Several prominent figures once deemed leading liberal voices have signed an open letter condemning the current trends related to cancel culture and ideological conformity.
The letter, published Tuesday in Harper’s Magazine, includes signatures from academics and well-known thinkers and writers. Among those who signed off on the letter include Margaret Atwood, J.K. Rowling, and Noam Chomsky.
“The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted,” their message read. “While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty.”
The letter comes after weeks of global unrest that was sparked by the May death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody. What began as demonstrations against systemic racism and police brutality have expanded into larger calls for social equality. In recent weeks, protesters have demanded the removal of historical figures deemed as symbols of oppression, and the cultural pressure of the time has led to resignations from top academic officials, business leaders, and media members for their past actions or responses to the current movement.
Those who signed the letter pointed to the recent oustings of several institutional leaders, which they argued came as part of a “panicked damage control” effort.
“Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes,” they said.
“Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal. We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement,” they added.
Top editors at the New York Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer resigned last month for publishing pieces that were critical of the current climate and Black Lives Matter movement. An editor at the Wall Street Journal was also reassigned from the news division to the opinion section after a number of staff members took opposition to him expressing views related to crime and its racial disparity.
Rowling, who famously penned the Harry Potter series and has been known as being staunchly left-wing throughout her career, has been recently condemned and “canceled” by social media and activists who disagreed with her views about the transgender community. Atwood, who wrote the feminist novel The Handmaid’s Tale, also came under fire from the social media mob for her criticism of the #MeToo movement’s push to “believe all women.”
Bari Weiss, a columnist for the New York Times who also signed the letter, also came under fire in 2018 over a tweet that read, “Immigrants: They get the job done,” referring to Japanese American figure skater Mirai Nagasu’s Olympic performance. Social media critics pointed out that Nagasu isn’t an immigrant and was born in the United States.
“As writers we need a culture that leaves us room for experimentation, risk taking, and even mistakes,” the signers of the letter argued. “We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences. If we won’t defend the very thing on which our work depends, we shouldn’t expect the public or the state to defend it for us.”
Harper’s Magazine is a New York City-based magazine focusing on literature, culture, and arts. It is the oldest general interest magazine in the country.
