Dougal MacDonald, Education, here offers a public statement in regard to the controversy over remarks he made about the Holodomor in a post on Facebook.
The central issue here is freedom of speech. It is both a human right and a Charter right. I have investigated a historical issue for a number of years and I have presented my position on it. As even Wiki says, there is an ongoing debate on the issue. A few quotes from Wiki: “The causes, nature, and extent of the Holodomor remain topics of controversy and active scholarship.” And, “The reasons for the famine are a subject of scholarly and political debate.” Another quotation: “Scholars continue to debate whether the Holodomor was (on one extreme) man-made, intentional, and genocidal and (on the other) nature-made, unintentional, and ethnicity-blind. Whether the Holodomor is a genocide is a significant issue in modern politics.”
So, my post is simply my contribution to the debate on the issue. Yes, it may be a minority position and others may disagree with it but it is my right to present it and it is a credible position. Others who have espoused it include George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells, two pretty smart guys who visited the area, as well as the Prime Minister of France Edouard Herriot, who visited the area, the British House of Lords after an onsite investigation by expert John Maynard, English economists Herbert and Beatrice Webb, Pulitzer prize-winning U.S. journalist Walter Duranty, and U.S. journalist Louis Fischer. And so on. All of them were actually around at that time, unlike today, which is 85 years later.
Further research support for my position is the comprehensive 1987 book by Douglas Tottle titled “Fraud, Famine and Fascism”. Also, West Virginia University professor Mark Tauger has published along the same lines, stating, for example, that the causes of any food shortages were natural conditions. Grover Furr, professor of Medieval English literature at Montclair State University, has long researched the issue and has long questioned the “official version”. And so on.
As I mentioned, others may disagree with me and with those whom I refer to here but that is their right. However, what they are now doing is not their right, i.e., to name call, hurl insults, and threaten to get me fired from my job, which, by the way, has absolutely nothing to do with this topic. That is their pathetic attempt to shut down the debate on the issue, not to further the search for historical truth. So why are they doing this and what are they afraid of? That others may take up that search? Finally, may I point out that free and public debate on issues, especially controversial issues, is a healthy aspect of our society and is, in fact, necessary, if we are to make any progress toward building a better future.
Arts Squared 
Dougal you are to be thanked for opening (I hope) a long necessary conversation about the intellectual independence of Ukrainian studies at the U of A. The utter spinelessness of the uni admin’s response on a clear issue of academic freedom is dispiriting but for anyone watching the process around the “free expression” policy recently approved at GFC, predictable.
Hi, Kathleen, as an editor at CIUS, my work involves fact-checking and formatting research output in line with established standards. I’d appreciate your clarification on the “intellectual independence of Ukrainian studies at the U of A.” Would you also care to comment on East Asian studies, Native studies, and the Wirth Institute by comparison?
Hi Ksenia! I know you and I know your scholarly standards are high. Nevertheless, as an outside observer I have come to the conclusion that Ukrainian Studies at the U of A is highly politicized. I will take as an example director Jars Balan’s two recent op-eds in the Edmonton Journal: https://edmontonjournal.com/author/jars-balan
The second is a sabre-rattling denunciation of Russia which calls it a “rogue dictatorship” and “state sponsor of terrorism”. This is part of a contemporary climate of renewing something like the Cold War between Russia and the West, to which many scholars (myself included) object very strongly.
The first is a discussion of the Holodomor which *opens* with a direct analogizing of the Ukrainian famine to the Holocaust (something that caused considerable conflict in planning the Canadian Museum for Human Rights). This positions any questioning of whether the Ukrainian famine was an intentional *genocide* on a par with Holocaust denial; what is more, it figures *Russia* as being responsible for a genocide in the same way Germany is responsible for Jewish genocide. We don’t say Germany is off the hook historically because it is no longer a National Socialist state; mutatis mutandis, if we accept this formulation, Russia is not off the hook historically because it is no longer a Soviet state. This is something to which many scholars, myself included, object very strongly.
Jars Balan has a perfect right to publish what he wishes, including op-eds I think are wrong-headed. He certainly enjoys a tremendous amount of support for these ideas in Alberta and in Canada.
These ideas about the Russia and the Ukraine do not, however, enjoy the sort of broad scholarly consensus that he suggests for them and that (from what I have seen), Ukrainian Studies at the U of A suggests for them. This does a disservice to students at the University of Alberta because it does not prepare them to enter into broader scholarly and public debates; even if they wish to make a spirited defence of the positions taken by Dr. Balan, it leaves them only half-armed to do so.
Kathleen, thanks for your reply. Arguing about politicization and broad scholarly consensus is above my pay grade, but I’d be happy to discuss some of the other, less subjective points with you, perhaps over coffee? Meanwhile, obviating your suspicion of Ukrainian studies at the U of A, you may find the latest results of Holodomor research published in the peer-reviewed Canadian Studies in Population journal (ed. Frank Trovato): https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/csp/index.php/csp/article/view/21772 and https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/csp/index.php/csp/article/view/27275