On October 23, 2025, an event is going to be held at Wilfrid Laurier University that features a discussion of contrasting viewpoints between Mia Hughes (a journalist critical of trans activism) and Morgane Oger (a trans activist).
Watching this event and its aftermath will be very interesting for Frances Widdowson, who saw her academic environment poisoned six years ago after a similar event, and a number of other controversies, eventually resulted in her being mobbed and pushed out of Mount Royal University.
The similar event was one that Widdowson organized for the Rational Space Network on the question of “Does Trans Activism Negatively Impact Women’s Rights?”
The next event was the cancellation of Armin Navabi’s talk on “The Case Against Islamic Reform”. Because of the cancellation, Widdowson and two of her Rational Space Network’s colleagues, Paul Johnston and Peter Zizler, tried to unsuccessfully rebook the talk. Widdowson and a number of other colleagues then wrote a letter to MRU administration complaining about the talk being cancelled. This resulted in the administration “expressing regret” for the cancellation. Thirty faculty members then sent a letter to administration criticizing it for expressing such regret. Although almost all of the names of these faculty members have not been revealed, the one professor who admitted to signing the letter is Scott Murray (who is currently the Chair of the Department of Humanities). Documents for this controversy are available in Episode 13: Disrespectful Criticism of Islam Will Not Be Tolerated.
The next incident that happened concerned MRU contract faculty member Mark Hecht. Hecht wrote a piece in the Vancouver Sun in September 2019. For doing this, he was attacked as a being a racist by a number of faculty members. About 30 faculty members again wrote a letter to administration criticizing Hecht, and Hecht’s field school was then cancelled by MRU administration. Documents for this case are available in Episode 14: Did Mark Hecht Violate a Diversity, Inclusion and Equity (DIE) ‘Loyalty Oath'”?
In October 2020, November 2020 and March 2021, three harassment complaints against Widdowson were filed by Gabrielle Lindstrom (now Gabrielle Weasel Head), D.A. Dirks and Renae Watchman (the circumstances of these complaints are available here). All three faculty members were associated with the Department of Humanities, and D.A. Dirks (left) is the partner of Scott Murray (right).
One element of Lindstrom’s complaint against Widdowson was that it was alleged that she had said “indigenous science is not science” in September 2019. Lindstrom argued that this was “racist and discriminatory”.
On May 14, 2021, Murray made a presentation to the Mount Royal Faculty Association. In his presentation, Murray criticized the event on trans activism, the Armin Navabi talk, Mark Hecht’s views, and the “pervasive, ongoing, relentless, anti-indigenous views to which everyone in attendance here, with the possible exception of Mira [a faculty member from the University of Toronto], has been relentlessly subjected to over and over again in every academic venue imaginable”. Although Murray did not mention Widdowson by name, it was obvious to everyone in attendance to whom he was referring. Therefore, Murray was implying that Widdowson’s views were “hateful and discriminatory” and should not be protected by academic freedom. Six months later, on December 20, 2021, Widdowson was fired from Mount Royal University.
Widdowson responded to these comments by Murray after she was fired in December 2021.
In September 2024, at a Mount Royal Faculty Association meeting (which Widdowson was not allowed to attend and thus prevented from defending herself), notes taken indicate that two faculty members argued against Widdowson’s reinstatement. According to these notes, Murray was one of these faculty members. The notes assert that he defamed Widdowson and implied that her firing was justified because she had caused “harm”, especially to Murray’s partner D.A. Dirks.
