 For The New York Times, Rabbi David Wolpe wrote a piece in honour of the Jewish holy day, Yom Kippur. Wolpe used the holy “Day of Atonement” as an opportunity to comment on “cancel culture” and share with readers the ways in which the Jewish faith deals with forgiveness and providing people with “a path back from shame to acceptance.” Wolpe states, “Public shame is a powerful and sometimes necessary punishment… But it can also be brutal, and I believe that too often, lifetimes are remembered by their worst moments, and complex personalities reduced to their basest elements.”
Read the full article here.  This week, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) released their 2021 College Free Speech Rankings. These rankings are designed to help prospective college students make informed decisions about their future education by providing them with information about schools and their commitment to protecting free speech and expression. This year's survey was conducted using the opinions of over 37,000 students at 159 of America’s top colleges, making it the largest survey of free expression ever conducted. According to the survey, Claremont McKenna College, in California, ranked first for free speech protection, while DePauw, a private university in Indiana, ranked last. Concerningly, the survey also found that “speaker shout-downs” was supported by 66 percent of all students, marking an increase of 4 percentage points compared to last year, while “using violence to stop a speaker” increased by 5 percentage points and was supported by 23 percent of all students surveyed.
Read and explore the full report here.  For Free Black Thought, Aaron Fenton-Hewitt wrote a piece outlining the differences between “justice” and what he calls the “victimhood economy.” According to Fenton-Hewitt, “justice” teaches that “everybody deserves to be treated equally, irrespective of immutable characteristics,” while “victimhood economy” in effect weaponizes our moral impulse toward justice in order to advantage one group over another. He says that,
[T]here’s no denying that we are currently witnessing an attempt to categorise people with certain characteristics into groups, some of which are deemed to be more ‘marginalised’ and ‘at risk’ than others. Consequently, by this standard and way of thinking about justice, it would be justifiable to grant some groups privileges in order to balance the social scale.
Fenton-Hewitt believes that the victimhood economy is itself a form of racism, because while “justice” focuses on the need to treat people the same irrespective of their immutable traits, the victimhood economy “suggests that people deserve to be treated differently because of their immutable characteristics, which implies that people aren’t equal.”
Read the full article here.  For The New York Times, Thomas Friedman wrote about why he believes Americans have become so polarized, positing that we have exchanged our impulse for plurality and tolerance with tribalism and extremism. Many factors have contributed to this increased tribalism that makes democracy “harder to maintain,” some of which include the rise of social networks, widening income gaps and, of course, the pandemic. In this time of intense polarization, Friedman posits that everything from masks to pronouns have been turned into symbols of tribal identity.
Your position on each point doubles as a challenge to others: Are you in my tribe or not? So there is less focus on the common good, and ultimately no common ground to pivot off to do big hard things. We once put a man on the moon together. Today, we can barely agree on fixing broken bridges.
Friedman believes that America needs to double-down on its commitment to pluralism and maintain its unique place on the world stage as a beacon of hope, “otherwise the future is grim for democracies everywhere.”
Read the full article here.  Washington University Chancellor, Andrew D. Martin, wrote an open letter last week in support of free expressions and viewpoint diversity after a student disrupted a flag display that had been set up by other students to commemorate 9/11. The disruptive student, who was caught placing American flags representing the several thousand Americans who died during the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center into trash bags, argued that his actions were a protest against “islamophobia” and “military interventions,” and that he was not in violation of any school rules. Chancellor Martin stated that while all students certainly have the right to express their viewpoints, they also have the obligation to respect the expressions of others. He stated:
The 9/11 commemoration on Mudd Field was not just a memorial, it was also an act of speech. The free exchange of ideas is central to a vibrant university. It is a hallmark of our academic community, and it is imperative that everyone here is able to express their views in a respectful environment.
You can read the Chancellor’s full statement here.  For Areo, Dr. Laith Al-Shawaf writes about the cognitive and societal biases that can impede our ability to discover and disseminate truth. From confirmation bias to in-group/outgroup dynamics to bias blindspots, all of us are running software that can make objectivity nearly impossible and contrary opinions almost painful to hear. The solution? Free speech—even when it's offensive. Al-Shawaf admits it is not a perfect solution (those don't exist), but it's the best shot we have to protect the truth when powerful entities attempt to silence it.
Nobody gets to decide what can and can’t be said—because nobody is immune to self-serving cognitive biases, it is best not to give the decision-making power to any specific person or group, because they will abuse it and use it to further their own interests.
Read the full article here. |
