A speech by Ann Coulter, the outspoken conservative political pundit, at Ottowa University was cancelled yesterday after officials deemed conditions unsafe for the right-wing advocate.
Fervent protests at the university led organizers to decide the venue was “physically dangerous” for Coulter, who is known for her extreme comments some consider hate speech. Over 200 protesters showed up to the event. Some shouted “Ann go home!” at the back of the auditorium.
Coulter told Macleans that:
The police, “had been warning my bodyguard all day that they were putting up [messages] on Facebook: ‘Bring rocks, bring sticks, you gotta hurt Ann Coulter tonight, don’t let her speak.’ And the cops eventually said, we’ve got a bad feeling, this isn’t gonna happen. And they shut it down.”
Controversy already surrounded the event after University of Ottawa Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost Francois Houle sent Coulter an e-mail last week informing her to educate herself on Canada’s free speech laws and advised her to “weigh [her] words with respect and civility in mind.” Coulter was scheduled to speak at three Canadian universities this week.
And according to Coulter? Well, she thinks the letter made her, yes, a victim of a “hate crime.”
“He described the law to me very carefully—any speech that incites hatred toward someone based on membership in an identifiable group can be criminally prosecuted. Well, before I even set foot in Canada, he had identified me as having criminal proclivities because I belong to an identifiable group: conservatives. Or it could be because I’m a Christian, I’m a Presbyterian. I’m a female conservative. If what Francois Houle did to me is not a hate crime, then nothing is.”
Coulter spoke at the University of Western Ontario Monday night. There she apparently said that Muslims should not fly in airplanes and instead take “flying carpets.” When one Muslim student asked how she should travel due to her lack of magical rug transportation, Coulter told her to “take a camel.”
And it’s no wonder Coulter thinks that, “Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could have spoken tonight with less controversy.”
