Education

Laurier TA Wants School To Fork Over $3.6 Million For Damages, Harassment, And ‘Nervous Shock’

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A Wilfrid Laurier University teaching assistant sued her school Tuesday in Canada for damages, harassment, and inducing “nervous shock.”

The TA, Lindsay Shepherd, got scolded by three university officials after showing a debate on gender pronouns involving University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson in her November 2017 class, reported The Toronto Sun.

The communications professor Shepherd assisted, Nathan Rambukkana, fellow Laurier professor Herbert Pimlott, and the school’s diversity and equity manager Adria Joel “created a toxic environment” for the TA, according to her lawyer Howard Levitt.

“At this session, all three lambasted Shepherd, viciously attacking her personally, falsely alleging there had been complaints … insisting that, in playing the TV Ontario clip, she had been threatening to her students,” said Levitt.

“[The university officials] are being hoisted on their own petards,” the lawyer noted. “I’ve practised labour law for 39 years and I have never seen anything like this.”

Rambukkana asserted that Shepherd was breaking the law, specifically violating Canada’s human rights code and the country’s Charter of Rights by showing the clip.

“They continued to abuse her even after she began sobbing, as they accused her of causing harm to unnamed students. She pleaded, ‘I am stressed out because to me this is so wrong, so wrong,’ noting ‘the very spirit of the university is to challenge ideas you already have,'” the lawsuit asserts, adding that the administrators had suggested that one of Shepherd’s students had complained about the video the TA showed, an allegation that later proved to be false.

Rambukkana and Laurier President Deborah MacLatchey apologized after the incident went viral, but the lawsuit alleges that the ordeal has left Shepherd unemployable.

“The attacks on Shepherd have rendered her unemployable in academia, resulting in her abandoning her previous ambitions of obtaining her Ph.D. or even teaching as a Masters graduate,” the lawsuit alleges.

Shepherd founded the Laurier Society of Open Inquiry following her investigation, attempting, sometimes unsuccessfully, to host events pertaining to free speech and diversity.

The Daily Caller News Foundation reached out to Laurier for comment but received none in time for press.

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