Dr. Widdowson: A Trespasser or a Liberator?

On Saturday April 25 Dr. Frances Widdowson was arrested for trespassing on the campus of the University of Lethbridge in southern Alberta. Two weeks earlier Dr. Widdowson was in court in suing the University of Lethbridge with the backing of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms. The case involved an alleged violation of her Charter rights in Feb. of 2023 when Dr. Widdowson was prevented from delivering a pre-arranged talk at the U of L.

Who is on the wrong side and the right side of this matter? Is there any middle ground? When will the senior figures of higher education in Canadian academia afford Dr. Widdowson the proper platform she deserves to explain her contentious thesis without harassment? Will Dr. Widdowson be invited to elaborate with poise in a suitable scholarly setting her position concerning whether or not the treatment of Indians by Church-run, federally-funded residential schools renders Canada a genocidal polity?

Can Canada rise to the challenge treating this issue with the respect and dignity such a sensitive and many-faceted issue deserves. There are many more sides to this complex story than only two. But right now Frances is speaking for a sizeable group of Canadians.

It is becoming increasingly clear that many Canadians feel dismissed and demeaned by the discourse as it is presently unfolding in our badly rattled universities. The academic mission of our institutions of higher learning as well as their most adept and sensitive faculty members, is undeniably coming undone.

https://www.jccf.ca/court-to-review-university-of-lethbridge-cancellation-of-widdowson-lecture/

I first met Frances in February of 2023. I met her during the evening when she was drummed and shouted down into silence before being ejected from the University of Lethbridge for her alleged crime of being a “residential school denier.”

I have shared my own experiences of the U of L’s indecent censoriousness when it comes to the suppression of certain controversial issues. My case goes back to 2016-2018 when some took severe exception to my comparison of the treatment of Palestinians by Israel to the treatment of Native Americans in the Western Hemisphere since 1492.

I cultivated my interests in these matters especially by way of research and publication. I came to the University of Lethbridge in 1990 to work as a professor of Native American Studies, now known as Indigenous Studies. In this capacity I enjoyed some very good years professionally. I took various positions on issues. Some of these issues concern matters on which Frances and I disagree. We have come to enjoy talking about some of these disagreements.

I did not take well to seeing Frances persecuted in February of 2023 or again on Feb. 4 or on April 25 of this year. Seeing her treatment reminded me of my own encounters with the zeal of some U of L administrators who were way too aggressive in declaring what matters could or could not be debated. Open Debate requires conscientious protection of the principles of academic freedom.

The failure to protect open debate via academic freedom robs students of some of the most valuable aspects of higher education. Moreover, in my view it demeans the heritage of the Native American Studies Department that I remember very fondly until a very intense and negative form of identity politics took hold of the unit in the early 2000s.

What follows below should help shed some light on the background of the process and the kind of supposed academic decisions that led to Frances being charged as a trespasser on the U of L campus on April 2025. She was arrested for the alleged crime of talking with students in the regular course of business in the Student Union’s cafeteria.

I myself have been taken aback to learn of the self-self righteousness of the superficial deliberations of some of the faculty members. They continue to paint a picture of Frances is hateful pariah. Because I respect and admire Frances’ insistence on following her own professional calling, some come to assume I must agree with her on everything. This way of thinking I noticed was strong in the Native Rights mob of students on Feb 4.

Apparently the same tendency of generalized thought is reflected in the assumptions of some of the students’ teachers.

I am suspicious that the document used to justify the arrest of Frances has some irregularities. I suspect the document originated much more recently than Feb. 4. No actual person has signed the document. It appears on the letter head of the document shown below, the document that comes from the “Office of the General Counsel.” The document proclaims without any signature that it has the backing of the U of L Board of Governors.

As Frances recalls it, she was not presented with any document on Feb 4 declaring her a trespasser. I spoke with her on the night of Feb 4 and she was very clear on that fact.

Obviously the power to declare who can or cannot be on the grounds of a public university needs to be treated with gravity, caution, and care. When and how did the Board of Governors meet on Feb 4 to pass judgment of Dr. Widdowson? What evidence did the Board Members use to make their decision?

Or was the sketchy document prepared just before April 25 to rectify the lack of a paper trial on this crucial matter. Is the Board once again failing to rise to its fiduciary responsibilities to act as the school’s genuine trustees by defending academic freedom?

Journalist Mocha Berzigan covered the arrest of Frances by the Lethbridge Police Service. As I write this essay I notice that the journalist’s You Tube clip of the arrest gathered about 1,650 comments. The vast majority of these comments are supportive of Frances and antagonistic towards the University of Lethbridge’s and the police department’s efforts to criminalize her. The comments on a number of other posts concerning the same matter demonstrate a similar pattern.

Without a doubt Frances has become an embodiment of an increasingly large and vocal jurisdiction that have arrived at the view that something has gone seriously wrong with university education in Canada. The controversies concerning Indian residential schools and genocide are not the only topics that are being relegated to negative forms of censorship accompanied by simplistic applications of the political correctness syndrome.

Compare and contrast the thinking in the general population with the thinking inside the woke preoccupations of many of the faculty members at the U of L, a school under the hold of the strong attachment to the Diversity, Inclusion and Equity movement as espoused especially by the U of L’s President, Prof. Digvir Jayas.

The statement below emanates from some members of the U of L’s Faculty Association. It seems the Faculty Association preoccupation is to strengthen the already radical woke positions of the DEI University administration. The statement on “Disinformation and Freedom of Expression” by members of the Gender Equity and Diversity Committee provides a good window into a least one facet of faculty thinking. The members of the Committee include Beth Gerwin, Arundhati Dasgupta, Cara Granzow, Lara Keffer-Wilkes and Aaron Taylor.

The Chair of the Committee is Patrick Wilson who I remember from my teaching days at the U of L as a senior member of the Anthropology Department. Dr. Wilson earned his Ph.D. at the University of Pittsburg.

The document below was developed by the Wilson Committee after the events of 4 Feb. in an effort to draw the line “disinformation and untruths with an intent to deceive.”

The two individuals Dr. Wilson and his colleagues refer to, are Dr. Widdowson and me, Anthony James Hall. Where is the evidentiary basis for Dr. Wilson and the Committee to back up their claim that Frances and I promote “disinformation and untruths with an intent to deceive”? Where is the backing for the Wilson Committee’s declaration that Frances and I are “intent on spreading disinformation based on prejudice and hate”?

Where is there any accountability for this kind of reckless and unsubstantiated language, supposedly representing a consensus of six colleagues seeking to justify a ruthless round of cancel culture. The declaration that Frances and I have an “intent” to deceive is especially inflammatory. Usually the most difficult requirement of those seeking to prove that genocide has taken place, is to prove “intent.”

As discussed below in a You Tube made by Frances, Dr. Wilson and Dr. Michelle Helstein have carried on an email exchange where the Anthropology Professor points accusatory language at the Kinesiology Professor, now chief academic officer of the U of L. One of the topics raised is the relationship between the Feb. 3 event and the Feb. 4 event. Dr. Wilson apparently finds is absurd that I gave a “lecture” on Feb 3.

As Provost Helstein indicated, I organized the Feb. 3 event following all the rules of creating the venue at the U of L and then carrying the events through as the sole presenter. For me the timing has to do with measuring ten years since the failed effort by the University Board of Governors to deplatform me.

That failure was played out in the Board’s loss at the Court of Queen’s Bench in 2017 and then in a badly flawed internal procedure largely kept secret from me. The main tactic was to locate the proceedings in Edmonton at the University of Alberta and then forbidding me to attend the secret proceedings.

I think it worth noting that I was not, and am not, a visitor on campus. Having retired in 2018 as a full professor in good standing at the University of Lethbridge, I am an Emeritus Professor. I intend to live up to the responsibilities of this lifelong title with my efforts to help save the increasingly tarnished reputation of our school. The U of L could be much better institution of higher learning than is presently the case.

I think the lack of this understanding as reflected in the dismissive and defamatory verdict of the Wilson Committee in judging both Frances and I, speaks to the poor quality of the research behind the Statement above.

Dr. Widdowson and her husband Albert attended the Feb. 3 event. They were among those who responded to my open invitation to attend my talk. I extended the invitation to members of the public from inside or outside the University.

The results of the content of the talk, took the form of a written transcript. I also made some last minute-alterations which I discussed extemporaneously as part of the talk. I have written a number of works all published in this Substack on the sequence of related issues now being given heightened focus with the trespassing charge against Frances.

On Feb. 3 both Albert and Frances engaged in the question and answer session. To my way of thinking, Frances demonstrated the fallacies of the loaded language regularly deployed against her by University of Lethbridge figures. They tend to portray Frances as a obsessed trouble maker who always seeks to disrupt any event she attends.

I know that this characterization of Frances does not do her justice. Frances is not shy and she tends not to back off when she believes herself to be wrongly accused or unfairly contradicted The U of L email of 4 Feb represented a classic illustration of one such superficial and gratuitous accusation.

Once the offensive email went out under the authority of U of L President, Dr. Digvir Jayas, faculty and staff were basically directed to militantly spurn Frances. It soon became clear where things were headed. Of course I was subjected to the same negative judgment and then the ruthless unrelenting condemnation for no other reason than displaying friendly civil interactions with Frances and her husband Albert.

Frances had a plan on Feb. 4 to lead some kind of modest ad hoc discussion in the public space of the Atrium near the main cafeteria at the U of L. I was prepared to discuss why I do view some residential school episodes in Canada as genocidal, especially after the UN formulated the Genocide Convention in 1948.

Things got out of hand because of a mounting onslaught of attacks on our foursome, including the spouses of Frances and me. There can be no denying that when the police were finally called in because things became too raunchy to be handled by University Security, the primary task of the police was to encircle us in order to prevent against incursions from the Native Rights mob.

These incursions were many. The unrelenting aggression are captured in many videos and independent narratives apart from my own eye-witness observations.

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Where was the equity? Where was the inclusiveness? Where was the diversity of ideas?

The clash over residential schools debate and ‘unsafe ideas’ is turning Canadian universities into ideological battlegrounds.

Premier Danielle SmithDanielle Smith via X.

Josh Andrus

Published on:

28 Apr 2026, 7:30 am

Josh Andrus is the Director of Operations at the Western Standard and a University of Lethbridge alumnus.

I don’t brag about where I got my university degree.

As a University of Lethbridge alumnus, the campus I remember was overrun by woke, left-wing activists who viewed the university as a laboratory for ideological capture.

Back then, I spent my days debating political science professors who were more dedicated to indoctrination than to fostering independent thought.

I was in the Dean’s office so often that I was on a first-name basis with the staff.

I briefly considered a major in political science before committing to a more challenging economics path — simply because I felt that the economics professors were the safest teachers to discuss fundamental theory without fear of conflict.

It seemed as if the bulk of my political science, sociology, and history professors were opposed to simple concepts like supply and demand, trickle-down economics, and self-identified as vessels of woke socialism that shut down any discussion that didn’t align with their narrow academic worldview.

When I returned in 2024 to give a seminar on the fiscal framework of Confederation (invited by the economics department), my audience was exclusively economists.

Not a single professor outside of that department showed up.

My experience at the University left me with the clear interpretation that the majority of the faculty had decided that coddling the radical “thought police” was more important than fostering independent thought and respectful debate.

Over the weekend, that rot reached its shameful, logical conclusion.

In a display of administrative cowardice that should chill every independent-minded Canadian to the bone, police officers entered the university cafeteria, seized Dr. Frances Widdowson, and physically dragged her into a waiting cruiser.

Her crime?

Showing up at a public institution that had preemptively banned her from the premises.

The University’s excuse for this is as flimsy as it is dangerous.

They claim Widdowson’s presence creates a “psychologically unsafe” environment and that her views — specifically her critique of the political consensus that residential schools are “genocidal” — are in conflict with the institution’s “values.”

They argue that her skepticism regarding unmarked gravesites at former residential schools is “harassment” that justifies a trespass notice.

But a university’s “values” should be centred on the pursuit of truth through rigorous, evidence-based inquiry.

With this pathetic spectacle, the University of Lethbridge has failed that basic test.

The administration’s panic stems from Widdowson’s refusal to follow the ideological script.

She is a scholar who has dared to question the ‘genocide’ narrative of the residential school system and demanded evidence for claims that the university treats as sacred dogma.

Whether you agree with her or not, her role is to challenge, to poke, and to provoke.

But at the modern University of Lethbridge, ‘provocation’ is now treated as a criminal offence, and “psychological safety” is used as a shield to protect students from ever having to hear a dissenting thought.

Premier Danielle Smith and Advanced Education Minister Myles McDougall need to start treating the University of Lethbridge like the failed project it has become.

If the University of Lethbridge wants to operate as a private, ideological safe space for woke radicals, they can do it on their own dime.

The Alberta government needs to send a message and cut the University of Lethbridge’s funding until the university cleans up its act and commits to a wholesale clearing of the administration offices that authorized this arrest.

This is an institution that has completely abandoned academic rigour in favour of compelled speech.

Enough is enough.

Josh Andrus is the Director of Operations at the Western Standard and a University of Lethbridge alumnus.

I came across the video below of Michelle Helstein discussing her administrative role at the University of Lethbridge. From my perspective the Provost evades in her sanitized and boring narrative any reference to many parts of her climb up the administrative ladder. Among her colleagues in this administrative rise are the now-retired Dean Craig Copper, Dr. Hosgood, Dr. Goldie Morgentaler, Dr. Eric Adams, Dr. Shelly Wismath and Amanda Hohmann. As Dr. Helstein is well aware I am sure, this whole episide has been well documented by Dr. Owen Holmes. His documentation constituted a significant part of my personal papers which the members of the Native Rights mob vandalized on 4 Feb.