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WINNIPEG — A hiatus in the University of Winnipeg’s public lecture series has prompted its professors to launch their own version in memory of a notorious dismissal on the downtown campus.

Faculty association president Peter Miller said he and his colleagues are determined to make the Harry Crowe Lecture an annual event.

They saw a gap and wanted to create a forum to consider ideas about the intersection of academia and contemporary politics and society at large, Miller said.

U of W administration did not provide an update on the status of its Axworthy Distinguished Lecture Series on Social Justice and the Public Good on Friday.

The lectures that pay tribute to former university president Lloyd Axworthy took place semi-regularly from 2015 to 2022.

The new series’ namesake is a late history professor at United College (now the U of W) who was fired in 1958 after his private letter criticizing campus administration was leaked.

Crowe (1922-1981) had penned a memo to a friend with political commentary and personal thoughts on his distrust in preachers, some of whom were principals on the campus. “We have abundant evidence that religion is a corrosive force,” he wrote at the time.

The late scholar’s subsequent dismissal ignited national media coverage and debate.

“It would’ve been an email 10 years ago and a text today,” Miller said.

The union leader noted that, in the wake of the controversial case, there was a wave of unionization on campuses across the country that ultimately led to 21st century protections for academics.

U of W academics now enjoy a level of academic freedom enshrined in their collective agreements. They have a labour right to teach and conduct research freely, as well as express their opinions about their employer without fear of retribution.

Roughly 75 people showed up to the Winnipeg Art Gallery on Thursday to kick off the Crowe lecture series with a 45-minute talk by Eve Haque, a professor from York University.

Haque spoke about recent controversies, such as one of her York colleague’s suspensions in 2023 after she was charged in connection to vandalism of a bookstore in Toronto and the overall state of academic freedom in Canada.

She also shared research she has conduced in connection to Crowe’s case. She recently interviewed a scholar who quit his job at United College more than 60 years ago in protest.

Sixteen of Crowe’s colleagues left their jobs over the controversy, per a 1959 report on his dismissal that was completed by the Canadian Association of University Teachers.

(He was never reinstated, despite a national outcry and the Canadian Association of University Teachers concluding there was an unjustified invasion of privacy and college leaders had committed “trespass on academic freedom.”)

“It seems arcane. It seems to be about faculty politics, which can be petty and small, but actually, the academic freedom element is the cornerstone on which the entire university edifice is built,” Miller said, arguing it was a fitting topic to launch the series.

The faculty association has started planning its second presentation for 2025-26.

» Winnipeg Free Press