Deborah MacLatchy, the president of Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada, apparently no longer believes free speech should be protected if it’s “threatening.”

MacLatchy’s statement came just days after she issued an apology because Wilfrid Laurier University chastised a teaching assistant for exercising her free speech rights.

“Academic freedom and freedom of expression are very central to the university,” MacLatchy told CTV Kitchener on Thursday. “We recognize that there will be challenging and uncomfortable conversations, but it’s not okay for them to be threatening — and that’s the overall balance that we look for in every class and in every tutorial.”

MacLatchy issued an official apology to Laurier graduate student Lindsay Shepherd this week because she was reprimanded for showing her students a video that featured conservative free speech advocate Jordan Peterson, who says gender-neutral pronouns are nonsense.

But the apology was only issued after the teaching assistant released a secretly-recorded tape of the reprimand to the Canadian media.

Prof. Simon Kiss, who also teaches at Wilfrid Laurier, told CTV that the university has stifled free speech with other incidents.

“We see this not as just an isolated incident, but a serious problem that needs to be addressed with kind of a foundational statement at Laurier on freedom of speech.”

Kiss represents a number of professors who are formally complaining with a petition about the way their universitiy ignores free speech. He says Laurier has become obessessed with a “gender and sexual violence” policy that often precludes free speech rights.

“While that’s important and meritorious, the policy as it was written was very broad and vague and it has contributed to both of these serious incidents where speech or debate has been constricted,” Kiss said.

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