Harper's Letter on Justice and Open Debate

[Beet]

I don't think this is a clear either/or. The vast majority would agree that some people, e.g. neo-Nazis for example, deserve to be cancelled, while for instance, David Shor does not. There is an ocean of difference between the two. It is not simply a question of "Cancel Culture is good" vs. "Cancel Culture is bad." Ezra Klein has a point when he says that the boundaries of free speech are, to some extent, about who has power. This is true. As for myself, I am still working through what I think would be the appropriate criteria for saying that someone should be cancelled.

Generally for me it comes down to two things-- punching up vs. punching down, and the health of society. On the first one, marginalized groups have more leeway to speak than dominant groups. That one is pretty self-explanatory. Of course, sometimes more than one party is marginalized, and then it becomes tricky. Trans activists claim marginalization as trans, whereas JK Rowling claims marginalization as a biological female. They both claim marginalization. In that case, I think both claims need to be taken seriously.

The health of society is the second one and this is where it I think the "woke" crowd goes wrong. Cancelling neo-Nazis benefits a healthy society, because if their views became widespread, it would be highly destructive of American society. On the other hand, cancelling David Shor is detrimental to a healthy society because axing someone for quoting an academic paper that could be seen in some corners as concern trolling, even though it is simply bringing to light an academic paper, is disproportionate punishment. This involves a judgement call that whatever harm comes from axing Shor, whatever harm to an atmosphere of intellectual freedom that allows us to explore valid ideas, outweighs whatever perceived harms might come to BLM by supporting a belief that violent protests don't help the cause. That's a judgement call. It's a judgement call, I think, everyone makes one way or the other.*

* It also raises the question of making judgement calls on behalf of identities you are not a part of. Most of the time however, members of identities involved in a controversy have differing individual opinions, and in that case none are necessarily authoritative.

[Beet]

I love how one of the critiques of the letter is that the signatories are complaining that they have no platform, but the letter itself shows they have a platform.

Isn't this circular logic? By the standard of the critics, the only way such a letter could legitimately make a point against de-platforming is if it itself had no platform, e.g. none of us would probably have heard about it. In other words, the only legitimate critique of de-platforming is one that makes no impact. This is a bit like the old test of drowing the woman to see if she is a witch. You lose either way! In reality, the Letter would have many, many times more signatures if people could sign anonymously without fear of reprecussions.

[Beet]

Good for Bari Weiss. It sounds like the NY Times has become a complete cesspool. I'm sure she will land on her feet.