Thread by @Katja_Thieme

What is cancel culture?

One of the burning questions of our time, surely.

Been reading one of #EricKaufmann's #AcademicFreedom reports. In it, he cites the National Association of Scholar's data sheet on cancellations to highlight how many there have been. 1/

So I went and looked at that. It was fun. It had a number of cases on it that I didn't know yet, and there are links the news pieces and blog posts, so it's useful in its way. 2/

The association itself way oversells what they think the data sheet shows. Just listen to the snippy description below. Aside: the article from which it's taken leads with a dictionary.com definition, ahem. Follow the links for the data sheet. 3/
nas.org/blogs/article/…

Here's the thing: since the beginning of the 20thC we've had terms that have gone through theoretical exploration, employment testing, #highered teaching, and some legal fire. They're robust, they serve us in our discussions. Academic freedom. Free speech. Mobbing. Criticism. 4/

And now some want to make cancel culture and cancellation stick in the same territory where those terms already apply. We can see the mud slip their feet out from under them every time they try that.

What's the point? 5/

I looked more closely at the column that summarizes the type of "cancelling" action each case elicited. Without examining the case details--I know a few of these cases quite well: some people are terminated for very good reasons--here's something to take note of . . . ⬇️6/

Nearly half the cases in that sheet are cases where other people make use of *their* right to speech in protesting and criticizing someone else's work and actions. Without the uni admin (dept. head, deans, higher admin) investigating or disciplining in response to that speech. 7/

A petition is not a threat to #AcademicFreedom. A petition is one of the oldest forms of registering grievance to governmental or institutional authority. To be able to petition an authority to try to make them act on one's behalf is part of the history of #FreeSpeech. 8/

What happens in response to petitions and letters that ask the university to discipline a faculty member or students is a different question. For us to discuss that we need to look at the specific cases and see what the evidence is. Investigation might be warranted. Or not. 9/

Leaving that question aside, we can say firmly that in the interest of freedom of speech we cannot count the sending of petitions and the production of public criticism as a "cancellation" against which we must rally. They are part of the gig. 10/

Here's my simple math, for anyone who likes to follow these details. The NAS data sheet currently has 128 entries. Two of these are from 1975 and 1988. All others are from 2010 to 2021, unevenly collected. I will leave the 1975 & 1988 cases out, including them would be silly. 11/

That's 126 cases. Of those, 51 are cases where others sent a petition, wrote letters, criticized the person on social media, or "denounced" the person (whatever form that may have taken) without there being a comment that the uni formally investigated or disciplined. 12/

Out of 126 recent cases listed, 51 seem to have stopped at critical speech (of whatever quality--possibly bad criticism) by others. That leaves 70 cases that one could look into further. Though I will not do that here, I'm done for the day.

Singing off!
Woke Sauron

13/

PS: In my count of 51 I also did *not* include cases where "threats" were mentioned in addition to petitions, letters, and/or social media criticism. 14/

@threadreaderapp unroll

Ooops, bad typo two tweets above: that leaves 75 cases which could be examined further. 15/