The Gentle Tyranny of Nathan Rambukkana

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 Wilfrid Laurier University is the latest scandalous instance of the political weaponisation of academia.  A year after Jordan Peterson warned that changes to Canada's Human Rights Act and Criminal Code amounted to legally-compelled speech, a teaching assistant has in fact been censured by an ad hoc tribunal for presenting Prof. Peterson's argument without reflexively condemning it.  The old characterization of university as a neutral space for higher learning is now passé.  Social justice as an ideology has been fully institutionalised.

Clearly Lindsay Shepherd, the offending TA, is the hero of the day.  She had the foresight to secretly record her superiors, the presence of mind to cogently convey her position, and the courage to face down a hostile panel accusing her of gendered violence and the passive endorsement of evil.

Wilfrid Laurier will undoubtedly suffer for this episode, but it's her supervising prof Dr. Rambukkana who comes off the worst in Shepherd's recording.  He accuses her of creating a toxic teaching climate with her problematic opinions.  Nonetheless, perhaps partly because he hasn't yet given any interviews, Rambukkana does not present as a real person.  He is a caricature, an absurdly convenient condensation of trends that have worried people like Peterson.  He steps forth and offers himself as a stock character in the dramatic enactment of our collective troubles.

If it wasn't him, it would be someone else.  If it wasn't Wilfrid Laurier, it would be another university.  However outrageous this occasion may be, despite or even because of the concreteness of the evidence, the scandal functions chiefly as a target for the projections of people who have already made up their mind on these matters.  The whole thing is so unsurprising that it's tempting to damn, denounce and decry and be done with it.

I wish it were that easy for me.  You see, fifteen years ago, Nathan Rambukkana was my TA.  I remember a sweet, gentle soul, who you can almost hear behind the tremulous and uncertain tones of his inquisition.  The question that presents itself is how did a well-meaning academic end up an Orwellian villain?  This is perhaps a question for us all to ask ourselves.

Nathan, what happened?  When did justice become about revenge for hurt feelings?  How did the infinite multiplicity of possible perspectives reduce to mandatory Marxism?  Who made that argument for you, and why did you never share it with us?  It confused me then and it confuses me now.

You know, the problematising of my positionality left me a broken wreck, so I've had fifteen years of sorrow in which to try to reconcile your seeming friendliness with the antisocial angst of my later professors.  There is no rational argument to be found, as far as I can tell.

For what it's worth, I think the most helpful thing you taught us was that reading cultural studies sometimes requires letting it wash over you without trying to understand it.  In hindsight, that sounds a bit like brainwashing.

All of this hoopla is over a short clip attesting to the existence of a debate, a piece of critical thinking in a communication class that you deemed to be inappropriate for school.

Do you remember, Nathan, the time you made us watch an entire episode of The Young Ones in lieu of conducting a tutorial?  I don't know if you thought you were giving us a treat, or if you were just hungover that day, but the case you made for its relevance to our studies was extremely weak, everyone hated it, and I was offended.  But I didn't take it to your bosses, because I was under the misapprehension that you're a nice person.