Michael Higgins: Frances Widdowson sues Lethbridge university for $3M in defamation claim

Frances Widdowson speaks at a dinner awarding her the 2025 George Jonas Freedom Award from the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, in Toronto on June 12, 2025. Photo by National Post

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Frances Widdowson, professor, “academic provocateur” and an increasing terror to higher education administrators, is suing the University of Lethbridge for defamation claiming she was accused of spreading prejudice, hate, disinformation and lies. 

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Widdowson, who is claiming $3 million in damages, also alleges that she was defamed when the university sent out a notice that it would be holding a sacred smudging ceremony to “dissipate the negative atmosphere brought by this individual to our community.” 

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Characterizing Widdowson as a “source of ‘negativity’ and communal or spiritual contamination, personally ‘brought’ by her, so serious that the university community required a formal, public ceremony to ‘cleanse’ itself of it” is defamatory, says her statement of claim. 

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In an interview on Friday, Widdowson said if it had been an individual saying and doing these things about her, she would have dismissed it as someone engaging in “negative commentary.”

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But the university was using “the full weight of institutional power to try to intimidate people and try to stop people from discussing” important issues, she said. Universities should be “bulwarks against authoritarianism” not institutions clamping down on free speech, she said. 

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“I’ve already had massive discussions with my lawyers and the reason why we’re doing this is because we’re very concerned about how these kinds of accusations are resulting in chilling discussion,” said Widdowson. 

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“We believe that the university is an area that you should be able to pursue the evidence wherever it leads,” she added, but “these kinds of very, very damaging accusations” would make people reluctant to speak out. 

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The lawsuit was filed last month in Court of King’s Bench of Alberta and names as parties to the action the governors of the university; Digvir Jayas, the president of the university; Leroy Little Bear, vice-provost, Iniskim Indigenous relations; Patrick Wilson, chair of the gender, equity and diversity committee, among others. 

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The university has not yet filed a defence and a press inquiry sent Sunday asking for comment had not been answered as of publication time. 

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Widdowson, a former associate professor in the department of economics, justice and policy studies at Calgary’s Mount Royal University, has become a lightning rod for challenging the narrative that 215 children were secretly buried at the Kamloops Indian Residential School. She has argued the evidence at this time does not support such a conclusion. 

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Widdowson also contributed an essay to the book Grave Error about the subject. It was the authors of the book who called her an academic provocateur. 

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Widdowson’s legal complaint arises initially out of an incident on Feb. 4 when she was invited by a professor at the university to engage in a Spectrum Street Epistemology session on the claim “The Residential Schools Were Genocidal.” The lawsuit describes the sessions as involving a non-confrontational, “Socratic method” of engaging people in debate.