The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss - Frances Widdowson | The War on Science Interviews | Day 10

Episode Date: August 2, 2025

To celebrate the release on July 29th of The War on Science, we have recorded 20 podcast interviews with authors from the book. Starting on July 22nd, with Richard Dawkins, we will be releasing one interview per day. Interviewees in order, will be:Richard Dawkins July 23rdNiall Ferguson July 24thNicholas Christakis July 25thMaarten Boudry July 26thAbigail Thompson July 27thJohn Armstrong July 28thSally Satel – July 30Elizabeth Weiss – July 31Solveig Gold and Joshua Katz – August 1Frances Widdowson – August 2Carole Hooven – August 3Janice Fiamengo – August 4Geoff Horsman – August 5Alessandro Strumia – August 6Roger Cohen and Amy Wax – August 7Peter Boghossian – August 8Lauren Schwartz and Arthur Rousseau – August 9Alex Byrne and Moti Gorin – August 10Judith Suissa and Alice Sullivan – August 11Karleen Gribble – August 12Dorian Abbot – August 13The topics these authors discuss range over ideas including the ideological corruption of science, historical examples of the demise of academia, free speech in academia, social justice activism replacing scholarship in many disciplines, disruptions of science from mathematics to medicine, cancel culture, the harm caused by DEI bureaucracies at universities, distortions of biology, disingenous and dangerous distortions of the distinctions between gender and sex in medicine, and false premises impacting on gender affirming care for minors, to, finally, a set of principles universities should adopt to recover from the current internal culture war. The dialogues are blunt, and provocative, and point out the negative effects that the current war on science going on within universities is having on the progress of science and scholarship in the west. We are hoping that the essays penned by this remarkable group of scholars will help provoke discussion both within universities and the public at large about how to restore trust, excellence, merit, and most important sound science, free speech and free inquiry on university campuses. Many academics have buried their heads in the sand hoping this nonsense will go away. It hasn’t and we now need to become more vocal, and unified in combatting this modern attack on science and scholarship. The book was completed before the new external war on science being waged by the Trump administration began. Fighting this new effort to dismantle the scientific infrastructure of the country is important, and we don’t want to minimized that threat. But even if the new attacks can be successfully combatted in Congress, the Courts, and the ballot box, the longstanding internal issues we describe in the new book, and in the interviews we are releasing, will still need to be addressed to restore the rightful place of science and scholarship in the west. I am hoping that you will find the interviews enlightening and encourage you to look at the new book when it is released, and help become part of the effort to restore sound science and scholarship in academia. With no further ado, The War on Science interviews…As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project YouTube. Get full access to Critical Mass at lawrencekrauss.substack.com/subscribe

Hi, and welcome to the Origins Podcast. I'm your host Lawrence Krause. As many of you know, my new book, The War on Science, is appearing July 29th of this year in the United States and Canada. And to celebrate that, we've interviewed many of the authors of the 39 authors who have contributed to this volume, and we have 20 separate podcast interviews

that will be airing over the next 20 days, starting July 22nd, before and after the last. the book first appears with many of the authors in the book on a host of different subjects. The authors we will have interviews with in order of appearance over the next 20 days are Richard Dawkins, Neil Ferguson, Nicholas Christakis, Martin Boudre, Abigail Thompson, John Armstrong, Sally Sattel, Solveig Gold, and Joshua Katz, Francis Woodison, Carol Hoven, Janice Fiamengo, Jeff Horsman, Alessandro Strumia, Roger, Cohen and Amy Wax, Peter Bogosian, Lauren Schwartz and Arthur Rousseau, Alex

Byrne and Modi Goren, Judith Sisa, and Alice Sullivan, Carleen Gribble, and finally Dorian Abbott. The topics that will be discussed will range over the need for free speech and open inquiry and science and the need to preserve scientific integrity stressed by our first podcast interviewer Richard Dawkins and will once again go. over historical examples of how academia has been hijacked by ideology in the past and the negative consequences that have come from that to issues of how specific disciplines, including mathematics have been distorted and how certain departments at universities now specifically claim that they

are social activists and a degree in their field is a degree in either critical social justice or social activism, not a degree in a specific area of scholarship, how ideology has permeated universities. We'll proceed also to discuss issues in medicine. Sally Settel will talk about how social justice is hijacked medicine. And also, when it comes to issues of gender affirming care, we have a variety of authors who are going to speak about the issues there and how too often gender affirming care claims are made that are not based on empirical evidence. In fact, falsely discuss the literature in ways that are harmful to young people. We will talk to several people who, for one reason, another, have been cancelled for saying

things. Francis Whittleson at Mount Royal University in Canada and Carol Hoeven from Harvard, who eventually had to leave Harvard after saying on television that sex is binary in biology, we'll be talking to people who've looking at the impact of diversity, inclusion in academia and how it's restricting free inquiry and also restricting in many ways scientific merit at those universities. And finally, Dorian Abbott, the last contributor to our series, we'll be talking about three principles he believes are essential to separate science and politics and keep academia free from ideology and more for open questioning

and progress and to make sure that science is based on empirical evidence and where we go where the evidence is, whether it's convenient or not, whether it's politically correct or not, and we're willing to debate all ideas that nothing is sacred, a central feature of what science should be about and what in some sense this podcast is about. So I hope you really enjoy the next 20 days and we've enjoyed bringing it to you. So with no further ado, the war on science, the interviews. Okay, Francis Wooderson, it's great to have you here. Well, not, I was going to say metaphorically, because we're separated. You're over here virtually, but that's what's wonderful about the modern world. Science has allowed me to talk to you from far away, and it seems like you're in

the room with me. So thanks for coming on. It's really nice to have you here. Thanks for having me on. And this is, as you know, this is part of an effort. You're contributing to the book, The War on Science, and hoping to have as many people contributors from the book have a chance to talk about their contributions, which now, of course, I'd read because I've edited the book, and I want to talk about that. But this is an origin's podcast, and I do want to find out people's backgrounds.

I like to find out how people got to where they are before we even begin to talk about where you are. And since I haven't had a chance before to chat with you in the podcast, I wanted to take time to do that. you know, the key point is you're a political scientist who was actually fired from a tenured position of Mount Royal University for satirizing woke ideas. And that firing has already been demonstrated to be wrongful termination, although there's things still in the courts about that. And of course, you've had talks canceled, which we'll talk about in a second because remarkably to me, there's the section of the book in which your contribution appears is called cancel culture. And I was, I was pleased in a sense that are impressed is a better way of putting it, that you chose not to talk about your own case of real cancellation of being removed, but rather the title of your piece is called,

indigionization destroys academic values, the University of Lethbridge case, which is not your case of being terminated, but rather an example of getting in the way of academic freedom for students and faculty to listen to you talk. And we'll get there in a second. Your political scientist, what was the area of your study? What got you to Mount Royal in the first place?

It was Aboriginal policy. So that was my dissertation was on a critique of a study that was done in the 1990s called the Royal Commission on Aboriginal peoples, which was the beginning of the terrible dissent of studying Aboriginal policy into postmodernist relativist thinking, the idea that there are different conceptions of history

and different ways of knowing that was the origin of that approach and as well that Aboriginal and non-Averional people could live in parallel societies. It's actually called parallelism with each with their own laws

and ways and so on, not interfering with one another, and of course indigenous populations in Canada are completely dependent on the Canadian state. So it makes no sense to be making that argument with respect to Aboriginal people. And so I was critiquing the whole mindset behind saying that Aboriginal people should remain isolated in unviable areas of Canada. And one of the biggest problems, of course, is the educational deficits, which, exist in Aboriginal societies, which are romanticized as being a more spiritual way of thinking about the world than examining through things through scientific methods.

Okay. Now, how did, okay, so that was your decision. What led you there? I mean, what led you to be interested in political science and how did you take, how did you, what led you to that one might call a contrarian view of, of what was going on? Had you become, had you become I mean, were you always concerned, did you enter your studies, were concerned about what was going on at the time, or did that develop? I mean, what got you interested in political science in the first place? Let me ask you that. Yes, so I was at the University of Victoria kind of experimenting with different courses,

and I found political science, ironically, to be one of the most argumentative of the disciplines. So I enjoyed the discussions and debates that went on. And this was before political science was destroyed. And so it really appealed to me. And then I went to the Northwest Territories and worked for the government there. And there I met Albert Howard. And at the University of Victoria, it was somewhat woke at the time, which I define as totalitarian identity politics.

It had a little bit of that, but not, it wasn't a dominant thread. And I was somewhat sympathetic to that. And when I met Albert Howard, he was a very rational thinker and started to question me on my somewhat woke mindset. And I realized that it really was not a perspective that could be defended. And then I became very, very strident in my rationality. And we worked together and discovered what was called the Aboriginal industry in the North West Territories, which is a group of lawyers and consultants that siphon money away from Aboriginal communities.

And so we got together working on a manuscript on that. And then I thought it would be a good idea to go into the university system because that's where you can tell the truth. And you're encouraged to tell the truth. Or so you thought. So I thought, I was able to do it for, you know, 20 years. And then. Well, that's pretty good.

Yeah, it was pretty good. It was a pretty good. No, it was great. So that's what led you. I mean, I think what the interesting thing about your story there, that really fascinates me is, well, first of all, you wanted to go into, because that's where you should be able to tell the truth and have free discussion. But I think your experience is one of the real arguments for free speech. It's a beautiful example. The fact that you were confronted by someone who questioned your views and it caused you to change your views.

The whole point to free speech is not to have the real value of it is not for the speaker, but for the listener. And the fact that if you're not allowed to hear views with which you might disagree, you'll never have the opportunity to discover you might be wrong. And that will get to the heart of your own experience. But I think that's really fascinating that your own view was, you were confronted and rather than feel victimized, you thought about it and realized maybe your own views were wrong, which I think is a, which is really. one of the wonderful things about in my mind being a scientist. I love, love, it's wonderful when nature proves us wrong because we learned something. That's a great story. And then for 20 years, you were studying this. And what's interesting to me, though, then, is you already had established yourself as someone willing to confront conventional, quote unquote, wisdom with facts. And in,

especially when it came to an indigenous industry, as you might call it there, or whatever the word is. Aboriginal industry. So Mount Royal must have known, you were, you were at Mount Royal for 20 years? 13 years. 13 years. They knew, so the university therefore knew of your,

of your position. So things changed, obviously. It was a wonderful institution in 2008. We had great administrators. It was making a transition from a college to university and it was having to articulate why it should be a university, which made it very concerned about the academic character of the institution. And we had wonderful administrators.

Robin Fisher was the provost and Manuel Merton, who was the Dean of Arts, and they protected me from the poisoning, which could have happened at any time, but they protected me. And then they retired, and we got a new set of corporate managers. coming in. And as well, there was a change that was taking in the, taking place in the composition of the professors who were being hired. And it was just a matter of time before I was going to be pushed out of there because of the indigenization policy that came about in, starting in 2015. So that's when the university began.

to take a conscious approach to indigenizing Mount Royal, which had in the strategic plan, we must value and respect indigenous ways of knowing. And I fought hard against this. I just said this is going to go nowhere academic. It's going to be terrible.

And of course, I was not successful, but I was told that it didn't matter, because I had academic freedom and I would still be able to argue against these things in the university. But because of the equity, diversity, and inclusion ethos, in order to make prized indigionization assets, the most important being the person Gabriel Lindstrom, who is now goes by her maiden named Gabriel Weaselhead, because of her. That's true. Sorry, Grabeio Weaselhead. Okay.

Gabriel Weaselhead. He wanted me out of there and said she did not feel safe with me being there and actually left Mount Royal because she didn't feel safe because of me. And the way to make Gabriel Weaselhead feel safe is Francis Whittleson's got to go. And that's basically what happened in this story. Okay, well, that's another story which we'll talk about. as I say, nevertheless impressed

that the short, when I contact you, because I knew your story and I've written about it and let you, and, and promoted what's, what's the tragedy or travesty,

is probably a better word, but it's probably both that's gone on. But, but, when I invite you to write for the book, you chose to write about your experience at the University of Lethbridge, which is another fascinating example

of how, as you say, how indigionization, as you call it, destroys academic values, values. And you begin the piece with talking with something that happened on February 1st, 2023 when you stepped out of the elevator and the atrium at the University of Lethbridge. And I find it ironic. It's funny that later on, it's sort of, you almost buried the lead, it seemed for me, as someone who writes for newspapers sometimes. It's incredibly ironic.

Your talk for which the response was given was how wokeism threatens academic freedom. It's so ironic that that was the title of your talk. And when you walked out of the elevator, what happened? I was with Paul Veminitz and Albert Howard, and Paul Veminitz didn't think this was going to be a big deal. And I was pretty sure there's going to be some protests there. But we were quite amazed to see the whole area just filled to the rafters And literally because they had like a balcony, it was just full of people.

And I was just shocked. And I moved forward. And I sort of had a bit of an out-of-body experience. It was quite, it's the first time that's really happened to me that I've known, where I just kind of almost was looking at myself from outside. And I had no fear at all. I was completely at peace. And I went to the front.

I ran through all these people, stood at the front. And I got ready to give my speech. And then, of course, they were just determined not to allow me to speak. And there was all sorts of drumming and people dancing and all sorts of things. And I tried to move to another area of the university to give my talk. I was followed. I had a very good conversation with an Aboriginal man

for about 10 minutes and that was recorded by some media outlets and we actually made some headway in terms of having a discussion. Anyway, it's just filmed, you can see pictures of it. It's amazing because there were so

many people there and then security decided. I didn't feel I was threatening at all. It was very theatrical. But the security was worried because there were so many people. 700, it says in the article. That's a lot of people. And placards with slogans like racism

is not free speech. We're ubiquitous. And often, so you're accused of being racist. The argument that the title we talk about wokeism threatening academic freedom, the subject in principle related to the release, as it happened on my birthday at the time in 2021.

The famous press release by an indigenous group announcing that the remains of 215 children had been confirmed at the Cam Bluice Indian residential school, which galvanized the whole country. And I'm, this hit home to me because I moved to Canada four days later than that. And all I heard was the reaction of the country,

the first thing that happened. is I moved to Prince Edward Island and I discovered that a statue of Sir John A. McDonald, which was on a park bench in downtown Charlotton, was removed as a result of this sudden uproar. And so you, in spite of the fact, by the way, that there were no evidence of that claim, which I think was the content, part of the content of your talk. I don't know for sure. But that was what provoked people. I'm assuming that you're speaking out of on that had provoked, people knew you were going to talk about that? Well, I wasn't actually going to talk about that.

Specifically, I might have mentioned it as an example of, you know, how you're, it's demanded that you affirm the Aboriginal genocide survivor identity of which this is linked. And if you don't, that's the nature of wokeism is that you have to affirm the identities of repressed groups. And if you don't, you're going to be subjected to various forms of coercion. Yeah, I'll stay back and say that, you know, I, my wife reminds me this all the time. Wokism means a lot of things to a lot of people. And so it's hard to, I don't want to label things in a way that some people might not understand.

So the idea, whatever, whatever wokenism is, the idea that you have to, what is clear and I want to subject new is the idea that you have to affirm, before you can speak, you have to affirm certain sacred truth. almost religiously and those can never be questioned at the risk of heresy. And that's the concern. That's really the argument about academic freedom in some sense. But the talk was shut down, right? It didn't happen. Is that it? That's correct.

So, well, first of all, I was supposed to be giving a talk in a room. So a room had been booked by Paul Veminetz, who was a philosophy professor there. And the president said that although my, my views were abhorrent, he would have to allow me to speak because of their free speech policy. But then there was this huge groundswell of protests. And then he went back on it. He caved in, he caved on this and said that, that my talk would have to be canceled because of safety, psychological safety concerns. and then I said, well, I posted on Facebook, I said, to the University of Lethbridge, I will come and give my talk in this atrium.

You will have to haul me away with security to stop me. I posted this and then I went in. And then, of course, this little created a huge reaction. But if I hadn't made that announcement, It would have all just died and not have had the kind of attention that it deserved to get. And that's what I do now in every, in all these contexts, I go in anyway. And I do something on the campus. Yeah.

So you respond, you respond to the attempt to shut things down by, by, by, in a sense, making it more, in promoting the issue as an example of act of freedom. Exactly. almost provoking, well, almost, you know, baiting the people, if you wish. And that's okay. Yeah. That's like, I am in the right and they are in the wrong. I have nothing to apologize for. They, on the other hand, have a lot to apologize for because they are destroying their academic

institutions. And the point is, if I were to disagree with you, I'm not sure I do. But if I were, the point is we could have a discussion about it rather than, and that's the whole. whole point. You know, people might not think you're in the right. And that's fine. But the point, the way to find out what's right and wrong is to have a rational discussion

rather than not discussing the matter at all. And I think that's what we're trying to get at. Now, you, but the title of your piece is indigenous, indignization destroys academic values. And in the piece, you have a section, what are I indiginization and decolonization? So why don't you give a little, little discussion about that and why what the problems of those two terms. Yes. So they're linked, but they're distinct.

And of course, they're never really well defined in the literature. There's large, you know, rambling tracks about them. But from what I can tell, indigenousization is about including into the university, all aspects of the university, indigenous culture. So you can have relatively innocuous things, such as, you. you know, making sure you have Aboriginal artwork from the area. You can name buildings after important Aboriginal figures. And there's nothing wrong with this.

This is a, this is part of the whole, you know, making sure that the university reflects a wide variety of influences. The problem, of course, is when there's a demand for anti-scientific approaches to examining the universe. But it's, although it's terrible doing that because it lowers the standards of the university,

it's nothing compared to the problems of what's called decolonization, which is about taking out those aspects which are offensive to selected representatives of Aboriginal groups. So it's not all, people who are Aboriginal people, not all their views. It's a select,

uh, spokes, selected spokespeople. And they'll do things like, you can't teach Brave New World anymore because it has the word savage in it. And savage is a terrible word and it's very, very upsetting to indigenous people to have this concept of the savage in Brave New World. So we're going to take this out of the curriculum. We're going to take this out of the libraries. And there's a whole bunch of efforts to remove, you know, things which Aboriginal activists don't like, including certain intellectuals like myself,

who cannot, can no longer be allowed at the university because our presence, just being there, not even saying anything to an Aboriginal activist, just the fact you're there is something that makes them feel unsafe, that kind of thing. So decolonization being the idea of removing knowledge, removing information because it might be offensive. As if offense gives you special rights, which it doesn't. But you point out the Lethbridge in particular, I don't know if this is why you chose Lethbridge, since you are a provocateur.

It's clear. And I like that being somewhat of a provocateur in various occasions, in various places myself. I think it's a good way to get discussion going. You point out the University of Lethbridge in particular had a history of this, going back to the 1970s headed by an indigenous activist. Well, I'll quote this. In the case of the University of Lethbridge, indigionization began much earlier than in other universities with the development of its Native American Studies program.

In the 1970s, headed by an indigenous activist with a law degree, Leroy Little Bear. The department was formed on the basis of consultations with an indigenous communities. In 2011, Little Bear was asked by President Mahon to be involved in developing a strategy to increase indigenous participation in the institution. Recommendations stress the importance of incorporating traditional cultural features into indigenous educational experiences. So it has a long history of that. But I guess, Gather, you claim it got out of control. Yes, I think it's, I think we went from trying to make sure, that indigenous people were prepared for the academic environment,

which obviously you need to have various remedial things to enable this to occur. That was sort of the original, that was the approach to kind of giving up on the aboriginal population to some extent and saying that they really can't do it. They can't master the academic disciplines and the kinds of rigorous methods. So we're going to pretend that they have a science that is just the same as science. So you're going to have indigenous science, which is not science. Indigenous science is local knowledge and spiritual beliefs. But that's going to be their science.

and we're going to teach that kind of science in their courses and so on. So that means that indigenous people are going to be forever isolated from the progress, the intellectual progress, the tremendous intellectual progress that has been made over the course of humanity with special emphasis on the Enlightenment, the movement of the Enlightenment, which, you know, was a huge step forward for humanity. and instead of giving Aboriginal people access to that great advancement in methods and philosophy and so on, we're going to pat them on the head and tell them that they're smudging and all these things that are going on are just another kind of science that is just as valid as a scientific method. Besides being ridiculous on certain grounds, it's also one could say, and I don't like to use one,

word racism, but someone could say, one could say it's more racist to assume that indigenous people don't have the capability of dealing with the regular core curriculum and one has to create a special curriculum. In some sense, it's certainly patronizing at the very least, but it's some, it's, it's, if there is racism going on, one could argue that's the kind of racism that's going on, wouldn't you think? That's what I would argue. I think it's, I'm not sure who's said this, it might be Thomas Sol, the racism of low expectations.

Yes, yeah. And I think that's exactly what's going on. And as well as the more general attack on merit that is happening in the universities, which this is kind of a cloak for that, is that it's a lot easier to be

an ally of a supposed ally of the Aboriginal activists than it is to do serious academic work that, you know, is to a high standard within the universities. Well, in response, as this continued to go on, the Department of Indigenous Studies put out a department statement on the first lecture we're going to give. And it castigated you, quote, anti-indigenous rhetoric. And it referred to the Lethrid's territorial acknowledgement to try and delegiton as your visit.

And this quote is pretty interesting. So we honor the Blackfoot, the university's acknowledgement says we honor the Blackfoot people and their traditional ways of knowing in caring for the land. And so the Indigenous Studies Department argued that, quote, this honoring must include a commitment from all faculty.

This is the doctrinaire, the standard sort of requirement be it from Mao or in the USSR or wherever. The honoring must include a commitment from all faculty to ensure that indigenous histories, cultures, memories, and lives past and present are represented faithfully, truthfully, and safely on campus. It must be a commitment from all faculty

to vigorously reject ideologies which continue to propagate violence against indigenous peoples through the rhetoric of historical erasure, dismissal, diminishment, and dehumanization. such as espoused by Dr. Whitteson, which one would point out that claim against you is made without any empirical evidence about you're saying. The claim is that you do this.

But one would look, I think, in such a statement saying, examples of this are, and I didn't see those examples. Well, they did give two examples of this. Uh-huh. And this is that I deny that the residential schools were genocidal. And guilty is charged. I do. And I deny the veracity of the unmarked grades.

So, and this is a very important question in Canada right now, which I am currently involved in a major way, is that I do not deny the veracity of the unmarked graves. There are many unmarked graves across. the country in abandoned cemeteries. These are graves that used to be marked, but the crosses have deteriorated. What I deny is the veracity of the claim about clandestine burials for which there is no evidence, and this is especially the case with respect to the Kamloops Indian Residential School, which is my area of expertise. And it is highly improbable that there are clandestine burials.

at Kamloops because not one parent has said that their child never came home from the Kamloops Indian residential school and therefore if there are 200 clandestine burials there who are the children that are buried there. That's a great question which I never see asked and the interesting thing is this shocked me I guess and continues to shock me and when I talk to people in Canada which never mentioned the media or rarely, if it's ever been mentioned, it's still shocking. If you ask most

Canadians, I think the assumption is that there are 215 unmarked graves. As far as I know, there's not a single empirical example. There's no one, there's no unmarked grave that's been actually demonstrated to exist. That's still true, right?

And I have clandestine burial. Yeah, no clandicide. And no, in that 215, in the 215 at the family school. And they know, and it's not that the, the amusing thing is that it's even been admitted by the band in their, by their GPR supposed expert, that it's not 215. If it is anything, it's 200. Because when the supposed GPR expert submitted her report for review, the Simon Fraser Archaeology Department, which is under a gag order now, from the band, said that they had done excavations in a particular area that she had surveyed.

And the 15 of those anomalies or targets of interest were shovel test pits that were done by the archaeology department, which raises the question, if she was, if she was, if she was wrong on the 15, how come she couldn't also be wrong on the other 200, which are likely to be said. septic tiles that were laid in an east-west orientation in the old apple orchard. I mean, that's the point. Not a single one of those graves have been exhumed to show to be a grave. It's still, there's no evidence that any of those things are graves. And I think if you ask Canadians, on the whole, if that were the case, I suspect if I went to 100 Canadians, I wouldn't find any who recognized the fact that at this point, after all these time and changing national policies,

Not to say residential schools didn't have a huge problems, but this specific claim has no, at this point, no empirical basis as a scientist, no empirical basis whatsoever. And one of the big- And they got $12.1 million to excavate and they have not done the excavations. Yeah, so no one's done the, it's better not to know the answer than to, and to assume than to know the answer and might be wrong. That's often the way when ideology conflicts with science. One of the people who complained the most was a woman in gender studies professor Carleton Hodes who complained in emails, but actually wrote an article about it in a journal named feminist asylum, arguing you should not be granted space because of the fact

that you're known to distort the facts, quote unquote. But you created a psychologically unsafe environment. One of the arguments is that if you say something, if you say something, a people, are offended by it's psychologically unsafe and no students should ever be presented with something that would that would upset them as if that's I mean in fact the purpose of universities is to is to upset people in some sense and their and their notions and the claim is that residential school denial is genocidal denial and this is a violation of indigenous rights this is not a form of speech protected by Alberta Human Rights Act or academic freedom

is understood by a collective agreement. Both Dr. Witteson and another doctor, Biminitz, are engaging in forms of hate speech. The university itself may not have invited this speaker, but the university is responsible under the Occupation Health and Safety Act to provide environment free of psychological hazards. And I may not need to remind you that many students that's faculty at the University of Lettridge

are residential school survivors, whether through direct experience or into general, intergenerational trauma. So they're survivors because maybe an ancient back ancestor might have been there. So they're definitely survivors. This is a betrayal of the University of Lethbridge's commitment to a digitalization and reconciliation and this event should be canceled and disciplinary action taken place. But I think the key point is that then that this went further because of a problem that one of the reasons that this is this example is kind of interesting to go through is it's characteristic of many of the attacks on free speech and academic freedom at universities

as you point out at lethbridge this not only became not only where it's from faculty and students opposed but the university of lethbridge then hired activists as administrators which is another example you want to go you want to go these you want to go into the example of administration of activists who hired administrators. There's a vice provost position of inixim, indigenous relations. And you want to elaborate on that a little bit? Yes.

So this is Leroy Little Bear. And also, yeah, and a bunch of other people. And also, they had this MasterCard program. Yes. They hired a bunch of community activists to be administrator. So if you look at the organizational chart of the University of Left, it is very top-heavy in terms of all these administrators that are there to,

supposedly, originally it was to help indigenous people, you know, sort of become situated in the university environment and to make sure that they had all the supports that they needed and so on. But, you know, what we're seeing now is the tail wagging, the dog of the University of Lafridge, which is activists, like is just activists all over the place. And in the court, because I'm suing the University of Lethbridge with a student, Jonah Pickle. And as part of our lawsuit, we got production from the University of Lafrage, which provided 250 pages of emails from all of these activists and all of these professors. And it really is quite a sight to behold with their, you know, basically saying that anything that is upsetting to,

Aboriginal students or community members is not able to exist at the University of Leithbridge. So the whole university has been gutted by the academic side, has been gutted by all these activists. And, you know, it's been going on. I think it's much, much worse of the University of Lethbridge than many other universities because of the long history of it really being the indigenous types of programs being activist in their orientation. and the prominence of Leroy Little Bear, who I have been following his career for decades, because he has some of the most irrational views that I have ever heard spoken at the university. And he's celebrated, and I saw him give a talk at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences in 2016,

about how the enlightenment is almost, you know, is kind of a terrible move forward because it doesn't accept indigenous spirituality and this has to be brought into the university. It's, people can watch it. I saw this at the time. I was there in the audience and I was absolutely shocked that this kind of talk was happening at an academic type of conference. But the most surprising thing was everyone at the end of it got up and gave him a standing ovation after he'd finished this absolute nonsense. It was just nonsense from the beginning to the end.

But because he was an Aboriginal person, everyone thought that, you know, he should be celebrated just because he was Aboriginal. And it was just, it was absolutely embarrassing. Okay. And they, so there's people like activists who are administrators, which is one generic problem that you point out. And I think it's generic to a lot of the examples that we see in the book too. And we see an experience around the country. The other one, which I see so common, and this is a good example of it, is that senior administrators at all levels don't have the backbone to stand up for academic freedom. And that happens at all levels in the states from, you know, the heads of national institutions of health and other past ones that.

and presidents of university left, right and center. But in this particular case, it's just so manifest. You point out that President Mahon, who'd built his career, you claimed, on Panderington, but whether that's true or not, I don't, that may be true or not, but you point out his most cringeworthy moment occurred after he received a number of messages from activists demanding that the talk be canceled. In response, he told fellow administrators that this, it seemed heartless. This is the statement that is remarkable.

for a university administrator to say, heartless to quote, balance freedom of speech and respecting and supporting our indigenous bicarb communities. It's incompatible to balance free speech with respect for those communities. For university administrators say that that it's impossible respect, free speech, and respecting communities is just, it's absurd. It's an an anathema to what academic freedom and what scholarship is all about. And he then further said, thanked him for giving him a safe space in which to express his sorrow about the incompatibility between free speech and the indigenous communities. And he congratulated the mob that shut down your speech for, quote, unquote, conducting themselves in such a peaceful and powerful manner. That's the kind of nonsense that

university administrators, that's the problem, part of the problem of dealing with the culture, Part of the reason this book is being published is that is to kind of attack an internal culture that needs to be changed. And part of it, while there are many faculty, of course, who haven't bought into that, the real problem is when the university administrators don't have the backbone, even if they in their hearts believe in academic freedom, don't have the background to support it for fear of alienating activists, that's part of the problem. And we need to address that. But I think I want to get near the conclusion of this by you were attacked, really, by people who argued that two empirical statements you make are wrong. A sociologist, as someone at the university, sociologists at the university argued, again, without evidence that I know of, at least in the statement, Dr. Whittison's work is not evidence-based, rather it is based on ideologies that erase, diminish, and dismiss and diminish the magician people. There was a position of anthropologist Patrick Wilson who stated that, quote, people who put forward the kinds of positions of the invited speakers are not capable of intellectual engagement because they do not work in an evidence-based world.

Therefore, these kinds of talks do also not contribute to vigorous debate around ideas, Rather, they are disinformation campaigns. So the argument, what was omitted by these professors was an academic discussion of what aspects of your work were actually not evidence-based when it seemed to me the whole point, the two arguments that were given against you are two claims you made, which could be right or wrong, but could be discussed based on evidence. And those two claims are, were the residential schools genocidal and was, and are the unmarked graves, unmarked graves. Those are two statements which are empirically verifiable or falsifiable.

And you were arguing that maybe unpopularly that neither was true. But an academic discussion based on empiricism could try and, you know, a thorough and vigorous debate on those two questions could be carried out, which I think you were arguing, but rather it was argued that it was impossible to have an empirical debate about those particular issues. One of the, one of you explain why you don't think the residential schools were genocidal. So this is because the definition of genocide, it's about the definition of genocide. Yeah. So what they now, what the Truth and Reconciliation Commission said is that they were culturally genocidal, which is similist.

That's assimilation. That's not the recognized definition of genocide. The recognized definition of genocide is the UN's convention, which is intent to destroy an ethnic group, like a group that has some immutable characteristics. So it can't just be destroying a political enemy of some kind or something like. that. Anyway, there's five criteria that are put forward and they are, you know, mass killing and transfer, forcible transfer and so on. And it is quite, it seems to me clear from the

historical record that the government was not trying to destroy Aboriginal people. It was trying to incorporate them into Canadian, the Canadian economy and society. And certainly, it did this in quite insensitive and often harsh ways but it was it did not have the intent to destroy it was trying

to basically make indigenous people Canadians just like everyone else and what's happened is people are sort of seeing Aboriginal people as their culture is almost biologically rooted

in this view. So if you try to, for example, teach Aboriginal people about the scientific method and that their animistic beliefs are wrongheaded, you are actually engaged in a genocidal action because their spirituality is tied to their genetic characteristics.

So I think that there's a huge misunderstanding of the nature of indigenous culture, which is rooted in the hunting and gathering mode of production. And if you would like Aboriginal people to participate in modern society, you're going to have to some extent transform a number of the less developed cultural characteristics. One could say on the other hand, that hunting and gathering is very scientific if you want to do it after. If you want to survive, you have to learn what you can hunt and what you can gather. and so those things can be celebrated as empirical in their own right.

But not systematically, the way in which they are understanding is systematic. But you do quote, you say, so to confront the claims that you're, that you're not empirical and that you don't have intellectual arguments, you quote, you say one of the most significant historians of resident schools, J.R. Miller, his claim that there were not genocidal because attempts to assimilate, which the government was clearly doing, was not actually, is contrary to planned extermination. So there's a difference. And one can have that debate and disagree with you, but you can't have the debate if you

don't have the debate. The other one, I think we've already talked about that you're, that you're actually, when it comes to the graves, you're actually asking and promoting empirical evidence rather than claims that are not empirical. You say, as I've documented extensively based on the research of Nina Green, there's no evidence of clandestine burials. And that's a claim again, which one could argue with, but in no sense is this sort of anti-intellectual or anti-empirical or so anti-scholarly that one cannot even consider having such a discussion at universities. So those are the two claims in which, you know, which are the basis of why you were excluded. and and I think okay so I hopefully our discussion has provoked people enough and we may just they may disagree with you or me on this fine but that's the situation that's happened you were not allowed to speak because you were so heretical and many people may totally disagree with what you say but but again you weren't you didn't have the right to say it apparently but what I think is important is is the end of your piece in the book and what's really important

is what needs to be done? And there are three things that I think you talk, and I want to give you a chance to mention, to discuss each three. The first is institutional neutrality, which is something that the University of Chicago's Calvin Report emphasized. Why don't you talk about why that's important? Because the university should not have positions,

the university is a forum, is there to provide a forum for the different positions, to come together and discuss why something should be valued or whether it's true or not. And if the university takes a position, it's giving a signal to its faculty and students that this is the right way to think about something. And that's not the university's role. So I think the universities have really lost their way because, you know, you hear presidents say things like, you know, this is the right way to think about something or I'm just trying to remember the exact wording

but I do remember being in a meeting where the president made a declaration that this is how we should be thinking about this and I was just going that president does not know what a university is all about and this is a terrible thing that they're doing so that's why that is so dangerous

because it shuts down debate prematurely when all questions are open, you know, and things that we thought were correct, you know, last week might have been wrongheaded and we have to now have another debate to decide whether we should change course. Exactly. That's what academic. That's what science and scholarship are about as finding out that you're wrong sometimes. By allowing vigorous debate on both sides and all ideas to be attacked.

So institutional neutrality says, the university doesn't have a position. It is, its position is academic freedom and scholarship, but there's no position on specific issues a priori, no sacred issues that cannot be questioned. You already just said, in the sense,

by hearing that president, the issue number two that needs to be changed is governance. The universities have a brand now and are so involved with sometimes, administrators are more worried about public profile and raising funds than whether they're more interested in that because that's their job than predicting academic freedom. Do you want to have any – I mean, I've paraphrased your argument. Do you want to add to that at all? I think one thing which would be very effective, because universities have become corporations that sell products, and this is really destructive to the academic.

mission, one thing which has worked well in various contexts is getting the faculty to elect the administrators. So it's a way of changing governance. Now administrators are appointed by governments generally and often don't have any knowledge at all about universities. They're there as some kind of political appointee. Or they're appointed by a board of a board of trustees. in private institutions which I'm more familiar with in the States, but again, may not indeed be in touch with

the university. But here's a problem. The item number three that you talk about the change, I have problems with election of administrators by faculty in some sense.

I think the faculty need, look, the faculty need to run the university regardless of who the president is. The faculty are the ones who are doing the work of education and research. And ultimately need to be the ones who are effectively running the university. The president is an individual who can help logistically make that happen,

the best person who can help move that policy forward. But the third aspect of the problem that you need to be changed points out that the culture of the university itself is problematic. So right now, for example, if you had the University of Lethbridge faculty making a vote, they probably would not vote for someone to protect academic freedom. So you need the faculty to support academic values. And we're seeing because of a history of one, as you pointed on the University of Leithbridge, a concerted history, we have a faculty there, I'm assuming.

And I don't know this from first experience. So I could be wrong about Lethbridge. Your claims may be wrong, but maybe not wrong. But if you have a faculty that is more interested in ideology than scholarship, what can we do? Well, the first thing I'm doing now, which is having quite a important effect, is you try and break the cell censorship. And you break the self-censorship through Spectrum Street Epistemology, doing Spectrum Street Epistemology. And that has been very useful because with the cancellation, which are happening, because that's happened now at the University of Regina, too.

I was cancelled. So I said, I'm coming in. So I came in with a videographer and the spectrums due to epistemology mats and had an incredible discussion with a bunch of brainwashed students and their horrible professor about academic freedom and the residential schools and so on. And I'm doing that at the University of Ottawa. I'm going to talk about trans activism. Can people be born trans?

And we're going in with the mats and we are going to break the self-censorship on the trans activism file that exists at many universities. So that's one way to do it is to stop the self-censorship because that's probably one of the biggest problems is that most professors don't really say what they think.

It's true. The point is that most professors, professors, and it's not as if what the claim that somehow universities are polluted with faculty who are ideologically based is not necessarily true. There are a few activists, but most faculty just want to go ahead and do their work, keep their head below the radar and don't want to say anything for fear of being noticed or having their funds removed. And so most faculty are actually interested in scholarship and just don't want to be bothered. And by self-censoring to make sure that they don't get in the way, that as you say, helps, helps, uh,

further the problem. And it's nice to have, so one way I guess is what you're doing is to try to promote these discussions. And it is really important. But it's one of the purposes of the book that I asked you to include a chapter. And one of the reasons this book is being produced

is that these are all fat people who are internal to the system who are speaking out because it's important for faculty. It's not being condemned by external people saying, or leftist or universities are Marxist or universities or that. These are faculty who are concerned and willing to speak out and encourage our colleagues to

speak out because only when the faculty ultimately speak out. And that's the point. When the faculty speak out, things will change. And when the faculty say enough is enough, things will change. And I'm hoping it's happening slowly or not. But things like what you're doing and hopefully what we're doing with the book will have that effect. And I want to give you the last word by reading.

the last paragraph of your contribution to the piece. No one is denying that indigenous peoples have suffered terribly and have endured a litany of abuses. But recognizing this circumstance does not mean that the residential schools were genocidal or that 215 children have been buried clandestinely in the apple orchard at KIRS. Indigenous people deserve the truth, just like everyone else. But the actions undertaken at the University of Lethbridge have prevented an accurate historical assessment from emerging. This not only destroys the academic values the institution, it also deprives us of the common understanding needed for actual reconciliation. By forbidding free speech and free inquiry, we are deprived of the ability to learn the truth.

And that's what science is all about, and that's why we have to keep promoting it. And I encourage you to do that, and it's one of the reasons why I'm happy this piece is in the book. So thank you very much for being on. on the podcast and for your contribution. It's a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you very much. My pleasure. Hi, it's Lawrence again.

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