If I Were a Laurier Student This Is What I Would Have Asked Faith Goldy

A few days ago, Faith Goldy was supposed to give a talk at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, but was prevented from doing so by campus leftists who pulled fire alarms forcing an evacuation of the building where she was speaking. Goldy was invited to Laurier by Lindsay Shepherd on behalf of the Laurier Students for Open Inquiry.

Shepherd, of course, is the Laurier graduate teaching assistant who was reprimanded last fall for playing an excerpt of a debate involving University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson expressing his opposition to the use of non-gendered pronouns during one of her TA sessions. She was informed there were complaints by students she had behaved in a transphobic manner and had violated the school's transgendered violence policy as well as the Ontario and Canadian Human Rights Code. Shepherd recorded the reprimand and a subsequent investigation by the university cleared her of any wrongdoing. In fact, the investigation revealed no formal complaint had ever been lodged against Shepherd.Those of you familiar with this space may recall that I met Shepherd last month when she spoke at Harvard University.

Shepherd has been accused of being in league with white nationalists and white supremacists. Goldy did gain notoriety last summer for her sympathetic coverage of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia appearing on a white supremacist podcast. These acts were sufficient for Ezra Levant to dismiss Goldy from his Rebel Media organization.

Even if Goldy has embraced white supremacy, the same cannot be said of Shepherd. Indeed, Shepherd invited five Laurier professors to debate Goldy on immigration. All of them declined. Instead, she invited Goldy to speak on her own. Far from embracing Goldy's views, Shepherd was eager to question them herself. In a guest editorial for Maclean's, Shepherd wrote:

I had my own questions for Goldy planned: wouldn’t a theoretical “white ethnostate” be rather dull and homogenous? Doesn’t a diversity of cultures in Canada enhance our perceptions of the world and understanding of one another?

I never got to ask my questions.

This is a shame. By shutting down Goldy's speech, the campus left has turned her into a martyr while rendering themselves unreasonable.

When I was a left-wing student at Carleton University, if a right-wing speaker came to campus I asked him questions as was the case with Reform Party leader Preston Manning when he came to campus in the spring of 1992.

My politics have evolved over the past quarter century, but my attitude towards open inquiry has not. If I were a Laurier student in 2018 I would be eager to pose questions to Goldy.

Goldy is a devout Catholic. As such her embrace of white supremacism is curious. White supremacists are as anti-Papist as they are anti-Semitic. So what's a nice Catholic girl like you hanging out with a bunch of white supremacists?

Goldy's restrictive views on immigration are puzzling as well. Most immigrants to Canada are Catholic and are most likely to share Goldy's traditionalist views. So why should she want to restrict immigration?

Free speech ought to be a universal value and questions are essential in its exercise. By shutting down speech with which they don't agree, the Left is ceding free speech to the Right and particularly to the so-called alt.Right (who are really white supremacists). This is more dangerous than any foolish thing Faith Goldy might say.