An arbitrator has ruled that Calgary’s Mount Royal University (MRU) acted in a “disproportionate” manner in late 2021 in its firing of tenured professor Frances Widdowson.
Widdowson joined MRU in 2008 and was granted tenure – a virtual lifetime appointment – in 2011. She taught courses in political science and policy studies, with a specialization in Indigenous peoples’ policy and Indigenous affairs.
While the decision was delivered in July, it has only now been revealed.
Dr. Widdowson, an outspoken critic of the politically charged but theoretically simplistic notions of the academic culture wars at Mount Royal and elsewhere, expressed nearly exclusively on her Woke Academy website and social media, was fired just before Christmas 2021 during what arbitrator D.P. Jones called a “Twitter War” between her and a few activist colleagues opposed to her views.
The hearing took 30 days spread over 10 months as 25 witnesses gave evidence. It included thousands of pages of exhibits, focusing on complaints of harassment filed by Widdowson’s colleagues, countered by Widdowson’s claims that she was the one who was being harassed.
The main findings of the hearings were on the appropriateness and fairness of the procedures used to dismiss her, not on the reasons given for her dismissal.
The latter concerned September 2020 comments from Widdowson that far from constituting genocide, aboriginal children gained educational benefits by attending Canada’s Indian Residential Schools, an outrageously scandalous opinion at ultra-woke MRU.
Widdowson was also excoriated for arguing that the Black Lives Matter movement had “destroyed” the culture at MRU, resulting in a petition to have her fired which garnered over 6,000 signatures. (She now says the statement about BLM was intended to be hyperbolic.)
Her position on both issues would certainly have been considered heretical at MRU, a former community college where extreme pro-indigenous, anti-colonial, anti-white privilege perspectives have long ruled.
Widdowson was also in the headlines last year when a faculty member invited her to speak at the University of Lethbridge, spurring a student protest which successfully blocked her attempts to speak in an open and approved forum.
Following her dismissal, Widdowson filed 10 grievances, eight on procedural grounds and two on substantive ones. In his nearly 300-page decision, Jones threw out the grievances involving the procedures employed by the university in its dealings with Widdowson.
On the matter of discipline, Jones found that while Widdowson’s behaviour was “just cause” for discipline, her firing was “disproportionate” to that behaviour.
“A number of the 12 factors enumerated in the December 20, 2021 dismissal letter are inaccurate, or have not been proved in the arbitration hearing, or are not worthy to be considered in a university that values academic freedom,” Jones wrote.
Accordingly, the eight procedural grievances were dismissed by Jones. On one of Widdowson’s substantive grievances, Jones ruled that a two-week suspension was disproportionate and therefore ruled that a letter of reprimand be substituted in place of the suspension.
When it came to Widdowson’s firing, Jones wrote that there was just cause for discipline based on Widdowson’s conduct, but that dismissal was not an appropriate penalty.
However, Jones said that Widdowson’s continued employment with the university would not be viable for several reasons, including Widdowson’s ongoing hostility toward the university and colleagues, witness testimony that stated her return to the university would be disruptive, and her “persistence” throughout the arbitration hearing that several tweets investigated did not constitute harassment.
Instead, the arbitrator suggested, “In my judgment, this is an appropriate case in which to substitute a monetary payment rather than reinstatement with lesser penalties.”
In an interview with CBC News on Friday, October 4, Widdowson said she’s pleased with the arbitrator’s ruling that she was wrongfully terminated but that she continues to be upset about how the arbitration approached the issue of harassment.
“People continue to think that I engaged in harassment, which I did not. I’ve done extensive analysis of the different findings which were put forward by the different investigators,” she said.
“There were four different investigators hired by MRU, and these investigators all had different, contradictory findings. What we need from the decision is for there to be a neutral person who makes findings of facts about this.”
“There’s no reason why I shouldn’t be reinstated,” she said during a phone interview with the Epoch Times.
“The people who don’t want me to return to MRU, I don’t work with those people.”
She doesn’t “work with those people” because she shares nothing with them intellectually. The apparent irony is that Widdowson is an old-school leftist, a classical Marxist whose views on inequality focus on inter-class conflict having little to do with racial, ethnic, sexual, or gender identity, the preoccupation of contemporary identity politics, also known as wokeism.
Traditional Marxists and disciples of wokeism are both on the left, often the hard left. But they support incompatible paradigms about the causes and consequences of social and economic inequality, hence their mutual loathing.
Widdowson said she is appealing the decision so she can regain her tenured faculty position though it seems likely she will end up accepting a huge payout instead.
The arbitration report notes that the conflicts on Twitter (now called X), occurred over a four-year period.
“In a series of events from 2016 through 2019, Dr. Widdowson alerted officials at the University that she was being mocked on Twitter,” with the conflict between Widdowson and other faculty increasing into a “Twitter War” in summer 2020.
In his ruling, Jones found that although Widdowson has “controversial views on a number of topics … there has never been a complaint about the quality or ethics of her scholarship; she has never received performance management counselling for either her teaching or scholarship; and the University has supported and recognized her scholarly activities.”
Mount Royal officials said, “While the formal process continues, we will have no further comment.”
Hymie Rubenstein is editor of REAL Indigenous Report, a retired professor of anthropology, and a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
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