On Monday, a talk titled It’s OK To Be (Against) White(ness) at Trent University. Where’s the “Like” button?

On Tuesday, a talk titled Ethnocide: Multiculturalism and European Canadian Identity at Wilfrid Laurier University. Where is the “Stop!” button?

Instead, Laurier was saved by the bell, literally. Someone rang the fire alarm button, resulting in an evacuation of the hall and the event being cancelled.

The first event isn’t racist, the second is virulently so.

Whiteness is an academic term that describes a system of race-based hierarchy. Whiteness does not mean white people. Whiteness does not mean white people are bad. You don’t even have to be a white person to subscribe to whiteness. Whiteness is a term that facilitates the understanding of racism as being not just personal ignorance but systemic discriminations.

Based on attendees’ social media accounts, there was nothing inflammatory in University of Regina educator Michael Cappello’s lecture. He didn’t talk of race-based superiority or threaten other humans or seek their extermination.

The second talk? That was headed for fear-fuelled toxicity manifesting in xenophobia and white victimhood.

A university would be the last place you’d expect to go to pollute your mind with reheated white supremacist schlock, but Wilfrid Laurier had clearly decided that was just what the social justice doctor had ordered.

It hosted on its campus Faith Goldy, a person too vitriolic even for the far-right propaganda site Rebel Media, to discuss her views on immigration.

This is, after all, the person who calls for Muslims to be thrown out of the Holy Land, who talks of the threat of white genocide, says NATO should fire rocket propelled grenades at refugees to protect Europe, spouts pseudo-scientific bunkum such as “High IQ people tend to have a much higher characteristic and personality trait of openness. And you see them being open to these ideas … If you couple this with the enlightenment value of individualism etcetera, we literally are committing suicide.”

Laurier’s decision to legitimize such a talk under the banner of free speech was an absolutely devastating erosion of hard-won fights and debates that have already been settled.

It was therefore not surprising that dozens of protesters showed up Tuesday evening chanting “No Nazis at Laurier,” carrying placards with messages like “Laurier enables white supremacy”.

A protester told me the fire alarm was not part of the organizing students’ plan.

In fact, protesters were concerned when it sounded because “we thought attendees would be coming our way, which would have been the logical course. But the special constables steered them the other way. So we didn’t have to deal with that,” said Ann Marie, who didn’t want to give her last name for fear of reprisals.

“De-platforming certain speakers has only proven to raise the profile of those ideologues eager to spread messages of hate and intolerance,” the Graduate Students Association and the Laurier students union said in a joint statement Wednesday.

The talk was brought to the university by an unofficial student club named Laurier Society for Open Inquiry. It was co-founded by Lindsay Shepherd who made headlines after surreptitiously recording herself being taken to task by two Laurier faculty and an official for crossing a line in her obligations as a TA and introducing a debate on gender-neutral pronouns during a grammar lesson.

“While premised on the notion of free inquiry, there is little doubt that these speakers are increasingly brought to campus in a specific attempt to provoke resistance,” the student groups’ statement said.

Shepherd told CBC news, “These views are out there, no matter how despicable some people find them. Actually, the best thing to do is air them out and let them be publicly challenged. Because when you don’t, and ideas go underground, they actually become more dangerous and you can’t keep track of them.”

Ah, those foolish Shepherd critics, they simply don’t understand. She is doing disenfranchised people a favour, giving them exposure to such beliefs, something they would otherwise have had no opportunity to learn about despite, you know, living that life.

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The talk is part of the group’s new “Unpopular Opinion Speaker Series.” As in, racism is just unpopular, not deadly, not disastrous. But chin up. Let’s air views that devalue Black and Brown lives so they can be challenged.

That old “respectful dialogue” canard to end racism.

This is the problem with people who think history begins only when they decide to engage with it.

On Twitter @shreeparadkar

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