Imagine if a controversial politician finds he needs more security at his public appearances than less controversial ones.

Now imagine we charge this controversial politician a security fee every time he speaks, because of these increased costs.

Does this seem acceptable?

It’s obvious why we don’t operate this way, why we choose, instead, to share the security costs among all taxpayers.

We want people to pursue and debate ideas based on what they think, not on what they can afford.

Why is it, then, that at publicly-funded universities across Canada, it’s become acceptable for university administrators to charge a security fee to student groups based on how controversial the speakers they invite to campus are?

Of course these groups can invite speakers for virtually no cost if they aren’t controversial.

But to put on an event where the speaker challenges conventional opinions or makes people intellectually uncomfortable, you’d better have deep pockets.

Young Canadians in Action, a group of students at Western University, was recently charged a $1,200 security fee due to the expected controversy of their invited speaker, University of Toronto Professor Jordan Peterson.

Peterson, a psychologist, who refuses to use gender-neutral pronouns, has become a prominent free speech advocate on university campuses.

The university’s reasoning was that Peterson had been controversial in the past.

As it turned out, his address at Western University last weekend went off peacefully, with an audience of 700 giving him a standing ovation at the end of his speech.

However, the day before, protesters at McMaster University shut down his address after only a few minutes.

Clearly, in the case of student groups, which are lightly funded, the burden of paying security fees may impact on who they invite to speak on campus and compel them to avoid certain speakers altogether.

Worse, this security fee policy can give violent protesters the power to censor and shut down debate on campus, by making it too expensive for student groups to invite controversial speakers.

Ironically, while individual students are likely to understand why we should avoid this so-called “controversy tax”, student groups are often fine with discouraging controversial views, especially those of a supporter of free speech like Peterson.

Western University’s student newspaper, The Gazette, for example, published an editorial headlined “Jordan Peterson doesn’t need a platform at Western”, speculating about what might happen if Peterson was “dismissive and discriminatory” and fearing he might make some people “feel as though their true self is unacceptable”.

This from people who are interested in journalism, as well as being members of a university community.

You would think those factors would make them advocates of free speech and of having a wide range of viewpoints debated on campus.

On the bright side, the concept of intellectual diversity is slowly gaining back previously lost ground on some university campuses.

We should be telling our politicians that we want universities to have policies that prevent discrimination against ideas simply because they are controversial.

And that we oppose the controversy tax they impose on student groups that often follows their decision to invite controversial speakers to their campuses.

I’m not saying what Western did was illegal.

I’m saying it was a bad decision.

There is often a legitimate security cost to having controversial speakers on campus.

But universities should be paying that cost, when necessary, out of their publicly-funded budgets, not sloughing it off on student groups with limited funding in what amounts to an indirect form of censorship.

Let’s avoid strengthening the echo chamber, which comes with a toxic and politically correct university culture.

We need more open discussion and debate of controversial ideas, not less.

Whitlock is an academic governor of the University of Alberta, and president of the Public Science Institute in Edmonton.