Alberta university cancels speech by fired anti-wokeism professor

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EDMONTON — Frances Widdowson, a former Mount Royal University professor, has had a planned speech at the University of Lethbridge cancelled following an outcry from members of the university community.

Widdowson was invited to campus by philosophy professor Paul Viminitz for a guest lecture. Widdowson is perhaps best known for her defence of the educational benefits of Canada’s Indian Residential Schools system, and made international headlines in 2020 for saying that Black Lives Matter had destroyed her university.

Her defenders — including psychologist/commentator Jordan Peterson and Quillette editor Jonathan Kay — argue that her ouster from Mount Royal was because of her rejection of “woke” policies, and see her as a stalwart defender of academic freedom and free expression.

When she was fired, Mount Royal University was tight-lipped about the reasons.

“The university unequivocally supports academic debate and will always defend the rights of faculty related to academic freedom. However, academic freedom does not justify harassment or discrimination,” it said in a statement at the time.

Widdowson’s speech in Lethbridge was to be on “How ‘Woke-ism’ Threatens Academic Freedom,” and a note on her fundraising page says she was also going to give “two lectures on ‘Indigenous ways of knowing’ in one of (Viminitz’s) philosophy classes!”

In a statement late last week, Mike Mahon, the University of Lethbridge’s president and vice-chancellor, said “the vast majority of our community finds these views abhorrent,” but noted the speech would go ahead because of the university’s commitment to free expression, and that a “concurrent evidence-based counter-lecture” had been planned.

“Members of the university community have the right to criticize and question views expressed on campus, but they may not obstruct or interfere with others’ freedom of expression. Debate or deliberation on campus may not be suppressed because the ideas put forward are thought by some, or even most, to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or misguided,” Mahon’s statement said.

In a statement posted online, Nathan Crow, the University of Lethbridge Students’ Union’s Indigenous student representative, said that the university has a duty to students “to provide accurate and true information on this important piece of Canadian history,” and that Widdowson could not do that. 

“I strongly feel that Frances Widdowson’s attendance on our campus devalues the opinions and shared histories of the many survivors who attended this colonial system,” Crow wrote on a change.org petition.

The university’s Department of Indigenous Studies also issued a statement in which it “vehemently condemns the anti-Indigenous rhetoric routinely disseminated by former MRU professor Frances Widdowson and deplores the fact that she is being given a platform to legitimize that discourse on our campus.”

On Monday, an updated statement from Mahon announced that the speech would not happen on campus after all. The university, Mahon wrote, had sought guidance from those with “considerable cultural, scholarly, sectoral and legal expertise, including continuing guidance from the vice-provost, Indigenous Relations and others,” and had received feedback from the communities the university serves.

“This input confirmed that assertions that seek to minimize the significant and detrimental impact of Canada’s residential school system are harmful,” the statement says. “To ensure our community is safe, in the context of this planned lecture, the university will not provide space for this public lecture to occur on campus.”

Harm caused by Widdowson’s event, Mahon wrote, is “an impediment to meaningful reconciliation.”

In a Facebook post, Widdowson vowed to go on with her speech.

“You will have to haul me away by security to stop me,” she wrote.

— With additional reporting from the Calgary Herald

• Email: tdawson@postmedia.com | Twitter: tylerrdawson

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