I recently read a very depressing book:The Canceling of the American Mind: Cancel Culture Undermines Trust, Destroys Institutions, and Threatens Us All—but There Is a Solution by Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott. Ever since the October 7th Hamas attack, I was alarmed by elite college students’ responses and I try to understand what is going on there. This book is very sobering. October 7th is a wakeup call. I hope the free speech and critical thinking values can be restored in American elite colleges. At the moment, it’s a bloody mess.
I think the most important point made in this book is that free speech is under attack in America and it’s gradually slipping away. Did you know many elite colleges such as Harvard and NYU have bias response hotlines where people can call to complain about people’s public and private politically incorrect conversations and basically snitch on their classmates and professors? The same universities also have *speech codes* training at orientations to tell students what speech is acceptable. The same colleges also require DEI statements for faculty position applications. I know these policies are well intentioned but they create a chilling effect on campus expression, encourage self-censoring and jeopardizes academic freedom. The DEI statement requirement also creates a self-filtering mechanism where many left-leaning elite colleges are intolerant of conservative voices and anyone who doesn’t buy into the victim/oppressor ideology will be excluded. The book gave a few examples of professors teaching controversial topics based on historical context getting disciplined for *being a racist* despite prior warnings on the controversial content. This is a slippery slope and what ends up happening is critical thinking is discouraged and controversial topics are practically banned in these elite colleges in the name of inclusivity and emotional safety.
The irony is after October 7th, the students from colleges that advocate inclusive and emotionally safe languages suddenly use the very vile language toward jewish people and claim it’s free speech. If the same language had been used on black and brown people, these students would have been canceled immediately but the administrators mostly do nothing to stop the antisemitism. Why is the anti hate speech policy not applied consistently? Well, according to the victim/oppressor ideology, white people including Jewish and Asians(?) are oppressors so speech codes don’t protect them. This is not the main focus in the book but the victim/oppressor ideology certainly plays a critical role in the justification of the Cancel culture. I also realize people who are captured by this ideology don’t want equal rights. They want special and preferential treatment for designated victim groups. This victim/oppressor dichotomy is mostly based on immutable characteristics. I found this extremely repulsive. Basically, a poor white man from West Virginia with no college degree is an oppressor and a rich black woman from a Chicago elite family with a Harvard degree is a victim. How does this make any sense? This is really no different from the Cultural Revolution in China. At the very least in the Cultural Revolution, people were categorized into good (red five) categories and bad (black five ) categories based on mutable characteristics like education, occupation and wealth. Here in America, it’s based on immutable characteristics like race and gender. Let me remind you that 30+ millions people were killed during the Cultural Revolution. America is on a dangerous path if young people are indoctrinated to believe in this victim/oppressor ideology. I believe people should have equal rights regardless of race, gender, etc. I also believe in human agency that people can rise above their suffering and trauma can actually make people stronger. Indulging the victim mindset is simply not productive.
A free speech culture is important because it encourages open debates and ideas. Censoring speechis a slippery slope. Very soon any idea that challenges orthodoxy will become offensive and deemed hate speech or bigotry. When the orthodoxy comes up with absurd ideas like what happened in the Cultural Revolution or Nazi Germany and forces people to take those ideas in, who will have the courage or the brain to challenge them? The absurd ideas will then turn into atrocious actions. Instead of censoring speech, we should encourage a free speech and critical thinking culture where offensive and controversial ideas are openly debated and people can judge the ideas for themselves by thinking critically. Currently both far-left and far-right are trying to censor each other and very often they don’t address each other’s arguments but discredit each other through labeling. (Oh he is a woke progressive. Oh he is a far-right Trump supporter. ) We can no longer have civil debates on hot button issues like affirmative actions or transgender athletes competing in women’s sports. Even rhetorics like pronouns are getting absurd. We get to the point that the far-left said not using proper pronouns is verbal *assault* and criminal. Well, I get that not using proper pronouns in many scenarios can be impolite but is not addressing someone with proper pronouns an actual assault like a physical assault? This is open for debates but I personally think calling it *assault* is too much, I don’t like people telling me if I don’t talk in certain way, I am a criminal and some people do weaponize the pronoun thing to try to cancel people and I am not a fan of that. Anyway, we must protect free speech, engage in open debates and listen to one another regardless of age, gender, race and political affiliation. We can still disagree but we must listen and think critically. Censorship and Cancel culture will lead us to a very dark place. Many elite colleges are currently a cult-like mess. Please read this book to understand how terrible things are. I hope these colleges will turn things around. Before that happens, I would not pay $100K+ a year to send any of my kids there to get indoctrinated.
Love your post and I agree with your sentiment.
Well said. Bravo! Love the book recommendations and look forward to reading this one. Thank you.