UVic Wants to Silence Me AGAIN (Asian Studies at the University of Victoria, Canada)

in Canada you have a constitutionally
protected right to complain about your university professors and to complain about the quality of the courses that you are enrolled in and there is a recent high court precedent backing up that right not just in theory but in practice as important as that right maybe I use it very judiciously I actually very rarely complaining here on my youtube channel and my blog elsewhere about particular professors I very rarely criticize them and that's because in the university context believe it or not I'm a natural conformist I have a great deal in common with my professors I very often like them as people even if I think they're bad professors several of the university professors in Asian Studies at UVic went out to dinner with me took me out for coffee talked to me about their personal lives not just their research but their marriages and divorces many of these people really were my personal friends that was the case at University of Regina before and so on and forth even at University of Toronto there were professors are related to personally and got along well with even if I thought they were doing a very poor job in teaching their courses in their conducts you know as educators so I'm actually not the sort of character who would abuse this constitutionally protected freedom but it's important to note that this freedom doesn't require you to be reasonable it doesn't require you to use polite language and it very definitely protects you as a student against the tendency of university professors and administrators to punish you or to try to intimidate you into silence if you dare to criticize your professors or if you dare to discuss on the Internet publicly how poor the quality of education you're receiving may well be I just received a really nasty email from professor and Ally lab and I interpret this email you'll you'll see it in just a moment I interpret this as trying to intimidate me into silence trying to dissuade me from complaining about the quality of the courses at UVic and complaining about the conduct of a particular professor dr. Anna Lee lap is the kind of person I would probably enjoy eat lunch with and having a conversation about common research interest she probably didn't read my CV she probably read my resume before sending with his email you know what doctor an allele app has a distinguished career in researching prostitution human trafficking etc in Thailand Laos Cambodian Southeast Asia is a Research Institute based in Bangkok dealing with women's rights prostitution human trafficking sex slavery those are all issues I did years of research on I have several publications on and that I was employed in NGO charity nonprofit sector research honor that I also worked as an editor that can have a nonfiction on done a lot of reading in there in that area I've done a lot of travel and had a lot of direct experience and picked up anecdotes from talking other researchers probably you may not realize it dr. Anna Lee lap would probably enjoy sitting down having a casual conversation with me about past research experience I think we need to take a really evidence-based approach to thinking about what does it mean for someone to be traffic the head of the department currently professor Richard Fox who's never had a conversation meet his career began studying Buddhism and Sanskrit well I have more than 10 years behind me within Buddhism I work more on tera vaada Buddhism thus pally was my language of scholarship I really did learn to read and write Pali at this ancient language I did years of research on tera vaada Buddhism in Southeast Asia again including Cambodia Laos Thailand but also Sri Lanka Myanmar a little bit different geographical efficient it's a guy were not natural enemies in many ways in terms of past research interests we would be natural friends but if you give these people administrative duties and you give them management problems very often they will respond to that incredibly negatively and with frustration and they will be punitive and they will abuse the tiny amount of authority they have over students and why partly because the educational background they have is not in management dr. Anna Lee left so she works in gender studies women's studies history etc from my perspective politics also right but she's not someone whose education and training prepared her to deal with a man real problem like a conflict between a student and a professor or maybe one professor or another preser the type of management issues that inevitably and inexorably are part of having a large multimillion-dollar university institution right Richard Fox I could say something similar writing an examination about Sanskrit an ancient Buddhism doesn't prepare you to deal with this situation we're in right now and that's why having constitutional protection for students rights is so important here's an anonymously authored article from the gauntlet in 2011 Keith and Steven Pridgen took a law society course in 2007 taught by our Union Mitra after the course was over a student started a Facebook page called quote I no longer fear hell I took a course with Aruna Mitra on which both of the Pridgen brothers commented according to students took the class Mitra who was teaching the class for the first time claimed that she was a full-time professor when in fact she was only a sessional instructor she also made wildly inaccurate statements like claiming that the Magna Carta was an agreement between First Nations people in the government the prison's brothers and other members of the class were called for a U of C disciplinary hearing where keith was put on probation for 24 months and both were ordered to never again post a family Tory material but a member of the university community the case went to real court where a Court of Queen's Bench judge ruled the UFC lacks the right to prevent students from commenting on the quality of instruction they receive because the Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects freedom of speech and again let's face it it's much more meaningful it's much more important that university students can criticize the University then it is important for you and I to be able to criticize a restaurant or a shoe store if we are dissatisfied with what we've managed to purchase there there is to some extent a client holistic relationship between professor and student but there are much more meaningful much more important things that the stakes are really very high including for the future career of these students the Wikipedia article if you look at the top half here underlined in red I'm just drawing attention to how universities in Canada will often try to intimidate students into silence with charges that are wildly irrelevant to the actual conduct when you look at the definition of so-called non academic misconduct this is supposed to be punishing students for like stealing unauthorized removal and/or possession of university property this this wasn't written at all to dissuade students from criticizing their professors are complaining both the quality of courses and yet that is the purpose this was put to the tiny amount of power that professors have in positions of administration and management then gets wielded against students in this really fundamentally immoral and I may say unconstitutional way the court of the Queen's Bench of Alberta found the University of Calgary to be wrong in prosecuting ten students including the prison brothers in regard to the comments made about a professor on Facebook the key ruling in this case was that the universities are not exempt from and these students were in fact protected under Section 2 B of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms ok so what was the conflict what was the criticism I dared to offer what was the complaint that resulted in these professors trying to intimidate me into silence you all want to know here we go take a look professor Tian I am requesting a meeting with you to set the teacher pupil relationship on a better basis for the future the last time we had a meeting in your office was in 2015 your behavior at that meeting was so negative that had tremendous impact on the next five years of my life I think you genuinely do not know how negative those long-term impacts of be please take a few minutes to speak to me positively to set the relationship on a more positive basis as I am now returning to you Vick attached to this email is a sample of my Chinese handwriting and two very different contacts one careful and slow the other rapid and slapdash did I receive a reply from the professor I wrote you from professor Tian no did I receive a reply from professor Fox the head of the department no no no no no professor Fox only wrote back to inform me that he was going to have to refer such a serious matter to the Dean the Dean of you manatees and here's the intimidating email RC from the teen please compare this to the response you get to any kind of customer service complaint where you are a customer spending tens of thousands of dollars on the product in this case an education that cannot lead to any kind of employment for me whatsoever it responds to your email I refer back to the letter you received from dr. John Archibald Dean of the humanities in 2015 in that email dr. Archibald indicated the investigation your plan complaints and the responses to them had been concluded dr. Archibald also stated that further repetition of these complaints to your instructors or the chair crosses the line to harassment with the attendant consequent fifty tip that letter do you notice a slight mismatch between the letter I sent to the professor and this threat it's not a veiled threat it's not an implied threat this direct threat I received from the Dean that I'm somehow doing something immoral that I will be punished for in quote unquote repeating complaints to his truck sir was that even was there even a complaint in the message that I sent to Professor Jones yet what was that a complaint I think I sent a letter saying hey look let's try to set this relationship on a more positive basis if we're actually gonna be in the classroom together and we're actually gonna be worried together and now you're telling me something that was addressed debunked and resolved back in 2015 you're telling me that if I dare to complain if I dare to complain about the content or quality of the course of an if I dare to complain about a professor that would cross the line into harassment you're dead wrong professor an allele app you're dead wrong on the contrary that's my constitutionally protected right and that precedent in court proves I don't have to use polite language I don't have to write in an academic style or published in an academic journal I can make such outrageous statements as complaining that a course is worse than going to hell that was even in the title on that Facebook or I'm allowed to have just as much freedom of speech as a sports commentator complaining about the pitcher in a baseball game I'm allowed to use all the shocking and lurid metaphors of someone writing a column in the local newspaper I have full freedom of speech period protected in the constitution of this country and you tell me professor an allele app do you think we would be living in a better world if I did not have that freedom of speech do you think we'd be living in a better world if you and professor john tian and professor richard fox succeeded in intimidating students like myself into silence i think that would be a worse world for us all