Two days after issuing a public apology to a teaching assistant who was chastised for showing her students a televised debate on gendered pronouns, Wilfrid Laurier University President and Vice-Chancellor Deborah MacLatchy still will not say if the T.A.’s choice of material was appropriate.

“Academic freedom and freedom of expression are very central to the university,” MacLatchy told CTV Kitchener on Thursday. “We recognize that there will be challenging and uncomfortable conversations, but it's not okay for them to be threatening -- and that's the overall balance that we look for in every class and in every tutorial.”

Laurier graduate student Lindsay Shepherd says that she was subtly censured earlier this month for showing a debate on TVO’s The Agenda between controversial University of Toronto academic Jordan Peterson, who rose to national prominence after refusing to use gender-neutral pronouns in his classrooms, and sexual diversity scholar Nicholas Matte.

After a student complained, Shepherd was forced to endure a disciplinary discussion with three faculty members -- a tense meeting that she secretly recorded.

“They were telling me that you can’t debate something like this because it causes an unsafe or toxic learning environment,” Shepherd told CTV’s Your Morning on Monday. “I ended up being called transphobic and someone who causes harm and violence.”

Shepherd says that she does not support Peterson’s views and was simply showing the clip to demonstrate how a language’s structure can affect the society in which it is spoken.

“I was not taking sides,” she tells the faculty members in the secret recording. “I was presenting both arguments.”

Laurier’s public apology only came after Shepherd shared the recording with media.

“Let's not forget that this was [the university’s] only option," Shepherd told The Canadian Press on Tuesday. "They were basically forced to do it out of public and media shaming."

MacLatchy, however, contends that while staff members were previously aware of the recording, she only issued a public apology after it was released to the media because she did not have a chance to review it beforehand.

“We hadn't yet heard it -- we were waiting,” MacLatchy told CTV Kitchener. “The university does not decide on employee matters until we have all of the facts in front of us.”

According to Simon Kiss, an assistant professor in digital media and journalism at Laurier, there have been at least two incidents in the past year in which the university has curbed academic debate.

“We see this not as just an isolated incident, but a serious problem that needs to be addressed with kind of a foundational statement at Laurier on freedom of speech,” Kiss told CTV Kitchener.

Kiss is part of a group of professors who have started a petition that urges Laurier to support a statement on freedom of expression on campus. The issue, Kiss says, has become increasingly important since the university adopted a policy designed to prevent “gendered and sexual violence” in 2016.

“While that’s important and meritorious, the policy as it was written was very broad and vague and it has contributed to both of these serious incidents where speech or debate has been constricted,” Kiss said.

According to MacLatchy, in addition to supporting a third-party investigation into Shepherd’s case, the university will also be creating a taskforce to provide more clarity on how these types of situations should be handled in the future.

With reports from CTV Kitchener’s Natalie van Rooy and The Canadian Press