Alberta’s higher education minister says new steps to “strengthen free speech” on post-secondary campuses will be announced in the near future, news that follows a university’s decision to reverse course on a planned speech by a controversial academic.
The University of Lethbridge said this week that former Mount Royal University professor Frances Widdowson, who was scheduled to give a lecture Wednesday night on campus, will not be given a seat. She was fired from the MRU in 2021.
Widdowson made headlines in 2020 for comments she made that suggested there was an educational benefit to boarding schools.
Alberta Higher Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides said he learned of U of L’s decision on Monday.
“I understand that past comments made by this speaker have been controversial, but I believe it is important that our universities and colleges foster a strong culture of free speech and diverse viewpoints, even when those viewpoints are deemed controversial or even offensive , except for targeted speech to incite hatred or violence, of course,” Nicolaides said in a statement provided to CBC News.
“In the near future, I will be announcing new steps to strengthen free speech at Alberta’s post-secondary colleges. It should be the students, not university administrators, who make the final decision whether or not to listen to a speech.”
Nicolaides added that his comments should not be interpreted as agreement with past comments made by Widdowson.
Notley calls minister’s position ‘disturbing’
Opposition NDP Leader Rachel Notley said Tuesday she was troubled by the position taken by the minister.
“As far as I’m concerned, the idea of someone coming and speaking at a university, particularly in Lethbridge, to a student body that’s made up of a lot of Indigenous students, about how they’ve benefited in some way from residential schools is deeply troubling to me,” Notley said during a media appearance. “This is deeply hurtful communication.”
Speaking during a media briefing Tuesday, opposition NDP Leader Rachel Notley said she was troubled by the position taken by Alberta’s Higher Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides, given past comments by former Mount Royal University professor Francis Widdowson. (CBC News)
Notley said he believes that would be an exception to free speech principles.
“That the UCP doesn’t understand how incredibly harmful these ideas are to huge swathes of Alberta’s population reveals their lack of understanding of the real experiences and traumas that treaty people have been subjected to for centuries,” she said.
The changes come in addition to the “Chicago Principles”
Sam Blackett, a spokesman for the minister, said these new changes were likely to be announced in the next week or two.
Alberta has already adopted the University of Chicago Declaration on Principles of Free Expression, also known as the “Chicago Principles,” which states that universities must promote freedom of debate and protect it from potential restrictions.
“While members of the university community are free to criticize and challenge views expressed on campus, and to criticize and challenge speakers who are invited to express their views on campus, they may not obstruct or otherwise interfere with the freedom of others to express views they reject or even detest,” according to the Chicago Principles.
Under former Alberta premier Jason Kenney, all 26 publicly funded higher education institutions were instructed to either endorse the principles, which were originally published in 2014, or develop a separate policy consistent with them.
All institutions met the requirements by the December 15, 2019 deadline.
The principles have been adopted by dozens of universities in the United States and have also been adopted in Ontario. However, some critics suggest that the principles come with various imperfections.
“The major flaw of the Chicago Principles is the false confidence they offer to the colleges and universities that support them,” University of Pennsylvania political science and education professor Sigal Ben-Porath wrote in 2018.
“They rely on a legal and formal framework that aims to offer an answer to a set of problems that have little use for such blunt instruments.”
The university’s decision has been overturned
U of L’s decision was a reversal of its previous position released Thursday, which suggested that while the university disagreed with Widdowson, it would allow the lecture to proceed in accordance with its free expression policy.
Widdowson was invited by a U of L faculty member to give a lecture titled “How ‘Walk-ism’ Threatens Academic Freedom.”
But by Monday, after days of pushback from students and faculty — and two petitions that had received more than 2,500 signatures demanding the speech be canceled — the university reversed course, with Mahon saying it had received “significant feedback” internally and externally.
Left, file photo of the University of Lethbridge campus. On the right, a photo of former Mount Royal University professor Francis Widdowson. On Monday, the University of Lethbridge said it would not provide space for her planned lecture on campus. (Michael Whorf, Facebook)
Widdowson made headlines in 2020 after she said the Black Lives Matter movement had destroyed Mount Royal University and that there was an educational benefit to boarding schools, prompting more than 6,000 people to call for her dismissal through a petition.
She has often suggested that she has been punished for criticizing “awakened ideas” and that the open exchange of ideas is endangered in today’s universities.
Meanwhile, Widdowson says she still plans to show up and give her lecture at the university on Wednesday, adding that university security will have to “pull her off by force” to stop her.
An AU of L spokesperson said Tuesday that university officials saw her intentions on social media “to engage members of the university community in an impromptu manner.”
“As is always the case, the university will initiate approaches that thoughtfully mitigate disruptions and prioritize the safety and security of our campus community,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
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