(Copyright @ Kevin D. Annett, 2006. All Rights Reserved.)

 

1.     I make this public statement freely and truthfully, according to my own recollection and experience of the events described herein.

 

2.     I have personal knowledge of all of the events described herein.

 

3.     In February of 2003, I was invited by Richard Fredericks, an assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of British Columbia (UBC), to speak to his undergraduate Criminology class on the research I was conducting into the planned genocide of aboriginal peoples by Church and State in Canada. This class was entitled “Crimes Against Humanity”, and examined the policies and practices of legal genocide by countries around the world. Since my book “Hidden from History: The Canadian Holocaust” (2001) was one of the few works that critically examined and documented genocide against aboriginal people in Canada, Professor Fredericks wished to share this evidence with his students in order to make the course theme of legal Genocide relevant to Canadian students and their own context.

 

4.     In late February, 2003, I gave my first lecture to Professor Fredericks’ class. My talk was very well received by most of his students, and on the basis of this response, Fredericks enthusiastically invited me to speak to “three or four more” of his classes during the following two weeks. Fredericks told me that I would receive an honorarium payment for each lecture, as per the normal funding arrangements for guest speakers of the UBC Sociology department. He expressed no misgivings about my lecture whatsoever.

 

5. Two days after my lecture, I received a phone call from Professor Fredericks, who informed me that he was withdrawing his offer to me to speak to more of his classes. Fredericks was in a very agitated and depressed state. He said, “One of my students has made a complaint about your lecture”, but he did not disclose any other information about this complaint. I asked him why a single complaint from a student would require the canceling of my lectures, and he replied, “I can’t go into it right now”.

 

6.     I never received the promised honorarium payment for the lecture I had given; nevertheless, I did not give the matter any more thought for three months, until late May, 2003, when I received an email from Fredericks asking me to meet with him. We met on a Monday at 3 pm at a coffee shop next to the main branch of the Vancouver Public Library. Fredericks appeared very depressed and tense. He began by saying, “The shit has really hit the fan.” For over an hour, he then shared with me the following facts which had been disclosed to him:

 

7.     My lectures to his class had been cancelled as a direct result of the intervention of officials of the United Church of Canada with the senior administration of the University of B.C. The United Church officials in question had threatened legal action against UBC unless they ensured that I be prevented from lecturing at UBC. In addition, in the wake of my lecture, Professor Fredericks was reprimanded by officials of his department for inviting me to speak to his class, and he was forced to remove any material or reference to genocide in Canada from his “Crimes against Humanity” course. In addition, he was placed on effective probation in his department after my lecture, and had an interim session course removed from his normal teaching load. In short, not only was I effectively banned from lecturing at UBC, but Fredericks was being officially censured and penalized for having invited me to speak, and was academically censored in terms of what he could and could not teach in his course on Genocide.

 

8.     In the course of Frederick’s hour-long talk with me in May of 2003, and at subsequent meetings we held, he disclosed other information related to these events, including the following:

 

9.     The initial complaint against me had been made not by one of Frederick’s students, but by a students’ mother, Louise Mangan, who was a United Church minister in Vancouver. Upon hearing from her son about my lecture on the evening of its presentation, Mangan contacted the B.C. Conference office of the United Church and spoke to both its legal counsel, Jon Jessiman – who had played an instrumental role in my firing without cause and expulsion without due process from the United Church between 1995 and 1997 – and to an unnamed church official who was the next-door neighbour of senior UBC administrator and former head of the Sociology department Neil Guppy.

 

10.  On the basis of both informal discussion with these church officials, and a formal complaint brought by the United Church and addressed to UBC President Martha Piper’s office the day after my lecture, Neil Guppy, in his official capacity as Vice-President for Academic Affairs, directed the head of the UBC Anthropology-Sociology department, Dr. David Pokotylo, to meet with Richard Fredericks and instruct him to cancel my series of lectures in his class, and to change the content of his curriculum on genocide in Canada. This meeting between Pokotylo and Fredericks occurred approximately one week after my initial lecture, and as a result, my lectures were cancelled and Fredericks was placed under a form of discipline and censorship by his department.

 

11. At the meeting between Pokotylo and Fredericks, Pokotylo “gave me  the clear impression that unless I removed any reference to Canada from  my curriculum material on genocide, I wouldn’t receive tenure or promotion in the department”, to quote Fredericks. “He wasn’t ordering me, just giving me the chance to bow out gracefully from teaching about the Canadian genocide. I realized I had to go along if I was to keep my job.”

12.  At the same meeting, Pokotylo indicated to Fredericks that he was personally not in support of what was being asked of Fredericks, but that the matter was “out of his hands”, and the order to ban me and discipline Fredericks was coming from both Neil Guppy, as Vice-President of Academic Affairs, and the President’s office at UBC.

 

13.  As a result of his discussion with Pokotylo, Fredericks complied with the pressure being brought against him, and not only cancelled further lectures by me, but voluntarily modified the curriculum content of his course to exclude any reference to genocide in Canada.

 

14.  Despite his compliance, Fredericks found himself increasingly marginalized and ostracized within his department, and subsequently was denied teaching appointments and other assignments. Fredericks eventually decided to withdraw from teaching at the University of BC, and found new employment as a sessional instructor at Malaspina College in Nanaimo, during 2004.

 

15.  During the same period following my banning from further lecturing at UBC, that is, after the spring of 2003, I encountered a growing “rumour mongering” campaign against me among academics and organizations on the UBC campus who had formerly supported my work and public lectures. It seemed to me that an intensified campaign of vilification of me and my research was being organized on the UBC campus during the period after the censuring of Professor Fredericks.

 

16.  On the basis of these events, I wrote a letter of complaint to the offices of both Neil Guppy and Martha Piper, as, respectively, the Vice-President for Academic Affairs and the President of UBC, on June 3, 2003. My letter was a formal protest against the serious attack on free inquiry and academic freedom at UBC, and on the basic human rights of both me and Professor Fredericks, which was occurring under the auspices of their offices. I received no reply from either of these officials to my letter, and so I sent a second, registered letter to them, on September 8, 2003. That second letter also went unanswered.

 

 

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