A lucid guide from one of the most lucid writers around. Thank you. It helps in two directions: for those who are cancelling or being cancelled, it shows what this entails, and for those who are offering or receiving legitimate criticism, it shows how this is not the same as cancelling.
Cancelling seems to have become a knee-jerk reaction; even those with no particular stake in the issue take part in it. My second book received some angrily dismissive reviews on Goodreads from people who clearly hadn't read it and didn't know what its arguments were. Were they ganging up on me? I doubt it. Did they have anything personal against me? As far as I know, they were strangers. They might just have been annoyed with the book title or summary--and annoyance is enough of a provocation.
Some of this knee-jerk cancelling may come from the pressure (especially online) to have an opinion about everything and to share it quickly and widely. "We want to hear your voice!" "Join the conversation!" But why? Shouldn't a person have room to form thoughts in private?
Much cancelling is deliberate and premeditated. But much of it seems to be impulsive--and so one possible remedy is to slow the impulses down. Your list can come in handy here as well. Before posting, people can ask themselves: Am I trying to shed light on an issue, or am I trying to punish or harm someone? Am I thinking and acting from my own knowledge and conscience, or am I following others' lead? Am I focused on the questions at stake, or on personal matters? Am I trying to come to a better understanding myself, or have I already decided that I am right, no matter what anyone else might say? If the answer to any of these questions is the second option, then the person should hold back and think the matter over some more.
These points are fine, but written more for the public intellectual, academic, outspoken professional, celebrity and others who are more or less wearing targets on they backs. But the culture of canceling is broader. Democrats have pushed single-issue organizing to 'recruit' voters for over 40 years. And all those groups fighting for women, minority, and gay rights as well as the environment, health care, criminal justice reform etc. have competed with each other for funding and followers. Like academics are always thinking of new angles on a subject to get published, advocacy groups tend towards narrower and purer objectives. A younger liberal cohort that assumes certain 'truths' that are popular assumes those issues are also resolved, therefore not subject to any more debate. But in politics, as we've seen with the current Administration, nothing is ever completely resolved. At the same time, liberals have faced take-no-prisoner conservative wedge issue. Both fed on the other resulting in where we are now. Cancel culture is a product of these dynamics. Cancel culture is exactly that. it is a cultural phenomenon trying to replace politics with ideology, a no win propositions. A politically astute newspaper doesn't force out an editor that allows an op-ed by Tom Cotton to be printed. It prints the Cotton op-ed and let's its reader tear it apart. Politically astute people want to understand their opposition better than they understand themselves. i was pissed off when the opportunity to hear David Remnick take on Steve Bannon was canceled. A political culture that blocks out criticism is brittle and juvenile. It won't last.
What we now call "cancel culture" is just "culture" in many academic fields. This is especially the case where faculty embrace an understanding of themselves, their teaching, and their research as progressive or radical. What I suspect many non-academics who have long defended the humanities as a crucial training ground for critical thinking don't know is that students in many disciplines are taught, and believe, that the instruction they receive in this worldview is "critical thinking." That is, critical thinking doesn't require knowing and assessing different perspectives on difficult questions or considering the ways in which facts complicate belief systems. It only requires that we learn the right answers, hold those around us to those answers, ignore (or, better, denigrate) "facts," and punish those who refuse to submit for undermining safety and doing harm. Cancelling is just the end result of this process.
Great comment - this is exactly the case. Although I don't know how widespread this phenomenon is in fields like Politics, International Relations or even Philosophy or Psychology. I can say with some confidence that such ideas are not common in my field (Economics). The problem is that university administrators and the diversity infrastructure is trying to popularize these ideas (or principles derived from these ideas) in the campus as a whole. For example, the idea that speech that you disagree with constitutes violence. Or the idea that when a person from a "minority" group accuses you of any bias, they are automatically correct because their "feelings" are the only guide to the truth. Thus when you face such an accusation, if you try to defend yourself by saying that your intentions were good, that only proves you are racist because intentions don't matter. And if you try to prove what you said isn't racist by referring to facts or logic, that also proves you are racist because you believe there is an objective world of facts or evidence that one can refer to outside of the subjective experience of a person living the reality of being a "minority" in society. You are invalidating the entire existence of a person or their life experiences with your so called facts or logic, so obviously they are racist. Thus when you are accused of racism, your only option is to apologize unreservedly, admit that you have been racist and promise to do penance, anything else will amount to doubling down on your racism.
Sinchan: I was trained and taught in a traditional discipline, and now I'm a women's studies prof. I think you're correct that the worldview I sketched isn't as pervasive in the social sciences, though it's spreading into these disciplines because of administrative support and through scholars (and grad students) in subfields in these disciplines who are more amenable to defining themselves through norms of (this particular model of) social justice than disciplinary methods. You've pointed to the components of the problem: 1. speech (that I don't like) is violence, and 2. feelings (especially feeling unsafe) trump evidence. You refer to facts and logic, and, of course, in order to fully explain this worldview you'd want to put those terms in quotations: "facts" and "logic." Not all of our students take these positions. In fact, I find that some students are receptive to intellectual challenge and complexity. The others will do what "we've" taught them to do, as you suggest with your example of racism: punish those who contravene whatever position has been defined most recently as the only correct position on an issue. Extra points for calling the challenge violence and stating that one feels unsafe because of this violence (violence+feelings).
Thanks for your response! Given that you are a woman studies prof, I cannot resist the temptation to ask another question. Do people (other faculty or graduate students etc) seriously take the position that all facts and the rules by which we determine whether there is evidence for a claim (the scientific method) is a reflection of power hierarchies and is therefore in some sense invalid? They are invalid because these epistemological principles were developed by "dead white men" and their goal is to reproduce existing power hierarchies. Thus endeavouring to argue for a position based on general theoretical principles (theory of logic) or (empirical) evidence is useless. The only guide to reality that we have is "lived experience". Is that an accurate summary of how people think or is it just a caricature?
That isn't wrong, but it simplifies the situation. So here's my take: for those who are most committed to the worldview I'm describing, there are essentially three kinds of evidence. First, there are feelings (especially "feeling" unsafe. That technically isn't a feeling. But we can call anxiety and rage feelings if they are, as I suspect, lurking right beneath the surface of what people demanding safety call feeling unsafe). Second, there's empirical evidence (if it bolsters the worldview. If it doesn't, it probably arises from an unreliable source--one of the uses for the pervasive explanation for everything we don't like as the "operations of power." This is a radical left academic version of Trump's "fake news"). Finally, there's theory (but only certain kinds of theory that are consistent with an appropriately radical worldview can be trusted, mostly because the findings never falsify the assumptions. Real theorists don't do hypotheses). I should say that it was not always thus in women's studies, and there are lots of feminist scholars doing quite interesting work in many disciplines today. But, ironically, the radical scholars we're talking about are firmly in the driver's seat across the US in women's studies and in many other, especially humanities, disciplines.
And they exercise an iron fist when crossed, as we see with the Hypatia affair. That was just one example of the disciplining of dissenters that goes on all the time; it just happened to spill into public view. And it's really important to point out that the young scholar who was disciplined was a believer. That is, she wasn't someone who was taking on the whole corrupt intellectual apparatus. She was someone who was very careful to make plain that she didn't dissent from any key tenet of the radical academic worldview. Essentially she just said: even though I believe everything we're supposed to believe, I'm just going to ask this one question, ok? And it was not ok.
Thanks a lot for your answer - I have a better understanding of this now. I hope things get better in social sciences and humanities. I was alarmed when journalists at NYT started using this campus radical language "they felt unsafe due to contrary views being expressed" etc. As Andrew Sullivan says, we all live on campus now...or at least many of us do.
This article needs more concrete examples of the negative consequences people have faced as a result of these “cancelling” campaigns. In what cases have cancellers succeeded in deplatforming their targets? A journalist is mentioned, but no context is provided. What happened to the philosopher that was the recipient of the wrongful, ignorant criticism made against her paper? I’m concerned that we’re seeing republican politicians beginning to do-opt this term to guard against legitimate criticism, and I fear it will only get worse.
We will see few, if any, people who are suffering those negative consequences tell their stories in public space. That's part of the Catch 22 of the dynamic imposed on the target. In many cases the stigmatization on the target, while widely known in his or her workplace, campus, profession or a particular social media platform did so enough to make them unemployable in that profession or render them silent in that forum, but the accusations (always stated in their worst possible light, without context or mitigating fact) are not known to one's family, friends, or, say, at wherever the targeted then ekes out some kind of living at much lesser pay in a different, less public form of work outside of that which one spent a lifetime educating and training to do. To speak publicly about the negative consequences one has faced would bring down greater consequences and harm upon the targeted party's head. The already rich and famous - say, an author of bestselling books or successful actor - who can afford legal and PR counsel is usually advised not to speak of the events in public and can afford to "wait it out" whatever number of years it takes until the pendulum swings back. But the vast majority of the cases of those 'canceled' are not well known or, worse, only known for their cancelation. It's a dynamic that reinforces the climate of fear and obscures the examples you seek. But if we look around and notice that voices we used to see in public spaces have gone missing and silent, that's a pretty reliable clue that they're still suffering serious harm and ongoing damage.
Thank you for your reply. I think the dynamic you’re describing needs to be a much bigger part of the conversation. If there really is a large population of everyday people suffering in silence as they get fired from their jobs for personal held beliefs, or for being quoted out of context, then I think that’s where the focus should be. Context is key though, and often absent from these conversations. When I was an intern at my current job, a full time employee confided in me that he was a racist. He didn’t mince words, he literally told me he was a racist and proceeded to say overtly racist things to me. I planned on going to HR about it once I started as a full time salaried employee, but he was fired for lying to his supervisors before that time came. If I had gone to HR and gotten him fired for being an outspoken racist, would he not be able to claim he was a victim of cancel culture? That aside, I’ve found that much of the conversation surrounding “cancel culture” is focused on those who have public voices. Tenured professors, journalists, comedians, public speakers, etc. I would argue that voices that we are used to seeing in public spaces are rightfully held to a different standard than non-public voices. Social expectations are changing, as they do with every generation, and it seems to me that much of the conversation surrounding “cancel culture” is a projection of discomfort with certain new ideas. I also have found that many of these public voices have avoided being “cancelled” despite being very outspoken with their positions on certain matters. Joe Rogan regularly laments cancel culture with his guests and he’s got the most popular podcast on earth. Many of his guests join him in their concern and gain listeners and readers with every appearance on his show. Dave Chapelle, (who I love), complained about cancel culture during one of his comedy specials that was taped in a broadway theatre, where the cheapest seats - where I was seated - costed $240, and for which he was being paid $20,000,000. If the dynamic you speak of is actually a problem that is effecting everyday people, that’s where the focus of the public conversation should be.
Thanks for your response. Regarding this part of it:
"When I was an intern at my current job, a full time employee confided in me that he was a racist. He didn’t mince words, he literally told me he was a racist and proceeded to say overtly racist things to me. I planned on going to HR about it once I started as a full time salaried employee, but he was fired for lying to his supervisors before that time came. If I had gone to HR and gotten him fired for being an outspoken racist, would he not be able to claim he was a victim of cancel culture?"
My thoughts:
The very first question on the checklist in the essay we're commenting on is "Are people denouncing you to your employer?" Without knowing the context or the details of the story you've shared, I'm not a fan of "tattle-tale culture," one of the ingredients of cancel culture today. Too often the accusers and finger pointers shrink from our own opportunity (and responsibility) to do what we can about it directly.
The guy in question sounds like somebody I would dislike intensely. He also sounds like an idiot with an employment death wish (and apparently that's how his story played out). But long before reporting him to a higher authority my tendency would be to use my own power in the exchange as a lever to influence and persuade. Sometimes people say things just out of an idea that it makes them rebellious. There was a time when Willie Nelson and Tom Petty unfurled Confederate flags at their concerts in that kind of expression. People engaged with them, and each later spoke publicly about their decisions to stop doing that. People often can say racist, sexist or other "ist" things who are not themselves malicious or intentional perpetrators of those harms. I would rather say, "hey, that's not cool, and here's why I don't want to hear that or overhear that again." To engage a conversation. If that doesn't bear fruit, to escalate slowly. "Well, I hope your hateful views don't affect how you treat other employees or clients here because that would be a matter for HR, don't ya think?" Having bigoted thoughts is not itself a crime. Allowing our prejudices to cause discrimination against others is. See the difference? It's that between "thought crimes" "speech crimes" and "harmful acts."
As to your thought that certain professions should be held to "higher standards":
I fear this is what is driving most of cancel culture. It's about perceptions of social status and of competition over work that has more demand than supply: Jobs or roles with perceived "status." Somebody recently made the point that status is not necessarily economic: A plumber generally makes more money than an entertainer or media worker. The cancel mob doesn't go after plumbers. It goes after those in positions they themselves covet, those with perceived social status. The "thrill" of "taking one down" is the ugliest dynamic of all, not much different than the schoolyard bullying by groups of children against isolated kids. It is often an attempt to virtue-signal that the finger-pointer has social status. "I denounce it therefore I am not it." I think many of us know stories in which the finger pointer is actually worse. The claim that by "canceling" someone or getting them fired we have therefore made the world better, or less racist or whatever, is not borne out by what actually happens. Usually, another idiot just takes the canceled person's place.
What's at stake here is more than whether the number of people directly suffering from cancelation is large enough to merit our empathy. We're all victims of it in the sense that maybe we like watching and benefit from Ellen Degeneres on TV. Right now some want to cancel her because she is "mean" to people off-camera. Every celebrity is a mean SOB when too tired to sign an autograph or fails to return the glommer's love at the level the glommer feels he deserves. The banishment of, say, Kevin Spacey, first from House of Cards, then the cancelation of his Gore Vidal biopic, hurts all of us who want to see a Gore Vidal biopic or found meaning in his performances on HOC. That guy was never convicted of an actual crime. The courts - and not the online mob - are where justice has due process and rules that separate fact from claim. During a previous manifestation of cancel culture (it's nothing new or novel) when the drug war was a bigger part of it, Robert Downey Jr. was unable to find work for years because of his chemical transgressions. That was wrong. I'm glad it was corrected. Movie viewers have benefited from its correction.
The real victim is all of us. Anyway, that's my two cents.
You raise some good points. The only thing I’d like to say in response is that standing up to an overt racist in the workplace as an intern is easier said than done. Appreciate you sharing your thoughts though.
That's a fair enough point. But as you recognized above, going to HR as an intern has its risks, too. You mentioned that you would wait until you were an employee. By that point, you'd no longer be an intern and would have more power in that equation. Whether it would be enough would be a decision you'd measure at that point. Every story and circumstance is different - another thing cancel culture tends to obliterate.
So you are not concerned about the fact that many people on the Left is undermining one of the key principles behind the American Constitution (or at least the spirit behind it), but you are very concerned that Republican politicians are taking advantage of it? if you read Quillette or Persuasion, there are many examples of censorship being practiced on the Left. The university campuses are another story altogether.
1. I never said I wasn’t concerned about the undermining of key principles behind the American constitution. However, I do think the right to free assembly is under a much bigger threat than the right to free speech is right now. Thousands of Americans were assaulted by police forces for peacefully protesting this summer. Tear gas, pepper spray, and rubber bullets hurt more than the ire of college students and ignorance displayed in comment sections.
2. I’m speaking about this specific article. Should I need to look for other sources in order to find supporting evidence for the claims made in this article?
3. My concern about Republican politicians taking advantage of this phenomenon isn’t mutually exclusive to the concern for censorship on the left.
I see your point. One article probably cannot list all the evidence that is there on this type of phenomenon. I would call it social justice mobbing and bullying - more specific than cancel culture. But if you read Quillette or this website over time, there are many, many examples. (look at the series on such mobbing in the world of knitting reported by Katherine Jebsen Moore for Quillette, it is an interesting example of this phenomenon). If you need more examples, I can provide more. But it would be hard to list every instance. This kind of thing is meant to serve as an example to many others, so that some general norms of censorship become established firmly in society. The fact that this has already happened is evidenced by opinion surveys where people say they are afraid to openly discuss their political views. And what has been happening on university campuses is not just about some people getting cancelled - I would say that is a relatively minor issue. The real issue is that students are being indoctrinated in an ideology that everything should be evaluated in terms of racial and gender identity of the person writing and not in terms of the substance of the argument which is irrelevant. There are massive problems with this ideology and it is hollowing out American social and intellectual life.
Most people have protested peacefully but some have not. There is plenty of evidence for violence which has not been shown in the liberal media. I have stopped believing everything I read in the NYT or Washington Post. (like most liberals, I used to do that earlier). Now I also read the Wall Street Journal. It is useful to learn the arguments of the other side, even if you disagree.
I responded to you above. BTW - I agree there are many other things to be concerned about on the political right. I recently learned about a fraudulent television channel peddling crazy right wing conspiracy theories called One News Network and it is apparently watched by millions. But I think any attack on freedom of speech and expression should be taken extremely seriously by liberals. The Left today is full of bad ideas - only if we maintain a culture of open debate which subjects all ideas to critical scrutiny can we discuss and discredit bad ideas from both the Left and the Right.
Institutions currently enable these zealots. For me, that's the crucial point. What can be done to combat large organizations from firing people this mob targets? Perhaps some sort of organization to systematically stand up to them in courts of law and public opinion, modeled along line of the ACLU? Develop counter institutions? There have been radical leftists in the West for 250 years. They've always wanted to tear down the system, never listened to reason and are now explicitly beyond reason. No use confronting them. The institutions need to suffer for enabling them. Again, how can this be done?
A good article, but I take issue with the comment that the retraction of scientific articles is "deservedly controversial". Most retractions are because of falsified data or manipulated images, and therefore a retraction is surely the only honest way to proceed.
Here are several examples of recent retractions that are not due to falsified data or manipulated images. In my opinion, the retractions are for ideological reasons, but you can judge for yourself:
I think you misunderstood the point. The author is talking about retractions that happened due to political campaigns organized by activists. Such things were unheard off earlier but have become more frequent in the last 5 years due to increasing left wing extremism.
He wrote that the phenomenon of retracting papers in science is relatively new. This is not true. If he meant that some papers were now being retracted for woke or political reasons, then he should have said so. I'd also dispute that scientific papers have been retracted for those reasons. Perhaps they have not been published, but that's not the same as a retraction, which is almost always due to irreproducible or falsified data. Do you know of any retractions for woke or political reasons? Don't get me wrong, I agree with almost all of the article, but think he was either wrong or misleading with that claim.
The fact that he is talking about papers being retracted for political reasons is kind of assumed from the context (an article about cancel culture). You are right that this didn't happen earlier and retractions happened due to fraud, plagiarism or scientific reasons. The fact that such things (that were previously unthinkable) are happening now is part of the reason why this website exists. A paper published in PNAS on racial bias in police use of deadly force in 2019 was withdrawn recently by the authors themselves after a sustained political campaign which intimidated the university. The paper was withdrawn by the authors one year after being published. If you follow Quillette, other papers were withdrawn or retracted after being accepted for publication by the relevant journal. A paper was withdrawn from the Journal of the American Heart Association due to political reasons. The paper said that racially based affirmative action in medical schools should be gradually phased out over many years in accordance with a Supreme Court recommendation. The person who wrote the paper was removed from a senior administrative position in the university. He was Chinese, but he was smeared as a racist person believing in white supremacy. I am not sure this website allows weblinks in the comments section, so I am not posting the links.
Thanks for your reply, with examples. I fully understand the reasons for the existence of this website, which is why I'm a paying subscriber; Nevertheless, I still think his wording was misleading in this instance (though I otherwise agree with his point of view on cancelling issue), inviting us to assume that retractions were suddenly commonplace in scientific publishing. Best wishes
Thanks for your response. I agree his wording could have been better. Retractions for political reasons are certainly not common! That would make United States like Soviet Union! But the fact that they are happening at all in a country with high academic standards and the world's most robust tradition of free speech is a scandal. (I am also a paying subscriber, so we agree about the importance of this website).
I know a little bit (though not an expert) about the literature on racial bias in deadly police shootings. There is one prominent researcher who found that there is no evidence of racial bias in lethal police shootings. This researcher is at Harvard and he is Black himself. If that were not the case, he would face enormous pressure and social ostracization from his colleagues for doing research that leads to these findings. I have no firm evidence for this - I am just going by how deeply the Left resents any departure from orthodoxy (however slight) and there is increasingly a demand for punishment for holding the wrong views. (thoughtcrime). It is not enough to discredit someone's ideas, they need to be destroyed and they need to face consequences, so that it becomes a lesson and a warning to others. This is not a mindset which is conducive to intellectual inquiry.
I agree with all of that, though being on the Left myself, I'll double down on my pedantry by saying that we're talking about sections of the Left, and not the Left as a whole.
For quite a while now it seems that people are reveling in "the right to be offended." Instead of offering criticism or rebuttal they seek refuge in being offended. Perhaps this morphed from the longstanding political correctness theme that has existed for the past generation. In any event it's now morphing into cancel culture , to no one's benefit.
Good article, but it would have been even better had the author noted that Adam Schiff and Adam Nadler could just as easily substitute for DT in the sentence "One of many reasons Donald Trump is a menace to democracy is that he views truth instrumentally, as something to use, abuse or ignore depending on the needs of the moment."
This is a good article and I share the author's concerns and perspectives. But I am struggling to find a boundary between socially acceptable discourse and ideas appropriate for social approbation. Almost no one thinks that open followers of Richard Spencer should be welcomed into polite society and most people would agree that supporters of Steven Pinker should. But there are many cases in between. And social pressures (petitions, boycotts , etc.) must have some role. (I am not referring to government censorship of speech here). Not every publication needs to publish every idea, for example.
I am deeply concerned about pervasive social censoriousness. Social media amplifies outrage and makes it frictionless to accumulate social capital through empty displays of virtue. But it seems to me that the important question about cancel culture is not "if" but "when". I can't find a satisfactory answer and wonder if others have thought about this.
I think a helpful, though not complete way to draw the line is whether the views deemed unwelcome in polite society are (1) widely known and quite unpopular or (2) relatively normal or largely unknown. If (2) it stinks of an effort to win by power and not persuasion.
We should typically not try to excise even (1) views by shaming - unpopular views have won out before - but should feel more willing to provide some candid one to one judgment or, with public officials, more forceful concern.
A lucid guide from one of the most lucid writers around. Thank you. It helps in two directions: for those who are cancelling or being cancelled, it shows what this entails, and for those who are offering or receiving legitimate criticism, it shows how this is not the same as cancelling.
Cancelling seems to have become a knee-jerk reaction; even those with no particular stake in the issue take part in it. My second book received some angrily dismissive reviews on Goodreads from people who clearly hadn't read it and didn't know what its arguments were. Were they ganging up on me? I doubt it. Did they have anything personal against me? As far as I know, they were strangers. They might just have been annoyed with the book title or summary--and annoyance is enough of a provocation.
Some of this knee-jerk cancelling may come from the pressure (especially online) to have an opinion about everything and to share it quickly and widely. "We want to hear your voice!" "Join the conversation!" But why? Shouldn't a person have room to form thoughts in private?
Much cancelling is deliberate and premeditated. But much of it seems to be impulsive--and so one possible remedy is to slow the impulses down. Your list can come in handy here as well. Before posting, people can ask themselves: Am I trying to shed light on an issue, or am I trying to punish or harm someone? Am I thinking and acting from my own knowledge and conscience, or am I following others' lead? Am I focused on the questions at stake, or on personal matters? Am I trying to come to a better understanding myself, or have I already decided that I am right, no matter what anyone else might say? If the answer to any of these questions is the second option, then the person should hold back and think the matter over some more.
These points are fine, but written more for the public intellectual, academic, outspoken professional, celebrity and others who are more or less wearing targets on they backs. But the culture of canceling is broader. Democrats have pushed single-issue organizing to 'recruit' voters for over 40 years. And all those groups fighting for women, minority, and gay rights as well as the environment, health care, criminal justice reform etc. have competed with each other for funding and followers. Like academics are always thinking of new angles on a subject to get published, advocacy groups tend towards narrower and purer objectives. A younger liberal cohort that assumes certain 'truths' that are popular assumes those issues are also resolved, therefore not subject to any more debate. But in politics, as we've seen with the current Administration, nothing is ever completely resolved. At the same time, liberals have faced take-no-prisoner conservative wedge issue. Both fed on the other resulting in where we are now. Cancel culture is a product of these dynamics. Cancel culture is exactly that. it is a cultural phenomenon trying to replace politics with ideology, a no win propositions. A politically astute newspaper doesn't force out an editor that allows an op-ed by Tom Cotton to be printed. It prints the Cotton op-ed and let's its reader tear it apart. Politically astute people want to understand their opposition better than they understand themselves. i was pissed off when the opportunity to hear David Remnick take on Steve Bannon was canceled. A political culture that blocks out criticism is brittle and juvenile. It won't last.
What we now call "cancel culture" is just "culture" in many academic fields. This is especially the case where faculty embrace an understanding of themselves, their teaching, and their research as progressive or radical. What I suspect many non-academics who have long defended the humanities as a crucial training ground for critical thinking don't know is that students in many disciplines are taught, and believe, that the instruction they receive in this worldview is "critical thinking." That is, critical thinking doesn't require knowing and assessing different perspectives on difficult questions or considering the ways in which facts complicate belief systems. It only requires that we learn the right answers, hold those around us to those answers, ignore (or, better, denigrate) "facts," and punish those who refuse to submit for undermining safety and doing harm. Cancelling is just the end result of this process.
Great comment - this is exactly the case. Although I don't know how widespread this phenomenon is in fields like Politics, International Relations or even Philosophy or Psychology. I can say with some confidence that such ideas are not common in my field (Economics). The problem is that university administrators and the diversity infrastructure is trying to popularize these ideas (or principles derived from these ideas) in the campus as a whole. For example, the idea that speech that you disagree with constitutes violence. Or the idea that when a person from a "minority" group accuses you of any bias, they are automatically correct because their "feelings" are the only guide to the truth. Thus when you face such an accusation, if you try to defend yourself by saying that your intentions were good, that only proves you are racist because intentions don't matter. And if you try to prove what you said isn't racist by referring to facts or logic, that also proves you are racist because you believe there is an objective world of facts or evidence that one can refer to outside of the subjective experience of a person living the reality of being a "minority" in society. You are invalidating the entire existence of a person or their life experiences with your so called facts or logic, so obviously they are racist. Thus when you are accused of racism, your only option is to apologize unreservedly, admit that you have been racist and promise to do penance, anything else will amount to doubling down on your racism.
Sinchan: I was trained and taught in a traditional discipline, and now I'm a women's studies prof. I think you're correct that the worldview I sketched isn't as pervasive in the social sciences, though it's spreading into these disciplines because of administrative support and through scholars (and grad students) in subfields in these disciplines who are more amenable to defining themselves through norms of (this particular model of) social justice than disciplinary methods. You've pointed to the components of the problem: 1. speech (that I don't like) is violence, and 2. feelings (especially feeling unsafe) trump evidence. You refer to facts and logic, and, of course, in order to fully explain this worldview you'd want to put those terms in quotations: "facts" and "logic." Not all of our students take these positions. In fact, I find that some students are receptive to intellectual challenge and complexity. The others will do what "we've" taught them to do, as you suggest with your example of racism: punish those who contravene whatever position has been defined most recently as the only correct position on an issue. Extra points for calling the challenge violence and stating that one feels unsafe because of this violence (violence+feelings).
Thanks for your response! Given that you are a woman studies prof, I cannot resist the temptation to ask another question. Do people (other faculty or graduate students etc) seriously take the position that all facts and the rules by which we determine whether there is evidence for a claim (the scientific method) is a reflection of power hierarchies and is therefore in some sense invalid? They are invalid because these epistemological principles were developed by "dead white men" and their goal is to reproduce existing power hierarchies. Thus endeavouring to argue for a position based on general theoretical principles (theory of logic) or (empirical) evidence is useless. The only guide to reality that we have is "lived experience". Is that an accurate summary of how people think or is it just a caricature?
That isn't wrong, but it simplifies the situation. So here's my take: for those who are most committed to the worldview I'm describing, there are essentially three kinds of evidence. First, there are feelings (especially "feeling" unsafe. That technically isn't a feeling. But we can call anxiety and rage feelings if they are, as I suspect, lurking right beneath the surface of what people demanding safety call feeling unsafe). Second, there's empirical evidence (if it bolsters the worldview. If it doesn't, it probably arises from an unreliable source--one of the uses for the pervasive explanation for everything we don't like as the "operations of power." This is a radical left academic version of Trump's "fake news"). Finally, there's theory (but only certain kinds of theory that are consistent with an appropriately radical worldview can be trusted, mostly because the findings never falsify the assumptions. Real theorists don't do hypotheses). I should say that it was not always thus in women's studies, and there are lots of feminist scholars doing quite interesting work in many disciplines today. But, ironically, the radical scholars we're talking about are firmly in the driver's seat across the US in women's studies and in many other, especially humanities, disciplines.
And they exercise an iron fist when crossed, as we see with the Hypatia affair. That was just one example of the disciplining of dissenters that goes on all the time; it just happened to spill into public view. And it's really important to point out that the young scholar who was disciplined was a believer. That is, she wasn't someone who was taking on the whole corrupt intellectual apparatus. She was someone who was very careful to make plain that she didn't dissent from any key tenet of the radical academic worldview. Essentially she just said: even though I believe everything we're supposed to believe, I'm just going to ask this one question, ok? And it was not ok.
Thanks a lot for your answer - I have a better understanding of this now. I hope things get better in social sciences and humanities. I was alarmed when journalists at NYT started using this campus radical language "they felt unsafe due to contrary views being expressed" etc. As Andrew Sullivan says, we all live on campus now...or at least many of us do.
Thanks for the convo, Sinchan.
This article needs more concrete examples of the negative consequences people have faced as a result of these “cancelling” campaigns. In what cases have cancellers succeeded in deplatforming their targets? A journalist is mentioned, but no context is provided. What happened to the philosopher that was the recipient of the wrongful, ignorant criticism made against her paper? I’m concerned that we’re seeing republican politicians beginning to do-opt this term to guard against legitimate criticism, and I fear it will only get worse.
We will see few, if any, people who are suffering those negative consequences tell their stories in public space. That's part of the Catch 22 of the dynamic imposed on the target. In many cases the stigmatization on the target, while widely known in his or her workplace, campus, profession or a particular social media platform did so enough to make them unemployable in that profession or render them silent in that forum, but the accusations (always stated in their worst possible light, without context or mitigating fact) are not known to one's family, friends, or, say, at wherever the targeted then ekes out some kind of living at much lesser pay in a different, less public form of work outside of that which one spent a lifetime educating and training to do. To speak publicly about the negative consequences one has faced would bring down greater consequences and harm upon the targeted party's head. The already rich and famous - say, an author of bestselling books or successful actor - who can afford legal and PR counsel is usually advised not to speak of the events in public and can afford to "wait it out" whatever number of years it takes until the pendulum swings back. But the vast majority of the cases of those 'canceled' are not well known or, worse, only known for their cancelation. It's a dynamic that reinforces the climate of fear and obscures the examples you seek. But if we look around and notice that voices we used to see in public spaces have gone missing and silent, that's a pretty reliable clue that they're still suffering serious harm and ongoing damage.
Thank you for your reply. I think the dynamic you’re describing needs to be a much bigger part of the conversation. If there really is a large population of everyday people suffering in silence as they get fired from their jobs for personal held beliefs, or for being quoted out of context, then I think that’s where the focus should be. Context is key though, and often absent from these conversations. When I was an intern at my current job, a full time employee confided in me that he was a racist. He didn’t mince words, he literally told me he was a racist and proceeded to say overtly racist things to me. I planned on going to HR about it once I started as a full time salaried employee, but he was fired for lying to his supervisors before that time came. If I had gone to HR and gotten him fired for being an outspoken racist, would he not be able to claim he was a victim of cancel culture? That aside, I’ve found that much of the conversation surrounding “cancel culture” is focused on those who have public voices. Tenured professors, journalists, comedians, public speakers, etc. I would argue that voices that we are used to seeing in public spaces are rightfully held to a different standard than non-public voices. Social expectations are changing, as they do with every generation, and it seems to me that much of the conversation surrounding “cancel culture” is a projection of discomfort with certain new ideas. I also have found that many of these public voices have avoided being “cancelled” despite being very outspoken with their positions on certain matters. Joe Rogan regularly laments cancel culture with his guests and he’s got the most popular podcast on earth. Many of his guests join him in their concern and gain listeners and readers with every appearance on his show. Dave Chapelle, (who I love), complained about cancel culture during one of his comedy specials that was taped in a broadway theatre, where the cheapest seats - where I was seated - costed $240, and for which he was being paid $20,000,000. If the dynamic you speak of is actually a problem that is effecting everyday people, that’s where the focus of the public conversation should be.
Thanks for your response. Regarding this part of it:
"When I was an intern at my current job, a full time employee confided in me that he was a racist. He didn’t mince words, he literally told me he was a racist and proceeded to say overtly racist things to me. I planned on going to HR about it once I started as a full time salaried employee, but he was fired for lying to his supervisors before that time came. If I had gone to HR and gotten him fired for being an outspoken racist, would he not be able to claim he was a victim of cancel culture?"
My thoughts:
The very first question on the checklist in the essay we're commenting on is "Are people denouncing you to your employer?" Without knowing the context or the details of the story you've shared, I'm not a fan of "tattle-tale culture," one of the ingredients of cancel culture today. Too often the accusers and finger pointers shrink from our own opportunity (and responsibility) to do what we can about it directly.
The guy in question sounds like somebody I would dislike intensely. He also sounds like an idiot with an employment death wish (and apparently that's how his story played out). But long before reporting him to a higher authority my tendency would be to use my own power in the exchange as a lever to influence and persuade. Sometimes people say things just out of an idea that it makes them rebellious. There was a time when Willie Nelson and Tom Petty unfurled Confederate flags at their concerts in that kind of expression. People engaged with them, and each later spoke publicly about their decisions to stop doing that. People often can say racist, sexist or other "ist" things who are not themselves malicious or intentional perpetrators of those harms. I would rather say, "hey, that's not cool, and here's why I don't want to hear that or overhear that again." To engage a conversation. If that doesn't bear fruit, to escalate slowly. "Well, I hope your hateful views don't affect how you treat other employees or clients here because that would be a matter for HR, don't ya think?" Having bigoted thoughts is not itself a crime. Allowing our prejudices to cause discrimination against others is. See the difference? It's that between "thought crimes" "speech crimes" and "harmful acts."
As to your thought that certain professions should be held to "higher standards":
I fear this is what is driving most of cancel culture. It's about perceptions of social status and of competition over work that has more demand than supply: Jobs or roles with perceived "status." Somebody recently made the point that status is not necessarily economic: A plumber generally makes more money than an entertainer or media worker. The cancel mob doesn't go after plumbers. It goes after those in positions they themselves covet, those with perceived social status. The "thrill" of "taking one down" is the ugliest dynamic of all, not much different than the schoolyard bullying by groups of children against isolated kids. It is often an attempt to virtue-signal that the finger-pointer has social status. "I denounce it therefore I am not it." I think many of us know stories in which the finger pointer is actually worse. The claim that by "canceling" someone or getting them fired we have therefore made the world better, or less racist or whatever, is not borne out by what actually happens. Usually, another idiot just takes the canceled person's place.
What's at stake here is more than whether the number of people directly suffering from cancelation is large enough to merit our empathy. We're all victims of it in the sense that maybe we like watching and benefit from Ellen Degeneres on TV. Right now some want to cancel her because she is "mean" to people off-camera. Every celebrity is a mean SOB when too tired to sign an autograph or fails to return the glommer's love at the level the glommer feels he deserves. The banishment of, say, Kevin Spacey, first from House of Cards, then the cancelation of his Gore Vidal biopic, hurts all of us who want to see a Gore Vidal biopic or found meaning in his performances on HOC. That guy was never convicted of an actual crime. The courts - and not the online mob - are where justice has due process and rules that separate fact from claim. During a previous manifestation of cancel culture (it's nothing new or novel) when the drug war was a bigger part of it, Robert Downey Jr. was unable to find work for years because of his chemical transgressions. That was wrong. I'm glad it was corrected. Movie viewers have benefited from its correction.
The real victim is all of us. Anyway, that's my two cents.
You raise some good points. The only thing I’d like to say in response is that standing up to an overt racist in the workplace as an intern is easier said than done. Appreciate you sharing your thoughts though.
That's a fair enough point. But as you recognized above, going to HR as an intern has its risks, too. You mentioned that you would wait until you were an employee. By that point, you'd no longer be an intern and would have more power in that equation. Whether it would be enough would be a decision you'd measure at that point. Every story and circumstance is different - another thing cancel culture tends to obliterate.
So you are not concerned about the fact that many people on the Left is undermining one of the key principles behind the American Constitution (or at least the spirit behind it), but you are very concerned that Republican politicians are taking advantage of it? if you read Quillette or Persuasion, there are many examples of censorship being practiced on the Left. The university campuses are another story altogether.
A few more things about your comment:
1. I never said I wasn’t concerned about the undermining of key principles behind the American constitution. However, I do think the right to free assembly is under a much bigger threat than the right to free speech is right now. Thousands of Americans were assaulted by police forces for peacefully protesting this summer. Tear gas, pepper spray, and rubber bullets hurt more than the ire of college students and ignorance displayed in comment sections.
2. I’m speaking about this specific article. Should I need to look for other sources in order to find supporting evidence for the claims made in this article?
3. My concern about Republican politicians taking advantage of this phenomenon isn’t mutually exclusive to the concern for censorship on the left.
I see your point. One article probably cannot list all the evidence that is there on this type of phenomenon. I would call it social justice mobbing and bullying - more specific than cancel culture. But if you read Quillette or this website over time, there are many, many examples. (look at the series on such mobbing in the world of knitting reported by Katherine Jebsen Moore for Quillette, it is an interesting example of this phenomenon). If you need more examples, I can provide more. But it would be hard to list every instance. This kind of thing is meant to serve as an example to many others, so that some general norms of censorship become established firmly in society. The fact that this has already happened is evidenced by opinion surveys where people say they are afraid to openly discuss their political views. And what has been happening on university campuses is not just about some people getting cancelled - I would say that is a relatively minor issue. The real issue is that students are being indoctrinated in an ideology that everything should be evaluated in terms of racial and gender identity of the person writing and not in terms of the substance of the argument which is irrelevant. There are massive problems with this ideology and it is hollowing out American social and intellectual life.
Most people have protested peacefully but some have not. There is plenty of evidence for violence which has not been shown in the liberal media. I have stopped believing everything I read in the NYT or Washington Post. (like most liberals, I used to do that earlier). Now I also read the Wall Street Journal. It is useful to learn the arguments of the other side, even if you disagree.
The concern about the “people on the left” and college campuses seems to be the only aspect of this that gets discussed in circles like these.
I responded to you above. BTW - I agree there are many other things to be concerned about on the political right. I recently learned about a fraudulent television channel peddling crazy right wing conspiracy theories called One News Network and it is apparently watched by millions. But I think any attack on freedom of speech and expression should be taken extremely seriously by liberals. The Left today is full of bad ideas - only if we maintain a culture of open debate which subjects all ideas to critical scrutiny can we discuss and discredit bad ideas from both the Left and the Right.
Co-opt*
Institutions currently enable these zealots. For me, that's the crucial point. What can be done to combat large organizations from firing people this mob targets? Perhaps some sort of organization to systematically stand up to them in courts of law and public opinion, modeled along line of the ACLU? Develop counter institutions? There have been radical leftists in the West for 250 years. They've always wanted to tear down the system, never listened to reason and are now explicitly beyond reason. No use confronting them. The institutions need to suffer for enabling them. Again, how can this be done?
A good article, but I take issue with the comment that the retraction of scientific articles is "deservedly controversial". Most retractions are because of falsified data or manipulated images, and therefore a retraction is surely the only honest way to proceed.
Here are several examples of recent retractions that are not due to falsified data or manipulated images. In my opinion, the retractions are for ideological reasons, but you can judge for yourself:
https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-activists-send-a-published-paper-down-the-memory-hole/?v=322b26af01d5
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypatia_transracialism_controversy
https://retractionwatch.com/2020/07/06/authors-of-study-on-race-and-police-killings-ask-for-its-retraction-citing-continued-misuse-in-the-media/
https://retractionwatch.com/2020/06/05/following-outrage-chemistry-journal-makes-a-paper-decrying-diversity-efforts-disappear/
Thanks. I'll take a look.
I think you misunderstood the point. The author is talking about retractions that happened due to political campaigns organized by activists. Such things were unheard off earlier but have become more frequent in the last 5 years due to increasing left wing extremism.
He wrote that the phenomenon of retracting papers in science is relatively new. This is not true. If he meant that some papers were now being retracted for woke or political reasons, then he should have said so. I'd also dispute that scientific papers have been retracted for those reasons. Perhaps they have not been published, but that's not the same as a retraction, which is almost always due to irreproducible or falsified data. Do you know of any retractions for woke or political reasons? Don't get me wrong, I agree with almost all of the article, but think he was either wrong or misleading with that claim.
The fact that he is talking about papers being retracted for political reasons is kind of assumed from the context (an article about cancel culture). You are right that this didn't happen earlier and retractions happened due to fraud, plagiarism or scientific reasons. The fact that such things (that were previously unthinkable) are happening now is part of the reason why this website exists. A paper published in PNAS on racial bias in police use of deadly force in 2019 was withdrawn recently by the authors themselves after a sustained political campaign which intimidated the university. The paper was withdrawn by the authors one year after being published. If you follow Quillette, other papers were withdrawn or retracted after being accepted for publication by the relevant journal. A paper was withdrawn from the Journal of the American Heart Association due to political reasons. The paper said that racially based affirmative action in medical schools should be gradually phased out over many years in accordance with a Supreme Court recommendation. The person who wrote the paper was removed from a senior administrative position in the university. He was Chinese, but he was smeared as a racist person believing in white supremacy. I am not sure this website allows weblinks in the comments section, so I am not posting the links.
Thanks for your reply, with examples. I fully understand the reasons for the existence of this website, which is why I'm a paying subscriber; Nevertheless, I still think his wording was misleading in this instance (though I otherwise agree with his point of view on cancelling issue), inviting us to assume that retractions were suddenly commonplace in scientific publishing. Best wishes
Thanks for your response. I agree his wording could have been better. Retractions for political reasons are certainly not common! That would make United States like Soviet Union! But the fact that they are happening at all in a country with high academic standards and the world's most robust tradition of free speech is a scandal. (I am also a paying subscriber, so we agree about the importance of this website).
I know a little bit (though not an expert) about the literature on racial bias in deadly police shootings. There is one prominent researcher who found that there is no evidence of racial bias in lethal police shootings. This researcher is at Harvard and he is Black himself. If that were not the case, he would face enormous pressure and social ostracization from his colleagues for doing research that leads to these findings. I have no firm evidence for this - I am just going by how deeply the Left resents any departure from orthodoxy (however slight) and there is increasingly a demand for punishment for holding the wrong views. (thoughtcrime). It is not enough to discredit someone's ideas, they need to be destroyed and they need to face consequences, so that it becomes a lesson and a warning to others. This is not a mindset which is conducive to intellectual inquiry.
I agree with all of that, though being on the Left myself, I'll double down on my pedantry by saying that we're talking about sections of the Left, and not the Left as a whole.
Thank you. Well-said.
For quite a while now it seems that people are reveling in "the right to be offended." Instead of offering criticism or rebuttal they seek refuge in being offended. Perhaps this morphed from the longstanding political correctness theme that has existed for the past generation. In any event it's now morphing into cancel culture , to no one's benefit.
Good article, but it would have been even better had the author noted that Adam Schiff and Adam Nadler could just as easily substitute for DT in the sentence "One of many reasons Donald Trump is a menace to democracy is that he views truth instrumentally, as something to use, abuse or ignore depending on the needs of the moment."
Jerrold, not Adam Nadler
This is a good article and I share the author's concerns and perspectives. But I am struggling to find a boundary between socially acceptable discourse and ideas appropriate for social approbation. Almost no one thinks that open followers of Richard Spencer should be welcomed into polite society and most people would agree that supporters of Steven Pinker should. But there are many cases in between. And social pressures (petitions, boycotts , etc.) must have some role. (I am not referring to government censorship of speech here). Not every publication needs to publish every idea, for example.
I am deeply concerned about pervasive social censoriousness. Social media amplifies outrage and makes it frictionless to accumulate social capital through empty displays of virtue. But it seems to me that the important question about cancel culture is not "if" but "when". I can't find a satisfactory answer and wonder if others have thought about this.
LOL, meant "opprobrium" not "approbation". (Note to self: use simpler words).
I think a helpful, though not complete way to draw the line is whether the views deemed unwelcome in polite society are (1) widely known and quite unpopular or (2) relatively normal or largely unknown. If (2) it stinks of an effort to win by power and not persuasion.
We should typically not try to excise even (1) views by shaming - unpopular views have won out before - but should feel more willing to provide some candid one to one judgment or, with public officials, more forceful concern.