Resisting Cancel Culture: Promoting Dialogue, Debate, and Free Speech in the College Classroom. Perspectives on Higher Education
Author: Strossen, Nadine
Date: 2020-11-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Freedom of Speech,Civil Rights,Higher Education,Political Attitudes,Criticism,Ethics,Public Opinion,Persuasive Discourse,Diversity,Intellectual Freedom,Propaganda,Censorship,Social Media,Campuses,News Reporting,Power Structure,Teaching Methods,Resilience (Psychology),Prosocial Behavior

The author has built one of America's most distinguished careers among defenders of free speech and civil liberties. Cancel culture, presented in this essay, is not a new phenomenon. In this essay, the author marshals a wealth of survey data to show the scope and depth of the growing crisis: Americans feel more pressure to conceal their viewpoints today than during the McCarthy era. Some people--among them many civil libertarians--dismiss or minimize the crisis, making three arguments. The first is that cancel culture amounts to a spate of overhyped anecdotes, not a national problem. But, as the author shows, recent survey evidence finds that Americans are more fearful to voice their real opinions now than at the height of the McCarthy era. Almost a third worry their livelihoods will suffer if they fail to self-censor. On campus and off, millions feel the chill. A second claim is that cancel culture is just criticism, and if people can not stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. But, as the author establishes, the two are very distinguishable in principle (and usually in practice, too). Criticism uses rational, non-coercive persuasion to influence public opinion and uncover truth. It is inherently friendly to viewpoint diversity and intellectual pluralism. Cancel culture organizes or manipulates the social or media environment to isolate, intimidate, deplatform, or demoralize political or social adversaries. It is inherently hostile to viewpoint diversity and intellectual pluralism. Criticism comes from the world of truth-seeking, cancel culture from the world of propaganda and information warfare. Far from being versions of the same thing, the two are irreducibly at odds. A third claim is that cancel culture is a private matter, not a matter of law or government policy, and as such is not of concern to civil libertarians. But in recent decades, as free speech has won robust protections against government censorship, the action has shifted to the private sphere: campuses, social media, newsrooms, places of employment. Cancelers' power to coerce and intimidate has been turbocharged by social media, where devastating shaming campaigns can be organized literally in minutes, and by the discovery that employers and professional associates are quick to knuckle under to such campaigns. The author's salient contribution is to lead civil libertarians--by argument and by example--toward full engagement with the cultural side of the struggle. Finally in this essay, the author identifies an important locus for rolling back cancel culture: the classroom. Students who are encouraged to shrink from encountering unwelcome, repugnant, and sometimes, yes, &quot;unsafe&quot; ideas will learn to demand protection from speech they dislike. They will come to believe that free speech, far from being a civil right, is a violation of civil rights--the equivalent of allowing physical violence. They will accept and even favor government censorship, social repression, or both. As indeed they are doing. Students who are taught to be epistemically resilient--capable of encountering diverse and sometimes repugnant ideas without melting down or demanding protection--will be better informed, more tolerant, and stronger.