PART II of III

Part I

Regent College scheduled a presentation by Nigel Biggar on March 6 on the topic of “Colonialism Revisited: Did the British Empire Promote Human Welfare?” (based on his recent book Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning, 2023). Regent then unilaterally cancelled the presentation. The ensuing brouhaha, extensive coverage in the National Post and display of woke-ism and cancel culture in action, were covered in a post yesterday. I had an opportunity to interview Biggar on March 2, 2025, regarding the experience thus far.

RG: You were cancelled by Regent College—what was your reaction and response?

NB: I owe Regent College gratitude for my career and my wife. I wish ill to neither it nor its president. However, I object strongly to the college's dereliction of their Christian and civic duty. I wrote two emails to the president, copying in the faculty and board of governors, in which I explained clearly why I think their decision fails in Christian and civic duty. I received bureaucratic replies from the president that refused to engage substantively with what I had written and confined themselves to procedural platitudes. They also offered an explanation for the last-minute cancellation that was at odds with what other witnesses had told me.

As Christians, they should be committed to the corporate searching out of the truth. And they should not let that searching out of the truth be held hostage to the strongly felt grievances of some people, no matter who they are. Strong feelings can sometimes lie, because they are based on false perceptions. Those perceptions, being the perceptions of creatures and sinners, have to be accountable and open to testing.     
As I wrote to the president:

"You make no mention at all of the intemperate, even abusive agitation that has recently appeared on the Regent alumni Facebook site. Again, let us be clear. These agitators were not protesting against being forced to listen to me, because no one was forcing them. No, they were protesting that Regent should allow anyone else to hear what I have to say, because they regard it not merely as mistaken but pernicious. (And, I suggest, because they fear that their own dogmas will come under critical challenge.) That's to say, their protest was intentionally repressive. It seems to me highly unlikely that this did not issue in your receiving strong protests and demands that you cancel my lecture.

It has reached my ears from reliable sources that you were indeed presented with such repressive protest and that you yielded, effectively concurring with it. Thus you aligned yourself with those who think my views pernicious and unworthy of being heard.

In taking this position, you are replicating the conduct of too many leaders of academic (and other) institutions. Repressive agitators use their intemperate, aggressive emotions to browbeat conflict-averse managers. The managers, thinking they're protecting the reputation of their institutions and oblivious to what else is at stake, comply by cancelling lectures that the agitators don't want other people to hear.  Observing this, students and junior professors sympathetically inclined to the views of the cancelled lecturers note which side their institution has taken, contemplate the career-costs of dissenting, and resolve to keep their heretical views to themselves. (Or at least, only to whisper them in secret.) Thus, the narrative of the repressive dogmatists prevails and its distortions of public policy are allowed to continue, damaging the whole of society. And on campus? Fear reigns and demoralisation spreads, as the conscious gap between secretly held belief and openly spoken word testifies of the failure of integrity. This phenomenon, formerly confined to totalitarian societies, is now common in the increasingly less liberal West. And it has now come to Regent College."  

RG: What does the approach of Regent College say about them and their approach?

NB: That the quality of their leadership is indistinguishable from that to be found in most other secular institutions. In the name of 'pastoral concern', they cancelled a forum for the reasonable discussion of a matter of high public importance out of deference to the intemperate feelings of people who are determined that no one else should hear viewpoints with which they disagree, thus keeping those viewpoints unaccountable and insulated from critical scrutiny.

RG: Yet, you were not cancelled elsewhere. You spoke to students at Redeemer University—how did that go?

NB: Extremely well. The audience comprised over 100 people, mostly students. My interlocutor on stage, the historian Dr. Kevin Flatt, posed some very thoughtful talking points. The questions from the floor were also respectful and intelligent. There was no heckling. And the conversation continued afterwards with a selection of faculty.

RG: You spoke at a Yorkminster Park Church in Toronto, organized by the Canadian Institute for Historical Education, in conversation with Margaret MacMillan—how did that go?

NB: Again, extremely well. The 300 seats were sold out, and over 300 people registered for the event online. Margaret MacMillan is arguably Canada's most famous historian, and we had a thoughtful, adult conversation on stage.  

RG: Given your experience, how do you think Christian institutions should function in terms of free speech, woke-ism and cancel culture?

NB: Christian institutions, while mindful of the strength of feeling on the part of some, should not allow those feelings to limit what can be said with due respect and in good faith. They should require the speaker to avoid needless provocation, but they should also require those with strong feelings to make them accountable to reasons. None of us possesses the whole truth. We all need to submit our creaturely and sinful perceptions of it to reciprocal testing, under God. That doesn't happen if we let some bully us into silence.    

RG: What are some lessons you have learned as to how best for Christians to function in the public square?

NB: I have learned five lessons:

1. Don't expect everyone to treat you fairly. Get used to abuse and provocation, don't rise to it.
2. Always maintain your dignity in public.
3. Avoid engagement with those who want a fight, not a dialogue.
4. Be aware that your witness consists as much in how you speak as in what you say.
5. Your duty is to say what you believe to be true. Say it, while being open to correction.