Frances Widdowson is a residential school denialist, Anti BLM, and trans rights critic who was fired Mount Royal University for her controversial ideology. Her 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 student's well-being and safety.

Although this was not organized by the University itself, the University should be focussed on Truth and Reconciliation. The reality is, that racist and harmful ideologies are coming on campus; silence is complicity. This is an act of violence upon its BIPOC, LGBTQIA2S+, and especially Indigenous students by allowing space for these ideolgies to traumatize students in a space that is supposed to be safe and educating. 

Freedom of speech is vital to the functioning of higher education, but Frances Widdowson's ideology of "anti-wokeism" is not only based on historical falsities and racist bigotry, but student-well being and safety is more important than any guest speaker's message.  Anti-wokeism is a fallacious ideology because things like critical race theory and Indigenous teachings are just as much a part of academic freedom and freedom of speech, but is labelled as "wokeism" by scholars such as Widdowson.

Thank you for taking your time to support preventing harmful ideologies from permeating a place of higher education and the prevention of retraumatization of Indigenous students.