Alerta Kingston Antifascists! On Monday, March 5th, Jordan… SOURCE: antifainternational.tumblr.com]]>On Monday, March 5th, Jordan Peterson is coming to Queen’s University campus. While he is inside Grant Hall spreading hate and discrimination, we would like to invite you to come stand in solidarity with racialized, trans, and other minority groups and protest this event in front of Grant Hall. For anyone not familiar with him, Jordan Peterson is a Psychology professor at University of Toronto who began using his platform in order to spread far-right ideas. He has been vocal in his disagreement with giving transgender people acknowledgement, respect, and protection under Canadian law (1). He is supported by outright white-supremacists, and preaches Islamophobic views (3). It should also be noted that although he is speaking at an event organized by Law students, he has no academic qualification in Law. This is consistent with Peterson’s past talks, in which he has attempted to speak with authority on biology, sociology, and other topics for which he lacks academic qualification. Jordan Peterson is an ideologue, using bigotry as get rich quick scheme (2), who distorts scientific theory to support his deluded worldview. His so-called “compelled speech” narrative is an ad-hoc misconstrual of human rights legislation which serves to undermine the idea of fundamental rights and liberties and provide a smokescreen so that he is not forced to defend his extremist philosophy. This anti-scientific, transphobic drivel has no place on a university campus. We condemn his proselytising in the strongest possible terms, and declare our solidarity with marginalised students. In addition, we would like to condemn the University’s choice to allow this discriminatory event to take place. We have contacted the Human Rights Department, the Equity Office, and relevant people within the AMS and SGPS about taking away this prestigious platform, but none of them have taken action to do so despite existing policy that would support preventing him from having that platform. On March 5th, we will come together as a community to give voice to truth, and to combat this reactionary propaganda. We hope that you will join us.
Sources & further reading: https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/pa3jzg/for-trans-folks-free-speech-can-be-silencing
(1) https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/education/u-of-t-professor-opposes-transgender-bill-at-senate-committee-hearing/article35035768/
(2) http://www.macleans.ca/opinion/is-jordan-peterson-the-stupid-mans-smart-person/
(3) http://ottawasun.com/2017/06/10/chambers-islamophobia-is-real-sorry-prof-peterson/wcm/d07e9864-3422-4d8f-b976-e8695ec270f1
