Higher education is in crisis. A week rarely passes without an incident on a college campus in which cancel culture manages to shut down a speaker or an event. And while this sad state of affairs on campuses is now too familiar, self-censorship has moved well beyond leafy quads, lecture halls, and student unions and into the mainstream. 

Cancel culture is no longer reserved for celebrities and public officials; free speech is now under threat for most people. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s recently-created National Speech Index disturbingly shows that people are actually canceling themselves at levels higher than students, and this puts our democracy in real danger.