SLOBODIAN: Is this any way for a law professor to talk?

Is it ethical for a University of Alberta assistant law professor to — in any way — advise social media followers to commit crime?What if the words, although open to personal interpretation, happen to be a well-known anarchist movement rallying cry?“As a law professor who teaches criminal law, I felt compelled to inform you be gay, do crimes. Also, look at my pretty earrings today,” transfeminine activist law professor Florence Ashley posted on a TikTok video..‘Be gay, do crimes’ is an anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist slogan that has endorsed protests, riots and committing crime as necessary to obtain equal rights.A professor — teaching aspiring lawyers — would know that some view it as the right to literally break the law.Throwing “Molotovs” and “punching fascists in the face” are included in comments on social media by radicals offering their interpretation of the slogan.However, the slogan is also interpreted by others simply as the right to object to anti-gay laws.But Canada doesn’t have any anti-gay laws.If Ashley does in fact endorse breaking the law, what crimes would be acceptable?Ashley didn’t respond to email requests from the Western Standard to explain the intention behind this post.However, other social media comments shed light on Ashley’s personal views regarding the law.“Be gay, do crimes in not just a queer slogan. When fascists make medical care illegal, it’s also a bioethical principle,” posted Ashley on May 18.“People need to sue cops and challenge police action a whole lot more than they already do. If not for the good of society, at least for the good of law professors and their students,” Ashley posted on Twitter (“X”) Tuesday.“One thing I learned studying law is that a lot of what people do every day is illegal and much of our ability to live in society is predicated on the discretionary non-application of law,” Ashley posted on December 26 2020.Ashley has written that as a transfeminine jurist and bioethicist the focus is on “how we can use law and medicine to better the lives of trans communities and, hopefully, all marginalized communities.”No problem with that.It’s the next statement about the criminal justice system that is problematic.“My research is rooted in the idea that the criminal justice system won’t save us, but gender self-determination might.”Is this appropriate law professor talk?The self-appointed judge also opined on who isn’t allowed to exist.“The damage Elon Musk is causing to the fabric of society through his (mis)management of Twitter is probably the best argument for why billionaires shouldn’t be allowed to exist,” Ashley posted on October 26.Free speech, to a degree, is still allowed in Canada — even potentially threatening comments like that exhibiting poor taste.However, no one is exempt from the responsibility attached to free speech. Not even radical associate law professors who are passionate about personal beliefs.Ideology is not at all the issue here. At issue, is respect for the law. Period.Does the U of A Faculty of Law have an ethical problem with professors — no matter what their personal ideology — being so careless with words?Would all law professors posting anything associated with breaking the law get a pass?What do practicing lawyers who earned degrees at the U of A think about this?The U of A did not return calls from the Western Standard.The faulty is promoted as an “innovation and prestigious destination” for law students.Last March, the U of A appointed Ashley as a “distinguished legal scholar” to its Faculty of Law.“My goal is to help students not only understand what the law says, but how it operates in the lives of people,” said Ashley at the time.Ashley, a bioethicist who researches legal and healthcare issues faced by transgenders, is a member of the John Dossetor Health Ethics Centre.Ashley holds degrees from McGill University and the University of Toronto.Ashley uses the pronouns They/Them.Ashley has also used the pronouns They/Them/That B*tch on Instagram.On Ashley’s website, the professor self-describes as “metaphorically a biorg witch with flowers in their hair.” Ashley boasts of being “transfeminine activist, academic and slut” in the promotion of a book Gender/F***ing: The Pleasures and Politics of Living in a Gendered Body, to be published in February.Ashley also self-described as a “dyke who has a slut phase” in a post musing about women exclusively wearing G-strings. That post, like many of Ashley’s profanity-laced posts — some too crude and unpalatable to print — included the F-word.Again, Ashley’s right to free speech, even laced with profanities, must be protected. Hopefully though, Ashley refrains from cursing in the classroom. Impressionable young minds might pick up the habit to find the judges they’ll eventually stand before in courtrooms won’t be impressed.Ashley has unlimited freedom to rail against the status quo.Ashley’s opinions, including an objection to gendering pets, have been profiled by a few mainstream media outlets and in academic publications.One article included a footnote that reads: “calling trans people depraved freaks just for being trans is really insulting to those of us trans folk who work really hard to be depraved freaks.”“It’s so f***king funny that I managed to publish this footnote as part of a peer-reviewed article in a serious and well — respected law and medical journal,” Ashley posted.Ashley also recorded a four-minute TikTok video and said parental rights is a US-based ideology “there’s no such thing” in Canada.“Parents don’t have constitutional rights vis-a-vis their children.”John Carpay of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms pointed to Supreme Court rulings proving otherwise.“This lawyer clearly has not read Supreme Court of Canada rulings and the declaration that Canadians have no parental rights is probably wishful thinking on her part,” said Carpay.Parents have ‘Liberty’ interests under section seven of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”“The Charter, the charter itself does not mention parental rights expressly, but section seven has been interpreted by the courts to include parental rights. So to defer that these do not exist in Canadian law, is a decision of ignorance.”This isn’t the only time Ashley has said children’s rights are paramount.In fact, Ashley dismisses the authority of parents — along with the authority of the courts and judges — when it comes to gender-affirming care for adolescents.Trans adolescents “should almost always get to decide whether to initiate gender-affirming care,” Ashley wrote in a paper published in the Journal of Medical Ethics titled: Youth should decide: the principle of subsidiarity in paediatric transgender healthcare.“Because gender uniquely pertains to personal identity and self-realisation, parents and judges are rarely better positioned to make complex medical decisions,” argued Ashley.“Instead of taking away trans youth’s authority over their healthcare decisions, we should focus on supporting their ability to take the best possible decision for themselves.”Ashley once took a run at clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson for his stand on gender-neutral pronouns. Supporting a call to silence him, Ashley said “refusing to give him a platform would be justified.”“To quote Spider-Man ‘With great power comes great responsibility,’” wrote Ashley.“Academia maintains a rigorous peer-driven hierarchy that bestows upon professors significant authority. When professors make claims, we reasonably expect those claims to be backed by evidence and argument of a quality befitting a scholar,” pontificated Ashley.Rules for thee, but not for me?Ashley has professed a “dislike of disciplinary boundaries.”But Canada is bound by laws.And what would Spiderman say about a law professor’s responsibility to not, in any way, advocate that anyone “do crime?”

SLOBODIAN: Is this any way for a law professor to talk?

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