Kwantlen’s own controversial professor

By Melissa Fraser [Culture Editor]

Last weekend a man showed up unannounced at Russel Ogden’s door. The man was there to ask Ogden if he would attend his suicide. This isn’t the first person to ask Ogden such a thing and it mostly likely won’t be the last.

Ogden is a sociology and criminology instructor at Kwantlen who’s currently researching assisted suicide, a topic that’s put him in situations like these more than once.

Ogden’s PhD research includes interviewing assisted suicide patients as well as sitting through the process. Ogden says at this point the people he includes in his research often find him. Many of them know of him because of his reputation as one of the foremost in his area of research, a title that comes after years of controversy.

What started in 1994 with his Master’s thesis at Simon Fraser University and led to being subpoenaed three times by Crown Council and the Coroner and facing research restrictionsat several universities, Ogden’s familiar with contention.

Despite the number of times Ogden has had to fight for his academic freedom, he says the controversy hasn’t affected his will to continue the research.
“The fact that it’s attracting controversy means that people are noticing the research and that it’s noticed means it’s of some importance,” says Ogden. “I think the fact that some people don’t want certain knowledge to emerge from science is again further evidence of the importance of that research.”

He says universities are increasingly more worried about their image and their brand than they are about academia. Ogden says the hardest part of his research is the misunderstanding from his peers and colleagues that stems from the ideal of being accepted by the status quo.

“There’s all this concern about image in the community and sometimes I think this concern about image overrides the purpose of the university which is to acquire, to understand and to share knowledge. Even if that knowledge happens to be unpopular,” says Ogden.

On the flip side of all the misunderstanding he feels from his colleagues and peers, Ogden says one of the best parts of the research is the appreciation the topic receives from students. He says that while his peers are afraid of the research, the students are interested in it. Ogden said he first got into researching assisted suicide because it was one of the usual topics undergrads choose to research. Ogden’s methods are what make the topic atypical and compel people to shut him down.

In 1994 Ogden had done research with Simon Fraser University for his Master’s Thesis on assisted suicides and AIDS victims. But Ogden learned too much and the coroner called on him to reveal his sources. Ogden refused to reveal any names based on the agreement he had arranged with the sources and his right to academic freedom. During the process, SFU refused to support Ogden despite their responsibility to research. It wasn’t until a long battle and a  judge calling the university cowardly that SFU apologized and repaid Ogden for legal fees in 1998.

Controversy followed Ogden to Exeter in the UK and then, most recently, Kwantlen. In 2006, Kwantlen put a stop to research on Ogden’s previously approved endeavors. After a two-year battle, including a Canadian Association of University Teachers inquiry into Kwantlen’s rights to stop his research, Ogden was finally allowed to continue the research.

Ogden met with Kwantlen’s then-new president David Atkinson in 2008. He was granted two years to focus solely on his research and Ogden is expected back in the classroom in January 2011.