So many emotions about this. The fact that I'm now established in a good career where I'm probably mostly un-cancel-able and a good marriage has ironically made the urge to just roll my eyes, keep my head down and spend my time on my patients, my kids and my D&D campaign much stronger. I no longer believe that this is something that can be reversed by any action I can take. My project for the next few years will be trying to invent a way to inoculate my kids against this nonsense as much as possible and steering my young patients away from the self-mutilation that is gender-affirming care.
It was still pretty disgusting to see someone like Nicholas Grossman doing the same nonsense you saw from Davidson. I've spent the last 13 years of my life in 3 different universities. At this point it is not plausible that anyone with any exposure to universities (much less a professor) could deny in good faith that a) Everyone is terrified to speak their minds about the known taboos even though the majority know or suspect they are bullshit and b) this is not the way it was even 10 years ago. In the latter years of medical school and into residency it was obvious that all of my colleagues lived in perpetual terror of saying the wrong thing. By the time I graduated you could hear a pin drop when a lecture ended on anything remotely politically charged (And there were many, many such lectures. The last academic conference of residency had a 30 minute lecture devoted to a glorified twitter troll lecturing us on our duty as doctors to advocate for abolishing the police).
2. Do you think FIRE shouldn’t have stood up for Nicole Hannah Jones when the UNC decided not to provide her tenure?
I don’t think either of these actions were properly recognized by Seder or NHJ, who are dishonest actors. But there are plenty of others who do recognize it, and support you and FIRE because of it.
If you do think those actions were wrong, what was the correct response? I don’t think anti-woke liberals are a powerful enough group to actually make these people pay a cost here. I don’t think they should be defended as vigilantly as someone we think is more innocent, but I am not convinced there is much to gain by breaking our principles.
The correct response depends on what one aims to achieve.
I want the end of cancel culture, and believe that will only happen when it is not a weapon for one side alone.
It is lovely to hear that I have gained supporters through integrity - but what if my personal gain comes at a cost of ending this nonsense once and for all?
You may be right that anti-woke libs are not powerful enough to make anyone pay - but I also think part of the reason we are defanged is that we refuse to wield power even when we have it.
I do not think it is dishonorable to refuse to defend someone who has a history of targeting others or excusing the targeting.
But FIRE was right to stand for NHJ - that is their mission. However, if Sam Seder was being fired again today, I would probably just point out his hypocrisy. I know that doesn’t sound very noble, and to be honest the thought makes me uncomfortable as it is not my habit/tendency - but I also think “dying nobly” is in itself a self-serving act. Not everyone can make a big show of how much integrity they have while being ground to dust by this brutal machine.
“I want the end of cancel culture, and believe that will only happen when it is not a weapon for one side alone.”
I’ve thought about your response a lot and I think this is probably the crux of why I am unconvinced.
You write that “The only way Good White Men like Mr. Davidson will recognize the harms of cancel culture is when it is them and their friends and loved ones, who suffer.” We’ve seen how people like Sam Seder and NHJ react to being cancelled: they don’t suddenly recognize the harms of all cancel culture; they simply integrate what’s happening into their existing worldview and assert that the only real cancel culture comes from the right.
I think trying to get the Adam Davidsons of the world to acknowledge cancel culture by letting it happen to them is a doomed strategy. But it also isn’t necessary. The NYT editorial board recently asserted that cancel culture was a real problem; they also hired John McWhorter some months ago to write weekly anti-woke newsletters for them.
Was this because the people at the NYT finally felt the pain themselves and didn’t have anti-woke liberals to defend them? Or did the fact that there were principled anti-woke liberals decrying cancel culture, and not just unprincipled right-wing populists, help them come to those decisions? I would wager it’s the latter.
It’s simple really, many liberals have had decades of selling their souls for triffles. At least the affluent muslims Sarah wrote about, ignored extremism to avoid loosing the vague promise of an afterlife. At what price did so called secular, feminist westerners agree to run cover for female genital mutilation, forced marriages..? The woke have a despicable vision for our future, but their contempt for the type of liberals who even now, won’t lift a finger to save their own skin is deserved.
Having smug principle-free people in positions of power is a bad thing, and would continue to be a bad thing even in a world without a single Ibram Kendi.
Whenever defending the virtueless is not strategically necessary to prevent the domination of the woke, doing so, is a bad thing. There are plenty of decent people also being targeted by our rivals. Defending people takes time, and abandoning your friends to help people who would never raise a finger for anyone, is morally wrong.
<When a canceller gets canceled, it is fairly common to see anti-woke liberals defend them - as if on a mission to prove their own magnanimity and integrity.
But this is a misguided tact, and in practice more self-serving than morally justified.>
It seems what you want is for the people on your side of the fight to lack real principles, basically. It seems like you want "anti-woke liberals" who advocate for free speech to put aside those principles as long as the "right people" are on the business end of the punishment stick.
//It seems what you want is for the people on your side of the fight to lack real principles, basically. //
Really frustrating to put care into what you say, and then someone comes out with this. If I lacked "principles" I would be calling for more cancellations, at any cost.
I'm explicitly calling for none. But I do not think it is dishonorable to refuse to defend someone who has a history of targeting others or excusing the targeting - especially as I detailed here - this is indeed the only way this will end.
If you were also convinced, as I am, that it will stop only when those who benefit from it stop benefiting from it - what would you recommend we do? What is the best way to reduce the most harm?
Let’s say I am “anti punching people for no reason”. When people are punched or seem like they are about to be punched for no reason, I go out of my way to defend them. Sometimes I even shield them with my own body.
But say there is a group that likes punching people for no reason. They want more of it - they think it is a good thing that happens to bad people. When one of this group gets punched - should I fall over trying to defend them? Is it unjust for me to do so? If I refuse to do so - does that mean I must not truly believe punching people for no reason is bad?
After reading your two responses, I guess I'm left a little unclear on exactly what it is you are advocating overall...indifference?
Because the tone of your article has the feel of rooting for the "cancel-ers" (there's gotta be a better word for this, but whatever) to receive their comeuppance, but then you say you are not actually rooting for more cancellations. Feels like....I don't know....something akin to yearning for schadenfreude?
I'm going to work backwards in order on your questions, Sarah.
<When one of this group gets punched - should I fall over trying to defend them? Is it unjust for me to do so? If I refuse to do so - does that mean I must not truly believe punching people for no reason is bad?>
So I think there is daylight between falling over myself to defend punchers and rooting for their pummeling. I can only speak for myself, but I try not to think about it in terms of defending individual people and more in terms of defending a principle I want to uphold. If people not getting punched is a principle I subscribe to, then I am going to defend the principle of folks not catching hands regardless of who it is getting stuck.
(I should take a moment to clarify that I do not think you are unprincipled, but it felt to me like you were advocating for people who do adhere to certain principles to ignore their instincts to defend them provided the "right" people are being targeted.)
<If you were also convinced, as I am, that it will stop only when those who benefit from it stop benefiting from it - what would you recommend we do? What is the best way to reduce the most harm?>
So I think we somewhat part ways here, because I don't see this as a huge societal issue. I think this, like most panics, has to burn itself out. Don't get me wrong, I think you address each individual instance as it pops up, and I'm not advocating people's careers get sacrificed at the altar waiting out the panic. I'm fully in support of telling college students who want to ban a guest speaker or get staff fired to go kick rocks in unequivocal terms, but I would also defend those same people if they were being unfairly maligned when the revolution inevitably consumes it's own children.
So many emotions about this. The fact that I'm now established in a good career where I'm probably mostly un-cancel-able and a good marriage has ironically made the urge to just roll my eyes, keep my head down and spend my time on my patients, my kids and my D&D campaign much stronger. I no longer believe that this is something that can be reversed by any action I can take. My project for the next few years will be trying to invent a way to inoculate my kids against this nonsense as much as possible and steering my young patients away from the self-mutilation that is gender-affirming care.
It was still pretty disgusting to see someone like Nicholas Grossman doing the same nonsense you saw from Davidson. I've spent the last 13 years of my life in 3 different universities. At this point it is not plausible that anyone with any exposure to universities (much less a professor) could deny in good faith that a) Everyone is terrified to speak their minds about the known taboos even though the majority know or suspect they are bullshit and b) this is not the way it was even 10 years ago. In the latter years of medical school and into residency it was obvious that all of my colleagues lived in perpetual terror of saying the wrong thing. By the time I graduated you could hear a pin drop when a lecture ended on anything remotely politically charged (And there were many, many such lectures. The last academic conference of residency had a 30 minute lecture devoted to a glorified twitter troll lecturing us on our duty as doctors to advocate for abolishing the police).
I’m not following what you’re suggesting, Sarah. Let’s take a couple examples:
1. Do you regret tweeting in support of Sam Seder (https://mobile.twitter.com/SarahTheHaider/status/937820495810002946) when MSNBC fired him?
2. Do you think FIRE shouldn’t have stood up for Nicole Hannah Jones when the UNC decided not to provide her tenure?
I don’t think either of these actions were properly recognized by Seder or NHJ, who are dishonest actors. But there are plenty of others who do recognize it, and support you and FIRE because of it.
If you do think those actions were wrong, what was the correct response? I don’t think anti-woke liberals are a powerful enough group to actually make these people pay a cost here. I don’t think they should be defended as vigilantly as someone we think is more innocent, but I am not convinced there is much to gain by breaking our principles.
The correct response depends on what one aims to achieve.
I want the end of cancel culture, and believe that will only happen when it is not a weapon for one side alone.
It is lovely to hear that I have gained supporters through integrity - but what if my personal gain comes at a cost of ending this nonsense once and for all?
You may be right that anti-woke libs are not powerful enough to make anyone pay - but I also think part of the reason we are defanged is that we refuse to wield power even when we have it.
I do not think it is dishonorable to refuse to defend someone who has a history of targeting others or excusing the targeting.
But FIRE was right to stand for NHJ - that is their mission. However, if Sam Seder was being fired again today, I would probably just point out his hypocrisy. I know that doesn’t sound very noble, and to be honest the thought makes me uncomfortable as it is not my habit/tendency - but I also think “dying nobly” is in itself a self-serving act. Not everyone can make a big show of how much integrity they have while being ground to dust by this brutal machine.
“I want the end of cancel culture, and believe that will only happen when it is not a weapon for one side alone.”
I’ve thought about your response a lot and I think this is probably the crux of why I am unconvinced.
You write that “The only way Good White Men like Mr. Davidson will recognize the harms of cancel culture is when it is them and their friends and loved ones, who suffer.” We’ve seen how people like Sam Seder and NHJ react to being cancelled: they don’t suddenly recognize the harms of all cancel culture; they simply integrate what’s happening into their existing worldview and assert that the only real cancel culture comes from the right.
I think trying to get the Adam Davidsons of the world to acknowledge cancel culture by letting it happen to them is a doomed strategy. But it also isn’t necessary. The NYT editorial board recently asserted that cancel culture was a real problem; they also hired John McWhorter some months ago to write weekly anti-woke newsletters for them.
Was this because the people at the NYT finally felt the pain themselves and didn’t have anti-woke liberals to defend them? Or did the fact that there were principled anti-woke liberals decrying cancel culture, and not just unprincipled right-wing populists, help them come to those decisions? I would wager it’s the latter.
It’s simple really, many liberals have had decades of selling their souls for triffles. At least the affluent muslims Sarah wrote about, ignored extremism to avoid loosing the vague promise of an afterlife. At what price did so called secular, feminist westerners agree to run cover for female genital mutilation, forced marriages..? The woke have a despicable vision for our future, but their contempt for the type of liberals who even now, won’t lift a finger to save their own skin is deserved.
Having smug principle-free people in positions of power is a bad thing, and would continue to be a bad thing even in a world without a single Ibram Kendi.
Whenever defending the virtueless is not strategically necessary to prevent the domination of the woke, doing so, is a bad thing. There are plenty of decent people also being targeted by our rivals. Defending people takes time, and abandoning your friends to help people who would never raise a finger for anyone, is morally wrong.
Could you elaborate on a culture of honor vs. a culture of dignity?
<When a canceller gets canceled, it is fairly common to see anti-woke liberals defend them - as if on a mission to prove their own magnanimity and integrity.
But this is a misguided tact, and in practice more self-serving than morally justified.>
It seems what you want is for the people on your side of the fight to lack real principles, basically. It seems like you want "anti-woke liberals" who advocate for free speech to put aside those principles as long as the "right people" are on the business end of the punishment stick.
So the ends justify the means, then?
//It seems what you want is for the people on your side of the fight to lack real principles, basically. //
Really frustrating to put care into what you say, and then someone comes out with this. If I lacked "principles" I would be calling for more cancellations, at any cost.
I'm explicitly calling for none. But I do not think it is dishonorable to refuse to defend someone who has a history of targeting others or excusing the targeting - especially as I detailed here - this is indeed the only way this will end.
If you were also convinced, as I am, that it will stop only when those who benefit from it stop benefiting from it - what would you recommend we do? What is the best way to reduce the most harm?
Let me put it another way.
Let’s say I am “anti punching people for no reason”. When people are punched or seem like they are about to be punched for no reason, I go out of my way to defend them. Sometimes I even shield them with my own body.
But say there is a group that likes punching people for no reason. They want more of it - they think it is a good thing that happens to bad people. When one of this group gets punched - should I fall over trying to defend them? Is it unjust for me to do so? If I refuse to do so - does that mean I must not truly believe punching people for no reason is bad?
After reading your two responses, I guess I'm left a little unclear on exactly what it is you are advocating overall...indifference?
Because the tone of your article has the feel of rooting for the "cancel-ers" (there's gotta be a better word for this, but whatever) to receive their comeuppance, but then you say you are not actually rooting for more cancellations. Feels like....I don't know....something akin to yearning for schadenfreude?
I'm going to work backwards in order on your questions, Sarah.
<When one of this group gets punched - should I fall over trying to defend them? Is it unjust for me to do so? If I refuse to do so - does that mean I must not truly believe punching people for no reason is bad?>
So I think there is daylight between falling over myself to defend punchers and rooting for their pummeling. I can only speak for myself, but I try not to think about it in terms of defending individual people and more in terms of defending a principle I want to uphold. If people not getting punched is a principle I subscribe to, then I am going to defend the principle of folks not catching hands regardless of who it is getting stuck.
(I should take a moment to clarify that I do not think you are unprincipled, but it felt to me like you were advocating for people who do adhere to certain principles to ignore their instincts to defend them provided the "right" people are being targeted.)
<If you were also convinced, as I am, that it will stop only when those who benefit from it stop benefiting from it - what would you recommend we do? What is the best way to reduce the most harm?>
So I think we somewhat part ways here, because I don't see this as a huge societal issue. I think this, like most panics, has to burn itself out. Don't get me wrong, I think you address each individual instance as it pops up, and I'm not advocating people's careers get sacrificed at the altar waiting out the panic. I'm fully in support of telling college students who want to ban a guest speaker or get staff fired to go kick rocks in unequivocal terms, but I would also defend those same people if they were being unfairly maligned when the revolution inevitably consumes it's own children.