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“We’ve taught young people that any of their missteps or any of their heterodox opinions are grounds to tear them down. That’s no way to grow up.”

That was journalist Rikki Schlott speaking before a sold-out crowd on Monday night at a live taping of The Reason Interview with Nick Gillespie podcast in New York City. Schlott, 23, teamed up with Greg Lukianoff to co-write The Canceling of the American Mind .

Lukianoff, 49, is the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and co-author with Jonathan Haidt of the bestselling The Coddling of the American Mind (2018) . Schlott is a fellow at FIRE, a New York Post columnist, and a co-host of the Lost Debate podcast .

Cancel culture, they argue, constitutes a serious threat to free speech and open inquiry in academia and the workplace, and is best understood as a battle for power, status, and dominance.

Watch the video of the full event, and find a condensed transcript below.

Reason: What’s the elevator pitch for this book? Why is it relevant now?

Rikki Schlott: Well, I think it’s twofold. On the first front, people are still saying that cancel culture does not exist, which is absolutely crazy and defies all statistics fundamentally. But also, cancel culture is not just about the people that are torn down, it’s about the epistemic crisis that it creates and the devastation of the body of common knowledge that we all share, and also the undermining of trust between people.

And for me as a young person, the undermining of being able to grow up and have the freedom to fumble and make mistakes as well. So I think it’s important on a ton of different levels.

Reason: What is the working definition of cancel culture?

Greg Lukianoff: Basically, we’re trying to give the historical era that we’re in a name. I’m a First Amendment lawyer. I’m big on the history of freedom of speech. And a lot of what we call mass censorship events have names. So Alien Sedition 1798, the Red Scare One in the 1920s, Red Scare Two, also known as McCarthyism, the Comic Book Scare, etc.

So basically we’re proposing more or less that this be a historical definition of a unique and weird period where there’s been a lot of people losing their jobs because of their opinion. That’s really one of the things we’re trying to show, is that this is on par with any of these previous moments of mass censorship, and actually exceeds them in terms of the numbers of professors fired.

Reason: Can you elaborate more on the number of firings you are referring to?

Lukianoff: So real quick through the stats. Our definition is: the uptick of campaigns beginning around 2014 to get people fired, de-platformed, expelled, and the culture of fear that resulted from that. And I think it’s always important to root numbers in comparisons.

When I started at FIRE, I actually landed in Philadelphia at 9:10 in the morning on 9/11. All of my first cases were involving people who said jerky or insensitive things about the attacks or people who said, “Let’s go get those terrorists.” So it was a bad period for academic freedom. There was a moral panic, and it actually followed the normal M.O. of mass censorship events in history. There was a national security crisis. That’s usually the way it goesit’s either a national security crisis or a large-scale war that you have these mass censorship events. And 17 professors were targeted for being canceled, as we would say, which basically means punished for their speech. There were more students as well, but we were pretty small at the time, so we know that we probably only know a fraction of the students who got in trouble. Three professors were fired. That’s really, really bad historically. All three of those professors, by the way, were justified under things that weren’t related to speech.

For the cancel culture era, we’re talking over 1,000 attempts to get professors fired or punished in some way. About two-thirds of them resulted in someone being punished. About one-fifth of them, so about 200, resulted in them losing their jobs. During McCarthyism, the number of people who lost their jobs due to being a communist is about 63. They count other people who lost their opinions in this massive study that they did right towards the end of McCarthyism, and there were about 90 fired for their opinion overall, which is usually rounded up to 100.

We now think that they’re probably somewhere between 100 and 150 fired from 2014 to mid-last year, July. We know this is a crazy undercount as well. According to our survey, one in six professors say that they’ve either been threatened with investigation or investigated for their academic freedom. That means the numbers are absolutely colossal. Students, about 9 percent of them, say that they’ve actually faced sanctions for their speech. That’s an insanely huge number. And about one-third of professors say that they’ve been told to avoid controversial research. So we know that we’re only seeing a portion of it.

Reason: The first case study in your book is at Hamline University. Can you remind us what happened there and why it exemplifies cancel culture?

Schlott: There was a professor named Erica Lpez Prater who decided to show an image of the prophet Muhammad in one of her courses, which is considered sacrilegious by some people who follow Islam. And so she said in her syllabus that that was going to be in a class. She told people that you could get an excuse from class if it’s untenable for you to see that. She warned them multiple times ahead of time. She gave ample warning in every way, shape, and form, and also just told everyone that, “The only reason I’m showing you this is because there are some sects of Islam that do not find this offensive. This is a piece of art that was commissioned by a Muslim king.”

She ended up being squeezed out of her job for doing that because one student did show up to that class and decided afterward that she was offended. And the president of the university came out and said, “This is beyond freedom of speech, this is just offensive.” And it was a perfect example of cancel culture just defying common sense, defying just pluralism and democracy on a very fundamental level. And so that’s why we decided to call this one out as our opener because pretty much everyone condemned it in the end. It was unbelievable. And Hamline did have to reverse course.

Reason: The happy ending there is that the university president kind of got pushed out. What was the reaction of other academics?

Lukianoff: This was a positive case in the sense that people really came to her defense. The idea that she wasn’t rehired in the face of it is really stunning. Penn America was involved, of course, FIRE was involved, the American Association of University Professors came out and condemned it. So it was a moment of some amount of unanimity, but it somehow wasn’t enough at the same time.

Reason: What role do psychotherapists play in cancel culture?

Lukianoff: This is near and dear to my heart because my experience with Coddling of the American Mind started with me being hospitalized for depression back in the Belmont Center in Philadelphia back in 2007. The idea that you would actually have psychotherapists who think they should intervene if you have wrongthink in your mind when you’re talking one-on-one with them is about as horrifying as I can imagine. It’s no exaggeration to say I’m not sure I’d still be here if I actually had a psychotherapist who corrected me.

As far as a chapter that we could easily expand into its own book, and maybe we should, the psychotherapy stuff scares the living hell out of us. I know we talked to a number of practitioners. In terms of what I’ve heard from the existing clinical psychology programs is that they will pain over the nightmare scenario of, “What if it turns out the person I’m treating is a Trump supporter or a Republican?” And of course, the answer is, “Then you treat them compassionately,” not, “You have to drop out.”

Reason: Rikki, you were coming of age in the era that you guys are writing about. Have you experienced th mindset of “If you are a bad person, you have bad ideas”?

Schlott: Well, for me personally, I was in high school in the lead-up to the 2016 election and we just had a scourge of cancel culture explode even though we were still teenagers. I, at the time, was more worried about boys and acne than Trump, but I saw that en masse scale for the first time. It was really frightening to me. And frankly, as a result, I self-censored for a while, and by the time I got to NYU, I knew I was in an ideological minority as a right-leaning libertarian here in New York City. I actually started hiding books under my bed when I moved in because I was a new freshman and trying to make friends. Thomas Sowell and Jordan Peterson were under the bedbanished.

I think it’s so important to realize that there is a crisis of authenticity with young people who are growing up, who were supposed to explore different ideas and be an anarchist one day and a communist the next day and figure it out in the end, but we’ve taught young people that any of their missteps or any of their heterodox opinions are grounds to tear them down. That’s no way to grow up. You cannot be a young person and grow up in a graceless society.

I think it’s important to realize that there are a whole host of young people who did not come from this squeaky wheel, the tyranny of the minority group of people who do show up in institutions and scare the life out of everyone. But the fact of the matter is, whether it’s young people or American people at large, 80 percent of Americans think political correctness has gone too far. The vast majority of people do not want to live in a world where they’re tripping over tripwires at every turn or censoring their speech or biting their tongue for fear that someone will give them the worst possible interpretation of what they said. This is a tyranny of the minority, and courage is contagious, and there is strength in numbers, and I think that we really can fight back with that knowledge

Reason: Can you explain what the Woodward Report was?

Lukianoff: It was so terrific, and Yale specifically disavowed it in court. The Woodward Report was this wonderful report that came out in the 1970s. It was a stirring defense of the importance of freedom of speech, even for speech that we find deeply offensive. It was supposed to be kind of one of the things that really set Yale apart, and they haven’t been living up to it for a long time. But one thing that was kind of sobering to see is them actually going to court in a case where actually it was more of an attack on the right, that they were in a litigation against this one professor, and they specifically disowned the Woodward Report, basically saying in court that, “That’s just puffery. We didn’t really mean any of that.”

Reason: What is the right wing version of cancel culture?

Schlott: Yeah, actually, it surprises most people to hear that about a third of attempts to get professors censored or fired are coming from the right and are attacks on professors to the left of the students. That tends to happen less in the really shiny institutions that garner the headlines and more at smaller schools, but it’s still meaningful.

There’s intergroup cancel culture in a way that I think is really frightening on the right. We talk about David French, for example, who’s maligned for having some different views about Trump and conservatism. I think, especially in the post-MAGA era, there’s a reflexive response to anyone who might be critical of Trump or to doubt Trump to cancel them or to squeeze them out. We talk about Megyn Kelly as an example of that, who gave me my first job in media, and was squeezed out from the right and then from the lefta demonstration of how one person who is or at the time was in pretty much the center right area could be canceled by both sides.

Reason: Where does right-wing cancel culture come from?

Schlott: I mean, I would say as someone who is right-leaning, and who grew up in a context where I now realize I wrongfully associated illiberalism with liberalism just because of the context of the years that I grew up in. I’ve realized that the left completely left freedom of speech, which used to be a fundamental principle of theirs, up for grabs. And anyone could grab that mantle and say, “Here’s the restorative, pluralistic democratic vision to move forward.” But instead, I think that we’ve seen quite a lot of people on the right just fight illiberalism with illiberalism and fists with fists in a way that is just so infuriating.

Reason: How has cancel culture erupted in the last few weeks in response to the war between Israel and Hamas? Do you think that Harvard students should lose their jobs over their opinions on Israelis and Palestinians?

Lukianoff: It is still cancel culture. I mean just the fact that it’s cancel culture that many people agree with doesn’t make it not cancel culture and I don’t like blacklists. I like to actually deal with people individually, find out what they really think about something, and give the benefit of the doubt.

Now to be clear, do companies have the legal right to hire who they want? Yes, and I oppose laws actually saying that they have to hire, but I do want people to take a deep breath, take some distance and say to themselves, “What if we live in a country where every company was also not just a widget shop, but also a political shop, and the boss’s politics decided who got to keep their job?” And it’s not that fanciful because that’s what it started to look like in 2020 and 2021 where people were getting fired for just having mildly critical Black Lives Matter statements. So I want people to consider what the world would look like if essentially you have a First Amendment, but you can’t have a job if you actually honestly say your political opinion.

I will give one caveat though to the Harvard students. I think that a big part of the problem we have as a country is that we too reflexively hire elite college graduates. I think this creates serious problems. I think you should try to find out when you’re hiring from elite college campuses by asking, “Okay, no, I understand you have a view that I find abhorrent. Can you work with people who disagree with you?”

Reason: Universities love to shoot their mouths off about all kinds of things. In your perfect universe, would universities never talk about anything other than higher education? Is the problem that they’re making too many statements, or that they are not making the right statements, or that they’re just hypocritical?

Lukianoff: In my perfect universe, every university would adopt a 1967 University of Chicago C Report, which is a very strong admonition not to take political positions. We are not the speakers, we are the forum for the speakers and the thinkers, which I think is the right attitude to have about higher education.

Reason: What can we do about cancel culture?

Schlott: Yeah, this is the conclusion of our book where we really make the case that we all need to buy into this free speech culture. That the only way we can supplant cancel culture is by going back to the old idioms that so many Americans were raised with, like, “to each their own.” This is a free country, everyone’s entitled to their own opinion. Because I think we’ve underestimated just how far we’ve drifted away from that. Parents have not realized that they need to be aggressively mindful in instilling those values into a generation of young people who’ve been taught the absolute opposite, whether it was in K-12 or on college campuses, that words can wound and always trust your feelings, and that you can insulate yourself. You need safe spaces and trigger warnings.

We all need to buy-in to fight back against this tyranny of the minority of people who want to tear other people down to exercise cheap ad hominem attacks and dodge actual meaningful conversation. Because that’s the only way, if we actually want to move forward in a diverse and pluralistic society, we need to be able to have civil conversation and dialogue about the touchiest and most contentious issues. And unles we actually, mindfully fight back against cancel culture, we are just going to slump down into dangerous and illiberal tendencies.

This interview has been condensed and edited for style and clarity. Video Editor: Adam Czarnecki

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Alleged Madeleine McCann family stalker left voicemails saying ‘I believe I’m really her’

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Alleged Madeleine McCann family stalker left voicemails saying 'I believe I'm really her'

A woman accused of stalking the parents of Madeleine McCann allegedly left voicemails asking the mother of the missing girl for a DNA test, a court heard.

Jurors heard voicemails left by Julia Wandelt, 24, from Lubin, Poland, in which she was audibly upset.

She allegedly left the messages last year, over a period of months, and at one point asked: “What if I’m her?”

Co-defendant Karen Spragg, 61, began crying today at Leicester Crown Court and had to leave the dock when the voicemails were played.

Wandelt, whose head was down while jurors were listening, was heard saying: “I know you probably think Madeleine‘s dead. Well she is not. I really believe I’m her.

“Help me. Don’t think Madeleine is dead. This is a chance. Please, I beg you. The police don’t want to help me, they don’t want to help Madeleine. It’s all corrupt.

“I promise you that I will prove who I am because I know you love Madeleine.”

In another message, she said: “You probably believe Madeleine is not alive anymore.

Madeleine McCann went missing during a family holiday to Portugal in 2007. Pic: PA
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Madeleine McCann went missing during a family holiday to Portugal in 2007. Pic: PA

“What if I am her? What if there’s a small chance that I’m her?”

Jurors also heard that, one night, Wandelt sent a message to Mrs McCann at 1am, saying: “I don’t understand why you don’t want to do a DNA test.”

Prosecutors allege that Wandelt, a Polish national, falsely claimed she was Madeleine while stalking parents Kate and Gerry McCann by sending emails, making calls and turning up at their address between June 2022 and February this year.

The court previously heard that Wandelt called and messaged Mrs McCann more than 60 times in a single day in April last year. This included alleged memories of Madeleine’s abduction.

Madeleine went missing during a family holiday to Praia da Luz in Portugal, in May 2007.

Wandelt and Spragg, of Caerau Court Road in Caerau, Cardiff, both deny one count of stalking.

The trial continues.

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Tommy Robinson refused to give phone pin to police as he drove his Bentley to Benidorm, court hears

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Tommy Robinson refused to give phone pin to police as he drove his Bentley to Benidorm, court hears

Tommy Robinson refused to hand over his phone pin when police stopped his Bentley on the way to Benidorm, a court has heard.

He allegedly told officers “Not a chance, bruv” and said he was a journalist when they pulled him aside at the Channel Tunnel at Folkestone in July 2024.

Robinson, real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, is accused of “frustrating” counter-terrorism powers by refusing to give access to the phone.

He denies the charge.

The right-wing political activist was flanked by security guards as he arrived at Westminster Magistrates Court for the opening of the trial on Monday.

The 42-year-old faces three months in prison and/or a £2,500 fine if found guilty.

Robinson had £13,000 and 1,900 euros on him when he was stopped and told police he was going to Benidorm in Spain for a few days, said prosecutor Jo Morris.

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He allegedly refused to give the pin as he claimed the phone had sensitive “journalist material” on it.

He’s said to have told police: “It’s my work, I’m a journalist,” claiming it contained information about “vulnerable girls”.

The court heard Robinson was stopped in his silver Bentley SUV because he gave “short, vague replies” about what he was doing and “made no eye contact”.

PC Mitchell Thorogood told the court it was also “unusual” he bought tickets on the day rather than in advance and was in an expensive car not registered in his name.

Pic: PA
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Pic: PA

When police took Robinson into an interview room and demanded his phone, he allegedly told them: “Not a chance bruv… you look like a c*** so you ain’t having it.”

Officers said they recognised Robinson when they stopped him and his lawyer, Alisdair Williamson KC, suggested the stop may have been “discriminatory” against his political beliefs.

Police can stop anyone at a UK port and hold them for six hours if they suspect they may be involved in planning or committing acts of terrorism.

They are legally obliged to answer questions and must give access to their electronic devices or face a criminal charge.

In a video on X before the hearing, Robinson said Elon Musk had “picked up the legal bill” for “this absolute state persecution”.

The case comes a month after Robinson led a huge rally in central London under the banner ‘Unite the Kingdom’.

The trial continues.

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UK played ‘vital role’ in Gaza peace deal, says Trump aide, after minister branded ‘delusional’

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UK played 'vital role' in Gaza peace deal, says Trump aide, after minister branded 'delusional'

Steve Witkoff, the US special envoy to the Middle East, has claimed the UK played a “vital role” in helping negotiate the Gaza peace deal, smoothing over a potential diplomatic row between London and Washington.

Witkoff took to X on Monday, ahead of meeting President Donald Trump in Israel, to praise the UK.

“I would like to acknowledge the vital role of the United Kingdom in assisting and coordinating efforts that have led us to this historic day in Israel,” Witkoff wrote.

“In particular, I want to recognise the incredible input and tireless efforts of National Security Advisor Jonathan Powell.”

His comments came 24 hours after education secretary Bridget Phillipson was branded “delusional” by Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, for claiming that Sir Keir Starmer’s presence at a signing ceremony for today’s ceasefire deal in Egypt “demonstrates the key role that we [Britain] have played”.

The minister made her remarks on Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips but did not say exactly what the UK’s role in the ceasefire, largely attributed to Donald Trump, is or was.

Politics latest: Phillipson announces crackdown on antisemitism at UK universities

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Phillipson added: “We have played a key role behind the scenes in shaping this.

“It’s right that we do so because it’s in all of our interest, including our own national interest, that we move to a lasting peace in the region.

“These are complex matters of diplomacy that we are involved in. But we do welcome and recognise the critical role that the American government played in moving us to this point.”

Her comments prompted Mr Huckabee to repost the Sky News clip on social media, claiming: “I assure you she’s delusional.”

He added: “She can thank Donald Trump anytime just to set the record straight.”

Mr Huckabee was part of the negotiating team for the peace deal, with Mr Trump calling the former Arkansas governor “AMAZING” as he said he “worked so hard, and did so much, to bring about peace in the Middle East”.

In August, Mr Huckabee said the UK and other European nations that said they would declare a Palestinian state were “having the counterproductive effect that they probably think that they want”.

Israel: UK did not play key role in peace deal

Israel’s deputy foreign affairs minister, Sharren Haskell backed Huckabee, telling Sky News the UK played “the opposite” of a key role in the peace deal after recognising the Palestinian state.

“The message that the UK government has sent Hamas was the message that: the longer they continue this war, they will be rewarded.

“I mean, you must understand that when a terrorist organisation is thanking you. You are on the wrong side of history.”

It is understood the prime minister has underlined Mr Trump’s key role in securing this deal throughout the process. Publicly, he praised Mr Trump twice in his press conference in India on Thursday.

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Gaza latest: Hostages Square boos Netanyahu
Hamas official thanks Donald Trump for ceasefire deal

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Final preparations for hostages in Israeli hospital

Ms Phillipson stood by the September decision to declare a Palestinian state, saying it was “the right thing to do”.

Husam Zomlot, the Palestinian ambassador to the UK, told Sky News it was a “moment of leadership” for the UK to declare a Palestinian state, and a “responsibility to begin to correct a century of the gravest historic injustices committed against our people”.

He added: “That moment three weeks ago, when the UK did recognise, is a moment when we can say that the wheels of history are turning in a different direction.”

No plans for British troops on the ground

The education secretary also told Sky News the government has “no plans” to put British troops into Israel or Gaza as part of a stabilisation force after the ceasefire.

The US military will help establish a multinational force in Israel, known as a civil-military coordination centre, which is likely to include troops from Egypt, Qatar, Turkey and the UAE.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians have walked back to Khan Younis in southern Gaza. Pic: AP
Image:
Tens of thousands of Palestinians have walked back to Khan Younis in southern Gaza. Pic: AP

On Friday, US officials said up to 200 US troops already based in the Middle East will be moved to Israel to help monitor the ceasefire in Gaza.

The day before, President Trump announced Israel and Hamas had “signed off on the first phase” of a peace plan he unveiled last week.

Pic: Reuters
Image:
Pic: Reuters

Aid trucks have been gathering in Egypt to cross into Gaza after months of warnings by aid groups of famine in parts of the territory.

In Israel, the remaining hostages are due to be returned from Gaza by Hamas on Monday under the first phase of the peace plan. Twenty are believed to still be alive, 26 have been declared dead, while the fate of two is unknown.

The ceasefire agreement has been made two years after Hamas stormed Israel on 7 October 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages.

Israel’s military offensive has killed more than 67,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, which the UN deems reliable.

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