Lawsuit accuses Alberta university of violating Charter rights by canceling event against ‘wokeism’
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The legal action argues that the University of Lethbridge violated ‘Charter-protected freedoms of expression and assembly’ by canceling an event scheduled for February 2023 that was to include a presentation titled ‘How Woke-ism Threatens Academic Freedom.”
(LifeSiteNews) — An Alberta university is facing a lawsuit from a professor, student and guest speaker who allege that the institution violated their Charter rights by canceling an event designed to discuss the threat of “wokeism” to academia.
University of Lethbridge professor Dr. Paul Viminitz, student Jonah Pickle and guest speaker Dr. Frances Widdowson filed a joint suit against the school on July 26, according to a press release from the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms. The legal action argues that the institution violated the applicants’ “Charter-protected freedoms of expression and assembly” by canceling an event scheduled for February 2023, during which Widdowson was supposed give a presentation titled “How Woke-ism Threatens Academic Freedom.”
Widdowson, who was previously a professor and now pushes back against woke agendas through scholarly research, said that the incident “is a textbook case” of the topic she was to speak about six months ago.
“Instead of encouraging faculty and students to engage with my ideas in order to reach a better understanding of totalitarian identity politics’ impact on the academy, the University of Lethbridge created an ‘unsafe space’ for critical thinking and open inquiry,” she commented, per the press release. “This means that the development of knowledge and theoretical understanding is being compromised at this academic institution.”
Justice Centre lawyer Glenn Blackett added that “increasingly, universities are in the business of interfering with the search for knowledge, on the premise that the truth is already known and that dissenting voices are somehow dangerous.”
“It is, in other words, dogma, which is the opposite of science,” Blackett continued. “If we can’t save our universities, there’s no telling what scientific, social, and economic progress we’re denying future Canadians.”