Nathan Rambukkana publishes an open letter

*Open letter from Nathan Rambukkana to Lindsay Shepherd* Link to the "open letter": https://www.wlu.ca/news/spotlights/2017/nov/open-letter-to-my-ta-lindsay-shepherd.html Also a note from this petition's organizer: I will speak from my opinion. What I observe from Nathan Rambukkana is not an apology to Lindsay Shepherd. His letter to her states his reasons why he called her into a tribunal meeting. He has not apologized for putting Lindsay through a tribunal and a kangaroo court. He has not apologized to her that he was wrong to police her for being a true academic by **neutrally** presenting the opposing ideas regarding Gender Pronouns. Nathan Rambukkana has missed the goal of what an academic should be. The university, its point of existence, is to be the place where Diverse and also Opposing ideas are exposed and discussed. Free discussion Free debate Academic freedom These are the goals of the university. The university is not a place where only doctrine is taught. It is not a place where catechesis of Only One Kind of political values is taught. It is not a place where the side of a controversy that you don't like is presented as damnable and you are forbidden from being critical and from questioning why that side is being painted as garbage & as morally wrong. The university is meant to expose you to ideas and to a controversy that will make you uncomfortable. At university you're meant to get uncomfortable. This discomfort is the experience of your personal ideas and beliefs being questioned, and you have to learn how to critically defend them or to address them. Avoiding exposure to ideas and the side of a controversy that pisses you off is not learning to critically argue to defend your ideas. You silencing & shouting down the side of a controversy that pisses you off is not learning to defend your ideas with critical thought and debate. Also about Social Justice: You cannot claim that social justice is to silence, shout down and censor the people who present the side of a controversy that pisses you off. Social justice can be hijacked from being well intentioned to being a witch hunt. Social justice can devolve into the same early 20th century movement that was done in Eastern Europe: **People who were radicalized as communists targeted, witch hunted, shouted down & censored another group of people because they perceived these other people as being privileged.** Social justice can go wrong because of its premise that a group of people ( relatable because of race ) must be oppressors and another group of people ( relatable because of skin colour ) must be oppressed. Social justice can derail ( just like the communism of the Bolshevik revolution & of Joseph Stalin ) because it presumes there always and forever is a "them" and an "us" and the relationship is that of oppressor/oppressed and of "us versus them".