But she said the magazine is “respectfully removing her name.”)Others retreated after getting blasted for the company they kept rather than the principles they espoused.Another person who signed, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in an effort to stay out of the growing storm, said she did not know who all the other signatories were when she agreed to participate, and if she had, she may not have signed.
Get Access to Print and Digital for $23.99. Powerful protests for racial and social justice are leading to overdue demands for police reform, along with wider calls for greater equality and […]
We welcome responses at letters@harpers.org Our cultural institutions are facing a moment of trial. All Rights Reserved. On Friday a counter letter signed by 160 journalists and academics said the signatories of the Harper’s letter were writing from a position of privilege.
While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes.
Instead, its launch now seems ready to show just how shallow those commitments to those values really are among “prominent artists and intellectuals.”Did I say it would be a great satire of our time as a film? Hopefully most will, but that appears pretty optimistic at the moment.The point of the list was to show how broadly these principles are shared, the list’s creator told the New York Times. The letter asserts that Harper's signatories benefit from the type of free speech that they advocated, and suggests a blindness to the reality that minorities in the profession face.
Give black people back their homes.’Austin City Council votes to defund police – and the vote wasn’t even closeTwo retired military officers: Mark Milley must remove Trump in January if he loses and refuses to leavePolitico columnist: This sudden media crush on Kamala Harris sure is something, huh?Oregon state police to Portland: If you’re not prosecuting rioters, we’re leavingHeads roll: Sweeping staff changes made at VOA after pro-Biden ad released, hiring foreign workersLecturegram about Mongo: HBO Max adds “proper social context” to Blazing SaddlesNYC 9/11 organizers: “Street murals” and BLM protests are on, but 9/11 tribute lights must be canceled over COVID-19 worriesMinneapolis two months after the riots: ‘A desolate wasteland’Copyright HotAir.com/Salem Media. When the Left set about proving it, it didn’t take long for the signatories to start surrendering to the very phenomenon they protested:The letter, which was published by Harper’s Magazine and will also appear in several leading international publications, surfaces a debate that has been going on privately in newsrooms, universities and publishing houses that have been navigating demands for diversity and inclusion, while also asking which demands — and the social media dynamics that propel them — go too far.And on social media, the reaction was swift, with some heaping ridicule on the letter’s signatories — who include cultural luminaries like Margaret Atwood, Bill T. Jones and Wynton Marsalis, along with journalists and academics — for thin-skinnedness, privilege and, as one person put it, fear of loss of “relevance.” …Amid the intense criticism, some signatories appeared to back away from the letter. Previous cancel-culture attack figures like J.K. Rowling probably will hang firm, but how many of those who have not experienced that kind of character assassination will do the same? But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought.
We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom, which cannot exist without each other. We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. July 7, 2020 The below letter will be appearing in the Letters section of the magazine’s October issue. “We believe these are values that are widespread and shared, and we wanted the list to reflect that,” Thomas Chatterton Williams explained. The Harper’s signatories better believe that if this could happen to a private citizen, it could — and will — happen to them. This reads like a satire from Jonathan Swift or George Orwell, and if it were a movie, it would be the film of our times. The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away.
As writers we need a culture that leaves us room for experimentation, risk taking, and even mistakes. (Giulia Melucci, a spokeswoman for Harper’s, said the magazine had fact-checked all signatures and that Dr. Greenidge had signed off. Get Access to Print and Digital for $23.99. More like a farce, really.“…the free market would do a much better job at preventing discrimination than the government ever could.”ABC: DAs coming under fire for letting rioters off the hook.“If I was worried about being politically correct, I wouldn’t have joined this administration.”What in the wide wide world of sports is a-goin’ on here?Two retired military officers: Mark Milley must remove Trump in January if he loses and refuses to leaveSeattle BLM protesters to strangers: ‘Give up your house.
The letter — which boasts signatories including cultural icons such as jazz musician Wynton Marsalis, choreographer Bill T. Jones and feminist Gloria Steinem and … The forces of illiberalism are gaining strength throughout the world and have a powerful ally in Donald Trump, who represents a real threat to democracy. Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal.