A Letter on Justice and Open Debate

A Letter on Justice and Open Debate
"A Letter on Justice and Open Debate", also known as the Harper's Letter, is an open letter defending free speech published on the Harper's Magazine website on July 7, 2020, with 153 signatories, criticizing what it called "illiberalism" spreading across society. While the letter denounced President Donald Trump as "a real threat to democracy", it argued that hostility to free speech was becoming widespread on the political left as well.
Background
Writers Robert Worth, George Packer, David Greenberg, Mark Lilla, and Thomas Chatterton Williams drafted the letter. Williams, described by The New York Times as having "spearheaded" the effort, was initially worried that its timing might cause it to be seen as a reaction to the George Floyd protests, which he considered a legitimate response to police brutality in the United States, but ultimately decided to publish it, citing various recent events such as the firing of David Shor. Shor was fired after public backlash from tweeting a paper by Omar Wasow, which argued nonviolent protest was more effective at shaping public opinion.
In total, around 20 people contributed to the letter's contents.
Summary
The letter describes right-wing illiberalism and then-US president Donald Trump as "a real threat to democracy", but argues that the political left engages in censorship of its own, denouncing "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." Per the letter, "Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a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", "The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation", and "We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences." The letter concludes, "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."
Signatories
The letter is signed by 152 people, mostly scholars and writers. They include academics from Harvard University, Yale University, Princeton University, and Columbia University.
Notable signatories include linguist Noam Chomsky; fiction writers J. K. Rowling, Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, Martin Amis, John Banville, Daniel Kehlmann, and Jeffrey Eugenides; world chess champion Garry Kasparov; political scientist Francis Fukuyama; feminist Gloria Steinem; cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker; journalists Fareed Zakaria, Malcolm Gladwell, Anne Applebaum, Ian Buruma, David Frum, and David Brooks; composer Wynton Marsalis; writer and former Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada Michael Ignatieff; political theorist Michael Walzer; economist Deirdre McCloskey; poet Roya Hakakian; surgeon Atul Gawande; music journalist Greil Marcus; and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt.
Signatories generally did not know who had signed the letter until it was published. At least one, Jennifer Finney Boylan, expressed qualms about some of the other signatories but affirmed her endorsement. Others who reaffirmed their support for the letter's contents, such as Katha Pollitt, said they disagreed with some of the signatories on other issues but did not mind signing the same statement.
Full list
Elliot Ackerman
Saladin Ambar
Martin Amis
Anne Applebaum
Marie Arana
Margaret Atwood
John Banville
Mia Bay
Louis Begley
Roger Berkowitz
Paul Berman
Sheri Berman
Reginald Dwayne Betts
Neil Blair
David W. Blight
Jennifer Finney Boylan
David Bromwich
David Brooks
Ian Buruma
Lea Carpenter
Noam Chomsky
Nicholas Christakis
Roger Cohen
Frances D. Cook
Drucilla Cornell
Kamel Daoud
Meghan Daum
Gerald Early
Jeffrey Eugenides
Dexter Filkins
Federico Finchelstein
Caitlin Flanagan
Richard T. Ford
Kmele Foster
David Frum
Francis Fukuyama
Atul Gawande
Todd Gitlin
Kim Ghattas
Malcolm Gladwell
Michelle Goldberg
Rebecca Goldstein
Anthony Grafton
David Greenberg
Linda Greenhouse
(withdrawn)
Rinne B. Groff
Sarah Haider
Jonathan Haidt
Roya Hakakian
Shadi Hamid
Jeet Heer
Katie Herzog
Susannah Heschel
Adam Hochschild
Arlie Russell Hochschild
Eva Hoffman
Coleman Hughes
Hussein Ibish
Michael Ignatieff
Zaid Jilani
Bill T. Jones
Wendy Kaminer
Matthew Karp
Garry Kasparov
Daniel Kehlmann
Randall Kennedy
Khaled Khalifa
Parag Khanna
Laura Kipnis
Frances Kissling
Enrique Krauze
Anthony Kronman
Joy Ladin
Nicholas Lemann
Mark Lilla
Susie Linfield
Damon Linker
Dahlia Lithwick
Steven Lukes
John R. MacArthur
Susan Madrak
Phoebe Maltz Bovy
Greil Marcus
Wynton Marsalis
Kati Marton
Debra Mashek
Deirdre McCloskey
John McWhorter
Uday Mehta
Andrew Moravcsik
Yascha Mounk
Samuel Moyn
Meera Nanda
Cary Nelson
Olivia Nuzzi
Mark Oppenheimer
Dael Orlandersmith
George Packer
Nell Irvin Painter
Greg Pardlo
Orlando Patterson
Steven Pinker
Letty Cottin Pogrebin
Katha Pollitt
Claire Bond Potter
Taufiq Rahim
Zia Haider Rahman
Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen
Jonathan Rauch
Neil Roberts
Melvin Rogers
Kat Rosenfield
Loretta J. Ross
J. K. Rowling
Salman Rushdie
Karim Sadjadpour
Daryl Michael Scott
Diana Senechal
Jennifer Senior
Judith Shulevitz
Jesse Singal
Anne-Marie Slaughter
Andrew Solomon
Deborah Solomon
Allison Stanger
Paul Starr
Wendell Steavenson
Gloria Steinem
Nadine Strossen
Ronald S. Sullivan Jr.
Kian Tajbakhsh
Zephyr Teachout
Cynthia Tucker
Adaner Usmani
Chloé Valdary
Helen Vendler
Judy B. Walzer
Michael Walzer
Eric K. Washington
Caroline Weber
Randi Weingarten
Bari Weiss
Cornel West
Sean Wilentz
Garry Wills
Thomas Chatterton Williams
Robert F. Worth
Molly Worthen
Matthew Yglesias
Emily Yoffe
Cathy Young
Fareed Zakaria
Reaction
The letter drew mixed reactions on social media. In an opinion piece for CNN, John Avlon praised the letter, writing, "Demonizing principled disagreement does not advance liberal values—it fuels negative partisan narratives that Trump's reelection depends on. It can distract from actual purveyors of hate, and a sitting President who advances policies that are often racist or homophobic as well as anti-immigrant." In another CNN opinion piece, Jeff Yang criticized the letter, writing, "it's hard not to see the letter as merely an elegantly written affirmation of elitism and privilege", and that the signatories "in the face of resultant backlash, dismissed rebuttals and positioned themselves as beleaguered victims of the current culture, turning their support for open debate and free expression into an example of stark hypocrisy or sly gaslighting." Historian Nicole Hemmer criticized the letter's timing, saying that the letter primarily blamed cancel culture for disrupting free and open conversations at a moment during the George Floyd protests when it was becoming clearer what influence institutions had in controlling debate.
Vox writer and signatory Matthew Yglesias faced pushback from transgender coworker Emily St. James, who criticized the letter for being signed by "several prominent anti-trans voices". This included Rowling, who attracted controversy for her comments on transgender issues.
A response letter, "A More Specific Letter on Justice and Open Debate", organized by the lecturer Arionne Nettles and signed by over 160 people in academia and media, critiqued the Harper's letter as a plea to end cancel culture by successful professionals with large platforms while excluding others who have been "cancelled for generations". The response named specific incidents in which Black people were silenced by their institutions. Multiple signatories omitted either their names or institutional affiliations, citing fear of "professional retaliation".
Kerri Greenidge later asked for her name to be removed from the Harper's letter, which was done.
References
External links
A Letter on Justice and Open Debate, Harper's Magazine
2020 controversies in the United States
2020 documents
2020 essays
Criticism of Donald Trump
Open letters
Works originally published in Harper's Magazine