Len Findlay

Distinguished Professor Emeritus

University of Saskatchewan

Len Findlay was Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Director of the Humanities Research Unit and founding member of the Indigenous Humanities Group at the University of Saskatchewan, and Past President of Academy One (Arts and Humanities) of the Royal Society of Canada. Trained in nineteenth-century European elite and radical cultural theory and production, his more recent Canadianist work engages with the Indigenous/settler interface, historically and currently, the distinctiveness and endangerment of the humanities in Canada, and with connections between academic freedom and Canadian politics. He served for almost a decade on the Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, including two terms as Chair.

Blog April 26, 2021

“Safe Space” Classrooms within “Communities of Care”

There is a lot of talk (and some action) around safe spaces these days. While not in any way downplaying the needs for sanctuary even in a prosperous country like Canada, and for venues where one can exercise democratic and expressive rights without fear of violence or other forms of intimidation and attempted silencing, I would like to register a caveat about the colloquial tendency to conflate “space” and “place” and use these terms interchangeably in talking about post-secondary education and the harms currently attributed to it.

Len Findlay

Academic Freedom

Blog February 12, 2018

Back to Anti-racist Basics after the Gerald Stanley “Verdict”

I was at work last week on a quite different blog for the Ryerson CFE when a jury of Gerald Stanley’s peers (or is it settler clones?), seven women and five men none of whom were “visibly Indigenous,” acquitted Stanley of the murder of Colten Boushie of the Red Pheasant First Nation in August of 2016.

Len Findlay

Censorship

Blog September 8, 2017

Mein Trumpf: From the New Deal to The Art of the Deal, and On to the Abyss?

In the final days of 2016, the small island nation of Cuba mourned the passing of a political giant. Meanwhile, next door, superpower America nervously welcomed as the latest occupant of its highest office a gigantic bigot. To be sure, Fidel Castro’s passing was not mourned but celebrated in Little Havana in Miami, while Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton was lamented by most of the Americans who voted in their federal election.

Len Findlay

Censorship, Disinformation, Access-to-Information