Academic Curiosity Under Threat
Desire to know why, and how, curiosity; such as is in no living creature but man: so that man is distinguished, not only by his reason, but also by this…
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Freedom of Expression
37 posts
Would Hunter S. Thompson Be Cancelled Today?
It’s a strange world. Some people get rich and others eat shit and die.—Hunter S. Thompson, Generation of Swine. The father of gonzo journalism was known for his uncompromising but…
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De Jure and De Facto Censorship: Why We Need to Be Concerned About Both
The last few weeks have seen dustups over the decision by the foundation overseeing Dr. Seuss’s works (i.e. Dr. Seuss Enterprises) to cease publication of six books deemed problematic, as…
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Defending the Key Liberal Value: Andrew Doyle’s “Free Speech and Why It Matters”
I did not expect to enjoy Andrew Doyle’s Free Speech and Why it Matters. I like Andrew himself very much and our values closely align. However, I seem to be…
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Free Speech in the Age of Digital Oligarchy
An opinion that corn-dealers are starvers of the poor, or that owning private property is robbery ought to be unmolested when simply circulated through the press, but may justly incur…
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In Defence of Argument: “Intellectual Freedom and the Culture Wars” by Piers Benn
In the closing pages of Intellectual Freedom and the Culture Wars, Piers Benn writes: I was motivated to write this book because there was something that mattered to me, that…
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Words Don’t Hurt, Ideas Do.
I am often told that, as a writer, I should recognize the power of words. As a crafter of poetry and prose, they tell me, surely I must understand the…
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Brave New Literary World
I recently saw a tweet by writer Thomas Chatterton Williams that said, “We are going to need very brave novelists again.” My first reaction was that he’s right. My second…
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The Soft Mob: Intolerance and the New Definition of “Harm”
In the festival of non-sequiturs that was the reaction to the Harper’s letter, two equally specious rebuttals rose to the fore: the first, that freedom of expression has become a…
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On Fighting Monsters
Why are people so afraid of being cancelled? It’s not a social death sentence. You can see plenty of supposedly cancelled individuals rambling about the hot topic of the day…
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Hobbes, Locke and Mill: In Defence of Tolerance
The traditional liberal call that we should extend tolerance to our opponents has been replaced by a demand for recognition and acceptance that is paradoxically intolerant towards those who do…
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What Yoram Hazony Gets Wrong About Cancel Culture
The open letter in Harper’s Magazine on the dangers of ideological conformity and the suppression of speech, signed by more than 150 leading writers and intellectuals, has been explosively controversial.…
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Self-Cancel Culture and the Threat of Moderate Wokeness
Liberalism’s defenders usually describe illiberalism as comprised of two distinct threats: the authoritarian right and the culturally totalitarian left. However, this framing misrepresents the situation. The dangers posed by the…
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History and Cancel Culture
Harper’s Magazine sparked major controversy recently by publishing an open letter criticizing cancel culture, signed by hundreds of public figures. The letter was all the more galvanizing since—in addition to…
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What Cancel Culture Is Not
If you have a social media account, you must certainly have come across the phrase cancel culture. It describes the act of collectively unsubscribing from a person, the way you…
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The Problem with the Concept of Cancel Culture
The phrase cancel culture has been all over the internet over the past few weeks. The publication of the Harper’s letter defending free speech and a number of high profile…
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A Therapist’s Plea for Freedom of Speech
To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.—Frederick Douglass. The single best predictor of a positive…
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The Historian Who Came in from the Chill
I am in the sunset of life, and I feel it to be my special mission to tell people what they are not prepared to hear.—Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Elizabeth Cady…
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