An Alberta judge has overturned a 2023 decision by the University of Lethbridge to cancel a scheduled lecture by former Mount Royal University professor Frances Widdowson.
In his Sept. 17 decision, Justice Christopher Simard of the Alberta Court of King’s Bench found that the university failed to properly take into account Widdowson’s Charter right to free expression when it cancelled her talk entitled “How Woke-ism Threatens Academic Freedom.”
“The university erred in law by not expressly considering and mentioning the Charter in making the Decision,” Simard wrote in his judgment, adding that the university’s decision-making process was “fundamentally and fatally flawed” and ran counter to its own policy of encouraging “free and open critical inquiry.” …