Wade MacLauchlan

H. Wade MacLauchlan is a Canadian academic and politician.

MacLauchlan was president of the University of Prince Edward Island from 1999 to 2011. He was previously dean of the law school of the University of New Brunswick and a law professor at Dalhousie University.

Censorship

While serving as UPEI president MacLauchlan took the unprecedented step of censoring the student-run newspaper, The Cadre. On MacLauchlan's orders uniformed security personnel seized and later destroyed copies of the newspaper. In a statement, MacLauchlan said that the newspaper's edition, which had re-published political cartoons depicting a prophet of Islam, was "a reckless invitation to disorder." This highly controversial move was condemned as anti-academic, an attack on freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and short-sighted.

Clive Seligman, President of the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship, wrote an open letter to MacLauchlan which appeared in the National Post. In his letter Seligman wrote: "By censoring this debate at your campus rather than taking the necessary steps to provide appropriate security to allow debate to happen, you have encouraged the view that the threat of violence, real or imagined, is an effective way to challenge ideas with which one disagrees."

Since retiring from the university, MacLauchlan has chaired the Palmer Conference on Public Sector Leadership in 2012: Canada as a Leader in Immigration Policy and Practice, and co-chaired the 2013 Georgetown Conference: Redefining Rural.

On November 28, 2014, MacLauchlan announced his candidacy for the leadership of the ruling Prince Edward Island Liberal Party.