Free speech is under attack in Canadian universities, as students and their professors demand “safe spaces” from difficult topics.
Canadian lawyer Danielle Robitaille’s speech at Wilfrid Laurier University was canceled this month after a campus group led efforts to disrupt her presentation on the basis that her presence was a danger to students’ “group and personal safety”.
Robitaille, who is best known for being part of the defense team that cleared former CBC radio host Jian Ghomeshi of sexual assault charges, was invited to speak at the university’s Criminology Students Association.
A student group called the Advocates for Student Culture of Consent set up a list of reasons demanding her disinvitation, all of which focused on her involvement in Ghomeshi’s trial. They stated that having Robitaille on campus would be traumatizing to anyone who experienced sexual violence.
Writing for the Toronto Star, WLU’s David Millard Haskell expressed his disappointment with the student group’s actions, calling it “another nail […] pounded into the coffin of free speech.”
“Also explicit in their demands was the idea that they should be able to choose which topics are appropriate to discuss on campus and which are not,” he wrote, citing one of the group’s claims that choosing to bring Robitaille onto campus forced the debate of consent culture onto the campus. It’s a topic they believed the university should have been a safe space from.
“Where would these students of the ASCC get the idea that it is legitimate practice to shut down views that they personally find offensive? Mostly from their professors,” wrote Millard.
“I am ashamed to say that many of my colleagues, almost exclusively in the Arts, Humanities, and the Social Sciences, are promoting a virulent brand of cultural Marxism (under the guise of social justice) that preaches any idea they deem ‘oppressive’ is a legitimate target for censorship.”
Following the cancellation of her event, the university’s Diversity and Equity Office released a statement to say though the ASCC got their way, the university “recognizes that survivors and their support networks in our community have been impacted.”
Ian Miles Cheong is a journalist and outspoken media critic. You can reach him through social media at @stillgray on Twitter and on Facebook.
