Everyone knows what shunning and banning mean but many may never have heard of the closely related practice called “deplatforming.” It is used to describe attempts to prevent people from openly sharing or promoting information or ideas deemed unacceptable, by removing them from platforms like speaking venues or websites. .Deplatforming has been around for ages but has accelerated in recent years, especially at universities and on the internet. Up to the 1960s, deplatforming was used to block communists from promoting their ideology. Since then, deplatforming has disproportionately targeted those questioning unscientific “woke” beliefs about sexuality, abortion, gender, marriage, race, and crime..Recent deplatforming in Canada has ranged from the unprecedented banking punishments against the Canadian trucker convoy and its supporters to, the cancellation of university lectures by controversial speakers.. Frog MRU .All Canadians should be concerned about the preservation of our constitutionally protected “freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication” in an age of increasing social and political polarization. Meanwhile, universities are subverting their most fundamental right, namely academic freedom..Traditionally, universities were the one place where the free and open debate of contentious issues was ensured. Not anymore. Recent examples of right-leaning pundits being protested, even forcibly removed from Canadian campuses, are troubling. A university’s removing or banning someone for saying something people disagree with does not evoke the spirit of dialogue that universities are meant to encourage. In fact, it counters the very foundational premise they are built on: The unfettered search for truth..A university that deplatforms speakers due to their controversial ideas would certainly be violating traditional definitions of academic freedom. If an invited speaker, for example, has academic and professional credentials, and their work has gone through various peer-review processes, they have earned their right to express truths as they see them.. In Canada, most recent victims of deplatforming have been those questioning establishment views on indigenous issues, particularly the history, operation, and legacy of the Indian Residential Schools..A scheduled February 1, 2023 lecture at the University of Lethbridge (U of L) by highly published but controversial scholar Dr. Frances Widdowson dismissed in December 2021 from her tenured position at Calgary’s Mount Royal University [MRU] saw a late politically-motivated cancelation by its central administration on January 30 after she had already arrived in Lethbridge..Dr. Widdowson is a controversial academic only because of her refusal to conform to the mainstream view that Canada’s Indian Residential Schools were genocidal houses of horror. The reached the conclusion that the boarding schools and their staff were unfairly maligned after careful research that has been widely reported..Beginning last weekend, hundreds of people signed two different digital petitions, one created by “Concerned Students” at Lethbridge University on Change.org, seeking to cancel Dr. Widdowson’s lecture. Currently with more than 1,800 signatures, it said:."Francis Widdowson is a residential school denialist, Anti BLM, and trans rights critic [whose] presence on campus not only denigrates the status of the University by giving space to a speaker who promotes historical falsities and racial bigotry, but endangers students’ well-being and safety.".More than anything else, these unsubstantiated claims highlight the childishly fragile egos among today’s hyper-privileged university students..The other petition, also on Change.org with over 1,100 signatures, was put together by U of L Indigenous Student Representative Nathan Crow. Again, it underscores the real or feigned mental fragility of the moral do-gooders involved:.The atrocities that occurred within the Indian Residential School system are 100% accurate and true, and 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. This issue not only affects the many survivors that attended the IRS, but it also affects the children and grandchildren of these survivors who are dealing with the impacts of intergenerational trauma, like myself and many other students who attend our university..The petitions attracted the attention of U of L President Dr. Mike Mahon who issued the following statement:.The University of Lethbridge has become aware of a guest speaker, invited by one of our faculty members, whose views are in conflict with a number of the values held by the University — including the University’s stated commitment to the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission [TRC] of Canada…. It is encouraging that … the vast majority of our community finds these views abhorrent.”.Mahon also noted that The University of Lethbridge’s “mandate affirms its commitment to protect free inquiry and scholarship, facilitate access to scholarly resources, and support artistic expression and free and open scholarly discussion of issues” and that debate or deliberation on campus “may not be suppressed because the ideas put forward are thought by some, or even more, to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or misguided.”.This equivocal virtue-signaling reply that joins the university at the hip to the deeply flawed, incomplete, and biased TRC Report, a clear abdication of the impartial search for truth, nevertheless still speaks to academic freedom and constitutionally protected speech. This did not satisfy the U of L’s indigenous studies department which quickly issued a statement full of distortions and unsubstantiated assertions that genocide took place at the schools and that unmarked graves of missing indigenous children have been found at the sites of multiple former IRS sites..“Genocide” is a fabricated charge because Canada’s IRSs exhibit not a single element of Article II of the United National genocide convention. Not only is there the absence of a single verified case of a child murdered by a staff member at any of the boarding schools, there are no proven “unmarked graves” outside those in known indigenous graveyards..Moreover, contrary to the department’s assertion, most of the 150,000 estimated indigenous children who attended these schools were sent there voluntarily by their parents. Many of these boarding schools also worked hard to protect and preserve the identities, cultures, and languages of their students..A protest organized by the U of L Student Action Assembly was scheduled to be held outside the venue where Dr. Widdowson’s address was supposed to take place, presumably a factor contributing to the cancelation of her talk..According to the Western Standard, U of L President Mike Mahon said the university would be stopping Widdowson from speaking “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.”.In a Facebook post, Dr. Widdowson replied: “To the University of Lethbridge: I WILL be speaking at The Atrium at 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, February 1, 2023. The title of my talk is "How 'Woke-ism' Threatens Academic Freedom". You will have to haul me away by security to stop me.”.The treatment of Widdowson and a legion of other deplatformed university speakers in recent years suggests that Canada’s universities are now islands of speech oppression in a sea of communication freedom..Hymie Rubenstein is editor of The REAL Indigenous Issues Newsletter and a retired professor of anthropology at the University of Manitoba.
