This is a thoughtful piece in many respects. I'd add to it: the singular focus on cancellation misrepresents how political power and ideology shape personal autonomy on campuses.
https://twitter.com/adamgurri/status/1439897018835607555
An example: I was back in Madison a couple of weeks back and spoke to a dozen faculty. Not one mentioned the topics of the two McWhorter essays in the NY Times in the last month. All were concerned they were being forced to work in unsafe conditions.
https://twitter.com/donmoyn/status/1439286758663929857?s=20
A couple of faculty I had talked to had been personally subject to a College Fix/YAF attack, part of a well-funded anti-speech ecosystem that has no equivalent on the left. In general FIRE does not count these in their databases even though they are a routine campus risk now.
Its hard to scold any individual piece for missing the bigger picture, since writers should cover what they want. But if the mosaic of those individual pieces does not feel representative to the people who actually live on campus, time to ask if there are some biases at play.
One bias in the coverage of campus speech is the eternal "kids these days" bias: the young ones have some radical ideas!
More radical than the 1960s? Or engagement with communism in the 1930s?
As @adamgurri points those students may simply be more visible.
More radical than the 1960s? Or engagement with communism in the 1930s?
As @adamgurri points those students may simply be more visible.
The other bias is in-group favoritism. Writers are covering professionals like them. If you are a visible person on twitter or a media publication you have almost certainly faced some version of online (or workplace) criticism. Easy to be sympathetic to others in the same boat.
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