specialness of insisting that everyone must play along with whatever the identity of the day is.
#7
Acolyte of Sagan
November 24, 2017 at 12:03 pm

Cannot argue with that, quixote, which is why, unless a particular man or woman gets the credit I always say that ‘humans’ or ‘we’ invented, discovered, etc. I also refer to ‘humankind’ rather than ‘mankind’, though again I prefer the simpler ‘humans’.