Thirty years ago, an Egyptian immigrant named Ahmed Khadr, who would become the head of Canada’s foremost “family of terror,” was a peace-abiding master’s student in engineering at the University of Ottawa. But, as the Ottawa Citizen comments, Khadr became radicalized at the university:

Khadr joined the Muslim Students Association which had been founded, in part, by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group opposed to Egypt’s secular government. Exposure to the group would be a galvanizing experience for Khadr, according to an important new book [Guantanamo’s Child, which explores the case of Khadr’s second youngest son, Omar] by Toronto Star national security reporter Michelle Shephard … [who] writes … “The Muslim Student Association opened his eyes to the politics of Islam and by the time he graduated, he was a proponent of Sharia Law.”So began the Khadrs’ epic family journey into the world’s darkest circles of terrorism and counter-terrorism.

I relay this story, lest we forget that university radicalism can have horrific consequences.