In early October, Sunera Thobani, assistant professor of Women’s Studies at the University of British Columbia, was accused of a hate crime under Canada’s draconian “hate speech” laws for making anti-American statements at a public conference. Though her statements were harsh and ill-timed, they should not be considered criminal acts. The Thobani case demonstrates the dangers of hate-speech laws.

At the Women’s Resistance Conference on October 1, Thobani was scheduled to give a speech on Canadian foreign policy. However, in light of the terrorist attacks on September 11, she turned her guns on the United States. Thobani attacked American foreign policy as “steeped in blood,” and charged that the American government’s response to the terrorist attacks is only intended to guarantee access to oil and natural gas reserves in the region.

Her fellow ideologues on the left praised her, but most people were shocked and outraged. The premier of British Columbia, Gordon Campbell, denounced her speech as “hateful and disgraceful.” Others demanded apologies or censure. The president of a large Canadian corporation even called for people to withdraw funding to the University of British Columbia.

The most surprising turn of events came when a police officer, who since has been reprimanded, let slip that Thobani had been accused by a “concerned citizen” of hate crimes against the United States. It’s possible that Thobani’s speech falls within the realm of actionable crimes under Section 319 of the Canadian Criminal Code.

Section 319 allows for a jail sentence of less than two years for anyone convicted of “public incitement of hatred” against an identifiable group of people, when the comments lead to a breach of the peace.

Though the law also states that no one can be convicted “if the statements were relevant to any subject of public interest, the discussion of which was for the public benefit, and if on reasonable grounds he believed them to be true,” there is little clarity on what that means.

The Thobani case underscores how fragile free speech can be when the government acts like a parent, defining bad words and what may or may not be said. The ultimate irony of this case is that those who designed the hate-speech laws did not foresee them limiting the leftist, anti-American speech which is a kind of national sport in Canada. Indeed, Section 319 has largely been used to prosecute “right-wing” reactionaries and bigots, such as Holocaust deniers and anti-Islamic pamphleteers. Now the politically correct have been hoisted on their own petard.

Thobani’s harangue was boilerplate left-wing hysteria that before September 11 would have been rightly ignored by most people and applauded only by a few. Like the Taliban, Thobani does hate the United States, but she should not be penalized for revealing her bigotry in public.

Though the case is still under investigation, its legacy is clear: freedom can be the first casualty of war. More generally, laws against such vague “crimes” as hate speech make the job of censors much more appealing.

Those who believe that hate speech should be a crime ought to consider whether they want to be the next ones arrested when the political tides change. Today’s supporters of hate-speech laws can easily become tomorrow’s victims.

Joelle Cowan is a public-policy fellow at the California-based Pacific Research Institute’s Center for Entrepreneurship. She can be reached via email at jcowan@pacificresearch.org.