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What bothers me about the Cancel Culture Letter - despite agreeing with some of it! - is that it perpetuates the myth that the greatest threats to free speech are directed at powerful political and cultural institutions and personalities. When, in fact, the opposite is true. 1/6
A free exchange of ideas is not in really danger when a well-educated editor has to find another perch. It's in danger when the world's most powerful company retaliates against employees seeking justice in their community. 2/6 https://www.thestand.org/2020/06/whole-foods-censors-black-lives-matter/
Asking tenured professors to consider how their teaching affects their students doesn't narrow the bounds of democratic discourse. University presidents undermining students' speech and threatening greater censorship in response does. 3/6 https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/news/faculty-criticize-sonoma-state-president-judy-sakaki-over-apology-for-provo/?artslide=0&sba=AA
Free speech is not in crisis when the heads of institutions lose the privilege of holding a particular position of power. It's in crisis because police departments are targeting radical Black activists for brutal crackdowns on protest. 4/6 https://gothamist.com/news/nypds-ambush-of-peaceful-bronx-protesters-was-executed-nearly-flawlessly-city-leaders-agree
There are endless examples of real threats to free speech that the authors of the Cancel Culture decided to ignore, instead placing the security of their privilege at the center of a narrative of existential threat. This is the same move right wing free speech martyrs make. 5/6
If you're complaining about being silenced from the pages of a major publication and your complaint echoes for days in intellectual social media circles, maybe think about using your time to defend the free speech rights of people who can only dream of having your platform. 6/6
