In 2021, Dr. Frances Widdowson was fired from Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta, for rather impolitically criticising the indigenisation of the university. She sued for wrongful dismissal, and five years later she won, though such victories tend to be a tad Pyrrhic in Canada when universities are involved.

As my millions of followers will recall, in February of 2023, while I was still a professor at the University of Lethbridge, I invited Dr. Widdowson down to give a public talk on the effects of wokeism on the academy. At first the U of L’s President Mike Mahon let the talk go ahead. But over the weekend the forces of righteousness got the better of him and he retracted. Widdowson turned up anyhow, and all hell broke loose.

Until then my various offensivenesses – including in these blogs – had gone under the radar. But that invitation outed them. Eleven months later I too was fired. I didn’t sue. Under the new rules of the academic game I was just glad to be out of the profession. But Widdowson, a student, and I did sue over the original cancellation. (I subsequently dropped out, for some technical reason.) But three and a half years later, which is to say yesterday, the court ruled in our favour. Once again, probably a Pyrrhic victory. But a symbolic one nonetheless.

I mention this not because I told you so. In fact I didn’t. But because maybe, just maybe, the tide is beginning to turn. I say just maybe because at the same time there’s a movement afoot to criminalise (what the lobby is calling) Residential School denialism. So even if it’s one step forward it’s going to be followed by two steps back. Still, it’s interesting to see that there’s no such thing as being on the right side of history because the arc of history isn’t unidirectional. Or maybe God works in mysterious ways. Or ask not for whom the bell tolls. Or when you run out of things to say, just shut up and go to bed.

Categories: Everything You Wanted to Know About What's Going On in the World But Were Afraid to Ask, Humour

Tags: cancel culture, denialism, deplatforming, Frances Widdowson, Mike Mahon, Mount Royal University, Pyrrhic, termination, University of Lethbridge, wpkeism