Dr. Anthony Hall: Flanagan's Last Stand?

Decoding the encounter between Professor Tom Flanagan and Idle No More at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta Canada. Professor Tom Flanagan was instrumental in mentoring, grooming and handling Steven Harper, during the most formative stages of the meteoric career of Canada's current prime minister. Professor Flanagan is a US trained political scientist, who was hired by a transplanted Pentagon intelligence expert, to help make Calgary safe for Houston, and Dallas based oil companies in Texas North. Professor Flanagan was politically disowned recently, by many of his former students and associates, including by Stephen Harper, for characterizing the consumption of child pornography, as a victimless crime, that should be met with counseling, rather than incarceration. Professor Flanagan made the comments in response to questions from Aboriginal supporters of the Idle No More movement, who look at the denigration entailed in child pornography through the lens of many of their people's harsh experiences as victims of the child sexual exploitation in Canada's federally funded system of Christian residential schools for Aboriginal youths. On March 13, I devoted a three hour university class to looking at the media coverage, political fallout, historical background, and future implications of Tom Flanagan's controversial presentation two weeks earlier. I did so, as a long serving member of the Arts and Science Faculty at the University of Lethbridge where, on February 27, Professor Flanagan delivered his talk, including the now notorious comment, displaying his libertarian extremism on the subject of child pornography and the law. Professor McCormick and Professor Flanagan, are like minded political scientists, who have applied their academic expertise to helping the transmutation of the Reform Party, and then the Alliance Party, into the governing Conservative Party of Canada. As has been widely reported, the subject of Professor Flanagan's presentation at my school was the Indian Act, a topic in which he and I share considerable professional interest. Over the years, Professor Flanagan and I, have exchanged opposing interpretations on Aboriginal matters in a number of venues, both academic and journalistic. In August of 2000, I reviewed a book by Tom Flanagan's in the Globe and Mail. In the late 1990s, I debated him for an hour on the airwaves of CBC Radio, in an Alberta wide show, known as Wildrose Forum. During this period, I invited my colleague from the Political Science Department at the University of Calgary, to lecture my students, many of them Aboriginal, in the Department of Native American Studies at the University of Lethbridge. This academic unit was the first of its kind to be established in western Canada.