Academics falter after attacks on U of W prof, students

Members of the academic community were tense Thursday, a day after a professor and two students were injured in a knife attack on an Ontario campus.

“Today feels very heavy after what happened yesterday at the University of Waterloo,” Julie Lalonde, a women’s rights advocate and public educator, said during an online seminar on bystander intervention in gender-based violence with the nonprofit Right to Be.

“I know a lot of people feel pretty down.”

Waterloo Regional Police said investigators believe the knife attack, allegedly committed by a recent graduate, in a gender studies classroom on Wednesday afternoon was a “hate-motivated incident involving gender expression and gender identity”.

At 3:37 p.m., the time of the attack the day before, hundreds of people gathered on the Waterloo campus to denounce what they saw as hatred and violence.

“There are people who want to intimidate us,” says university president Vivek Goel.

“They want us to be afraid – afraid to learn, afraid to share, afraid to speak our truth. But we will not be deterred from loudly proclaiming our values ​​of inclusion and openness.”

The attack has the academic community once again discussing how to stay safe. Advocacy groups and experts are seeing an increase in gender-based violence in Canada and across the border, where anti-feminist and anti-LGBTQ sentiment has led to changes in access to reproductive health care, such as access to safe abortions, and an erosion of gay rights.

On Thursday, Waterloo Police Chief Mark Crowell claimed the suspect, 24-year-old Geovanny Villalba-Aleman, entered the ground-floor classroom of about 40 students with two large knives and asked which class it was before stabbing the 38-year-old professor. Katy Fuller. Two students – a 20-year-old woman and a 19-year-old man, both from Waterloo – were also injured. All three were taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries after students intervened, some throwing objects such as a chair, Crowell said.

Police said they found Villalba-Aleman trying to pretend to be a victim. The suspect is a member of the university community.

“He was trying to blend in and essentially hide in plain sight[with the mob of students fleeing],” Crowell said.

“Fortunately, thanks to excellent witness information, we had a good description of who the individual was and were able to identify that this was the suspect we were looking for.”

According to the school’s website, the Philosophy 202 course was designed to “explore the construction of gender in the history of philosophy through contemporary discussion. What is Gender? How do we ‘do’ gender? How can we ‘undo’ gender – and do we want to?”

Villalba-Aleman has been charged with four counts of aggravated assault, three counts of assault with a weapon, two counts of possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose and mischief under $5,000. He remains in custody after a brief trial Thursday.

More than 40 miles away in Hamilton on Thursday, Syrus Marcus Ware and his McMaster University community discussed the Waterloo incident and how they could build safer spaces where “activist scholars” and their students can thrive.

“We’ve certainly seen an increase in incidents like this, but of course this is reminiscent of the tragedy at the École Polytechnique on Dec. 6,” said Ware, an assistant professor at the university’s School of the Arts and co-founder of Black Lives. Matter Canada, referring to the 1989 attack that killed 14 women on the Montreal campus.

As a black trans professor and with a “radical swing to the right” in North American politics, Ware said, he thinks a lot about his safety.

“I think about what it means to work late on campus and teach content that some would rather not learn,” he said.

“I really hope that this moment at least reminds us of the need for our programs.”

A 2019 study published by Statistics Canada found that 34 percent of female teachers from post-secondary institutions reported harassment, while only 22 percent of their male counterparts reported the same treatment. Those who identified as part of the LGBTQ+ community also saw a higher likelihood of harassment compared to heterosexual teachers.

“One thing we do, and as professors we don’t shy away from, is encourage discussion,” says Ethel Tungohan, an associate professor of politics at York University, of online discourse. But since 2016, “the tenor of the talks has shifted.”

“It wasn’t just a raw debate…it felt personal,” she said, adding that she has been subjected to email threats of death and rape because of the work she does.

“Being in the public eye as a professor and being part of some kind of non-normative body … puts you under extra scrutiny.”

It’s been happening often enough lately, she said, that professional faculty associations are organizing panels on the topic.

“Obviously when I heard the news about Waterloo I was shocked and I’m still recovering, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t surprised.”

While the current physical threat to students at the University of Waterloo may be over, she said, she is concerned that the psychological damage will continue.

“What about continued threats to people’s experiences in the classroom … the chilling effect it will produce?”

Over the course of an hour on Thursday, Lalonde took the webinar participants through a series of tools to de-escalate these types of situations, offering practical tips such as how to distract the bully while checking in with the victim or documenting the interaction.

“There are a lot of really targeted attacks on women, queer and gender nonconforming people,” Lalonde said in an interview afterward.

“It can feel like an overwhelming feeling where nowhere is safe.”

Lalonde, who lives in Ottawa, said the constant drumming of news about incidents like this can cause apathy, one of the reasons she’s made the workshops a regular part of her job.

“We really need to start being honest about the influence we have in our own communities,” she said

It should also be recognized that suspects of the “lone wolf” type find fellowship somewhere and don’t act alone that way, Lalonde said.

“These little things make a huge difference and I think people underestimate how much power they have.”

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