Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Free Speech on Campus

Eugene Volokh reports:

Canadian University Womyn's Centre Trying To Exclude Pro-Life Groups from funding and space generally available to other student groups. The university student association vice-president for student services agrees; so does a student association vice-president at another Canadian school.

Anti-abortion speech, the theory goes, is "gender-discriminatory," and debate about abortion upsets some women because it "happen[s] in a space that they thought they were safe and protected, and that respected their rights and freedoms."

This is the kind of occurence that provides a useful reminder of how some campuses really do try to stifle free speech. It is easy to forget as college becomes a more distant memory, but this is a great real life example. Sure, there are some kinds of speech that should be prohibited -- hateful, personal insults, for instance. But choking off the abortion debate by excluding pro-life speech? Come on.

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