The Queen's University Talk: The Rising Tide of Compelled Speech

[Applause] Thank you. Well, welcome everyone. I'm assuming that applause was not for me. [Laughter] My name is Bill Flanagan, and I'm the dean of law here at Queen's University. I am pleased to welcome all of you here today for the inaugural Liberty lecture, generously sponsored by Greg Pizzetsky Law. A long-time and very generous supporter of the law school. Greg is here today, and I just want to perhaps join me in thanking Greg for sponsoring this lecture series. [Music] Thank you.

The Liberty lecture is intended to explore the meaning of liberty in our contemporary society, a subject of rich interest to philosophers, political scientists, and legal scholars, just to name a few. Today's Liberty lecture is moderated by Professor Bruce Party, to my right, of the Faculty of Law, an expert in a variety of areas including environmental law, governance, ecosystem management, climate change, water law, and university governance. Our guest today is Dr. Jordan Peterson, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and a clinical psychologist. His many publications include his recently published book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, and his research spans a number of topics including the psychology of religion and the modern understanding of creativity and personality.

I know that today's lecture has generated a great deal of interest, as is evident from the packed hall here today. It's also generated a certain amount of heat. The proposed topic, "The Rising Tide of Compelled Speech in Canada," is for many a controversial one, and I know that many of you in the audience will hold widely divergent views. I fully support your opportunity to be heard, and should you wish to challenge the speakers to defend their positions, I know that today's speakers likewise share this conviction and will welcome your comments and questions.

As might be appropriate for a lecture series named after liberty, I believe it is also important for me to affirm, at the outset, that the core values of the Faculty of Law and of Queen's University include academic freedom and respectful dialogue among those with differing views. This includes providing our speakers with the opportunity to be heard and providing all of you with the opportunity to respond in a respectful environment free from any harassment or any attempts to shut down the conversation.

So it is in this spirit of free and respectful academic exchange that I am pleased to launch this new lecture series and welcome again our guest. I look forward to our discussion. Thank you. [Applause]

Thank you, Bill. Welcome, and thank you for coming. I would like to underline what Bill said, which is that this event would not have happened without the initiative and support of Greg Piazewski, so Greg, thank you very much as well. Before we start, I would like to thank some people from the Faculty of Law: Diane Butler, Adam Blake, Gallipol, and Christina Ulian for their help in putting this together. I would also like to acknowledge the support, help, and generous assistance of several people around the university: Lisa Plater and Event Services, David Patterson, and the campus security office. You have been professional, helpful, straightforward, and I thank you very much for making this possible.

I would also like to return to Dean Flanagan's observation about the importance of this moment and to acknowledge the role that both Dean Flanagan and Principal Wolf have played in enhancing the reputation of this university in terms of its commitment to academic freedom and academic debate. They have reflected an unflinching commitment to those ideas. As Principal Wolf said on his blog, informed, respectful debate is central to academia, and gentlemen, I salute your academic statesmanship. Thank you very much. [Music]

So, we're going to proceed as follows. The first thing I would like to say is that in the hall behind you afterwards, there will be some of Jordan's books on sale: 12... What's the title again? 12 Rules for Life. 12... 12 Rules for Life. Wanted to get to 12 what it was, right? That's not 12 steps; it's 12 rules, right?

We are going to proceed as follows: Jordan and I are going to have a conversation for half an hour, maybe 40 minutes, and then we are going to throw the floor open to questions. We'll describe what kinds of questions that you should ask later on when we get to that stage. But our topic is the rising tide of compelled speech in Canada.

I am going to take just a couple of minutes to give us some context and set it up, and then I'll ask Jordan to tell us what he thinks. You may have seen the CBC production of The Tudors. The story of King Henry VII. In one episode, the king has condemned Thomas More to death for refusing to say that the king is the head of the Church of England. More is in his cell awaiting execution. A friend comes to him to plead with him to say what it is the king wants to hear. More says he cannot do that for he does not believe it to be true. In exasperation, the friend says, "You don't have to believe it, you just have to say it."

When your brain makes that kind of calculation, you know you are under the thumb of a tyrant, and Thomas More lost his head. The tide of compelled speech in Canada is rising. The Law Society of Ontario has introduced a new policy that requires each lawyer to develop a statement of principles which endorses and acknowledges an obligation to promote certain values. The Ontario Human Rights Commission says that under the Human Rights Code, failing to address somebody by their preferred pronoun will constitute discrimination for which you may be investigated and prosecuted. The Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario has introduced a new curriculum to require teachers to teach elementary students about white privilege, and the federal summer grants program requires applicants to attest to the values that the government believes in. They don't have to believe it. [Music]

Foreign [Applause] [Applause] Okay, security. [Applause] That's pure narcissism at work, by the way. You don't want to hijack an event like this that other people put time and effort into and to use their civility of the crowd and the civility of the organizers as an excuse to blatantly yell out your ill-informed opinions. There's no way to conduct a civil dialogue. It's absolutely appalling. The people who do that should be embarrassed. [Music]

All right. I guess I would also say that as students and as faculty members, you shouldn't put up with it. There's no way that you should allow people who are doing this to hijack your educational opportunities and to bend and twist the functions and the structures of the university. It's not a good thing. Not in any way at all. I would say that was a very disgraceful display fundamentally.

So let's stick with it. Why do you think people are afraid of free speech?

Well, you know, people develop an ideological view of the world because they don't want to think through things in real detail, and they're aided and embedded in that endeavor by their pathological professors who are feeding them what would I say? An oversimplified radical view of the world that in my estimation is fundamentally based in resentment. Not that there's no reason for, say, a left-wing view of the world, and we can get to that later. It's easy virtue. You know, you can stand up in front of 900 people with your placard and your screeching, and you can declare to the entire audience your fundamental moral superiority. You can tell everyone at once that they're all beneath you and you're standing for the right thing, and absolutely none of that is earned. You know, like, what the heck? What the hell was that? It's just complete misbehavior. It's embarrassing, and the fact that people who do that don't have enough sense to go hide their head in shame just tells you how badly socialized they are and how terribly educated they are.

The thing that's so awful is that there are professors and educators who promote that. They say, well, that's how you change the world. It's like, it is how you change the world, but it's certainly not how you make it better. You make it worse clearly. You know, there's no comfort in that and there's nothing about it that's impressive. It's no better in some sense than a two-year-old having a tantrum on the floor. It shows, as far as I'm concerned, it approximates the same level of psychosocial development.

So, the fact that this is happening continually in universities is, it truly makes me embarrassed to be associated with the university. I say that with great displeasure because I've been working for great universities for a very long time, and the university is an absolutely remarkable institution. You know, it's survived for a thousand years, and to see it brought down by people whose behavior would be out of place at a four-year-old's birthday party is something visible to behold.

So, what about the actions of government now? Because it is government after all that is the source of this compelled speech, as law, as well as other ways in which they seek to restrict speech. But the compelled speech is the most egregious form of violation.

Yeah, so tell us about that.

Well, I've been trying to sort this out because, you know, if you're a clinician, I would say one of the problems you always have when you're dealing with behavior that's gone astray is to understand at what level of analysis you should address it. You know, is it a theological problem? Is it a philosophical problem? Is it a psychological problem? Is it social? Is it economic? Like, these are very complicated questions. Is it a trivial issue? Is it an issue of rights? Is it something else? The people who put in Bill C-16, for example, and its associated legislation make the claim that it's a legislative movement that's facilitated by nothing but compassion and desire to expand the domain of, let's say, rights and freedoms.

And, you know, there's nothing wrong in principle with expanding the domain of rights and freedoms, except of course, for every right and for every freedom, there's an attendant responsibility and obligation, so you have to keep that in mind. When I looked at Bill C-16 and the legislation that surrounded it, especially that was written by the Ontario Human Rights Commission, the policies that surrounded it, and also the policies that gave rise to the social justice tribunals—named social justice tribunals, appallingly enough—that gave rise to those tribunals in Ontario, the things I read just made my hair stand on end. You know, the social justice tribunals have the right to place themselves outside of legal, outside of jurisprudential precedence. It's like, what the hell is that? It's really—you're going to make the case—the only way I think that you could justify doing that is if you tortured yourself into the ideological proposition that English common law is somehow an oppressive branch of the patriarchy, and because of that you have every right and even obligation to place yourself outside of its structure of precedent.

But we don't want to place ourselves outside of the structure of precedent of English common law. I can tell you that it's one of the supreme achievements of the human race. It's Purdue societies that are as free and as productive as any societies have ever been anywhere on the planet and certainly are now. And to dare to state that you would place yourself outside of that precedent—that's the sort of thing that made my hair stand on end. And there are other elements of the policies that were equally reprehensible—not least their complete incoherence of formulation. You know, I couldn't understand some of it. Like, I don't understand, for example, with regards to the gender propositions how it can be that you can be anywhere on the gender spectrum, which, by the way, is not a spectrum technically, and it actually matters which words you use if you're writing law. You can be anywhere or nowhere on that spectrum. Like, I don't know what that means, and I don't believe that the people who wrote it know what it means either.

And you don't write things that you don't understand into the damn law— you don't do that because the law unfolds in society and it tangles people up as it unfolds, and it's no joke when that happens. So you'll be very, very careful when you're writing law, and you certainly don't want to write law to push forward your ideological commitments, especially in the face of precedent, because precedent is what keeps law from degenerating into ideology essentially.

And so, well—and so to answer your question, you know, more fundamentally, I don't believe that this argument has ever been about the rights of transgender people. I think that it's an attempt by the radical left ideologues to push their ideological agenda forward using attempts to manipulate the linguistic domain, and I'm not willing to cede the linguistic domain because I don't think there are any more, anything more important than the words that you use. And then when the government says, "Well, you should start using these words," you should start thinking hard about your damn government because your words are no different than your thoughts, and your thoughts orient you in the world. And if someone is going to tell you what it is that you have to think, then they're going to disorient you in the world, and I wouldn't recommend that because there's lots of terrible things that can happen to you, and if you're disoriented, you're going to run into a very large number of them. So, that's how it looks to me.

So, the ideological context of this seems like something has changed because if you think back decades earlier, liberals were the champions of free speech. Yes, it was the conservatives at a certain moment in time who were the censors. You know, they sought to curb blasphemy and obscenity, sedition, and so on, and the liberals said no, free speech is the way we want to go.

And yet today that has flipped. If you look back to what left-leaning officials and authorities and figures said, let me just give you one quote. This is Samuel Gompers, who is the founder of the American Federation of Labor in 1886. He said this: "The freedom of speech has been granted to the people in order that they may say the things which—sorry, I misquoted—that have not been granted to the people in order that they may say the things which please and which are based upon accepted thought, but the right to say the things which displease, the right to say the things which may convey the new and yet unexpected thoughts, the right to say things even though they do are wrong."

Now that is not a sentiment now carried on by the left today. What has happened?

Well, again, I see that it's a consequence of continual agitation by, I would say, a minority of the left, of radical left in particular. Those are people who aren't Marxist/neo-marxist in their fundamental ideological orientation and have joined that in an unholy union with the worst of French post-modernism, and they push it forward: ideological certainty.

And the thing that's really distressing about that is that if you know anything about the history of oppressed people, let's say, much as I hate to engage in that particular form of dialogue under the current conditions, it's pretty obvious that freedom of speech is a freedom that's particularly important for people who don't have anything else, right? If you're supporting freedom of speech, you're not supporting the status quo. I mean, just think about—let's use the logic of the radical leftists and assume that society is a tyrannical hierarchy and the people at the top have the upper hand in everything, including access to communication. Foreign are not your friends. [Music] They would say, you know, "That's that," and mark my words, that's the sounds of the barbarians pounding at the gates. Right? [Applause]

Yeah, I'll tell you again too that Yusuf in Kuwait—what would you call it in Kuwait? Sensation is the best formulation of their argument, and there's not much difference between knocking on the doors and knocking on—you, so keep that in mind. It's not amusing. There's nothing to it, there's nothing for it. The thing that's also quite appalling is that there's no evidence whatsoever that the people who are conducting these protests know what it is that they're protesting against. You know, I was in [Applause] I was in the midst of a discussion attempting to make the case that it's freedom of speech that's what people who have nothing still have, right?

So if you look at the tyrannical structure of our society, let's say, the people at the top have access to means of communication. Everyone knows that it's the people at the bottom who have the right to say what they think, however badly they say it, that enables them to get a toehold into the system and to make their suffering known. That's what freedom of speech is for, and so, like, what's the protest against that? And I'll tell you, you know that the radical neo-Marxis types, they speak the language of power, and that's what they're speaking right now. And if you want to live in a world where everyone speaks the language of power, then just let them do what they're doing and see what happens. I wouldn't recommend it. It's not a pretty road.

And you're all in a position—you're in a situation in your life now where you have to make decisions about these sorts of things, like, is this the sort of institution that you want this to be? Now, one of the arguments against what you said about the pronouns was that, well, after all, you're being asked to do is to say something that is reasonable. It's not unreasonable to address somebody by the pronoun that they prefer.

Yet, if you think of any kind of speech which is prescribed, imagine a statute that said people shall use the words hello and please and thank you in their conversations. That statute is untenable.

Yes, because it now requires people to use certain words in their conversations even if those words are reasonable themselves. So that is not the question, and it was not your case you were making, that using a pronoun was unreasonable in itself. Do I have that correct?

Well, yeah. First of all, there's a couple of things I'd like to say about that. You know, I looked at the process by which the Ontario government formulated its legislation with regards to the pronouns and the consultation process they used, and the consultation process was deeply flawed. They contacted activists and said, let's say activists of the trans community. Okay, well, there's a couple of things I'd like to say about that.

The first is there is no trans community. Trans people are as diverse as any other group of people, and to the idea that somehow because of one of their attributes they constitute a homogeneous group is a—well, you'd think that that would be a falsehood that the people who are concerned about treating groups of people adequately would be loath to put forward, but even more importantly, there's absolutely no evidence whatsoever that the activist types are actually representatives of any of the communities that they hypothetically activate on behalf of. It's like they're not elected; they're not appointed; they don't pull; they do this—they say, "Look, here's a group. It's a minority group, and it's oppressed. I'm a member of that group, and therefore I stand for the group." It's like, actually, no, you don't. You don't stand for your group; you maybe stand for yourself.

You know, I don't stand for men, and I don't stand for white men. I'm not entitled to speak on their behalf, and so the idea that it's the trans community that wanted this is a completely unsustainable idea; it's certainly unproven. I've had like 40 letters from trans people since I started to engage in this, call it chaotic battle, and only one of them was mildly critical of what I was doing. All the other ones—and there aren't that many trans people, you know, so to get 40 letters is actually quite a few. I'm not saying that this is a scientific pull, but it's at least as scientific as the process by which the Ontario government generated its legislation.

And I'm not generating legislation, and what these people said, to a person, was, "I didn't ask to be the newest whipping boy for the radical post-modernists." All it's done is made my life more difficult. You know, the basic letter would say, "Well, I'm transitioning from one gender to the other, and it's very difficult, and I'm not sure that it's the right thing to do, and this has made the process spectacularly more difficult on all fronts." It's like, "And these people don't speak for me." Just because they say they do, that doesn't mean they do.

And so the other thing that we seem to have swallowed as a society is this crazy notion that—well, first of all, that we should be portioned up into our different minority groups, which I think is a return to tribalism and unbelievably dangerous. I can't really think of anything more dangerous than that. And then we've swallowed the idea that if you identify yourself as a member of a minority group, and then you bring forward a grievance, you have to be treated as if you're a valid representative of that group. It's like, well, why in the world would we do that? It's guilt, I suppose. Maybe that's part of it, or I think it's mostly guilt.

You don't want to stand up and say, "Well, you know, who died and made you king?" So to speak. You know, can we stay on that logic for a moment—the idea? So this compelled speech material seems to insist upon treating people not as individuals but as members of groups, to either blame them or to favor them as a member of a group. If we take that logic and extend it, you know, that the group identity thing becomes intersectionality, where you're not just belonging to one group, but you also have these characteristics. Spin that out for us. What is the logic of that? Where does it lead us to?

Well, okay. So the first thing I would say to everyone in the room is I don't think—and this is why I decided to do what I did right from the beginning—you know, I don't want to play the group identity game. I don't want to construe the world in those terms, and I'm not going to use terminology that would require me to formulate my thoughts in that manner. I think it's a terrible catastrophe to divide us all up into our tribal entities. I don't see anything positive about that at all, so I just don't want to go there.

And then, second, I would say—and maybe this is even more relevant—you may or may not have heard about intersectionality, but intersectionality is a new development on the radical left, and I think it's actually—if I wasn't so intent upon seriousness in these matters, I would be constantly laughing about intersectionality. And the reason for that is that it's the radical left has discovered its own Achilles heel.

So look, what's the problem with dividing us up into groups? Well, there's many, and the descent into tribalism is not least among them, but the next is that, well, it turns out that we don't fit into one group, any of us. We fit into multiple groups, and it's not obvious at all which of those groups should take precedence, be of paramount importance.

You know, there's a racial group and an ethnic group, and there's groups of intelligence, and there's groups of temperament, there's groups of attractiveness, and there's groups of wealth, and you can multiply them really indefinitely. And I do mean indefinitely because you can categorize a finite number of entities a virtually infinite number of ways.

And so the intersectionalists discovered this. They said, well, there's—let's say there's Latinos and there's Asians. It's like, okay, well, wait a minute. There's male and female Latinos, and there's male and female Asians. So do we treat—is the division into two enough, or do we need a division into four? Well, and then, well then there's socioeconomic class of male and female Asians and male and female Latinos, and generating the groups—technically, without end.

And you actually see this happening in real time, so to speak, as the acronym for the LGBT activists continues to expand really without end. And see what's at the bottom of intersectionality, and this I suspect will be discovered eventually by the radical leftists if they get that far, is that you have to fractionate the groups right down to the individual.

And that's what Western culture discussed and articulated over the last five thousand years. It's like, oh, right. The group isn't the paramount division; it's the individual. Because unless you treat each person like an individual, you're not taking all the intersections into account. And so it's extraordinarily comedic, but it also isn't as if it's treating everyone as they're an individual is an instant solution that will bring us to utopia.

You know, it's like Winston Churchill said of democracy, right? It's essentially the least terrible approach we have, and life isn't the sort of problem that is amenable to an instantaneous utopian solution. But our best bet is to meet each other with the desire for peace and productivity on this stage that enables individual interaction because then we meet soul to soul, so to speak, and we also meet in a domain that we bear responsibility for as individuals.

And that's also extremely important, right? You should be responsible for what you say. You should have to suffer the consequences of what you say, not least so that you learn. And so the individual is paramount as far as I'm concerned. I think that's the fundamental principle of Western civilization.

Now, it's not only the West that has come across that discovery, but I think we've done the best job so far of articulating it, and so we don't want to lose that because the alternative isn't a multicultural utopia; the alternative is a descent into tribal barbarism, and there are people who would be just as happy if that happened, but I would suggest that it's not a destiny that an awake person would long for.

Yeah, do you feel like taking some questions? Do you feel like taking some questions from the floor? Sure. All right, so we're going to have questions, and we'd like you to participate in this conversation now. Please do ask a question. We welcome you up to say what you'd like. If there is a preamble to the question that's fairly short, then so be it, but please do ask a question. We're not actually inviting speeches, and we do primarily want to hear what Jordan has to say. So feel free to line up at the two microphones. We'll take one at a time. Go ahead, sir.

So, first of all, thank you so much for being here. I really enjoyed it. [Music] And, second, this ties into my question. I just—last week my Free Speech Coalition at Bishops University was officially ratified, and I would love to invite you to be our first guest speaker if that's at all possible.

All right, thank you. My question pertains to this: For Dr. Peterson, what would you consider the most under-discussed or overlooked ideas and topics that you think should be discussed in the club? Because I know we're looking for controversial ideas that we think are maybe not as discussed as much as they should be.

Well, that's a difficult question. I would say that it isn't obvious to me that on university campuses at the present time, or in the education system in general, we've done a good job of taking stock of the advantages and disadvantages of our current socio-political systems now. And I think there's enough data so that we can start having intelligent conversations.

So one thing I would recommend to you all if you're interested is a book I just finished reading. It's called The Great Leveler, by Walter Scheidel, and it's a discussion of inequality, and it's a very intelligent book. So one of—so inequality, as you may or may not know, is rife throughout human societies, right? And that's the case in the present day, and it's being the case historically, but it's also the case in animal societies by every measure.

So inequality is the rule of life, let's say, and that doesn't mean it's not an ethical catastrophe. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that the fact of inequality cannot be laid at the feet of the West, or of capitalism, or really of any human construction for that matter. One of the things Scheidel did was to investigate empirically the relationship between inequality and the pull of government. So because let's say if you surveyed a very large number of states, you could determine whether the governments were left-wing or right-wing, and then you could do a compilation of inequality coefficients, and you could find out if left-wing governments had any ability to ameliorate inequality just as an empirical question.

And the answer that Scheidel generated was no, there's no difference whatsoever in the inequality coefficients in left and right-wing states. And what that points to is a much more fundamental problem. And Scheidel, in his book, also points out that the only known historical forces that limit inequality or that reduce inequality are war, revolution, and pestilence. It doesn't look like it's easily under human control, and so, you know, the Marxists talked about inequality and the fact that capital tends to accumulate in the hands of fewer and fewer people, which is sort of true, except that the people at the top tend to rotate a lot more quickly than that than the Communists and the Marxists ever presumed.

But it doesn't look like that's a consequence of capitalism. It looks like it's a much deeper process. And capitalism, at least, well, it's shoveling money and resources up to the top, also does lift the bottom very, very quickly. You know, and this is something we need to have a serious discussion about in the University. So, like, one—because we shouldn't be doing this. We should be partying in the streets.

And here's one reason why—do you know that the level of absolute poverty in the world fell by 50% between the year 2000 and the year 2012? You know, that was three years faster than the most optimistic UN projection considered. It was the fastest decline in absolute poverty that the world has ever seen, and like, that's a big deal. You know, about hundreds of thousands of people a week right now that are being connected to the power grid, and almost everybody has access to high-speed computation, and these struggling economies in Africa have, for the last four years, been the fastest growing economies in the world.

You know, there's almost no absolute privation left. There aren't people starving except for political reasons. We're at a point where obesity is the worst problem than starvation, you know? And now I also think that a lot of that was purchased at the cost of the dreams and hopes of the working class in the West. You know, I think what we did in some sense for about a 30-year period was sacrifice the aspirations of the Western working class to alleviate poverty in India and China and in Southeast Asia, and it looks like that might have been a really good deal, although it was a little bit hard on the working-class people, and that has to be taken into account.

But we're not having discussions of this sort in universities. It's like we're stuck in 1980 or maybe in 1960. We haven't updated our models to take into account the new and often extraordinarily positive realities, and we're tearing ourselves apart in the West with this identity politics idiocy at the same time that things are getting better and better faster and faster than they ever have by a huge margin in the history of mankind. So it's like, it's time to wake up and throw off the depression of the Cold War and to look around and see what's available in front of us and what we could accomplish that would be much better than—well, this.

Yeah, so [Music] foreign. Yes, ma'am. Hi. So Mr. Peterson, you've said that your utmost—or one of your utmost priorities is the pursuit of truth. Could you just clarify what truth you mean when you're presented with a situation where you have to—or you're being asked to refer to someone to their preferred pronouns? Is it their truth? Is it your truth?

To me, the issue isn't the request of the individual to be addressed in a certain manner that by law—so when these issues get conflated constantly. Look, I've dealt with all sorts of people in my life, a much broader range of people than most people ever encounter in the course of their entire lives, and I'm perfectly capable of deciding how to treat someone on a one-to-one basis. But when the demand for terminology becomes part of the legal system, I don't care what the rationale is. It's not happening as far as I'm concerned.

And people say, "Well, we're pushing it forward because of compassion, and maybe you could stop just being such a mean professor." It's like, why should I believe that? You know, what the hell are you doing with your compelling laws? You're willing to move past a legal line in the sand that's been drawn for, let's say, 700 years? You do not write compelled speech into the legislation.

Oh, but we're doing it with the best of intents. Yeah, no, you're not. So these issues have to be separate. Look, if this was about transgender rights, it would have disappeared in September of 2016. It's not about transgender rights, and everyone knows it.

So this is not about transgender rights. What these—what these people are doing outside, it's about something far deeper than that. So thank you. But let me ask the question this way: Can we say, don't doesn't everybody have the rights, the liberty to decide how to present themselves? You know, how to be who they want to be, what to wear, you know, what gender to call themselves? And the answer is yes, everybody has the liberty to do that. But everybody else has liberty too.

And the liberty to do that doesn't mean they have the right to compel other people to agree with it. In other words, liberty is not the right to demand that the world validates the choices that you've made. You have your choices; you have the freedom to make the choices. And everybody else has the freedom to make their choices too and to approve or disapprove or to call you this or they call you that. In other words, liberty is a two-way street, and everybody has it. And the fact that you've made choices doesn't mean everybody else doesn't have the same ability to make the same choices.

Oh yeah, back, Mike, please go ahead. Hi, um, that was loud. I just want to thank you for being here. I'm really a big fan. And um, I have a bad habit of making—or getting into arguments with a lot of radical leftists. And the most common argument they present to me generally is Bill C-16 only covers the Ontario Human Rights Code. So those are protected areas under the Ontario Human Rights Code, such as universities, elementary schools, etc. I was just wondering how you would combat this argument, seeing as their argument is generally they're only dealing with vulnerable groups such as young students.

And it doesn't matter; they say, "Well, it's restricted in scope."

Yeah, it's not restricted enough. Look, I mean, here's a couple of facts. Okay, so when I first made my videos about Bill C-16, one of the things that I suggested was that the act of making the video itself could well have been illegal. And of course, people immediately accuse—not always easy to understand the full intent of a new piece of legislation and surrounding policies. But I can tell you one thing. When the lawyers at the University of Toronto read through the new legislation and the surrounding policies, they also decided that what I was doing might have been transgressing the law. And that's why they wrote me two letters telling me to stop, okay? So that's fact number one.

Okay, fact number two: Words Lindsay Shepherd. [Music] Okay, so let's say for the argument that I'm a paranoid megalomaniac and that I'm a bigot and all of the other things that people have decided that I might be, okay? Well, I'll tell you what, in my paranoid megalomania, I never envisioned a situation where a teaching assistant—a 22-year-old teaching assistant at a major Canadian university—would be hauled in front of a quasi-militant inquisition and have to record it because she dared to show five minutes of a video from a mainstream news program run by public television funded by the government of Ontario. So paranoid as I was, let's say it isn't obvious that I was paranoid enough.

So, and I don't see that—I don't see how either of those examples can be disputed. You know, it was like the University of Toronto wrote me two letters without thinking about it. They went and consulted their high-powered lawyers, and the lawyers reviewed the policies and the legislation, and they thought, "Oh, Dr. Peterson, he might be contravening that legislation." It's like it was a weird paradoxical gift to me that they sent out those two letters telling me to stop because it was instant proof that what I was doing was—I wouldn't say right, because God only knows about that—but at least that my interpretation of the bill and its intent was correct.

So can we just make this observation that that response to Jordan's critique of C-16, the one that went, "Oh, he's overreacting. Nobody is going to be punished or sent to jail for this," is silly in this sense. Remember, every single legal rule there is is a legal rule only because it is backed with the monopolistic violence of the state. There is no such thing as a rule without punishment.

So, if for example there's a no-parking sign, what the parking sign says is, "Oh, by the way, please don't park here." But there are no tickets? Well, people are going to park because that's not really a rule. So if you have a rule in the Human Rights Code and if you breach it—if that's discrimination—well, then true that the first thing that happens to you is not going to be thrown in jail, but there's a process, a series of steps, right? The first one might be a mediation or an investigation, and then there might be a fine. And then if you don't pay the fine, then your wages might be garnished or you might be ordered to fix it. But believe me, if you refuse and refuse and refuse and refuse, that order will become a court order. And then if you don't obey the court order, you'll be in contempt of court, and then that will lead to arrest and imprisonment.

So every single rule in the Human Rights Code is effectively enforced with the most severe violence the state has, even though it's known, actually practiced most of the time, because most people obey. When we also don't want to underestimate—I don't know how many of you have had the pleasure of being dragged before a board that investigates your behavior—but I would tell you that even if you don't end up paying a fine or in jail, there's nothing particularly pleasant about the process itself. It's enough, you know? You wonder why people don't speak up, and I can tell you one of the reasons they don't speak up is because merely being dragged in front of a board of inquiry—innocent or guilty—is enough to pretty much do you in for a whole year.

Like, if you're a sensible person and you're concerned with propriety and you want to maintain the stability of your life, and your reputation is important to you, perhaps because of the stability of your family depends on it, to be investigated for such things is a punishment all of its own. It's no pleasant business, and many of you will experience that. I would equate being investigated by a non-punitive board, let's say, with these punishments that Bruce described quite far down the distance. I would equate that to having a fairly serious disease in terms of its psychological and physical impact.

I would also say—you know what? I won't. I won't say it. Let's go with the next question, please. Thank you.

Thank you. So, first of all, thank you both for doing this. As embarrassing as what's happening out there is for Queen's University, I think what it does, if anything, is show how important what we're doing here is and how weak those people are. So thank you, first of all. [Music]

In terms of my question, I think most people here believe that it's extremely important in everything that we're doing to speak our mind, to speak freely. That's why we're here. But in terms of practicality, there's a lot of things, again, are in the way of our lives with students. You know, we have our GPA to look out for, job prospectives.

So, in terms of practicality, what are kind of maybe your tips and your perspective on the steps that students can take to kind of speak their mind while not sacrificing kind of, you know, their future prospectives?

Well, I can tell you a couple of things that are very practical. Don't write in your essays what you think the professor wants to hear. There's absolutely no excuse whatsoever for doing that. Now, first of all, most professors, even those who have descended into a state of ideological possession, let's say, most of them still have enough character to grade an essay that's well written properly.

So you're actually taking less of a risk than you would think by stating what you have to say. But look, if you start practicing when you're in university, when the stakes are rather low, pandering to the audience, let's say, and saying what you think will get you by, you're going to train yourself to do that. And what that means is you're going to train yourself in the falsification of your character, and your character is the only thing you have to guide you through life.

You know, people dream of riches, and they dream of luxury and all of that, but that's a thin defense against the harsh realities of the world. You have your character. And so what you do when you go to university is you learn to say what you think as clearly as you can and to take the slings and arrows that come along with that—not in an arrogant manner, right? Because, like, what the hell do you know? You know, so you've got plenty to learn, but you want to formulate your thoughts carefully.

You want to write what you think. Well, why? Because when you're writing, you're thinking. You're laying out the arguments that you're going to use to structure your existence in the world throughout your entire life. And if you start to twist and bend those for expedient reasons, you're going to warp your soul. And I mean, I could talk about that neurophysiologically if you want to. You know, you become what you practice. You automate what you practice.

So if you automate expedient speech for the sake of short-term gain, then that's what you're going to produce. You're going to produce expedient speech for short-term gain. Well, God help you if you do that. Like, there is nothing that you will possibly do in your entire life that will serve you better than to get control of your voice in university.

I remember—so you do that by reading, right? You read great people. You do that by writing what you think. You stay true to yourself while you write what you think, and you take the risks and you gain the benefits that go along with that. You learn to stand up and speak and to listen carefully, and that makes you a negotiator of unparalleled power. And if you're a negotiator of unparalleled power, there's nothing in the world that won't open itself up to you. So that's what you're doing in university.

And if you find professors who reject that—and there's fewer of them than you might think—then it's your sacred obligation to stand up for yourself against that because it's going to happen to you throughout your whole life, and you might as well start practicing how to do it right now. So that's how it looks to me.

Yeah, there's an old saying that I write in order to know what I think. And you'll note how compelled speech interferes in that process, yes? So the idea that you have to write what your professor wants is the form of compelled speech. It's like, it—I really do believe that this is a fundamental issue as a therapist.

Say, when I'm trying to help someone set their life straight, I do my best not to compel their speech. And the reason for that is quite clear. It's like you have your destiny with all its attendant triumphs and sufferings, and it's on your shoulders. I don't want to tell you how to think. I don't want to tell you how to think because I do not know how you should think. You have to figure that out for yourself, and then you have to bear the responsibility for that.

And you're a terribly arrogant fool if you dare to tell someone else how it is that they should conduct themselves through life. Now, I mean, having said that, well, obviously I say, "Well, you should tell the truth or at least you shouldn't lie." But that's not a dictate of action, so to speak.

It's a dictative process. It's like, well, you can't—you shouldn't interfere with the mechanism that allows you to solve all the problems that you will face in your life. And you come to university maybe to prepare for a profession, you know, and to set yourself up economically. But to set yourself up economically properly, I don't care what your profession is going to be. There is no one who is more powerful than someone who can communicate.

It doesn't matter what the field. It doesn't matter if you're a plumber or a politician. If you can formulate your thoughts clearly, if you can conduct yourself honorably in your action and your speech, if you're articulate and careful, then the world opens itself up to you. You have an unlimited horizon of possibility.

So thank you very much.

Thank you both for coming. But firstly, I'd like to thank everyone in the room who has not devolved into the hysteria we see outside. They would prefer that we lost our sanity, and that our society would fracture into the nonsense we see. So by sitting here, being as patient as you are, this is how we keep our academy. This is how we keep our society. Thank you! [Applause]

My question is a simple one. We see more and more of this new language I call of leftism: intersectionality, equity, diversity, inclusion. And we see people from all political and philosophical stripes adopting this new vernacular. Is this in any way dignifying that as a position? Is this dignifying the philosophical bases of these words? Do people recognize that when they use these words, that they're making that somehow a truth that we all ought to accept? And should we or should we not?

I don't think people do recognize that. Again, you know, what I'd like to reiterate—the reason I made those videos to begin with was because I don't—I was unwilling to cede the linguistic territory. As soon as you think—it's already happening to some degree. So imagine that we just define the socio-political landscape in terms of identity politics, which is happening very rapidly—in fact, we're compelled to do so, right?

So, well, then what happens is you get activity on the identity politics front on the left and on the right. The left says, "Well, the oppressed shall rise and take their rightful place," and the right says, "Yeah, over my dead body," and probably years too. So as soon as we play the identity politics game, that's where we're at, and we start playing it by accepting the terminology. You know, already I find myself stumbling when I use the word sex instead of gender, and that's not good.

Like, I have to consciously overcome a resistance to use the word sex instead of gender because, you know, I'm actually quite an agreeable person, and it actually pains me to go against the crowd, let's say. You know, I'm not temperamentally suited for it, strangely enough. And so I feel the compulsion to use this kind of language welling up inside of me just to be nice, I suppose.

But I know where identity politics leads. It leads to the gulag. It leads to the concentration camps. It leads to blood in the streets. We don't need that here. We're doing pretty well. [Applause]

Hi, Professor Peterson. I studied history for the duration of my degree, and I think it's just sickeningly ironic that the people who are using their free speech want to take away your free speech, and furthermore, that they can't see the irony of the situation, of how tyrannical they're being.

My question is, however, I've noticed from a lot of what you've talked about, and I've been watching you since your rise in 2016, and I know that you're a Christian, and I don't want to divulge into that. But I notice a lot of the sort of North American Protestant work ethic in your lessons, like, you know, self-redemption and to be your own person, like we've been talking about that for the last, like, hour and a half, I suppose.

And in an ever-rising tide where people are rather—in the Western world where it's becoming increasingly—that rather, increasingly decreasingly Christian and specifically, it's—yeah, decreasingly religious and specifically decreasingly Christian. How can you—what do you think is the best suggestion in order to be able to uphold those such important values that have been across the world from American cultural influence since the end of the Second World War?

I apologize for the long questions.

No, no, it's fine. The—you know, people have asked me repeatedly about my religious views, and I've answered them in a variety of different ways. But they say, "Do you believe in God?" let's say. And my response to that always is, well, I don't know what you mean when you ask me that question, so I don't know how to answer it.

I don't know what you mean by believe. But I can tell you something that I believe, and I would say this is a way of speaking symbolically. I do believe. So I was thinking the other day—a week ago, I was thinking about this—this little fantasy that entered my mind. I was thinking about Saint Joseph's Oratorio in Montreal, and Saint Joseph's Oratorio is a very large religious building. It's one of the biggest cathedral-like structures in the world, and it's set on the hill on Mount Royal.

And it's set up where it can catch the sun, you know? So it's an image of the Heavenly City on the hill, right? It's an image of the structures that we strive to create; that's what it is, independent of its specifically Christian or religious function. That's what it stands for symbolically, okay? So it's the city on the hill. It's what we're striving towards when we walk uphill in life.

Okay, now, the way the Oratorio is structured, there's hundreds of steps leading to it up front, and in the early part of the 20th century, a lot of people who had physical disabilities came there, and they struggled up the step on their crutches. Many of them left their crutches in the Oratorio. You can see hundreds of them if you go there. It's quite an interesting site. And I was thinking about that, and I was thinking about what that meant.

And this is what it means. It means that, you know, everyone has their disabilities, let's say. And I know that some people are far more terribly affected than other people. I'm perfectly aware of that. But the question is, what do you do about that? And what you do is you set yourself up on your damn crutches, and you struggle up the bloody hill. That's what you do. And you struggle up the hill towards the kingdom of God. That's what you do, because the alternative is to descend into the abyss. That's the alternative.

And so to say, well, do you believe—it's like I believe that you should struggle uphill towards the city of God on your crutches. That's what you should do. That's the opposite of the descent into the abyss. And so that's at the foundation of our civilization, that idea. Well, argue with it if you will. See if you can figure out why that's not an acceptable idea.

Maybe you should help someone struggle up the hill; perhaps you should. You know, you can lend a hand to someone, although you don't want to take the burden away from them entirely, because there's something noble about struggling up the damn hill, right? There's something—that's the call to proper being. It's like, well, we don't need to forget this. You know, we don't need to forget it.

The universities have been there since time immemorial to try to push that idea forward through the generations, and everyone needs to know that idea. That's what gives your life—not happiness, forget about that. If it comes, well, great, accept it. Dignity, nobility, character, truth, responsibility, beauty—those are the things to aim for. Honor too, I'd say. Honor.

Thank you very much, and I hope when all this is done, I hope you take a nice long big vacation because I think you really deserve it. Hello. Dr. Peterson. First, thank you for coming.

So I'm Chinese. My parents grew up in the cultural revolution of China, so I took particular attention when you mentioned on multiple occasions comparing what's happening in the West right now to Mao's China. And I agree, and it's pretty obvious the connection between the radiology, the identity politics and the oppression versus oppressed viewpoint.

But my question is mostly about how they're promoting the political agenda. I mean, I see that the political agenda—the philosophy behind the political gender are very similar. But at the same time, I see a shocking similarity in the way that they're promoting that political agenda, specifically backing back in the cultural revolution. Anyone who dares to say anything that is not fully for the movement was classified as anti-revolutionary.

Just as now, anyone who dared to say anything that goes remotely not fully aligned with whatever they want to promote is classified as hate speech, although it has nothing to do with hating anybody. So since the same thing is happening here and in Mao's China, what would you say—what do you think is the connection between the philosophy and their idiotic, oversimplifying and tyrannical way of trying to promote it?

Okay, well, the first thing we should make clear is that there is such a thing as hate speech, right? Like, let's not be naive about this. And you can use words to inflame, and words can be very dangerous tools. And people use them in hateful manners all the time. That's not the issue. That's obvious. The issue is whether or not you should regulate that, and even more importantly, whether the state should regulate it.

And the reason that's an issue is because who's going to define it? I'll tell you who's going to define hate speech: it's the people who are doing that that are going to define hate speech. And right now they're defining you sitting in here as hate speech. I mean, that's exactly what's going on.

Well, we sit here—it's like who would be interested in defining the parameters of hate speech? Here's the answer: the people that you would least want to have adopt that responsibility. And hate speech—it's like, well, let's say I was interviewed a while back, and the journalist asked me, "Well, why should your right to offend trump someone's right to be secure?" It's like, okay, well, let's say I'm talking to one person, and you might say, "Well, I don't have the right to offend them." It's like, all right, what if I'm talking to ten people? Do I have the right to offend one of those people when I speak to them? What if it's a thousand people?

So what you're saying is, "Foreign—you can't have a conversation about something serious without offense." Like, if I'm thinking about something serious, like I offend myself. You know, and I seriously mean that. I really mean that. So if I'm laying out a set of hypotheses, for example, about a complex social problem, I might lay out twenty hypotheses, and maybe two of them I think, "God, I hope that's not true." But, like, maybe it is true.

You know, sometimes you discover things as a social scientist that you wish weren't true, and those are usually the things that you've discovered that are actually true, right? Because they violate your assumptions. So you can't even think if you're not willing to offend yourself. That's what thinking does.

If you're ever talking about something serious, wouldn't it be serious if it didn't have the possibility of frightening and offending people? That's kind of how—that's kind of like the definition of seriousness. It's like, well, we can only talk about things that no one ever gets upset about. It's like, well then it's like you're trapped in an elevator for the rest of infinity listening to nothing but music. That's a kind of hell, man.

If you're going to think, and also if you're going to speak, you're going to offend people. You're going to go after their deepest presuppositions and end your own as well. You're going to shatter them at times. It's going to be brutal, absolutely brutal. And you all know that because every single one of you has had a serious conversation with someone that you love, and the probability that that was an easy conversation and that either of you escaped without offense and terror is zero. If you haven't had a conversation like that—well, well, you're not human, right?

I mean, right? Because everyone has conversations like that all the time except when they run from them, which is most of the time—and no bloody wonder. You know, real conversations are—there's nothing worse than a real conversation, except the war that you have if you don't have the conversation. That's basically how it goes.

I just want to underline—I just want to underline Jordan's first point, which is really that it's a very dangerous thing, any legal rule that relies on some kind of reasonableness, because reasonableness lies in the eyes of the beholder. I mean, those people out there think that you guys are uttering hate speech. They think that you guys should be the ones who are arrested.

And just imagine if they were the ones who had the reins of government power. Just—it's all very well to think of hate speech as a reasonable idea, but as soon as you give up the control about what that means, you're liable to run into real trouble next.

Hello, Mr. Peterson. My name is Zachary Milligan. First off, I'd just like to start by actually thanking you for all the hardship and troubles you've endured for standing up for our rights and being a part of this debate. I come from a dairy farm in Napanee, rural-raised conservatively. And my question is, in the face of when we have a social situation so divisive, when you genuinely believe what you're doing is the right thing in this particular instance, since you have experience with it, what would you say is there a more effective—I don't want to say an easy way to reach out for them, but what do you think is the best way to try and talk some sense into those folks outside in a one-on-one setting?

So the first thing is, I don't necessarily—I don't necessarily think that what I'm doing is the right thing because you don't—you have to be careful when you make a claim like that. But I can tell you one thing: I'm not going to let anyone stand in the way of me trying to figure out what the right thing is. That's the thing. [Applause]

And then I would say we're doing exactly what we should be doing right now in this discussion. It's just exactly right, right? I mean, admittedly, we have to talk over the noise, but that's really not that big a catastrophe. And everybody in here is comporting themselves in a reasonable manner, and we're trying to struggle our way through the topics, and we're asking questions, and we're trying to have a genuine dialogue about them, and that's what we've got.

We've got three things: we've got negotiation, we've got slavery, and we've got tyranny, and those are your choices. And so this is negotiation, right? That's public discourse. And the reason that freedom of speech thought is obviously important—everyone can understand that. You might say, "Well, you don't need to speak freely because you can think."

Who's going to get inside your head? But the problem with that is that that's not it. You can't think very well because there you are in your little world, you know, with all your biases and your ignorance. You're wrong about so many things, and you're going to learn it really painfully. And then maybe you can trot out some of the things you think erroneously and ignorantly, and other people will give you a tap on the side of the head instead of running you over with a freight train, right? They'll give you a little tap on the side of the head, and maybe you'll walk away a little smarter.

And that's why freedom of speech is so important is because a lot of thinking, especially about things that are beyond you for whatever reason, has to take place publicly as we stumble around towards an adequate formulation of the problems that beset us. So, I would say, well, in this book I wrote, I have a rule. It's—it's, I think it's rule eight, which is tell the truth—or at least don't lie.

I would say, well, that's another reasonable way to start approaching the situation is it's not so easy to tell the truth because, like, what do you know? You know, you can't come out and say, "Well, here's the truth." But I know what one thing you can do, which is when you know that what you're saying is a lie by your own standards, you cannot say it.

And you can have a consultation with yourself, and you can try to learn to say those things that make you strong instead of saying those things that make you weak. And you contribute to the health of the public dialogue in an incalculable manner that way. This is another issue that pertains to the dignity and importance of the individual.

How you conduct yourself and your life is way more important than you think. And I mean, I think that that's a daunting idea because, you know, let's say you're nihilistic and life is meaningless. It's, well, what's the payoff for that? I think, well, there's no payoff. It's like, well, yeah, there is. You have no responsibility. That's a pretty decent payoff. I mean, you have to pay the price of meaninglessness, but it doesn't matter what you do.

Well, we'll flip that over and say, "No, no, sorry, you're wrong." Your life is meaningful. It's way more meaningful than you think, but you have to bear responsibility for your thoughts and your actions. It's like, yo, there will be plenty of meaning in that. Well, that—if you understand that properly, that will cleave you to the depths of your soul, and maybe you'll learn to speak carefully and to act carefully, and that will have a beneficial effect on everyone around you.

If far more—you're far more powerful in the place you stand in the place you sit and stand than you think, and I think everyone has an intimation of that. And if you don't think that's true, then try treating people around you as if it's not true. Try treating people that you know in your life as if they don't matter, and just see what kind of response you get. People are not going to be happy with you, not in any sense whatsoever. You'll ruin all your relationships. You have to treat people as if they matter, and maybe you have to treat them as if they matter because maybe they do.

And that goes for you too. And so if you matter, then you should act like you matter, and that's a very daunting proposition, that's for sure.

And if—as a footnote, go ahead. As a footnote, I just have one small thing to say. Hola. I would very much like to stay and talk with a bunch of you, and I generally do that, but I can't do it today because I have to go back to Toronto, and I'm going to Australia tomorrow. So I can't do that, even though I would like to.

So I have to run off, and then I have to drive back to Toronto. And despite that, thank you very much for coming and for being patient and all of that. Yeah! [Applause]

[Music] Let’s listening. [Applause] [Music] [Applause] Thank you. [Music] [Applause]

[Music] [Applause] [ __ ] white supremacy, shame on Queens! No freedom for hate speech! It's actually really catchy. I haven't really chosen where I'm at with him. I've been looking at his points. I'm looking at the protest points, so I'm not really sure.

I just think it's interesting that he's drawing this sort of crowd, and that you know what's happening here is happening. I think that really says something about participation in Queen's. We're here to protest Jordan Peterson being given the platform at Queen's University.

Jordan Peterson, aside from not knowing what he's talking about—visually the law, Peterson pencils hatred wherever he goes, it's not a discussion about which toppings you like on pizza; it's a discussion about which people should be considered human, which means we should respect. And that's not a debate that should happen anywhere. [Music]

I love that they are here having this, of course, because clearly they don't agree with what he has to say, so they're showing it. But I have seen a lot of people, you know, call for a dream to be canceled. They are shouting that Daniel Wolf should be ashamed of himself for allowing this to happen, and I just think is wrong.

I don't know, it seems like we have a lot of very angry people here because someone's expressing an idea different than their own, and here at a university, I kind of thought that was the point. Everything transformation, please! Thank you. Would you like to—I got one more. Would you like a delicious Pepsi Cola?

I'm good. Okay, save the best for yourself. [Applause] Thank you. It's refreshing. It takes bravery to say that hate is unacceptable, guys, yeah? Like, really good? They broke the [ __ ] window out in there. Jesus Christ! Oh, crazy, crazy.