Hi All, this evening a commenter on this post crossed a line into what looked to me like online harassment. The comments were in my view also unrelated to the content of this post and were plainly unhelpful. In case that wasn't clear, as I believe it was, I just want to state my unequivocal support and respect for Meghan Bell and thank her for a number of courageous and helpful things she has done to help the literary community move on in a positive manner.
Although I have not had any direct contact with her I have similar respect for Sierra Skye Gemma. The reason this story is so captivating is because its complex. There are so many factors at play for many of us in how and why we fell into the roles we did. Untangling all of this can be tricky and even painful. But it will be downright impossible if everyone continues to think the worst of each other. And I refuse to do that.
So I thank all of the people who come here with an open mind and good intentions. It's the way forward. And thanks again to Meghan Bell for helping set that standard with her dignified comments. They are greatly appreciated and welcome.
I agree. If people genuinely apologize for what they did and said to other people in the belief that the “facts” they had been told were correct, I hope we who were the targets of vilifications will be able to accept those apologies. It’s a hope, not a demand. Some people were very damaged. - almost destroyed. If they can’t at present accept an apology, that will be their prerogative. Recovering from mob attacks can take years.
Brad, thank you for continuing to write about the fallout from the UBC accountable letter, and about Galloway's ongoing legal battles as well. I, too, was a signatory, but I've always felt I remained relatively unscathed because I'm a children's author, and was therefore not in the direct line of fire - a bit removed, certainly more unknown. I'm stunned and saddened to read of the negative impact signing a letter for due process has had on so many authors. And I remain to this day infuriated that the entity that is UBC, got away with their absolutely egregious handling of the situation. I was an adjunct up there at the time so I got to see - not everything, but some - of how it all went down. From the outset I and many others were deeply uncomfortable with how events unfolded, but only a few of us dared question what was happening - not because we were braver (hell, no - I've kept my head very far down from that day forward) - but because we didn't have a lot at stake. For many up there, who were hoping for full-time positions, for example, in a notoriously tough field to make any kind of living in, they didn't dare speak up (and let me emphasize, I don't blame them) - but I know some of them shared our discomfort. The ripple effects have been profound and long-lasting. Thanks for continuing to shine a light.
Good column, Brad. Only want to correct a couple of things: none of the board members at Room called for Carmen to be dismissed as a contest judge, that came from outside the collective, and was basically just Rak and Palmer. It was the same for Lorna appearing in our festival: the board agreed to keep her invite but we were harassed for it. Lorna ended up being one of the most popular speakers at the first Growing Room Festival (in terms of event attendance and audience feedback), and Carmen judged our contest without it being an issue.
However, I'm not disputing that authors who signed the UBC Accountable letter were backlisted, including at Room. I was opposed to blacklisting, but not strongly enough, and wish I had spoken up more and more clearly. At the time, I was overworking / too busy and constantly exhausted, and the harassment was overwhelming. I still have some of Palmer's emails, which include overt threats to spread malicious lies about the Room collective if we didn't fire Lorna in particular.
I've been following this blog and have been dismayed to learn more details about what actually happened. You already know this, but I privately apologized to both you and Steven a while ago for my role in the online fiasco. Here's the public apology. I was wrong, entrenched in at atmosphere at UBC that was deeply unhealthy, and I acted on and formed beliefs based on bad information.
Wishing you all the best and thank you for this. = Meghan
Hi Meghan, thank you so much for this. I just got off the phone with Steven who is out of province right now. I read him your comment and he asked me to thank you very much and say that he has no hard feelings and wishes you all the best.
I've forwarded your comment to Carmen and Lorna as well. I'm just going to put some thought into the issue of the new information you provided and how to handle it in either a correction or a future clarification. Happy to discuss that offline if you have a preference. I'd just like to echo Susin's comment that what you've done here is admirable. And greatly appreciated.
Thanks, Brad. Lorna was one of my favourite teachers at UVic, and one of the reasons Carmen was invited to judge our contest was because I was a fan of her work. I thought both of them handled the situation well, all things considered. One of the patterns I noticed early on in the UBCA kerfuffle was that the signatories always spoke to or emailed me with respect and kindness, while many of the anti-UBCA crowd tried to bully me into adopting their hardcore stance.
Edit: I looked back over the old emails, and it was actually Carmen that Palmer pushed us to fire more, not Lorna. They're from six years ago and my memory was fuzzy.
I think the fallout was intense for the whole community, though you have articulated clearly the heavy price paid by many of those who signed. We don't realize how important due process is until we see how things play out when it is eliminated. It is truly disheartening to see how effective those who demanded blacklisting have been, and how so many literary institutions--who were suddenly and stressfully thrust into the role of judge and jurors themselves--caved to their demands. A robust, healthy community would be able to tolerate strongly held differences of opinion and would have safeguards in place to protect diversity of thought. Thank you for this, Brad.
Thank you Wodek. Yes, I've found the erasure of good people and important literature to be one of the hardest parts of this story to swallow. Although perhaps the hardest part to swallow is who and what replaced those who were erased. I'll have more on that soon.
I read this story out of curiosity, please note, I am not a writer by any stretch of the imagination. To say that im shocked, stunned,in disbelief is an understatement. How can this be allowed to happen.
This reminds me of an incident at McGill Not to long ago, Declan McCool was internal vice president if the McGill student union, he was falsely charged with sexual assault. And what happened afterwards was that this life was turned into a living hell.
Details are in the Montreal Gazette
Thank you all, for writing on this sordid chapter of Canadian Literature
How is it that I, who has never attended university, or college, can see the absolute lack of morals, and academic corruption. Am I alone in this regard.
Where as my wife, much better educated than i, said and I Quote, you'd be surprised at what some people are willing do to to get tenure, fellowship.
Reminds me of this past Tuesday
Chancellors from MIT Harvard and Penn
Were asked a simple question about antisemitism, and they couldnt answer?
There's a difference between book smarts and intelligence. Academics, writers (especially those who focus on autobiographical writing), tech etc are often left hemisphere dominant (which is where verbal language is processed, while the right hemisphere processes nonverbal communication). Unfortunately for the left hemisphere dominant, it is the right hemisphere that is our brain's BS detector. Iain McGilchrist's work is illuminating, but if you don't want to wade through his enormous books, I am attempting to summarize it and answer questions like this on the Substack account I just launched. My second post, next week, is the first of a four part series called "The Dangers of Reading Too Much."
It's a subject dear to my heart. I had a serious right hemisphere brain injury when I was one. I can breeze through academic work and intelligence tests, abstract, visual tasks (e.g. I am sooooo good at Tetris) but am apparently incapable of instinctively picking up when someone is lying to my face. I only figure it out if they make a mistake and contradict themselves or claim something I know is physically or mathematically impossible or statistically very improbable. One of my good friends once described me as the "smartest and dumbest" person she knows. Sigh.
What was so hard to understand why people online kept calling Galloway a rapist when they didn’t know any details because he and his accuser signed NDAs. The public knew the details of what Ghomeshi & Weinstein & other sexual predators had done but not Galloway. This online mobbing went on for a year before the UBCA open letter was published and it helped to prompt the letter asking for due process at UBC whose staff had rushed to judgement and then they didn’t clearly and publicly state that Galloway had been cleared of sexual assault by their internal investigation under Justice Boyd. That was the situation before the open letter came out. The university admin wanted a scapegoat because they had mishandled or ignored earlier reports of assault on students.
Hi Brad. One of the signatories here. Must’ve missed your email. No personal or professional repercussions myself but I’m just some nobody who wrote a few silly trivia books. Also someone who is proud to call Carmen Aguirre, quite possibly the bravest person I’ve ever met, a friend.
Is there any evidence that any of the non-entities who attacked the signatories have resiled from their initial support of the Plaintiff, or have apologized to any of them once the nature and scope of the Plaintiff's lies, her acolytes' blindfolded shit-flinging and UBC's iniquities surfaced?
There have been some behind-the-scenes apologies, to my knowledge, and some 180 dergree turns from some who were initially fervent believers. Again, behind the scenes. One of the saddest things to my mind is how people's laudable beliefs (in, for instance, justice and equality for women) were used to scam and con them. And it all could have been prevented by a few phone calls early on -- to, for instance, the CBC. But fervour and probably panic trumped ('scuse the pun) the need for evidence and sound process.
Thanks for the note Margaret. It's not a new phenomenon is it - "behind the scenes" regrets and/or apologies? Complicity on whatever order admitted quietly and privately, carrying the whiff of shame, and occasional for some, not just a whiff but a gale, like Germans who did the Nazi's dirty work; Americans who cheered on Trump, among countless other times people have been sucked into the vortex thinking they were "doing right". Along come the apologies, but always after the damage is done.
Sidney, listening to both sides of an issues, as I have been known to do, is not "playing" both sides. I was trying to help create peace in the community and was very naive. I've made many donations, both public and private, and I don't remember why that one was public, but at the time, I believed Steven was guilty. I no longer do because I have more information.
The blog post you wrote about me contains multiple fabrications and is so nonsensical I've chosen to ignore it. Please leave me alone, and don't you dare steal photos of my daughter again to post to your deranged account.
My thesis was "short" because it was a poetry collection. It was supposed to be short. I produced a significant body of work during my time at UBC, much of which was published, but I hopped around genres a lot and as I had already sold my short story collection, I did not see the point in using it as my thesis.
I didn't choose Nancy and Keith. I choose Timothy Taylor, but had to switch because I delayed finishing my thesis for too long and abandoned the half-finished novel I was working on with Timothy, and Nancy and Keith volunteered to take me on for a poetry thesis since I already had about half a collection's worth of poems, many of which were published in literary journals.
I also never "coerced" anyone into submitting work about sexual assault to Room. In the example in your "blog", I invited a woman to submit a piece I liked. She said she wasn't ready, and I said I understood and never brought it up again. She later submitted on her own accord, and I published it. She was happy about it.
I did forward an anonymous allegation of multiple incidents of sexual harassment related to a venue at Growing Room to a reporter. Note what I didn't do: go public with the allegations, start a social media shaming campaign, etc. I forwarded it to a reporter to investigate. It ended up being meaningless, because the CBC already had the story and reported it first.
You don't know me. and should stop pretending you do. I only know you exist because you have been harassing me, and apparently many others.
Changes of heart are a sign of maturity. What I have learned from my brief interactions with you is that I will be more careful with my privacy in the future, including no longer posting pictures of my child online and making sure I tick the "anonymous" box before donating to any cause again.
You complain about being "attacked mercilessly" while actively harassing me, writing lies about me, and then following me here to continue your relentless fictions about the imaginary creature you have created in your mind. Get help.
I'll add -- I've been criticized for "seeing the good" in people too much, and one of the reasons I got involved, talking to both sides, was that I believed most people on both sides of the UBCA issue had good intentions. I still do. You can ask Brad, as I've defended Sierra's character to him quite recently. People make mistakes. Stop online stalking me and get a life.
Hi All, this evening a commenter on this post crossed a line into what looked to me like online harassment. The comments were in my view also unrelated to the content of this post and were plainly unhelpful. In case that wasn't clear, as I believe it was, I just want to state my unequivocal support and respect for Meghan Bell and thank her for a number of courageous and helpful things she has done to help the literary community move on in a positive manner.
Although I have not had any direct contact with her I have similar respect for Sierra Skye Gemma. The reason this story is so captivating is because its complex. There are so many factors at play for many of us in how and why we fell into the roles we did. Untangling all of this can be tricky and even painful. But it will be downright impossible if everyone continues to think the worst of each other. And I refuse to do that.
So I thank all of the people who come here with an open mind and good intentions. It's the way forward. And thanks again to Meghan Bell for helping set that standard with her dignified comments. They are greatly appreciated and welcome.
I agree. If people genuinely apologize for what they did and said to other people in the belief that the “facts” they had been told were correct, I hope we who were the targets of vilifications will be able to accept those apologies. It’s a hope, not a demand. Some people were very damaged. - almost destroyed. If they can’t at present accept an apology, that will be their prerogative. Recovering from mob attacks can take years.
Brad, thank you for continuing to write about the fallout from the UBC accountable letter, and about Galloway's ongoing legal battles as well. I, too, was a signatory, but I've always felt I remained relatively unscathed because I'm a children's author, and was therefore not in the direct line of fire - a bit removed, certainly more unknown. I'm stunned and saddened to read of the negative impact signing a letter for due process has had on so many authors. And I remain to this day infuriated that the entity that is UBC, got away with their absolutely egregious handling of the situation. I was an adjunct up there at the time so I got to see - not everything, but some - of how it all went down. From the outset I and many others were deeply uncomfortable with how events unfolded, but only a few of us dared question what was happening - not because we were braver (hell, no - I've kept my head very far down from that day forward) - but because we didn't have a lot at stake. For many up there, who were hoping for full-time positions, for example, in a notoriously tough field to make any kind of living in, they didn't dare speak up (and let me emphasize, I don't blame them) - but I know some of them shared our discomfort. The ripple effects have been profound and long-lasting. Thanks for continuing to shine a light.
Ah, when you pop into my mind--and you do, Susin--I am grateful to know you. Integrity. Thank you.
I think of you too Alison, fondly
Thank you for this!
Thank you for this new post, Brad!
Not only did UBC get away with it but, rubbing salt in the wound, they installed one of the ringleaders as the program's Director.
Good column, Brad. Only want to correct a couple of things: none of the board members at Room called for Carmen to be dismissed as a contest judge, that came from outside the collective, and was basically just Rak and Palmer. It was the same for Lorna appearing in our festival: the board agreed to keep her invite but we were harassed for it. Lorna ended up being one of the most popular speakers at the first Growing Room Festival (in terms of event attendance and audience feedback), and Carmen judged our contest without it being an issue.
However, I'm not disputing that authors who signed the UBC Accountable letter were backlisted, including at Room. I was opposed to blacklisting, but not strongly enough, and wish I had spoken up more and more clearly. At the time, I was overworking / too busy and constantly exhausted, and the harassment was overwhelming. I still have some of Palmer's emails, which include overt threats to spread malicious lies about the Room collective if we didn't fire Lorna in particular.
I've been following this blog and have been dismayed to learn more details about what actually happened. You already know this, but I privately apologized to both you and Steven a while ago for my role in the online fiasco. Here's the public apology. I was wrong, entrenched in at atmosphere at UBC that was deeply unhealthy, and I acted on and formed beliefs based on bad information.
Wishing you all the best and thank you for this. = Meghan
Wow, Meghan. This is a powerful statement. I admire you for it.
Hi Meghan, thank you so much for this. I just got off the phone with Steven who is out of province right now. I read him your comment and he asked me to thank you very much and say that he has no hard feelings and wishes you all the best.
I've forwarded your comment to Carmen and Lorna as well. I'm just going to put some thought into the issue of the new information you provided and how to handle it in either a correction or a future clarification. Happy to discuss that offline if you have a preference. I'd just like to echo Susin's comment that what you've done here is admirable. And greatly appreciated.
Thanks, Brad. Lorna was one of my favourite teachers at UVic, and one of the reasons Carmen was invited to judge our contest was because I was a fan of her work. I thought both of them handled the situation well, all things considered. One of the patterns I noticed early on in the UBCA kerfuffle was that the signatories always spoke to or emailed me with respect and kindness, while many of the anti-UBCA crowd tried to bully me into adopting their hardcore stance.
It's overdue :-/ thanks
Edit: I looked back over the old emails, and it was actually Carmen that Palmer pushed us to fire more, not Lorna. They're from six years ago and my memory was fuzzy.
Thanks for the clarification!
I think the fallout was intense for the whole community, though you have articulated clearly the heavy price paid by many of those who signed. We don't realize how important due process is until we see how things play out when it is eliminated. It is truly disheartening to see how effective those who demanded blacklisting have been, and how so many literary institutions--who were suddenly and stressfully thrust into the role of judge and jurors themselves--caved to their demands. A robust, healthy community would be able to tolerate strongly held differences of opinion and would have safeguards in place to protect diversity of thought. Thank you for this, Brad.
Rose, thanks for articulating this so well.
Thank you, Susin; I appreciated your comments as well. Best, Rachel (Rose)
And, naturally, the villains of the piece are the "be kind" crowd. Jackals and hyenas the lot of them.
Thank you Brad for keeping the score. We can’t allow for people who joyfully engaged in career destruction of so many to be “forgotten”.
Thank you Wodek. Yes, I've found the erasure of good people and important literature to be one of the hardest parts of this story to swallow. Although perhaps the hardest part to swallow is who and what replaced those who were erased. I'll have more on that soon.
Is this my country, our country?
Our University system , or just UBC?
I read this story out of curiosity, please note, I am not a writer by any stretch of the imagination. To say that im shocked, stunned,in disbelief is an understatement. How can this be allowed to happen.
This reminds me of an incident at McGill Not to long ago, Declan McCool was internal vice president if the McGill student union, he was falsely charged with sexual assault. And what happened afterwards was that this life was turned into a living hell.
Details are in the Montreal Gazette
Thank you all, for writing on this sordid chapter of Canadian Literature
And Brad
How is it that I, who has never attended university, or college, can see the absolute lack of morals, and academic corruption. Am I alone in this regard.
Where as my wife, much better educated than i, said and I Quote, you'd be surprised at what some people are willing do to to get tenure, fellowship.
Reminds me of this past Tuesday
Chancellors from MIT Harvard and Penn
Were asked a simple question about antisemitism, and they couldnt answer?
What is going on in Academia?
There's a difference between book smarts and intelligence. Academics, writers (especially those who focus on autobiographical writing), tech etc are often left hemisphere dominant (which is where verbal language is processed, while the right hemisphere processes nonverbal communication). Unfortunately for the left hemisphere dominant, it is the right hemisphere that is our brain's BS detector. Iain McGilchrist's work is illuminating, but if you don't want to wade through his enormous books, I am attempting to summarize it and answer questions like this on the Substack account I just launched. My second post, next week, is the first of a four part series called "The Dangers of Reading Too Much."
Megan
I may have to read in to that.
Thank you
Happy Friday
It's a subject dear to my heart. I had a serious right hemisphere brain injury when I was one. I can breeze through academic work and intelligence tests, abstract, visual tasks (e.g. I am sooooo good at Tetris) but am apparently incapable of instinctively picking up when someone is lying to my face. I only figure it out if they make a mistake and contradict themselves or claim something I know is physically or mathematically impossible or statistically very improbable. One of my good friends once described me as the "smartest and dumbest" person she knows. Sigh.
What was so hard to understand why people online kept calling Galloway a rapist when they didn’t know any details because he and his accuser signed NDAs. The public knew the details of what Ghomeshi & Weinstein & other sexual predators had done but not Galloway. This online mobbing went on for a year before the UBCA open letter was published and it helped to prompt the letter asking for due process at UBC whose staff had rushed to judgement and then they didn’t clearly and publicly state that Galloway had been cleared of sexual assault by their internal investigation under Justice Boyd. That was the situation before the open letter came out. The university admin wanted a scapegoat because they had mishandled or ignored earlier reports of assault on students.
Hi Brad. One of the signatories here. Must’ve missed your email. No personal or professional repercussions myself but I’m just some nobody who wrote a few silly trivia books. Also someone who is proud to call Carmen Aguirre, quite possibly the bravest person I’ve ever met, a friend.
Is there any evidence that any of the non-entities who attacked the signatories have resiled from their initial support of the Plaintiff, or have apologized to any of them once the nature and scope of the Plaintiff's lies, her acolytes' blindfolded shit-flinging and UBC's iniquities surfaced?
There have been some behind-the-scenes apologies, to my knowledge, and some 180 dergree turns from some who were initially fervent believers. Again, behind the scenes. One of the saddest things to my mind is how people's laudable beliefs (in, for instance, justice and equality for women) were used to scam and con them. And it all could have been prevented by a few phone calls early on -- to, for instance, the CBC. But fervour and probably panic trumped ('scuse the pun) the need for evidence and sound process.
Thanks for the note Margaret. It's not a new phenomenon is it - "behind the scenes" regrets and/or apologies? Complicity on whatever order admitted quietly and privately, carrying the whiff of shame, and occasional for some, not just a whiff but a gale, like Germans who did the Nazi's dirty work; Americans who cheered on Trump, among countless other times people have been sucked into the vortex thinking they were "doing right". Along come the apologies, but always after the damage is done.
Vian, be sure to read Meghan Bell's comment above.
Sidney, listening to both sides of an issues, as I have been known to do, is not "playing" both sides. I was trying to help create peace in the community and was very naive. I've made many donations, both public and private, and I don't remember why that one was public, but at the time, I believed Steven was guilty. I no longer do because I have more information.
The blog post you wrote about me contains multiple fabrications and is so nonsensical I've chosen to ignore it. Please leave me alone, and don't you dare steal photos of my daughter again to post to your deranged account.
My thesis was "short" because it was a poetry collection. It was supposed to be short. I produced a significant body of work during my time at UBC, much of which was published, but I hopped around genres a lot and as I had already sold my short story collection, I did not see the point in using it as my thesis.
I didn't choose Nancy and Keith. I choose Timothy Taylor, but had to switch because I delayed finishing my thesis for too long and abandoned the half-finished novel I was working on with Timothy, and Nancy and Keith volunteered to take me on for a poetry thesis since I already had about half a collection's worth of poems, many of which were published in literary journals.
I also never "coerced" anyone into submitting work about sexual assault to Room. In the example in your "blog", I invited a woman to submit a piece I liked. She said she wasn't ready, and I said I understood and never brought it up again. She later submitted on her own accord, and I published it. She was happy about it.
I did forward an anonymous allegation of multiple incidents of sexual harassment related to a venue at Growing Room to a reporter. Note what I didn't do: go public with the allegations, start a social media shaming campaign, etc. I forwarded it to a reporter to investigate. It ended up being meaningless, because the CBC already had the story and reported it first.
You don't know me. and should stop pretending you do. I only know you exist because you have been harassing me, and apparently many others.
Changes of heart are a sign of maturity. What I have learned from my brief interactions with you is that I will be more careful with my privacy in the future, including no longer posting pictures of my child online and making sure I tick the "anonymous" box before donating to any cause again.
You complain about being "attacked mercilessly" while actively harassing me, writing lies about me, and then following me here to continue your relentless fictions about the imaginary creature you have created in your mind. Get help.
I'll add -- I've been criticized for "seeing the good" in people too much, and one of the reasons I got involved, talking to both sides, was that I believed most people on both sides of the UBCA issue had good intentions. I still do. You can ask Brad, as I've defended Sierra's character to him quite recently. People make mistakes. Stop online stalking me and get a life.