Invocation of Fear
Originally published in the Ottawa Citizen on March 16, 2010.
It’s a shame that Ann Coulter’s speech at the University of Ottawa was cancelled. Although many of her views are considered to be outlandish, contrived and extreme to many, her platform to speak at the University of Ottawa should not have been taken away because of safety concerns.
Unfortunately, it reflects badly on the University of Ottawa and permits her to play the victim
card. Like many others, I have been robbed of the right to partake in what many of us deemed
a free and open democratic society.
It would have been much more pleasurable to expose Coulter’s ignorance and the fragility of
her “arguments” through some well-reasoned questions. Instead, Coulter’s silencing presents
an inescapable irony, by which the university, a place which is supposed to allow a modicum
of free speech and thought, has been mutated into a place that shuts one up through the
invocation of fear.