FUMBLE: MANUFACTURING CENSORSHIP

This week's perspective from Joe Chidley:

Know your adversary. It’s a classic strategic imperative in communications, and what’s remarkable is how often organizations fail to do it. Consider the Ann Coulter-University of Ottawa saga, a tempest in a teapot that has percolated up disturbing and unwelcome questions in the media about the state of freedom of speech on Canadian university campuses. The tragedy is that it was all so unnecessary. Ms. Coulter, a right-wing commentator who apparently never backs down from a fight or from an opportunity to give offence, would have appeared at UOttawa, done her shtick to gratify her supporters and outrage her detractors, and then she would have moved on to the next stop on her road show (in this case, Calgary). Instead, the provost of the university sent Coulter a letter warning her to watch her mouth if she didn’t want to get charged with hate crime. Perhaps the university thought it was doing Coulter a service. Instead, it handed the class-A provocateur a golden opportunity to make a vast left-wing conspiracy out of a molehill. She blamed the letter for inciting student protests and promptly cancelled the speaking engagement, citing safety concerns. And the University of Ottawa ended up in editorials across the country as a poster child for censorship and overweening political correctness. A statement from Chancellor Allan Rock pointing out that Coulter and not the university cancelled the speech was correct, but ineffective. Our take: If you invite a snake into your house, don’t give it something to sink its fangs into. Fumble, University of Ottawa.