Lindsay Shepherd was born on December 7,1994 and is a Canadian columnist who became known for her involvement, as a graduate student and teaching assistant, in an academic freedom controversy at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, in 2017.
21 Facts About Lindsay Shepherd
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In November 2017, Shepherd played her communications class two clips of a debate, formerly aired on Canadian public broadcaster TVOntario, with psychologist Jordan Peterson on Bill C-16, which added "gender identity or expression" as a prohibited ground for discrimination to the Canadian Human Rights Act and as an identifiable group to the Criminal Code.
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An independent fact-finder hired by the university reported that the meeting should not have taken place, that "no formal complaint, nor informal concern relative to a Laurier policy" had been registered, and that Lindsay Shepherd had done nothing wrong by showing the clips.
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In May that year Lindsay Shepherd received the 2018 Harry Weldon Canadian Values Award from Canadians for Accountability.
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Lindsay Shepherd's mother teaches elementary school and her father is a youth counsellor.
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Lindsay Shepherd attended Cariboo Hill Secondary School, Burnaby, before completing her undergraduate degree in communication at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.
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On 1 November 2017, Lindsay Shepherd was teaching a WLU first-year undergraduate class, "Canadian Communication in Context".
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Lindsay Shepherd's mother suggested that she record the discussion; the other participants did not know they were being recorded.
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Lindsay Shepherd argued that students must be exposed to mainstream ideas, and that the ideas should be presented without taking sides.
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Lindsay Shepherd responded that the matter at hand was indeed "out there" and up for debate.
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The meeting ended with Rambukkana asking that Lindsay Shepherd send him her lesson plan prior to each class because there had been a breakdown in communication.
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Lindsay Shepherd released the recording to the National Post, as well as to a local newspaper and another on Canada's west coast.
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Lindsay Shepherd wrote that he regretted comparing Peterson to Hitler, which was "untrue and was never my intention".
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In June 2018, Lindsay Shepherd filed a lawsuit against the university, Rambukkana, Pimlott, Joel, and a graduate student for damages of $3.6 million, claiming "harassment, intentional infliction of nervous shock, negligence, and constructive dismissal".
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In December 2018, Rambukkana and Pimlott filed a third-party claim against Lindsay Shepherd, alleging she had had control over the recording and should therefore be liable for any damages Peterson suffered as a result of its publication.
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Lindsay Shepherd remained active online, gathering over 30,000 Twitter followers by December 2017.
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Lindsay Shepherd appears in the 2019 documentary No Safe Spaces.
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On 7 February 2019, the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms announced that Lindsay Shepherd was joining the Justice Centre as a "Campus Free Speech Fellow".
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On 14 July 2019 Lindsay Shepherd was banned from Twitter due to an exchange with Jessica Yaniv on the social media platform.
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Lindsay Shepherd said she would look to using other platforms, possibly including Thinkspot, a platform proposed by Jordan Peterson.
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Lindsay Shepherd received the Harry Weldon Canadian Values Award in May 2018 from Canadians for Accountability for her free-speech advocacy.