Episode 11: Is the Mount Royal Faculty Association Acting in Good Faith?
In May 2020, Lee Easton, Rafik Kurji, Irene Shankar, and D.A. Dirks put their names forward to run for positions on the Mount Royal Faculty Association (MRFA) Executive Board. The MRFA is Frances Widdowson’s union, and she is completely dependent upon it to make the case for her reinstatement at Mount Royal University (MRU).
Lee Easton was elected President, Rafik Kurji was elected Treasurer, Irene Shankar was elected as the Member at Large, and D.A. Dirks was elected as the Contract Faculty Representative.
In May 2021, Milena Radzikowska and Roberta Lexier put their names forward to run, and were elected as the Diversity and Equity Officer and Member Engagement Officer respectively. Shankar and Dirks did not run again in 2021.
All MRFA Executive Board members are bound by the MRFA Bylaws. These include Article 16.2.5, which maintains that MRFA Executive Board members “have a duty…to encourage…freedom of inquiry” at MRU, and to have “respect for our colleagues’ right to dissent and express views with which we disagree”.
On June 14, 2019, Lee Easton, the representative of the Mount Royal Faculty Association Negotiating Committee, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Board of Governors of Mount Royal University. This MOU directed the Academic Standards Committee of General Faculties Council to “Review the Institutional Tenure and Promotion Criteria to ensure that the criteria recognizes Indigenous ways of knowing and Indigenous knowledge in terms of teaching, scholarship, service and research”. “Indigenous ways of knowing” and “Indigenous knowledge” were not defined in the Collective Agreement.
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The six MRFA Executive Board members identified above all had connections with Dr. Gabrielle Lindstrom, the MRU indigenous studies professor who encouraged the anonymous “student led” group, MRU Racial Advocacy (@RacialAdvMRU), to complain about Widdowson for defending CBC journalist Wendy Mesley’s reference to the book title White Niggers of America and her mentioning the word “nigger” in an anti-racist context (see Episode 5).
From November 2018 to June 2022, Lee Easton and Roberta Lexier were involved in a number of scholarly activities with Dr. Gabrielle Lindstrom on “decolonizing” teaching and learning, including the following:
– In November 2018, Easton and Lexier participated in a presentation with Lindstrom entitled “Disrupting to Decolonize” at a Symposium in Banff;
– In 2019, Lee Easton and Roberta Lexier published a chapter with Gabrielle Lindstrom entitled “Uncovering the Complicit”;
– In February 2019, Lee Easton and Roberta Lexier participated with Gabrielle Lindstrom in a “Decolonizing the Curriculum Through Disruption” presentation at the Educational Developers Conference;
– Lee Easton, Roberta Lexier, and Gabrielle Lindstrom were scheduled to make the presentation “Disrupt to Decolonize” on March 1, 2019, but it was cancelled;
– On March 14, 2019, Lee Easton and Roberta Lexier participated with Gabrielle Lindstrom in the presentation “Complicit in Colonialism”;
– In August 19, 2019, there was a four day exchange at Mount Royal University with other academics that involved Lee Easton, Roberta Lexier and Gabrielle Lindstrom;
– In April 2021, Lee Easton and Gabrielle Lindstrom published an article entitled “Nitawahsin Nanni and Disrupting Journeys”;
– In October 26-29, 2021, Lee Easton participated with Gabrielle Lindstrom in a presentation entitled “Different Paths to Disrupting the Disciplines”; and
– Lee Easton has been scheduled to participate with Gabrielle Lindstrom in a “pre-conference workshop” entitled “Identifying Complicity in Colonialism” in June 2022.
In 2019 and 2020, D.A. Dirks was scheduled to sit on two panels with Gabrielle Lindstrom. The first concerned “Critical Pedagogy” at the Celebrate! Teaching and Learning at MRU conference in 2019.
The second was scheduled for the MRFA Spring Retreat in 2020. This panel was entitled “What does anti-racism work look like in the academy?”. The description of the panel asserted that “both administrators and faculty associations often refuse to challenge the racist, homophobic, transphobic views of faculty…”.
These interactions are connected to how Widdowson’s case unfolded, and how the MRFA Executive Board responded to it. On August 1, 2020, Rafik Kurji responded to Gabrielle Lindstrom’s post accusing Widdowson of “hid[ing] behind academia to spread racist views!” for defending Wendy Mesley with the question “Code of conduct?”. When MRU Racial Advocacy asked the question “Wouldn’t it be a code of conduct issue at this point?”, Kurji responded with “I would say so”.
Kurji also replied to another colleague who had stated that Widdowson’s “choos[ing]” to “use a derogatory label….knowing that it will perpetuate harm is *never* well intentioned” with the assertion that “Using derogatory language is never well intentioned. In my mind, there are no arguments that support justification of this language”.
When Widdowson reminded Kurji that he was an MRFA board member, and therefore bound by the duty of fair representation, which includes upholding the MRFA bylaws, Kurji repeated that “there is no place, platform or arguments to support the use of derogatory language”.
On August 1, 2020, Irene Shankar responded to the assertion that Widdowson’s “*choos[ing]* to use a derogatory label…knowing that it will perpetuate harm is *never* well intentioned” with the comment “well said”.
On August 1, Roberta Lexier responded to MRU Racial Advocacy’s claim that “‘academics’ use racist slurs” with the comment “Imagine paying a small fortune to be forced to take a class with someone who says overtly that you’re less than human. This is what our students have to deal with. It’s not academic freedom”.
On August 3, 2020, Roberta Lexier responded Gabrielle Lindstrom’s comment that if Widdowson was “looking for evidence [for why there is “daily hostility from bullies” and “systemic oppression & outright harassment”] she just has to find the closest mirror and take a long look at what’s staring back at her” (see Episode Twelve) with the assertion “Solidarity, y’all. Her time has come”.
On September 23, 2020, Milena Radzikowska responded to two other professors about how Widdowson was engaged in “sad and pathetic attempts to become the next alt-right martyr” and that there was “no evidence of peer reviewed scholarship” with respect to her work. Radzikowska claimed that Widdowson’s publisher (the University of Ottawa Press) and MRU “continue to support blatantly unscholarly – unresearched, unsupported – opinion pieces”.
Later on, Radzikowska claimed that Widdowson’s views constituted “lazy, self-serving, unexamined opinion making set in the guise of ‘scholarship’ and academic thought”. She asserted that this was similar to stating “the earth was only 6,000 years old” and then attacking and mocking paleontologists who said this was wrong.
Although Radzikowska was not a MRFA Board member when she tweeted the remarks above, on October 30, 2021, after being the Diversity and Equity Officer for three months, she tweeted a thread that implicated Widdowson in attacks that had been made on the indigenization and decolonization administrator Linda Manyguns.
On December 20, 2021, shortly after Widdowson’s termination was announced at 6:22 p.m., MRFA Executive Board Members Rafik Kurji, Milena Radzikowska, and Roberta Lexier made the following tweets:
On December 21, 2021 ,at a meeting with MRFA President Lee Easton and the VP Policy and Senior Grievance Officer Kelly Sundberg, Widdowson was told that the MRFA bylaws stipulated that she would retain her MRFA membership for one year after she had been terminated (i.e. until December 2022).
On January 7, 2022, Lee Easton, Milena Radzikowska, Rafik Kurji, and Roberta Lexier did not recuse themselves from the discussions about Frances Widdowson’s wrongful dismissal grievances, and it was maintained that “there was neither an actual or perceived conflict of interest” with respect to this.
On February 13, 2022, Milena Radzikowska entered into a discussion about Widdowson’s termination with a professor on the Friends of Post-Secondary Education in Alberta Facebook page (a public page with 2,100 members). When the professor stated that Widdowson was “exceptionally courteous to all speakers and professional in her comportment” at a conference at MRU, Radzikowska stated that “inviting reflection based upon one instance or a carefully-curated subset is unlikely to garner any useful results”. When the professor asserted that he would like to see the results of the arbitration, Radzikowska asked “Will you continue to have such faith even if the result is one you don’t like?”
On February 23, 2022, the MRFA Executive “discussed concerns raised about specific sessions” of the PD Retreat Program and asserted that “only current members, as outlined in the MRFA Bylaws, and individuals invited by the Association would be eligible to attend the event”.
On February 28, 2022, Widdowson’s membership in the MRFA was terminated. This was justified by referring to stipulations about how members get into faculty associations in the Postsecondary Learning Act.
The section of the Labour Relations Code that relates to the expelling of union members was ignored.
Also ignored was the approach of the University of Alberta’s faculty association bylaw 4.3.4, which stipulates that terminated employees who are grieving their termination remain members until their grievance is resolved.
On March 11, 2022, Widdowson began to be subjected to increased surveillance in the Faculty Centre. She was told that an MRFA Executive Board member had inquired about why she was unaccompanied when she had arranged a lunch meeting with a colleague on March 9 (her lunch date was late in arriving). Soon after, the Faculty Centre door was locked and could only be accessed with an MRU card, which meant that Widdowson’s admittance had to be vetted before she entered. Faculty members also were also subjected to a new requirement to immediately sign in guests with an electronic device, which enabled Widdowson’s presence to be constantly monitored.
On March 25, 2022, Widdowson was told that the Executive Board did not entertain a motion to invite her to participate on a panel that she had organized for the 2022 MRFA Spring Retreat.
On that same day, it was alleged that the MRFA President asked that Widdowson not come to the Faculty Centre before 5:30 p.m. because a Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity event was being held that afternoon.
On April 11, 2022, Widdowson applied on Associate Membership in the MRFA. Widdowson was told that she would have to fill out a special form in order to make an application. After Widdowson made inquiries about when the form had been created, the MRFA President accused Widdowson of “pestering” staff. He would not answer her question about whether the form had been created after she had applied.
After inquiring about the timing of the form’s creation, Widdowson submitted an application for Associate Membership. It was supported by 23 MRFA current and former MRU faculty members.
At the April 19, 2022 MRFA Executive Board Meeting, Widdowson’s application for Associate Membership was deferred until after the Spring Retreat.
Although Widdowson was told that she could not participate on the Panel because her Associate Membership application had been deferred, she produced a video that was played by one of her fellow panelists on April 27, 2022.
According to the minutes, a discussion of Associate Membership applications did not occur at the next Executive Board Meeting (on May 3, 2022).
