Wilfrid Laurier’s apology criticized

Though Wilfrid Laurier University has apologized to Lindsay Shepherd, the Ontario university’s Rainbow Centre appears to be endorsing the disciplinary action originally taken against the teaching assistant for showing her students a TV clip of a debate on non-gendered pronouns.

“In the face of recent media attention, we feel it is our responsibility to speak out against the climate of transphobia that is being fostered at Laurier,” reads a statement released Tuesday by the Wilfrid Laurier University Rainbow Centre, a service within the school’s diversity and equity office that offers support to queer and trans students.

Shepherd, a 22-year-old teaching assistant in the university’s communications department, was accused of violating the university’s gendered and sexual violence policy for showing her class a short clip of a debate over the use of non-gendered pronouns that aired in 2016 on TVO’s program The Agenda.

In a subsequent 43-minute disciplinary meeting, Shepherd’s superiors told her that she was fostering a “toxic” and “unsafe” learning environment, and compared her screening of a portion of the debate to exposing her students to Nazi ideology.

When a recording of the encounter was made public on the weekend, Wilfrid Laurier University responded Tuesday with a statement saying the hearing “does not reflect the values and practices to which Laurier aspires.”

Despite the apology, the school said it would proceed with a third-party investigation into the dispute. The university has also struck a task force looking at issues of academic freedom.

The Rainbow Centre accused the university of “silence” on the issue of transphobia. “The discourse of freedom of speech, is being used to cover over the underlying reality of transphobia that is so deeply ingrained in our contemporary political context,” reads the centre’s statement.

The statement does not directly name Shepherd or the professors who met with her, claiming that “confidentiality” makes the Rainbow Centre “unable to comment directly.” (Shepherd had chosen to name herself in media.)

Nevertheless, it suggests the debate of gendered pronouns is “disallowable speech” that constitutes “a form of epistemic violence that dehumanizes trans people by denying the validity of trans experience.” The term “epistemic violence,” used in this context, roughly translates to “knowledge violence.”

Shepherd responded Tuesday with a Tweet criticizing the centre for equating transgender issues with silencing seminar debate.

“Why is (The Rainbow Centre) suggesting that being trans and supporting academic freedom are mutually exclusive?” she wrote.