A flurry of controversies surrounding who can and cannot speak at university and college campuses has once again raised the spectre that our vaunted rights to free speech are under attack.

Are they?

All the speakers recently in the spotlight already have multiple platforms to spout their views. Certainly, the robustness of the arguments for and against who should speak suggests those rights are very much in action.

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So, who exactly is arguing against free speech rights? Is it the people protesting the platforms given to those who attack others based on their identity? Or is it those who raise the alarm bell at the protests, but mostly where white far-right speech is concerned?

When the controversial French comedian Dieudonné M’bala M’bala, who has been convicted of hate speech and anti-Semitism in Europe, landed in Canada in 2016 to give a show in Montreal, border security officials barred him from entering. It was a move that was hailed by the political left and right.

“His messages go completely against the Canadian values of religious freedom, tolerance and pluralism,” said Michelle Rempel, Conservative immigration critic. “Conservatives have always stood up against hate speech and those who condone it.”

Tom Mulcair, then the NDP leader, also opposed it: “Well, there are laws in Canada. When someone propagates hate against a religious or racial group, we need to ban these people from Canada,” he told media.

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Dieudonné’s Canadian tour promoter said the comedian was coming in peace and had nothing offensive to say. You would think all those panicking about the fall of free speech rights would have rushed to advocate for this man.

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That begs the question: Is the furor really about erosion of free speech rights at all? Or, is it about censoring the protests, for fear that the gatekeeping role on what topics are OK to debate be taken away from groups that have traditionally had that power?

The free speech erosion bogeyman, then, becomes the elite equivalent of the “It’s OK to be white” posters. It frames identity-based intolerance in innocuous or righteous terms that anybody can get on board with. In reality it’s code for affirming the status quo or pushing back against resistance. It allows opposition to certain topics to be framed as opposition to the concept, in this case free speech.

This, although, there is no unfettered free speech in society, legally or literally. We may speak freely but we are all constrained by context, by relationships, by decorum, by responsibility. In this newspaper, for instance, we don’t carry photos with dead bodies even though there’s no legal censorship of it.

Are school campuses obliged to host those who spout intolerance, and further legitimize their views? Could I read a few rubbish books on computer science and expect to give a lecture on Artificial Intelligence at Waterloo University?

Free speech may give us the right to falsely attribute the phrase, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,” to Voltaire. But it doesn’t protect us from being corrected that not Voltaire, but Beatrice Evelyn Hall, wrote those words about him in a biography.

Free speech assures us of the right to repeat the original erroneous statement, but not the right to demand it be debated, nor the right to a university platform or space in a newspaper.

Having those avenues closed off is not censorship. It’s common-sense rejection of falsehoods.

We can’t debate the merits of white supremacy or phrenology in North America, any more than we can debate, say, allowing kids to smoke. These issues are long settled.

There’s a difference between speech that makes people uncomfortable, such as the topic of white privilege and speech that threatens violence on others, such as the topic of white ethnocide, which essentially seeks to extinguish Canada’s multicultural makeup.

Protesting intolerance or hate is not about protecting hurt feelings, or about being offended, as is sometimes claimed. It’s about the exhausting, emotional work it takes to prove your humanity to society. For those who face the brunt of intolerance, these issues are not merely theoretical debates or click-bait-filled paths to brand-building.

Only the wilfully blind — or the privileged — would suggest that students need exposure to xenophobic or transphobic or racist ideas in university to equip themselves for the “real world.”

That real world is no stranger for those who make it to university by navigating and hurting from identity-based hurdles. They come to school to expand their minds, not to put up with the trauma that trips up their lives, or the stigma they continue to face in society. Many end up carrying the weight of agitating for dignity in addition to their studies.

Of what value, then, are such degrading debates on university campuses — or indeed anywhere — other than to suggest that intolerance is on the agenda again?