Dr. Frances Widdowson has been shouted down, arrested and literally smudged out of the University of Lethbridge. All because she challenged the politically correct but false claim that 215 children's remains were found buried in unmarked graves at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School.

Now she's exposing what the state-funded school has done to silence ideas and debate in her new documentary, A University Unhinged. The independent film, produced by Widdowson and directed by Simon Hergott, follows her fight that began in 2023, when Lethbridge cancelled a talk she'd been invited to give. Every time she went back, it got worse: mobs, a six-hour standoff, being carried out by police, and finally handcuffs for trying to have coffee with a student.

The mob, meanwhile, faced nothing. "The police never charged or trespassed anyone. I was the only one who got any kind of, you know, disciplinary treatment," Widdowson told me.

A deranged student - encouraged by @UVic President Robina Thomas in December 2025 - throws a kombucha drink in the face of cinematographer Simon Hergott, damages his camera and then punches him several times. An orange ribbon clad @SaanichPolice officer does not charge her. pic.twitter.com/G1Czweit9r

— Frances Widdowson (@FrancesWiddows1) October 1, 2026

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It isn't just Lethbridge. Last month, I joined Dr. Tom Flanagan at the University of Calgary for a free speech debate on the same question. For about an hour and a half, students on both sides talked it out peacefully. Nobody at our table denied the harm children suffered in residential schools.

Then a mob moved in, shouted us down as "racist residential school deniers", and a masked, trans-identifying individual, assaulted Flanagan by pouring a water bottle over the elderly professor's head and soaking me in the process. Calgary police refused to pursue charges but Rebel News is still looking into legal options to not let it go.

Widdowson isn't letting it go either. She's suing the University of Lethbridge and its faculty association for defamation. She says the faculty association accused her of lying, intending to harm students and being motivated by hate.

Now they'll have to prove it in court.