Alexandra (Sasha) Lysova is a mother of children in public school and a professor of criminology at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. She immigrated to Canada to escape authoritarianism in Russia, and is alarmed by similar patterns emerging in Canada. Sasha has long been outspoken at her university about equity, diversity, and inclusion ideology. She has more recently been noticing similar problems at public schools attended by her children, exemplified by the careless adoption of land acknowledgements that now undermine BC property rights. This conversation covers Canada’s toxic politeness, quietly retreating into ‘internal exile’ to survive Russian and Canadian versions of authoritarianism, the importance of raising children who question things, the sacred nature of the new ideology, and different approaches to challenging land acknowledgements.
