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.

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, will be in Vancouver in March for the launch of a Canadian branch of the organization.