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Widdowson is aware that her scholarly approach to this subject is passé. She told me that she was last taken seriously as an academicauthority in 2008. “Mobbing,” she said, “is the new discussion.” At a debate panel she hosted last year at the University of Calgary (that she described as “the most disruptive event of my life”), she was told by some of the Aboriginal individuals in the audience that she had no right to speak because she was a guest on their territory. This claim shocked and disturbed her. If a university campus is indigenous territory where Aboriginals are the “hosts” and non-Aboriginals are the “guests,” the fundamental concept of the university as a public space has been corrupted.

In my conversation with Widdowson, I was struck by her eagerness to understand her adversaries’ positions. She is willing to engage in debate, and wishes they were too. As she put it, “I’m not trying to win the argument; I’m trying to have the argument.” Alas, that is increasingly more difficult in today’s climate of insouciant speech suppression. Widdowson has the stomach to face down her critics, but what university today will hire anyone who upholds the principles she embodies? (Mount Royal, Widdowson emphasized, has been “stalwart in their defence of academic freedom.”) My fear is that the lonely academic furrow Widdowson ploughs will be buried when she retires. And though her writings may endure in “samizdat” form, she will be remembered — cultural appropriation intended — as the last of the Mohicans in her field.

National Post

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Editor’s note: This article has been updated to correct a mischaracterization of Frances Widdowson’s views on aboriginal assimilation and land reserves, and to correct the point that Widdowson continues to be allowed to participate in Canadian Political Science Association indigenous issues panels.