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The Current Transcript for May 22, 2019

Host: Anna Maria Tremonti

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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SOUNDCLIP

It doesn't need a nip and tuck. It needs complete reconstructive surgery. Unless all of these amendments are accepted the government of Alberta will vigorously oppose bill C-69.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: It is a fight over the words on a page. An Environmental Assessment Act that pits the federal Trudeau Liberals against Alberta's Jason Kenney and the oil industry for being too restrictive and against environmental and indigenous groups for being too lax. It is also a controversy that embodies anxieties, economic and environmental, from those who say it would make pipeline construction impossible to those who believe it would do little to protect land and wildlife. In a moment our Wednesday National Affairs panel weighs in on the implications of those words, this fight and these competing visions of a Canadian future. And then, the cost of free speech.

SOUNDCLIP

So to those who say there is no need for a free speech club and to those who say that nobody cares about free speech on campus, look around. It's a full house.

[Cheers and applause]

AMT: The campus push for a free speech club is common at Canadian universities but those tracking a rise in hate speech worry that the pursuit of free speech and academic freedom on campus is sometimes being co-opted by extremists whose push for freedom is really a way to advocate for oppression. We'll hear the concerns in half an hour. Also today,

SOUNDCLIP

[Boys singing]

AMT: Well that could be a scratchy recording of boys at any summer camp but the boys singing at that camp were unsuspecting guinea pigs in an experiment that would try to get them to hate each other. It would make Muzafer Sherif's career. He would be recognized as one of the world's foremost social psychologists, but a closer look at that work reveals manipulation and hidden information. In an hour Gina Perry takes us through the story of the Lost Boys. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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Pipelines are irrelevant in the debate over Bill C-69, reporter argues

Guests: Mia Rabson, JP Tasker , Graham Thomson

AMT: It is not often that the hottest political debates in Ottawa take place in the so-called Chamber of sober second thought. But that is exactly the case as to controversial bills make their way through the Senate. Last week a Senate committee approved 187 amendments to the Liberal governments environmental assessment law, Bill C-69. The government says that if passed the law would help avoid court battles over energy projects by strengthening the review process. But conservatives including Alberta Premier Jason Kenney argue it would jeopardize future pipeline projects. Last week Mr. Kenney vowed to fight Bill C 69 unless it includes the amendments. He also took aim at another bill before the Senate, C-48, which would ban oil tanker traffic along British Columbia's north coast.

SOUNDCLIP

A bill that would attack Alberta's vital economic interests, would undermine our constitutional jurisdiction, would jeopardize jobs and would undermine national unity.

AMT: The Senate will vote on both bills in the coming weeks before parliament breaks for the summer. Aside from the politicians environmentalists, indigenous groups, oil and gas executives are all watching to see what happens. Our rotating national affairs panel is wonderfully obsessive on this one. So here we go. Mia Rabson is the energy and environment reporter for The Canadian Press. JP Tasker is a senior writer in CBC Parliamentary Bureau. They are in our Ottawa studio. Graham Thomson is a former political columnist for The Edmonton Journal. He now contributes to CBC iPolitics and Alberta Views. Graham is in Edmonton. Hello everyone.

MIA RABSON: Good morning.

JP TASKER: Morning Good.

GRAHAM THOMSON: Hello.

AMT: You are relentless and obsessive aren't you? Okay. Mia, Miss. Obsessive on environment. What exactly does Bill C-69 say?

MIA RABSON: That the legislation is designed to try and subvert the court challenges that kept coming up. Every time there were pipelines and other projects that were proposed the government would review them. The environment groups mostly what challenged them in court. Indigenous communities courts overturned the approvals and we sort of now have no pipelines. And so the Liberal government when they were running in 2015 campaigned on a promise to overhaul how the environmental review process works. This is change, making changes to what the conservatives brought in in 2012 which is known as the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. And what this does is replaces this that with something called the Impact Assessment Act in creating a new impact assessment agency to sort of funnel all major reviews through this one agency, either done by the agency or a panel that's appointed by them for the most part. And it would do sort of review almost all major inter provincial projects such as pipelines, electricity transmission lines, wind farms, even highways would have to go through this process. But environmental groups generally like this bill because they think it brought back what they said was a missing balance in the other legislation that many provinces and the energy industry believe that this is both sort of stepping into provincial jurisdiction over their own natural resources, and going so far that you'll never see another pipeline built in Canada.

AMT: Okay. And JP Tasker what about Bill C-48 the oil tanker Bill? What's at stake there.?

JP TASKER: Yeah this is a really controversial piece of legislation in particular in Albertans has got to win because essentially it bans all oil tankers from docking in ports on the northern B.C. coast. So any vessel that is carrying crude oil either coming or going from that area which stretches from the tip of Vancouver Island to the Alaska border can't dock there. So it cuts off any sort of project like Enbridge is Northern Gateway that would run from our border to Kitimat on the coast to send oil to Asia. That's out of the question an Indigenous led pipeline called eagle spirit that's being proposed right now by a number of First Nations peoples in northern B.C. would also be out of the question. So it really constrains Alberta oil to that narrow strip of land really along the lower mainland, a really controversial piece of land of course because we know the Trans Mountain expansion projects having a lot of difficulty. So little oil patcher or oil patch boosters are worried that by implementing this sort of ban in northern B.C. they're really you know going to keep that product landlocked and not going to have very many options to actually get the product to market to fetch prices close to the world going rate, because right now we're selling at such a discount to refineries in the Midwest for the most part that it's really having an impact on energy companies but also of course government coffers.

AMT: And JP. The other argument is that there's no restriction on tanker traffic in the St. Lawrence right?

JP TASKER: Or Placentia Bay in Newfoundland Labrador. Now we see a lot of Atlantic Canadian centres saying okay like why are we protecting Newfoundland and the coast of Atlantic Canada. And the government's saying well it's so pristine and so naturally beautiful in British Columbia. It's unique. You know it's untouched and a lot of politicians are saying well my part of the country is pretty pristine and untouched and naturally beautiful. Why don't we have a similar tanker band there, we've been able to manage marine life and the environment by also moving crude oil through those waters. And the government doesn't really have a great answer for that one.

AMT: Graham Thomson how have these bills been received in Alberta?

GRAHAM THOMSON: Not very well to put it mildly. And it's not just Jason Kenney who's against them. You go back to Rachel Notley the NDP premier. Last year - the end of last year and earlier this year was making submissions to the Senate herself fighting again.[Cutting] a bill C-48 the tanker ban should be scrapped. That bill should be scrapped completely and a big overhaul on Bill C-69 and Notley making these arguments. And so was Jason Kenney. Of course he won the election in April in Alberta. He sounds a lot like Notley vice versa. They were pushing against it because they see these bills as damaging Alberta’s economy so even though the bill C-69 is supposed to try and balance the economy and the environment not pit the two against each other. The bill I think really does just that and this is a problem for both new Democrats as well as conservatives.

AMT: JP what happened in the Senate last week with both of those bills?

JP TASKER: Yeah well we'll see 69 the Senate passed well over 100 amendments as you mentioned off the top which is very unprecedented to say the least. The last time we got even close to that number I think was with the transport omnibus bill and that was like 30 or so amendments. So this is really the new independent Senate and working on the Prime Minister's appointments while they often vote with the government at the end of the day. They don't hold any loyalty to the Liberal Party. They aren't whip. They don't have to vote a certain way. They don't fall in line. They don't really play by the rules, you know the original rules of the Senate, so they have no qualms about moving amendments and shredding government bills like this committee. So that's exactly what happened with Bill C-69 because there's all these competing amendments changing a lot of important provisions of the bill and then they also voted to not proceed with bills he 48 at the Transport Committee which essentially means it's in limbo. It goes back to the wider Senate for more debate and more votes so it could still be salvaged. But as it is right now it's really on death's door.

AMT: And so will C-69- is there a good chance it won't pass then before the next legislature?

JP TASKER: Well we only have a few sitting weeks left and that's the real problem and I think it will pass frankly in the end it's just in what form it takes is the real question, because as I said the independents they usually vote along government lines in the end, but they're really not shy about moving a whole host of amendments first but when it does come down to it at that third reading stage and legislative process they usually fall in line with the prime minister.

AMT: Mia, this really triggered a lot of lobbying?

MIA RABSON: It really did. I've spoken to some senators who felt who'd been in the upper chamber for quite a while. They said they've never been lobbied as hard on any other piece of legislation as this one. I think in January we were sort of counting about 55000 emails and letters had been sent to senators individually on this. There were some lobby groups that were created specifically just to lobby on this bill and on C-48.

AMT: such as?

MIA RABSON: I can't remember their names but they were sort of consortiums of energy groups energy companies and as well, I mean the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, the Pipeline Association, they've all been in Ottawa lobbying very very heavily on these on these pieces of legislation. And the senators were listening. I think it wasn't just I mean the Conservatives have been the most vocal against this bill but it was not just conservative senators introducing amendments. In fact I spoke to some environment groups who were more concerned about the ISG the independent senators amendments because the ISG has the majority in the Senate. Now they have the most votes and so they felt that those amendments were likely to pass if that the independent senators were the ones introducing them. They even managed to convince this committee to go across the country and to hold hearings in every province because that's what the energy industry in particular was demanding. The Conservatives have actually been accused of just sort of holding the pen for the energy industry on this, that they are just speaking exactly what the energy industry wants. Most of the amendments that conservatives introduced specifically where some of them were actually word for word what the energy industry had asked for. And so people are accusing the Conservatives of going too far into the energy industry and not thinking too much about the environment, and of course the accusation against the Liberals is that they aren't listening enough to the industry.

AMT: And JP there was a senator, an independent senator, who actually said we're not stenographers. What was that about?

JP TASKER: Yes that was Senator Yuen Pau Woo who's the leader of the independent senators group and he kind of took issue with the conservative amendments that had been proposed to Bill-69 because they were essentially word for word lifted from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers suggested amendments list. You know they didn't really make any tweaks. Whereas the ISG the independent senators group at least tried to make some tweaks, you know, try to balance the suggested amendments from the oil patch with all sorts on the environmental concerns. A big amendment of theirs was taking away some of the environment ministers power to start and stop the timelines on an assessment. They want to lead that authority with the impact assessment agency to try depoliticize the whole process for that Catherine McKenna or any future environment minister alone can't stymie a project just because they don't like it. They actually have to rely on the agency. So that was kind of an amendment that was accepted by both the Conservatives and the ISG, that was one that had not been suggested by the industry for example.

MIA RABSON: It is also one that I've been told might actually be accepted by the government right. Of all of the ones that the government might say yes to that's one of the few that has been hinted that they might be okay with.

JP TASKER: Yes.

AMT: So the conundrum is that on one side there's a push now that this bill that's going to be too restrictive and then the other side it's watered down.

MIA RABSON: This is not surprising given that in some ways they're very competing interests. I mean the environment groups would like to see none and no pipelines produced and built anymore. And of course the energy industry would just like to see them all built. And so you have competing interests so it's not surprising that you can't please either of them with this. It was interesting that the environment groups felt that there was a balance originally because that might suggest maybe there wasn't a balance if you're looking at it through that particular lens. I think it's clear that this bill was troubled. I mean even before it made it into the Senate this bill went through I want to say 170amendments in the House of Commons. So this bill came after two years of consultation, already went through heavy amendments in the House of Commons and are now going through have the amendments a second time. So it is clear this is not an easy issue for any government to tackle. And because of the competing interests you're never going to please everybody.

AMT: Graham Bill C-69 as we've heard is meant to replace that Harper era legislation which shun Jason Kenney was part of the Harper government at the time they fast tracked environmental assessment, and that's why they always ended up in court. So how does Mr. Kenney see getting around that?

GRAHAM THOMSON: Yes. That's the things. A few think he's been caught out on in terms of him being a member of a government federally that he's now campaigning against eventually. But his point is this bill has gone way too far. That yes, the idea was of course to raise the bar so that you don't get caught up in legal proceedings for years. If you can pass through Bill C-69 then you're guaranteed to not not be constantly held up. He has gone too far. Of course there's no real balance here and in fact I would say the balances aimed more, in the bill that is, aimed more at environmental concerns than the economic positives of projects. It's basically looking. There is no specific mention I think in the Bill of job creation and things like that investment. It's all about the environmental obligations on climate change and things like that, which to me is actually a good thing. You got to deal with the environment but for Kenney he's using this. There are major problems with this bill. People in Alberta, not just conservative, as I mentioned the NDP had problems with it but Kenney is also using this politically of course. This is him on another campaign and right now even though he won the provincial election in Alberta he's on a campaign now to try and defeat Justin Trudeau. And part of his political ammunition during the provincial election must be Notley-Trudeau alliance. He would go after the Notley Trudeau Alliance and that was killing jobs in Alberta. Now he's using that to try and help the Conservatives federally. So I think that in times he is overstepped the problems with the Bill and he's saying this is basically the Trudeau Liberals trying to shut down the oil sands basically and destroy Alberta's economy. It's a simplistic argument but it was very effective here in Alberta in getting votes to go to the UCP, Kenney's party in Alberta. So he is using this as a political cudgel against the federal government. Yes there are problems with it. Absolutely, Rachel Notley, the NDP Premier had a problem with it, but Kenney is also using this politically to go after Justin Trudeau.

MIA RABSON: And the interesting thing in that is that when Kenney came to the Senate committee a couple of weeks ago he actually said to the committee 'I want the amendments that Rachel Notley told you she wanted'. He didn't suggest any of his own. He actually was saying the amendments that I want are from the NDP and so he had sort of been going after her for being aligned with Trudeau, except on this bill he wanted her amendment. So it's kind of an interesting irony there.

AMT: And Mia was so what are the environmental groups saying? What would they like to see and what are their real concerns?

MIA RABSON: They wanted this bill passed as it was. They were quite happy with it. I mean it wasn't perfect for them but they felt that this brought back balance and they are very very concerned about the amendments that have been proposed, which obviously haven't been accepted yet. But they would be okay with the ministerial discretion one that was mentioned earlier. What they won't be okay with is giving the sort of power back to the regulators. One of the things that Bill did was separate the regulator, the National Energy Board for example, the nuclear safety commission. Those are the ones who regulate the projects once they've actually been built. And this bill was separating out their ability to approve the projects in the first place creating the impact assessment agency to do the assessment approved to build new projects, and then the regulator would take over once they were built. The amendments are giving some of that power back to the regulators to be involved on the panels that are in the assessment. And one of the biggest knocks and one of the reasons this bill was introduced in the first place is concerned that they had lost sort of credibility on that front, that they were too connected to the industries that they were regulated. The Trans Mountain pipeline in particular it actually had to start over from the beginning because there were scant connections to the energy industry on the panel. They had to sort of scrap the panel and start over. And so there's all these concerns that the regulators are too connected to industry so the environment groups do not want the regulators to be given any of those powers.

JP TASKER: Well there's also real frustration with the fact that the government has said when it released its proposed projects list, which is a list of things that will be reviewed by the federal government as part of this assessment, that a lot of oil sands projects will not actually be on the projects list. So a lot of environmentalists are concerned that this will allow Alberta to drill drill drill you know. And what also cap is concerned the Association of Petroleum Producers because they don't even like the possibility of Ottawa being able to review what's called in situ oil sand projects. They are cleaner. They use steam to extract the oil and gas from the ground as opposed to open pit mining. The Federal Government has said they will exempt in situ projects from a federal review. But Jason Kenney has to maintain that cap on emissions from the oil sands, something that was put in place by Rachel Notley. He has to keep at a100 megatons cap in place or else those in situ projects will now be in Ottawa's purview whereas at this point they've only been in the hands of the Alberta Energy Regulator, which the cap feels has more expertise to evaluate these projects in that you know they've just been frankly friendlier to these projects, and have been more likely to approve them and having Ottawa involved in more oversight of the oil sands is just not something that boosters want.

MIA RABSON: That's where the constitutional concerns come in as well because constitutionally provinces have control over natural resources and Jason Kenney is saying this is our purview. This is not Ottawa's purview. Oil sands are 100 percent within the Alberta borders. It's not an intra provincial project so hands off.

GRAHAM THOMSON: The problem here is that this bill supposed to have a balance between the environment and the economy. And it hasn't and to me it has pitted the environment against the economy. And you're right. Kenney can point to natural resources as being the provincial purview but the environment is a shared responsibility. The problem of this bill is put the environment against the economy and that's making things even worse when it comes to actually getting projects built.

AMT: In a lot of ways this is not a fight about a bill. This is about a view of Canada. This is really like almost epic. Is it not?

JP TASKER: Yes it comes at literally the worst possible time right for the energy sector. And I think the legislation has just become a stand in for all the anxieties in the oil patch. You know when they're facing constrained pipeline capacity, cratering oil prices foreign investment is essentially left the patch en masse. You know it's not necessarily about Bill C-69. It's about the future of the energy economy.

MIA RABSON: There are many who actually think that trans mountain if it ever goes forward would actually be the last pipeline likely built in Canada. Not just because it's hard to build them but because going forward they actually see that that energy use and oil use in particular is going to start declining and the need for them in the economic case for them will actually go down. So the interesting thing is we're talking about this bill a lot about pipelines and what it would do to pipelines. But some think that they will never actually review a pipeline because there won't actually be any more pipeline proposals. It's more the electricity grid and highways and tidal power and nuclear power and solar power and things like that it'll end up being used for except pipelines are dominating the discussion as they have for on this particular friendly environment just discussions competitive discussions and national unity discussions.

AMT: Well which makes me think we should look at the fine print on the other stuff as well then. Okay. We have to leave it there. Thank you all three of you.

GUESTS: Thank you.

AMT: That is Mia Robson she is the energy and environment reporter for The Canadian Press. JP Tasker is a reporter and CBC parliamentary bureau there both in Ottawa. Graham Thomson joined us from Edmonton. He's a former political columnist for The Edmonton Journal. He now contributes to CBC iPolitics and Alberta Views. Let us know what you think of what they said about this fight as it continues. Tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. Find us on Facebook go to our website cbc.ca/thevurrent and click on the contact link.

AMT: Stay with us the news is next and then when we come back we're talking about testing the limits of academic freedom. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current.

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Case of 'white supremacist' professor raises debate about free speech vs. hate speech on campus

Guests: Mark Mercer, Kerry Jang, Bernie Farber

AMT: Hello I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

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AMT: Still to come the story of the Lost Boys and we're not talking about the movie from the 80s with Kiefer Sutherland but a group of boys who took part in a social experiment in the 1950s at a summer camp. What happened supposedly shed light on the psychology of conflict and resolution. But author Gina Perry has been revisiting the so-called Robbers Cave experiment and what she's found could change the story. We'll talk about that, first, free speech or hate speech?

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AMT: Ricardo Duchesne teaches sociology at the University of New Brunswick in St. John. While he is not teaching university students he has written blog posts with headlines such as 'only whites can teach Western civilization'. He has written essays that say the West is being occupied by quote "hordes of Muslims and Africans" end quote. Only out of the coming chaos and violence he writes While Strong White Men Rise to Resurrect the West. Professor Duchesne has also appeared on a number of far right podcasts and YouTube channels including one hosted by the far right political commentator Faith Goldy who was banned by Facebook last month for engaging in what Facebook deemed quote "organized hate". For his critics, Professor Duchesne writings and talks veer past academic freedom into hate speech. After an article by The Huffington Post this weekend called him a white supremacist. UNB ays it is investigating. Professor Duchesne says the accusations against him are quote "lies, mis quotations and defamatory claims" end quote. We're going to hear from one of his critics in a moment but first my next guest says challenging academic freedom is a slippery slope. Mark Mercer is a philosophy professor at St. Mary's University in Halifax. He's the president of the Society for academic freedom and scholarship. And Mark Mercer is in our Halifax studio. Hello.

MARK MERCER: Hello.

AMT: Why do you think it's important that Professor Duchesne be able to say the things he says?

MARK MERCER: Well it's important for the sake of the ethos and the culture of the university and university culture is one where open and free inquiry and discussion should be valued so that people are able to determine their beliefs and their values according to evidence and argument and not according to a social or psychological pressures.

AMT: And are you defending what he's saying are you defending his right to say it?

MARK MERCER: I'm defending his right to say although I'm not sure about the term right, the appropriateness of allowing people to say what they want to inquire what they want as part of the university's mission.

AMT: And what's wrong with a word right?

MARK MERCER: Well I'm a philosopher I don't think there are such things as rights. I know what legal rights are but can go with that word that's fine. I'm defending his right.

AMT: And what do you see as the danger in prohibiting academics from saying things that many would construe as racist or hate speech?

MARK MERCER: Well the problem is one of encouraging doctrinal conformity where people are encouraged to believe that this or that or value this or that on grounds of fitting in, not wanting to be excluded. Whereas a university culture is a culture of open free inquiry and we're disputation. We engage in disputation. The goal is to try to understand how things are in themselves. And we enjoy the process of inquiry we try to understand things for the sake of understanding them. But as soon as there are limits on the content, restrictions on the content of our ideas beliefs or values then that potentially imposes conformity, prevents people from inquiring openly and freely. That's the problem from within the university but also universities perform a social function when they are places of a free and open inquiry and disputation.

AMT: So can I just clarify though. Are you talking about academic freedom to teach and research related to one's tenured job? Because isn't- that's part of the issue to this is does not necessarily what this professor is teaching this is just what he does elsewhere.

MARK MERCER: Well I hope that. Typically the concept of academic freedom does cover what's called Extra Mural speech that is talking about anything in matters of political or social importance for sure but anything else as well. I think it's important that all members of the university community, professors and students included, administrators as well I'd say, have that freedom.

AMT: Even if it's not related to one's own area of study?

MARK MERCER: That's right. Even if it's not related once on area study.

AMT: Well so help me understand that, because then if I see something I can't do that because I'm not an academic if you say you can't because you are?

MARK MERCER: Well I would hope that you would have something like academic freedom as well. I've written in favour of a journalistic analogue of academic freedom. I think your listeners would trust you much better if they knew that you were free to say what you said and you didn't say certain things because you didn't believe them rather than that you were forced not to say them.

AMT: Okay. Now some students at the University of New Brunswick complained about Professor machines association with Faith Goldy and speaking on her platform. What would you say to those concerns?

MARK MERCER: Well let them criticize away, we're a place of disputation and open a free discussion. So criticize the Professor as you will. It's a topic of discussion.

AMT: So is academic freedom absolute?

MARK MERCER: Well in the sense that there should be no restrictions on the content of one's ideas beliefs or values or the expressions of them, yes.

AMT: Do you believe in the need for laws on hate speech and hate crimes?

MARK MERCER: Well that's a different matter. I don't think that the concept of hate should be in the law at all. So I oppose that. But just in the context of universities, if someone believes that someone has engaged in hate speech, that's not the business at the university. That's the business of the person who has that view take it to the police.

AMT: Where have you seen the issue of academic freedom and controversial speech come up?

MARK MERCER: Oh, it comes up it comes up all the time. There are many cases. What do you have in mind? Something like of the Rebecca Tuval case for instance where she argued that if you accept that transgenderism, that we openly allow transgenderism then also on parity of reasoning trans-racialism people who identify with a race different from that which they're socially assigned, or whatever. And that came in for a not just sustained criticism but people were trying to have her removed from her position. I mean this is the sort of thing that worries me tremendously. We should be free, all of us, to explore ideas as we will.

AMT: And what do you say to those people who say that sometimes exploring ideas is sort of a an effort to-- you're not only exploring ideas you're trying to manipulate you trying to you're trying to use the idea of free expression. Not to give people who don't have a voice a voice, but in fact to take away those voices.

MARK MERCER: Well if anyone's voice is being taken away then let's open venues for these people to speak. I'm all in favour of creating new areas, new venues for expression. I don't think that limiting anyone's expression is a way of opening venues for expression or allowing other people to speak. It's limiting someone's expression. It's putting ideas beyond the pale.

AMT: And do you worry at all that sometimes ideas turn into actions that have that have consequences'

MARK MERCER: Well I worry about this all the time and certainly the restriction of ideas is going to have consequences.

AMT: Okay. Mark Mercer thanks for your time.

MARK MERCER: You're welcome.

AMT: Mark Mercer is a philosophy professor at St. Mary's University. He's president of the Society for academic freedom and scholarship. He's in our Halifax studio. We did request an interview with Ricardo Duchesne. He did get back to us last night outlining conditions for an interview, conditions we are not prepared to meet. My next guest first came to know Ricardo Duchesne's work in 2015. Kerry Jang is a professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia. And as you hear there he's on the line from Vancouver. Hello.

KERRY JANG: Good morning.

AMT: I want to hear your thoughts about what my last guests had to say but first tell me a little bit about your personal interactions with Ricardo Duchesne.

KERRY JANG: What was very interesting. He actually contacted me. I was on Vancouver city council at the time and he decided to go after a motion myself in another Chinese city Councillor Raymond Lui put together looking at reconciliation amongst the Chinese community. There was a number of racist things that happened in Vancouver way back in the day. For example having title on people's houses say 'no Asians shall ever buy this house'. Those types of things. So we're looking at that history. And he criticized us and sent me an email and we went to his Web site and found all these misstatements about me. I really find it ironic. He's complaining about he's been misquoted and misrepresented. He did exactly that to me. And that's what got me going. It wasn't so much the fact that I was Chinese or whatever but he was actually just a very poor scholar. He didn't bother to fact check or anything. In fact the things he said about me were just plain wrong. And he never bothered to correct them.

AMT: You did lodge a complaint with UNB and you wrote that his writings were, and I'm quoting here, "troublesome in that they go beyond fair comment and abuse the privilege of academic freedom by their pejorative nature that is based on poor scholarship" end quote. How did the school respond?

KERRY JANG: They didn't respond. That was exactly it. And you know I wrote the president I wrote twice and they never bothered to respond to me. And that was unfortunate because I would have thought that university administration would do these sorts of matters I normally do that at UBC. You know they look after these things and at least respond to the people who are saying things but absolutely nothing from Eddie Campbell. Zero.

AMT: Apparently they did respond if not directly to you. There was a statement released and I'm quoting here, "academic freedom is a foundational principle of university life. Often such academic debate expresses views that may be perceived as controversial and unpopular". What do you think of that'

KERRY JANG: Well that's fine. That's actually fine. I'm all for academic freedom as an academic. That's great but academic freedom must be bolstered by good scholarship. So academic freedom allows you to study and say what you need to say. However it has to be backed up by good scholarship so that means accuracy of facts. And that was my main complaint. There was no accuracy no fact checking no nothing. It has to be backed up by good methods. It has to be backed up for example by presenting alternative theories. So for example a lot of these folks talking about the Muslims that plotted to burn down the Notre Dame Cathedral. Why not let's talk about some of the alternative theories that maybe was faulty wiring. And you know what about safe ways to study things. I mean you have to provide you know backup and good scholarship in order to really foster good learning, good study and good research.

AMT: So how do you respond to my last guest's view of academic freedom?

KERRY JANG: Well it was kind of interesting. You know my thought - and I don't mean to be mean but you've got a bunch of eggheads sitting here talking to you this morning. And you know I've had 10 years as a Vancouver city councillor and why I went into politics is because as an academic first and foremost I want to see how our thoughts and ideas actually affect people on the street. And certainly what I did see you know certainly from Ricardo Duchesne writing is that people started to attack me. And I've experienced hate and I've experienced this and I had to explain to people, well, what he said about me just isn't true. He was saying that I was going after head tax money and all this kind of stuff that's Chinese paid to come to Canada, but my family never paid. So how the heck would I go after something that we never even paid for. So you know these are the types of things that bother me. So you know it's a very academic discussion on the one hand but on the other hand there are consequences. Until you've actually felt those consequences, then it's not a good thing. I remember way back in the 80s when I was going to a local community college here and there was some white supremacist settling Gara college by the bus stop handing out leaflets. And that was the first time as a young student at universities or college student I got this [unintelligible] I looked at it and I said, wow, I'm really hurt and I could really go fight this guy. Like I never felt that way before that I really want to go and fight. And that's because what did I do to you? Because my skin's yellow? But my family came here in the 1890s they helped build this country and all this kind of stuff. And you're picking on me because my skin happens to be yellow. Crazy.

AMT: So yes there was a group that invited Professor Josh Shane to UBC, the students for freedom of expression?

KERRY JANG: Yes that's right. I was actually out of the country when he came.

AMT: And what what do you think of- the founders of that group said that they're neutral defenders of free speech. They have legitimate concerns about political correctness in the classroom. They're not alone in raising those issues.

KERRY JANG: Oh absolutely not. And you know it up to them who they wish to bring but what I say to them. I said okay now that you've brought Ricardo Duchesne, let's go to good scholarship [unintelligible]. This is what the university is for. Why don't you invite somebody who has a different perspective? Right. And you know to provide different perspectives is what makes a university strong and a safe place. When you only provide one perspective- I read the UBC article about Duchesne when he came to UBC. I mean I think he acted very inappropriately for a faculty member. He showed up wearing a 'let's make America great again' hat. He brought somebody to film him and he was walking around campus looking for people to fight with. He's actually saying 'come on debate me now, debate me now on immigration on race' and all this looking for a battle. You know when I go to visit other universities and give talks, I'm collegial. I'm academic. I try to be a little classy here and really highlight this is what the university British Columbia's about. It's about you know talking accurately. It's about good scholarship.

AMT: But you know somebody would say that means you're politically correct. How do you respond to that?

KERRY JANG: I'm just being considerate.

[Cross talking]

AMT: But you're talking about academic work vs. spewing opinion.

KERRY JANG: Well you know you can spew an opinion but you have to back it up with facts. That's all I'm saying. I mean layout your evidence for us. Layout your methodology. When we submit papers to academic journals and whatnot, there's an editorial process it goes to peer review. And what we're seeing with a lot of Duchesne work that this was highlighted by his own colleagues at the University New Brunswick, that he's not publishing it in legitimate journals in peer reviewed ones. Like me I only publish in peer reviewed journals. And it goes through the whole review process where other people read it and pick apart your facts and look at your methodology to make sure everything is squared before it goes out. I've written controversial things in my field in the past. But you know it's because there is a body of evidence to support my opinion or my interpretation of the results that makes it fine. And at the same time people are able to take what I did and do research to say well no Kerry Jang was wrong or he misinterpreted this. And that's fine. That's part of the discourse but at least what I did was out there. What we're seeing with the shame it's just nothing but his anger or whatever it is I don't know.

AMT: Well we have to leave it there. Thank you for your opinions.

KERRY JANG: Mine are backed in fact because my family did not pay the head taxes.

AMT: Okay.We heard you. Thank you. Kerry Jiang professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the Faculty of Medicine at the University NBC. He is in Vancouver. Well the concerns about Professor Ricardo Duchesne raises questions about free speech and hate speech and where the line is. Bernie Farber monitors hate groups across the country. He's the chair of the Canadian Anti Hate Network. He's a human rights and social justice consultant and he's in our Toronto studio. Hi.

BERNIE FARBER: Hi.

AMT: How clear is the line between free speech and hate speech for you?

BERNIE FARBER: Well for me actually it is pretty clear. I think that there is a significant difference between hate speech and free speech and our laws here in Canada have created that distinction as far back as- and the laws first came into being in the early 1970s, and of course the famous cases of John Ross Taylor and James Keegstra really I think cemented for people and under landing of what hate speech is. And it is not just a difference of opinion and it's not just people saying things that you don't like. It is the most vile forms of hatred that tend to put people down, but not only down, that tend to discriminate against people for various different reasons. And white supremacists, white nationalists, bigots, Islamophobic anti semite engaged for the most part in hate speech. And from everything I've seen about Mr. Shane it seems to me quite clear that he is involved in and regurgitates white nationalist propaganda over and over again.

AMT: You heard our first guests say that that's academic freedom you're putting ideas out there. How do you respond to that?

BERNIE FARBER: You know I understand the need for academic freedom but at the same time I think in Canada we have to find this balance, as by the way this balance is found in countries right around the world where democratic countries right around the world. And they have found this balance between free speech and hate speech. And even university professors, I think I believe, have to understand that their university campus is made up of all kinds of people; black and white and Jews and non Jews. And each one of them has a right to feel a level of comfort and safety on that university campus. And when you have a person like Duchesne engaging in some of the rhetoric that he has engaged in, I mean he has said things such as /only out of the coming chaos and violence will strong white men rise to resurrect the West/. This is a white nationalist claptrap that that's all it is. And if you're a black student how do you feel about that? Would you feel a level of comfort in his class? Would you feel a level of comfort on campus? I certainly wouldn't. Just knowing that he gave a three part interview to the Occidental Observer - this is a magazine an online magazine that the ADL the most prominent voice in anti-Semitism and understanding anti-Semitism said this is an anti-Semitic publication. And he gives a three part interview to it. If I was a Jewish student at UNB I'd feel very uncomfortable. And so I think that academic freedom comes academic responsibility. And clearly from what I can see here NB has not engaged in any form of academic responsibility.

AMT: And so what are you seeing on university campuses when it comes to free speech veering toward hate speech even more broadly?

BERNIE FARBER: Well what's happening is that the university campus has become the recruitment place of choice for white supremacy. You see groups like the Identititarians. You see groups like [unintelligible]. You see groups like Soldiers of Oden and other, and Proud Boys trying very hard to renew the blood of white supremacy and how are they going to do that. Well in the old days you know during the days of the Heritage Front and others they tried to go to the streets. That wasn't helping them get old you know skinheads. They weren't smart young students who can reinforce and reenergize the movement and that's on university campuses. So when you have people like your friends and others engaging in their work for them- and we're not looking at getting them engaged in hate groups. Hate groups are not the thing anymore. Everything is online. Radicalization is done online.

AMT: It's more individual and you're seeing.

BERNIE FARBER: Much more individual.

AMT: Let me ask you. Are there examples of hate speech coming? Is it mostly from the far right? Do you also see this on the left of the spectrum?

BERNIE FARBER: I think that you see hate speech basically on both ends of the extremes of the spectrum. Yes you see it on the extreme left and yes you see it on the extreme right. However what we have seen here in North America which should really impact us is it's coming mostly from the extreme right. And not only is it coming mostly from an extreme right, the violence attached to the words is coming from the extreme right. And so the attack in St. Foy Quebec at the mosque that murdered six Muslims Canadians at prayer came from the extreme right. The truck ramming it Yong and Finch, allegedly by this incel Alex Menasian, came from the extreme right. Look at New Zealand at Christchurch. That was the extreme right. The synagogue murders in Pittsburgh. The extreme right. We have to start paying attention. This is a very dark time and people like Duchesne, they actually feed this they feed the far right and they feed these people who really want to cause harm.

AMT: in 2002 Concordia University temporarily banned our public discourse on campus about the Israeli Palestinian conflict after students rioted over a planned speech by Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu. The university even got a court injunction to stop a follow up debate. How does that play into?

BERNIE FARBER: Well you know when I take a look back at that and I was with Canadian Jewish Congress at the time I felt a sense of comfort that there was an injunction at that time. But when I think back to that intellectually they should have found a way to allow that to continue. We're talking about political speech here, and people are allowed to have differences of opinion on political speech and it can come from the left or the right. And as my father used to say the extreme middle.

AMT: Okay so but in the short time we have, that's the argument, that some of this of what you call hate speech they argue as their political speech. Spell out the difference.

BERNIE FARBER: The difference is that you're attacking individuals because of their race, creed, colour, nationality or sexual orientation. You're both belittling them. You're discriminating against them and you're making them feel inferior in the long run in hateful disgusting ways. And as far as I'm concerned Mr. Duchesne should have been reported to police in New Brunswick and there should be a police investigation because he has engaged in some of the most vitriolic hate speech that I've seen in a very long time.

AMT: We have to leave it there. Bernie Farber thanks for your time.

BERNIE FARBER: Thank you.

AMT: Bernie Farber is the chair of the Canadian anti hate network. He joined me in our Toronto studio. Let us know what you think. Tweet us @TheCurrentCBC or go to our Web sitecbc.ca/thecurren.t click on the contact link. In our next half hour, a famous experiment in social psychology is put under the microscope. Writer Gina Perry joins me to talk about the lost boys of the Robbers Cave experiment 70 years on. We'll hear from one of the boys too, now a judge. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. This is The Current on CBC Radio One, Sirius XM, online on cbc.ca/thecurrent, on podcast and on your radio app.

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Exploring the dark side of a widely-celebrated psychological experiment

Guests: Gina Perry, Doug Griset

AMT: Hello I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and this is The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

[Young boys singing]

AMT: Some young American boys singing away at a summer camp in the early 1950s. Not just any group of boys, however, not just any camp. They were known as The Lost Boys and what happened at their camps - one in medal Grove New York and another in Robbers Cave Oklahoma - helped shape the field of social psychology. Two camps, two different groups of boys and two social experiments happening and something called realistic conflict theory. The psychologists behind the experiments Muzafer Sherif went on to become a legend in the field. But according to author Gina Perry the legacy he left behind is complicated. Her new book is called The Lost Boys: Inside Muzafer Sherif's Robbers Cave experiment. Gina Perry joins me from Melbourne, Australia. Hello.

GINA PERRY: Hello how are you?

AMT: I'm well and I'm really curious to know what you know. So let's talk about this a little more. First of all tell us about the man who was Muzafer Sherif?

GINA PERRY: Well he was born in Turkey in the early years of the 20th century. So he grew up in a period that was the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the rise and the establishment of the Turkish Republic. And he was one of the first generation sent abroad by Ataturk and the new government as a group of young intellectuals to study abroad and bring back the tools and the knowledge for building a new republic which at that time was a very diverse group of different groups of ethnicities religions and lots of conflict. So Sherif's interest was always in how do you bring groups together, what is the glue that helps them to create a single identity.

AMT: And he had something called realistic conflict theory what. Is it?

GINA PERRY: It's a theory that he developed through his most famous experiment at Robber's Cave State Park in Oklahoma and it's a theory that says that conflict comes about between groups of people, not because it's part of our human nature, but because when you put groups of people together competing against one another hostility and stereotyping is inevitable and hostility and violence is a result of that. So realistic conflict theory was this notion that that was the way conflict was generated and that you could break down that conflict by giving a group or warring groups a larger problem that they had to solve and they were forced to cooperate. And so it was a very optimistic message for its time because its peace could be engineered.

AMT: And as you point out he came from a background where there were real struggles among the Turks, Greeks and Armenians and this takes place at the height of the Cold War not long after the Second World War. So all of these titanic struggles play into what he's trying to do here.

GINA PERRY: Yes yes and it was an experiment that really spoke the results of his experiment where he brought two warring tribes together and was able to engineer peace between them was a very optimistic message at that time in, as you say, the end of the Second World War the beginnings of the Cold War. But it also echoed his long time commitment to Marxism and the view that if you take away competition in society, if you take away inequity and injustice then you can engineer peace between people. And that was a very powerful message and something he believe very strongly in.

AMT: Why did he decide on a summer camp setting for this experiment?

GINA PERRY: Well it's interesting because summer camps actually, I found through my research, in the particularly the late 30s through to the 1950s were often used by psychologists like a laboratory I guess to study natural behaviour in natural human behaviour in a rural environment where particularly children were away from what scientists at that time or social psychologists would have seen as the contaminating influences of their parents or distractions like their hobbies. So the camp environment was just a perfect way for social psychologists in particular to have a group of subjects who were isolated and where their behaviour could be studied in the wild. What was different with Sherif though was that rather than just going along to an already established camp to observe children? He created a camp site of his own and recruited children and brought them in for three weeks under the guise of a summer camp. When in fact the whole camp was a psychological experiment. So it was your trial [unintelligible] are written that way.

AMT: So let's talk about the middle Grove experiment first. What were the characteristics that he looked for in the campers he recruited for Middle Grove?

GINA PERRY: Well the middle Grove experiment in 1953. He was really looking for boys who were very similar to one another in lots of ways. So they were all watched. They were all of the same religion, roughly the same ethnicity. And what he was trying to show there was that even people who had no reason to hate each other where there's no differences ostensibly between them can be brought to conflict. So he was looking for average boys of average intelligence whose parents would have been willing to send them away to camp. Probably because they couldn't afford to usually send their children away to such a summertime activity.

AMT: How many were there and what were their ages?

The boys were aged between 10 and 11 and there were 24 of them at Middle Grove.

AMT: Gina Perry, you found a number of these so-called lost boys including a man named Doug Griset who is now a judge and we have reached him. Doug Griset joins me from Schenectady, New York. Hello.

DOUG GRISET: Hello Anna Maria, how are you?

AMT: I'm well thanks and I'm curious to know what do you remember about that camp after talking to her? What images do you have?

DOUG GRISET: Sure. So my memories are mostly of what I've been told and seen about this very little of my own memories. However I do have a general sense of it as a relatively unpleasant sort of a darkness experience as opposed to what people think of as summer camp.

AMT: There was a knife on a mantel piece. Do you remember that?

DOUG GRISET: Yes. Vividly. That that was not just the mantelpiece, the centrepiece to the whole game that these chaps were playing. They had this knife, of all things, and I don't even like guns or knives or anything like that but they had it up on the mantel in the little dining area where we all ate. And this was going to be the ultimate prize to each of the twelve members of the winning team. And somehow they got that prize - in the least my mind - and I kind of remember the other kids feeling the same way, that this was gold and that is so vivid that I think I can see it in my mind 60 years later.

AMT: And so that was the symbol of what could be won in competition?

DOUG GRISET: That's correct. That was the only win. And for three weeks of baseball, volleyball, race, whatever else they had us doing, when you think about it it's a pretty [unintelligible]. They must be very clever at getting the boys to want this knife so much that they would fight over it, physically fight over it. And I think really the truth is for somebody like me it would not have been the knife it would have been the win.

AMT: And when did you learn this was actually an experiment?

DOUG GRISET: When Gina Perry called and came and visited my wife and with me and sat down and started showing us all of this stuff.

AMT: Knowing what you know now do you think it was a legitimate search for the truth about human conflict?

DOUG GRISET: In 1953 only seven years after the Germans were able to get little kids to shoot at people. Of course this would be much more on the minds of anyone than it is today. In its time I can see why they were interested in when they could cause children to become angry and violent to the point of truly harming, even killing others. However, and this is where I back off a little bit - what they did, we knew the counsellors, was set up a plan to prove a point rather than letting circumstances play out and see what happened and what point was proven. They had an idea. They wanted us to fight each other and they did everything they could to create that situation is that the right way to find out how to prevent children from shooting other people? I would say no. I would say smart adults manipulate the 10 and 11 year old children way too easy.

AMT: It's interesting to talk to you about this all these years later. Thank you for your time.

DOUG GRISET: Thank you.

AMT: OK so that is Doug reserves. He was one of the subjects of the experiment Unknowing. Tell me more of what they did.

GINA PERRY: Well the main difference with this 1953 study that Doug was part of was that the boys arrived at the camp in one bus. None of them knew each other so that by the time they got to the camp and they spent a day there they'd actually started making friends. And then the idea of the camp was to divide them into two groups put them in competition against one another so that they would fight. But the boys objected to being divided up because Sherif deliberately separated pairs of friends and unintentionally what this did was it actually made - I noticed, in the observer notes because they kept detailed observations of what happened with the children - was that the boys started paying close attention to the men because they were trying to work out why they'd been separated, because the men couldn't explain that it was an experiment. The boys were worried that perhaps they' offended the men or that they'd done something wrong and they were being punished. So this set in trying a series of events that I think eventually led to the boys realizing that the men wanted them to fight. But the second major thing I think was that - and this was a point Doug made to me when I first met him - and that was that the power at that time of Little League and baseball as a way of teaching boys sportsmanship and encouraging camaraderie between winning and losing teams. So the notion that boys for example after a baseball game together the winning team would always keep three cheers for the losing team and they'd shake hands with the other team. That was very important part of their training at home. Here at this camp, those kind of values were being turned on their head and a lot of the boys were uncomfortable about those sorts of developments. So what happened was that, despite the efforts of the men to keep the competition neck and neck and despite the hypothesis that competition inevitably creates conflict, the boys in terms of the men's eyes the boys failed to cooperate in the sense that they continued to each time they saw the other team there was sometimes there was conflict but generally it fizzled out.

AMT: So how did Muzafer Sherif respond when it became clear that this experiment wasn't working as he thought it would?

GINA PERRY: Well one of his assistants in desperation - you know there was a lot of money at stake here, the Rockefeller Foundation had funded the study - and one of Sherif's assistants actually while the boys were separated and men were away from the two tents one of Sharif's assistants pulled the tent down, pulled one of the boys tents down, and pulled all the boy's possessions out and trampled them in the dirt. And then in the hope that that group would blame the other group for vandalizing their property. The two groups were brought back together and it looked like the fight was going to be on because the group whose tent had been destroyed were distraught and angry and upset. But they they'd allowed the other group to respond to their accusations and the other group insisted that they had nothing to do with it. So the two groups came together and got the tent back up put back all the possessions, cleaned things up and came together spontaneously as a single group to help one another. And at that point was the point where Sherif virtually threw his hands in the air and said well we just had to cancel this, this isn't going to work. So what was interesting was that the boys did turn on the men at that point and say if it wasn't us then it must have been you. And they refused to fight. Really they turned on the men who were running the camp and came together as a single solid group and basically stood up to the more powerful group in the camp site which was some quite a remarkable event.

AMT: What did you do with the information he gathered from that first experiment?

GINA PERRY: Well he didn't do anything with it. He mentioned that experiment very briefly in two publications and didn't explain further than one footnote that talked about it being called off early. He didn't explain what had happened. So his staff wanted him to publish the results of the 1953 study and one of them in particular, Herbert Kelman, was very eager because he felt that what had happened was a very exciting event. It wasn't what they intended. And it certainly didn't fit their hypotheses. But he felt that it was very exciting that these groups had come together spontaneously finding a peaceful resolution. And so he was eager to publish. But in Sherif's view the experiment was a failure. And he wanted to forget about it and move on.

AMT: So in 1954 he tries again with Robber's Cave in Oklahoma. How does the second experiment differ from the first?

GINA PERRY: Well it's probably one of the key ways that was different was that Sherif seeded the control and the management of the experiment to one of his graduate students. There was a general recognition amongst the staff that Sherif's temperament and his zealotry I guess, his commitment to his theory, often got in the way of him being able to effectively manage a group of people in an experiment. So he had a very practical graduate student, OJ Harvey, who was a Native American from Oklahoma who actually took over the running of Robber's Cave. So I think that made a big difference. But the other major difference was that rather than bringing the boys to camp in one bus they actually brought the boys to camp in two separate buses on two separate days. The Robbers Cave State Park was much larger than the Middle Grove experiment had been. There was much more room for the two groups of boys to roam around the park and actually never cross paths. So for the first week of the Robber's Cave experiment each group believed that they had the park to themselves. So that when they were brought together in competition they viewed the other group very much as interlopers, people who had kind of invaded their space if you like. So there was very much-- The staff at Robbers Cave by this stage were much more skilful at working out ways that they could engineer this conflict more effectively.

AMT: So what kinds of conflict did they have between the two teams?

GINA PERRY: Well they had the two teams. They had a much longer competition and it was a very hot summer in Robber's Cave. So they had, again, they had these giant knives on display. They also had a trophy for each boy in the winning team and the losing team in the competition would get absolutely nothing. And the winning team would get it all. So again there was that real desire on the boys part to win this prise. The other way that they helped to keep the conflict going was that there were points at Robber's Cave where the boys tried to initiate conversations with the men to get them to punish what they felt was bad behaviour. So for example when there was a night raid one of the groups attacked the other group at night in their cabin when they were sleeping. And the group who'd been attacked went to the men and said well you should take points off them in the tournament because you know that's not good behaviour. And the men would block the attempts to kind of, I would call them, peaceful conciliatory moves between the groups and really kept that competition going by fanning the flames themselves.

AMT: What was the plan to try to resolve the conflict between the two teams?

GINA PERRY: Well Sharif engineered what he called a disaster which was as I said it was a very hot summer. And what the men did was they surreptitiously sabotaged the water supply for the camp. And they said to the boys- the boys at this point, this was after the competition was over. The winning team had received the knives and the trophies and the losing team were very dejected. And the relationship between the two groups was very fractious. So Sherif's plan was if we get the boys to help us to try and solve this problem with the water supply they will be forced to cooperate because it's going to be a big job. So initially the two groups of boys are climbing a hill behind the mess hall where the water tank is and they find that the waterline is buried under this huge rock fall. And they had to lift and carry rocks away. And they very soon realized that if they stayed in separate teams and did it it was going to take a lot longer in the hot sun. So eventually they started working together as a single group. And as a result of that the boundaries between the two groups began to blur. The animosity started to abate and then over the next three or four days Sherif instituted other exercises like this with a truck that supposedly broke down for example where one group had to push and the other group had to pull and these sorts of things that would bring the boys together in what he called a super ordinate goal. That is a problem that neither group could solve on their own and they had to rely on a large group. And so it was this really this metaphor for about how if you can find something that is larger then warring groups of people can solve on their own, it is something that will unite them. And it is something that offers an opportunity for peace. So there was this- at Robber's Cave State Park it happened. The boys worked together on the water supply. They managed to get the broken down truck going by working together as a single group. And by the end of the experiment, by the time they had to get go back to Oklahoma City from the state park, the boys insisted that they travel back in one bus not two. And according to Sherif as they drove into Oklahoma the boys were singing Oklahoma at the tops of their voices. So it was this very romantic if you like and very happy ending to this conflict that was happening between warring tribes.

AMT: A number of people have compared the Robber's Cave experiment with William Golding as Lord of the Flies. Golding did his own experiment using boys at around the same time. Can you tell us what Golding did?

GINA PERRY: Well yes I discovered this in my research that he actually took his class because he was a school teacher. He took his class of boys to a hill overlooking the source bricklaying called Fig Spree Ring and he divided the boys into two groups and had them fight on this ancient mound which was a battle ground. And he observed the situation so that he presumably could use it in his fiction. But you know he described the terrible cries that the boys gave when they were just supposedly play acting. And he said he had to actually cut it short because it got quite violent. And I went to the archives and looked through his material because I was hoping I'd find some connection because he was writing Lord of the flies at the same time that Sherif was conducting his experiments. And I thought there must have been some connection there but I could find nothing. It was just a coincidence that these two men on two different continents were using children to explore these notions about violence and war and course peace.

AMT: Gina Perry, it's fascinating. Thanks for your work.

GINA PERRY: Thank you.

GINA PERRY: Gina Perry is the author of The Lost Boys inside Muzafer Sherif's Robbers Cave experiment. She joined us from Melbourne, Australia. That's our program for today stay with Radio One for Q . US singer songwriter rapper Lizzo is on the show. Remember you can always take The Current with you to go on the CBC Radio app free from the App Store or Google Play. Now after our national affairs panel discussion of two key bills before the Senate we're going to leave you with a little legislative levity. This is from 2017 when Mark Critch of This Hour Has 22 Minutes dropped by the Red Chamber to visit a fellow Newfoundlanders. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti. Thanks for listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

MARK CRITCH: Senator George Furey. How are you doing my friend.

GEORGE FUREY: Nice to see you Mark. Welcome to the Senate.

MARK CRITCH: The Senate gets a hard time, right. People, Canadians, sometimes will make jokes about the Senate or they'll say why do we need that for. So on behalf of all Canadians why do we need that for?

GEORGE FUREY: The Senate's primary responsibility is looking after its regional representation and minorities.

MARK CRITCH: So Alberta has six seats there. Newfoundland and Labrador has six seats. Alberta has a bigger population than Newfoundland and Labrador but most people in Alberta are from Newfoundland Labrador. PEI has four. Surely to God PEI could get by with like one. How often do potatoes come up?

GEORGE FUREY: Potatoes come up a lot, Mark.

DOUG GRISET: The colour of gables.

GEORGE FUREY: The green lotus.

MARK CRITCH: Kevin O'Leary recently floated the idea the Conservative leadership race. He said that he would possibly sell senacies for a hundred thousand dollars or two hundred thousand dollars to raise money. That's ridiculous, right?

GEORGE FUREY: Oh. Where would the senators sit if they sold their chairs?

MARK CRITCH: I guess you know what, I hadn't even thought about that but I can see Kevin now on QVC or Larry special here on QVC.

GEORGE FUREY: Have a look at this. If the Senate chair going for just one hundred thousand dollars. It's got a beautiful leather back and solid wooden construction and it could be yours. Only a few left. We just have 54 left remaining. So call the number down.

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