"Something is very wrong with Canadian campuses"

What happens when the left defines hate speech. From the National Post in Canada:

Something is very wrong with Canadian campuses these days. Left-wing students and outside agitators get away with shouting down speakers they disagree with, smashing windows to prevent lecturers they don’t want to hear, even chaining themselves to a stage and screaming “racist, racist, racist” at the University of Waterloo to prevent Christie Blatchford from talking about her new book. Student unions routinely decertify pro-life clubs, and administrators frequently cater to the demands of a handful of vocal socialist anarchists.

But when right-of-centre student groups attempt to protest the censorship they face, or demonstrate against leftist speakers and those they believe are hateful, they are met with threats of lawsuits or expulsion by administrators or student unions.

The most recent example of this double-standard came Monday, when the Carleton University Student Association (CUSA) banned a pro-life club from operating on campus or even using campus meeting rooms. The CUSA said Carleton Lifeline could regain its official status — if it renounced pro-life beliefs.

We doubt CUSA would ask campus Marxists to renounce socialism, or require Muslim groups to convert to Judaism, yet they are demanding the equivalent backflip from pro-lifers.

In just the past five years, students or administrators at Lakehead University, the University of British Columbia-Okanagan, the University of Calgary, Newfoundland’s Memorial University and Toronto’s York University have either severely restricted or banned pro-life activities. Typically, they have made the bogus claim that calling for an end to abortion amounts to prejudice against women and therefore can be banned as hate speech.

Meanwhile, administrators at York University have threatened to sue Jewish groups that announced plans to protest an on-campus address by British MP George Galloway, a high-profile apologist for terror groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah. The university maintained the campus was private property and insisted it would take action against any member of the public who protested Mr. Galloway’s speech. It even urged protesters not to use public spaces near campus . . . .

This is the same York University, of course, that annually witnesses an anti-Semitic hatefest known as Israel Apartheid week, and which has been accused in the past of providing insufficient protection of its Jewish students from threats and intimidation by supporters of the Palestinian cause.

The reason for all this is ideological bias: Definitions of free speech, equality and political rights all have been reworked to show favouritism to those espousing leftist ideology. . . .