If I had only been interested in a rhetorical victory, I would’ve stopped replying long ago; I have, rather, been trying to explain, but in vain, it seems.
I agree with some caveats. IMHO the issue just can not be seen as having a solution like “one size fits all”, I do think many of the signatories are sincere, but they are falling for one of the most controversial ways to set policy. Many times in the past I encountered similar letters, with many who are not experts on the specific issues, trying to pass opinions as if the letter or petition was evidence to support scientific racism, climate change denial, increase of incarceration rates, etc.
It is an attempt at making an opinion to be more valid thanks to the number of signatories… forgetting that in the end, it remains an opinion. So, I agree with you on that; while there is a point to consider from the original letter, it is very important to check the context. When one can see that most of the items they complain about are not as they imply, one has to realize how underwhelming was their approach to the issue.
I’m so old I can remember when people on the left were outraged over the first episode of ‘cancel culture’, back when it was called the Hollywood Blacklist. Back then it was Communists in entertainment who were being ‘canceled’, and we’ve been hearing how horrible that was for 60 years now. Dalton Trumbo became a left-wing folk hero after he was canceled.
Now the same people who thought that was a huge injustice of the 20th century are bringing it back, scaled up to the entire society and not just a few Hollywood writers. And they think it’s totally okay.
I guess the concept of destroying the livelihoods of people for their political opinions is only bad when the other side does the canceling.
“Now the same people”?
And no, many like me are reporting that it is not ok, one has to look at this on a case by case basis, and so far there was an example that I would not agree it was ok.
I don’t know if you meant to imply these are the only options, but what about just being okay with people having different opinions, without feeling obliged to re-educate them or force them into submission? The fact many people can easily remember a time when gay marriage would have seemed a laughable concept is a good indication that what is currently popular is not necessarily correct. We couldn’t have got to where we are today if no one was ever allowed to disagree with prevailing views.
Damn, when I learned about McCarthyism in school, it wasn’t as a blueprint to follow. I’m amazed how many people seem to be excusing it or endorsing it in this debate.
This is a topic that can be “great debated” virtually forever, but as long as there are “viewpoints” there will be those that disagree with them and hence the minefields.
So in other words, it’s as if the right is saying, basically, “It’s not good enough for you to allow us the freedom to say what we want to say-- you are also required to believe/agree with everything we say, or you’re still in trouble”-- is that it?
There is an increasing intransigence everywhere you look, in virtually every nation as well as on the international arena. This incapacity to listen to opposing viewpoints seems to be an expression of the modern tribalism toward which human beings have evolved under the influence of media and social media networks. The epoch of modernism when professionals were revered and their opinion was respected has been replaced by post-modernism where neotribalism causes people to yearn for an idealized past when things were simpler and everything was better.
Who is saying you are in trouble? Donald Trump? If you work for CNN, or the New York Times, yes. DJT is a man of the right who, I would agree, effectively says that.
The Harper’s letter signatories? No. Few of them are on the right of the American political spectrum. And, as far as I can tell, none would say you are in trouble.
I don’t subscribe to the New York Times because I expect to believe/agree with what I read. I do expect to be exposed to a wide range of views I perhaps don’t agree with, whether those of Bernie Sanders, Vladimir Putin or Tom Cotton. I’m not canceling my subscription, but I am unhappy that James Bennet and Bari Weiss are gone.
I can’t help but point out the irony of your idealized characterization of “modernism”.
~Max
[sigh] I know, but still.
Where have all these staunch defenders of freedom to voice unpopular opinions been while people were, say, getting fired for flipping off a Trump motorcade while bicycling, or being threatened, doxxed and harassed for saying uncomplimentary things about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians?
It’s especially eyebrow-raising to see Bari Weiss, of all people, complaining about “cancel culture” and retaliation against people for expressing unpopular views. As this article comments,
The “regime of censorship” that Ball is critiquing isn’t some historical instance of retaliation that used to be happening a comfortable number of decades ago to people who had the audacity to speak up for, e.g., gay rights or racial integration. This is retaliation that’s happening these days to people who publicly disagree with so-called “centrist” views that Weiss complains she’s getting too much pushback for.
Real defenders were there, it’s just that most people, whether on the left or the right, are emotional and not very capable of a relatively unbiased analysis of pros and cons of issues.
Social media seems to be making things worse.
So, in other words, someone else demanded the terminations, not her. Is that it?
Now, it there is evidence that Bari called for firing, I’ll agree that was wrong (although I think that age – if she did it back in college and not after – can, up to a point, be a good excuse). I certainly don’t go for guilt by association with Anthony Weiner, now or then.
I did find a more recent example of what looks like a pure cancel culture attempt against one of the professors in question:
Even though I consider myself a Zionist, I also consider the effort to get the Trump administration to defund Columbia, because of a professor exercising academic freedom, to be completely wrong.
No, it is not it, AFAICT. Weiss was certainly not the only person involved in this “cancel-culture” campaign, but she was indeed very much involved in it:
You can’t really invoke “youthful folly” as an excuse for your repudiated actions if you’ve never actually repudiated them, which AFAICT Weiss has not. On the contrary, according to this article:
Looks like they, or at least one of them, were calling Zionists racists, and some of the Zionists were calling them racist back.
I have no plan to run down when that common insult is and is not fairly issued. I think is is overused and hardly likely to gain understanding.
The one area where I see borderline cancel culture, coming from Bari, is in opposing tenure. It’s not as egregious as shouting someone down, or saying that a controversial speaker can’t even come on campus, or can’t even write a rare op-ed in your newspaper.
Looking.at my next link, it does seem that Joseph Massad has more comfort with hurling insults – relating to his area of academic expertise – than makes sense if you are going to spend your lifetime teaching students coming in with a wide range of views on a controversial subject:
Consider:
“All those in the Arab world who deny the Jewish holocaust are in my opinion Zionists.”
I can understand why this would make Zionist listeners angry, because I myself feel insulted reading this. He still should be heard.
Now, I don’t know much about holocaust deniers in the Arab world, or for that matter Zionists in the Arab world. But I’m sure they are not “all” of anything, and that lumping them in clever insulting categories does nothing to enhance understanding.
In judging whether Bari was trying to cancel Massad, one thing I would like to know is whether faculty at Columbia are usually granted tenure. If the answer is yes, trying to stop it is cancel culture and the wrong approach.