Tuesday, September 29, 2009

On coercion

Dr. Dawg's post on Gary Goodyear's attempt to pressure the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) into pulling funding for a conference on the Middle East is definitely worth a read.

But it's worth noting that what Goodyear apparently did may actually be worse in some ways than those in the other incidents mentioned by Dr. Dawg. As ugly as the actions of Maurice Duplessis (in denying a liquor license to a restauranteur based on his support for Jehovah's Witnesses in several legal proceedings) and Lawrence Cannon (in declaring that he's entitled to withhold consular services based solely on his personal whims) may have been, they seem somewhat different in that they represent efforts to reach final judgment on matters involving private citizens (albeit by ministerial fiat).

In contrast, Goodyear looks to have gone a step further by actually using his arbitrary exercise of discretion to try to blackmail an independent public agency into his preferred course of action. From my standpoint, that roughly mirrors the difference between theft (of rights rather than property) and extortion - in that the latter involved a coercive effect on the other party's actions as well as a loss of what's taken. And while both are obviously serious issues, the latter seems far more likely to create a self-perpetuating cycle of abuse.

(Edit: fixed typo.)

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