The Letter

A year ago...oops, sorry, it was two weeks ago... a letter appeared under the Harper's masthead about assaults on free speech. It was a fairly anodyne, generalized statement in defense of the free exchange of ideas.

It unleashed a shitstorm.

Zack Beauchamp has a nice summary of the debate here, and this WaPo piece covers similar ground, but gives a bit more context. (Full disclosure: a friend of mine, David Greenberg, is a signatory.) The basic contours of the debate Beauchamp lays out nicely.

Abstract appeals to “free speech” and “liberal values” obscure the fact that what’s being debated is not anyone’s right to speech, but rather their right to air that speech in specific platforms like the New York Times without fear of social backlash. Yet virtually everyone agrees that certain speakers — neo-Nazis, for example — do not deserve a column in the paper of record.

This is a fairly "Inside Baseball" dispute that is more over HOW and WHERE voices are heard rather than WHOSE voices are heard. The criticism was largely from - honestly - less prestigious writers and intellectuals who can't believe that people like JK Rowling, Malcolm Gladwell or Margaret Atwood are really worried about "free-speech" or simply "consequence-free speech."  The inclusion of Rowling is telling, because of the backlash she's received for her retrograde views on transgender issues. For the critics, the letter was simply whining by elites who don't like the fact that people on Twitter can call them out for lazy or hurtful arguments.

While that might have informed some signatories, there have been some data points about disproportionate backlash against a few people. The most prominent case in favor of the Harper's letter is the David Shor case. Shor tweeted a peer reviewed study from 1968 that linked civil unrest to GOP victories. This enraged some BIPOC members of Civis, where he worked. He was fired.  Civis will not say if he was fired for that Tweet, but if he was, that is a real case of "cancel culture."

The problem is that after that case there isn't a great deal of evidence for "cancel culture." Banning Milo Yaniwhatshisface from a campus isn't "cancel culture," it's refusing to let someone speak who embraces neo-Nazi and racist views. I think that's fine. I think criticism of prominent writers is great.

I've tried in my Twitter-life to engage people in a respectful way. (Two examples: I had a discussion about race and the Revolution with a Bancroft Prize winning historian that started as tense but became illuminating. The other day I tweeted something that was wrong, the author corrected me and I thanked them, and they "liked" the thanks.) The default of social media is antagonism and venom. It's SO hard to maintain a climate of open inquiry.

The Vox piece interviews Regina Rini, a philosopher who has a book coming out on microaggressions. Her next book is tentatively titled Democracy and Social Media Are Incompatible.  That's a shitty title, but the idea seems to be accurate.

I don't think we need to ban challenging ideas, but we need to account for how social media is warping our public discourse. That strikes me as a good place to start.