Public lecture at Regent College canceled amid controversy
Regent at UBC revokes invite to Nigel Biggar
A troubling complimentary news piece is posted below with the permission of The Catholic Register, the oldest English Catholic publication in Canada. Founded in 1893, The Catholic Register’s roots go back 30 years earlier.
The article concerns the unconscionable cancellation by a Vancouver theological college located on the campus of the University of British Columbia, of a planned public lecture on March 6, 2025, by Nigel Biggar CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire, a British title that recognizes a person's service or achievements. It's the highest-ranking Order of the British Empire, excluding knighthoods and damehoods.)
Biggar is also Regius Professor Emeritus of Moral Theology at the University of Oxford, a member of the House of Lords, and an Anglican priest.
His lecture was cancelled after ignorant woke alumni took to social media, accusing the speaker of being a residential school apologist and ‘mass graves denier.’
Public lecture at Regent College canceled amid controversy
Anna Farrow
The Catholic Register
February 19, 2025
A Vancouver theological college cancelled a March 6 public lecture by Oxford professor and member of the House of Lords Nigel Biggar after alumni took to social media accusing the speaker of being a residential school apologist and “mass graves denier.”
Regent College, an evangelical graduate school located on the University of British Columbia campus, abruptly cancelled the event—Colonialism Revisited: Did the British Empire Promote Human Welfare?—less than a month before it was scheduled to take place.
Though Regent College chose not to comment to The Catholic Register, President Jeff Greenman issued a letter on Feb. 14 suggesting he acted out of concern for the college’s reputation with Indigenous Canadians.
“For the past 10 years I have sought to lead Regent to take very seriously our calling to love our neighbours on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Musqueam people. My concern was that this lecture would have been seen as out of sync with these efforts and could have seriously jeopardized our growing relationships with Indigenous elders and Indigenous Christian leaders locally and nationally,” he wrote.
“One of Britain’s leading public intellectuals” according to an Oxford University website, Biggar is the Emeritus Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Oxford University. He is also an alumnus of Regent College, having obtained a Master of Christian Studies in 1981.
Biggar is the author of the 2023 book Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning. In a chapter treating cultural assimilation and "genocide," Biggar posits that the “wholesale damnation of the residential school system in Canada is overwrought and unfair.”
According to a Feb. 11 letter Biggar addressed to Greenman, he accepted an invitation by Regent professor Jens Zimmermann to speak in April 2024 and Greenman was made aware of the event in late October 2024.
In his own letter, Greenman makes no mention of Facebook posts by former Regent students that were written shortly following the early February advertisement of the lecture.
In a Feb 6. public Facebook post, a man identifying as a Regent alumnus wrote that the college “continues its slide down into toxic conservatism.”
“Next month they will host and platform a lecture by Nigel Beggar (sic), who appears to be a Residential Schools Apologist (and, I’m told, a mass graves denier), 'Let’s Make Colonialism Great Again' I guess.”
Greenman wrote Biggar the following day to cancel the lecture.
As Christians, we are duty-bound to pursue the truth fearlessly
In his letter, Biggar suggests Regent is “aiding and abetting the continuing reign of an aggressively repressive culture in Canada, which is invested in a story that thoroughly (and unfairly) discredits the work of Christian missions and justifies the razing to the ground of dozens of Christian churches.”
“As Christians, we are duty-bound to pursue the truth fearlessly, and that we do so by exposing our own views — and others' — to critical testing by the give and take of reasons, albeit with charity.”
In a second letter to Greenman, Biggar wrote that:
“… since the prevailing orthodoxy about colonialism and residential schools trashes the reputation of the Christian Church, one would have thought that an institution such as Regent would be willing to take at least some risks for the sake of testing the narrative's truth.”
Aaron Pete is a podcaster based in Chilliwack, B.C. and hosted Biggar on his Bigger Than Me podcast last June. Pete is a Chawathil First Nation Councillor whose grandmother attended St. Mary’s Indian Residential School in Ontario. Many of his podcast guests are invited to discuss the legacy of residential schools and reconciliation efforts.
In addition to Biggar, Pete has hosted Williams Lake Councillor Michael Moses, Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Gary Anandasangaree, Minister of Indigenous Services Canada Patty Hajdu and True North Media founder Candice Malcolm. True North Media is publisher of Grave Error, the 2023 book which examines the media claims about missing Indigenous children and mass graves.
Pete told the Register he was surprised to hear that Regent had withdrawn the speaking invitation to Biggar.
“I’ve had Biggar on my podcast, but I’ve also had Councillor Michael Moses and Chief Willie Sellars. I don’t agree with Biggar on everything, just like I don’t agree with Moses on everything, but the important thing is to have the conversation,” said Pete.
Pete says that he finds the word “denialist" to be “a very unproductive term.”
“The 'Mass Graves Story' as told by the CBC needs to be a separate conversation from the history of the residential schools told in the Truth & Reconciliation Commission Report,” said Pete.
“Reconciliation doesn’t happen by shutting down the conversation.”
Biggar, who is a director of the Free Speech Union in the UK, was in Vancouver in March for the launch of a Canadian branch of the organization.
Every time the intellectual community gives in to these crude fools who don't want their lies challenged we all lose ground. When a Nigel Biggar is threatened we need to invite ten more like him to speak. Nothing scatters threats and fear like the bright light of truth.
In some ways it is an honour to be cancelled for the counter arguments do not stand up on examination. I am an Anglican from a school with a charter from Queen Elizabeth 1st. Written on vellum with the beautiful signature and trailing curves. Chapel every morning at the tolling of a bell and a short service including a psalm sung in Anglican chant. I taught in a Residential school and through the years have had a wide association with indigenous peoples. From running indigenous maintenance crews to Master thesis on the Cree snow shoe. I never heard any condemnation of the education system. On the contrary the opposite was true. For instance a conversation with graduates from St. Michaels IRS. in Alert bay, BC expressed gratitude for the business education training they received and the enjoyment of High school. Only in recent years has there developed controversy. My eldest son received his first inoculation shots in the infirmary at Grouard IRS. That year, my second in Canada, was full of positive experience as I interacted with the community. I do not hide my experiences and openly counter the blatant untruths which abound in recent years. This openness comes with the unqualified judgements of critics and their condemnation. I was "let go "as Town crier in Duncan and now my offer of involvement in an English Tea at St Peters, Quamichan, BC was declined on the basis I had involvement in residential schools and the multiple deaths at the Kamloops IRS. It should be noted that I had brought to the attention of the church administration that an indigenous presentation in the church on June 3rd 2023 was totally incorrect. The RCMP have no files on persons being burnt in incinerators and no bodies have been found in the grounds of the Kamloops IRS. I am guilty of "wrong think." This August we are installing a new incumbent, a trans individual, and the logistics of washroom naming and such are complete, and a trans lecture with a speech restriction presented. Why are there so few parishioners in attendance on a Sunday while a few hundred yards away 800 congregate in a double service shift ? It is a difficult situation with which to be challenged.
Ben, Redcoat. 57th Regiment of Foot.