ROTHENBURGER — Testing the right to free speech

COLUMN — Freedom of speech has been getting a lot of attention this week from near and far.

At TRU, a couple of speakers at a student law conference took some heat for their presentation on aboriginal law. Frances Widdowson and Albert Howard, who wrote a book call Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry, apparently hit a bit of a raw nerve.

CBC radio gave about 15 minutes of airtime to criticisms of their presentation, a response from Howard, and further response from aboriginal advocate and lawyer Michele Good.

I wasn’t at the presentation, but a promotional piece on their book says this: “By examining the root causes of aboriginal problems, Frances Widdowson and Albert Howard expose the industry that has grown up around land claim settlements, showing that aboriginal policy development over the past 30 years has been manipulated by non-aboriginal lawyers and consultants.”

That doesn’t sound disrespectful or even very controversial to me. Maybe it was the way they said it that caused the ruckus. Whatever, it’s raised the issue of freedom of expression at the university again as well as the broader question of how free is free speech.

In his interview with CBC’s Shelley Joyce, Howard said he and Widdowson intend to follow up on what he referred to as “this kind of censorship.”

Sometimes, people just write things without thinking them through. Like Adrian McNair, who somehow thought it would be a good idea to write about the Lower Mainland case in which six dogs were left in a vehicle by their sitter and died from heat exhaustion. Emma Paulsen at first claimed the dogs had been stolen, but was found out and sentenced to six months jail time.

Among other things, McNair wrote in a column that “they’re only dogs. Dogs are easily replaced.”

Surrey Now, the paper that published the column, was swamped with demands for his head. The editor soon followed with an apology for the “insensitive tone” of the column.

“While I support our columnists’ right to hold — and publish — opinions that may be unpopular, as editor, I accept responsibility for allowing such viewpoints to be expressed in a callous, insensitive and disrespectful manner,” the editor wrote.

Another way of putting it would be, “We defend freedom of speech but people should be careful about how they use it.”

Meanwhile, Florida and Texas are duking it out over an assertion by a Florida congressman by the name of Alcee Hastings that Texas is a “crazy state.”

In a committee hearing on Obamacare, Hastings said during an argument with Texas Republican Michael Burgess that Texas is “a crazy state to begin with” and he wouldn’t live in Texas “for all the tea in China.”

When Burgess demanded an apology, Hastings said he could “wait until hell freezes over.”

Texas doesn’t see anything funny about it — somebody even cancelled a trip to Disney World in protest.

Hastings shot back with a claim that an old Texas law on dildos proves his point. “One of their cities has a law that says women can only have six dildos, and the certain size of things,” he said. “And if that ain’t crazy I don’t know what is.”

Where does the right to free speech begin and end? When does the expression of a certain opinion become unacceptable?

I can’t draw any confident conclusions about the TRU situation, but the other two examples seem to me to be cases of the right to say or write something stupid. Which, one could argue, is what free speech is about.

Contact Mel Rothenburger at armchairmayor@gmail.com, on Twitter @MelRothenburger, or facebook.com/mel.rothenburger.7.