{"id":932534,"date":"2026-10-14T09:14:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-14T09:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/932534\/"},"modified":"2026-10-14T09:14:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T09:14:10","slug":"steven-galloway-accuses-ubc-of-making-up-excuses-to-fire-him-to-protect-its-reputation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/932534\/","title":{"rendered":"Steven Galloway accuses UBC of making up excuses to fire him to protect its reputation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Author and former University of British Columbia professor Steven Galloway, back second right, and his wife Katie Wagner, front left, leave B.C. Supreme Court with two unidentified people during a lunch break at his defamation lawsuit, in Vancouver, Oct. 6.DARRYL DYCK\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

Bestselling author Steven Galloway accused the administration of the University of British Columbia of making up excuses to fire him in order to protect the school\u2019s reputation after a former student accused him of sexual assault and harassment. <\/p>\n

Mr. Galloway told the B.C. Supreme Court Tuesday that the university\u2019s administration provided him with a \u201claundry list\u201d of reasons for his dismissal in 2016, but apart from the extramarital affair with the student in his creative-writing program, those reasons remain secret.<\/p>\n

His lawyers won a pre-trial motion this summer to keep the majority of his termination letter confidential, but Justice Neena Sharma is expected to weigh in Wednesday on a new motion by the counsel for the defendants to gain access to the redacted rationale for his firing.<\/p>\n

During the second week of the defamation trial Mr. Galloway has been pursuing for eight years, the former chair of UBC\u2019s creative-writing program testified under cross-examination that the allegations, levelled by the woman in November, 2015, were false and asserted his June, 2016, termination was under the auspices of the post-secondary institution trumping up other instances of his misconduct. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re living in a world where UBC is an honourable, respectful, rule-following organization and you\u2019re attempting to get me to engage with you as though that\u2019s the case,\u201d Mr. Galloway told Arden Beddoes, lead counsel for the woman known as A.B. due to a publication ban. <\/p>\n

Steven Galloway accuser threatened to sue UBC for up to $3-million, defamation trial hears<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI believe they\u2019re about as corrupt an institution as you\u2019re likely to find and whatever rules that exist, they\u2019re likely to make them up as they go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thandi Fletcher, a spokesperson for UBC, issued a statement Tuesday evening saying the school has \u201cwell-established, mature policies\u201d to deal with allegations of sexual misconduct, but noted it could not comment on Mr. Galloway\u2019s testimony because of privacy obligations and the fact that it is not a party in the trial.<\/p>\n

A B.C. Supreme Court judge began hearing Mr. Galloway\u2019s defamation trial last week against A.B. and three others. More than a dozen people originally named in his lawsuit have settled, including two UBC professors.<\/p>\n

Mr. Galloway acknowledged in court that a former judge hired by UBC to investigate A.B.\u2019s claims found he had sexually harassed her and found other instances of misconduct leading to his firing. The court has heard the former judge did not find that he sexually assaulted the woman.<\/p>\n

UBC\u2019s announcement of a formal investigation of \u201cserious allegations\u201d involving Mr. Galloway in 2015 led to an online firestorm over Mr. Galloway\u2019s right to due process versus the rights of his alleged victim. <\/p>\n

UBC fired Mr. Galloway in 2016 without severance, but two years later, an arbitrator awarded him more than $220,000 in two separate awards for violating his privacy during the process of suspending and dismissing him.<\/p>\n

He was never charged with a crime and in 2018 he launched his defamation suit, arguing the defendants repeated claims online that he had sexually assaulted a student. <\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Mr. Beddoes showed the court a copy of Mr. Galloway\u2019s termination letter and noted that the second, third, fourth and fifth pages were entirely redacted after Mr. Galloway\u2019s lawyers secured an order this summer to keep the letter secret. Mr. Galloway\u2019s lawyers argued the letter was unrelated to the core allegations of sexual assault levelled by A.B.<\/p>\n

Mr. Galloway conceded that he violated school policy and some of his conduct was \u201cunprofessional, unethical,\u201d and did not meet his standards or that of a UBC faculty member. But, he testified, he shouldn\u2019t have been fired for his actions.<\/p>\n

\u201cInsofar as I was made aware at this time, there had been two tenured faculty members terminated in the recent decade: myself and the guy who stole millions of dollars from a First Nations dental clinic,\u201d he testified.<\/p>\n

Steven Galloway says his accuser fabricated details of three sexual assault allegations<\/a><\/p>\n

Lawyers for the defendants have argued Justice Sharma should allow Mr. Galloway\u2019s termination letter to be made public so he can be cross-examined about his actions.<\/p>\n

Justice Sharma reserved her decision. She is also expected to rule this week on a Globe and Mail application to get access to an exhibit detailing A.B.\u2019s draft negligence lawsuit against UBC for up to $3-million<\/a>, which was brought up in court last week. <\/p>\n

On Friday, Mr. Galloway testified there was no official prohibition on sexual relationships between students and faculty, and that he knows of \u201cnumerous instances\u201d of similar relationships in the university\u2019s faculty of arts.<\/p>\n

He testified that \u201cabsent A.B.\u2019s sex assault allegations nobody had any reason to think negatively\u201d about him.<\/p>\n

Mr. Beddoes and counsel for two of the other three defendants argued Tuesday that\u2019s not the case. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Author and former University of British Columbia professor Steven Galloway, back second right,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":932535,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[901,888,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,44,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-932534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-news","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=932534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932534\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/932535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=932534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=932534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=932534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}