Defusing a doctrine of hate and hostility toward so-called ‘wokeness’ and gender ideology

The conversation continues after an act of hate allegedly sent three people to hospital this week, stabbed during a gender studies class at the University of Waterloo.

Regional police have said they believe the attack, carried out by a lone knife-wielding assailant, was rooted in hatred and related to gender expression and gender identity.

“I’m starting to come to terms with the long-term impacts of what’s going to happen from this,” said Aimee Morrison, an associate professor of English at UW.

Speaking on The Mike Farwell Show, Morrison said feelings of uncertainty and worry during Wednesday’s attack quickly gave way to a suspicion it was “motivated by something that exceeded the people in the room.”

With that since confirmed through eye-witness reports and by police, Morrison said we next need to grapple with the fact there is now a seemingly widespread “ideology of hatred” toward so-called ‘wokeness’ and gender expression.

“So the danger is not immediate, but it is diffuse and we have to come to terms with what it means to continue to teach in a world where people are going to act on this ideology in violent ways that imperil us where we work and where we learn,” she said.

Morrison, who celebrates 19 years of employment at the university this weekend, continued to say never in those nearly two decades has she entered a room already planning her potential escape.

“And I don’t think [that] should be a privilege, I think it should be a right,” she said. “I think we should all be able to go to our schools and our workplaces without having to always–on some level in our souls–be on guard for someone who hates us enough to come into our workplaces, our schools, [or] our homes to kill us based on some uncontrollable factor about what body we walk around in or what types of books we want to read, or what types of students we teach.”

“I think it’s really important that we try to remember that’s not a normal way to go through the world and we need to work toward getting back to a place where we can feel that kind of safety and not imagine, every day when we go to work, that we’re in a potential war zone.”

Meantime, on top of questions and concerns surrounding the seeming failure of a university warning system, Morrison said the school will also need to take a look inward at its own campus culture.

“We will have to ask how it comes to be that a graduate of our own university, who just graduated in convocation ceremonies not two weeks ago, was so full of some kind of hate about something happening on his own campus and so full of misunderstanding of that, that he was moved to bring weapons and try to harm people,” Morrison said.

“It hurts that a University of Waterloo student has now come to a classroom to [allegedly] try to kill other University of Waterloo students. How do we have such a divide on campus, even among our own community, is something I think is going to take a lot of time and thought to work through.”