Category Archives: cancel culture

Defining “Wokeness”: Strike 1 for Robert George et al

Posted on by under cancel culture

See update at the end of the post, July 12. Second update, July 25.

One of the many problems with the “culture wars” in the United States is that almost all of the contested terms used in the debate have gone undefined. It’s common for people to speak loosely about “wokeness,” “cancellation,” “cancel culture,” “the Left,” and “Cultural Marxism,” as though these terms had some obvious meaning known by all. They don’t. In fact, in the absence of explicit definitions, all of these terms are mysterious to the point of meaninglessness. So despite contrary appearances, no one really knows what they mean. The absence of definitions of contentious terms tends to benefit people who don’t know what they’re talking about, but would like to conceal that fact from others. That might explain why so much talk on this subject has such a nonsensical quality about it, at once insular, enigmatic, and histrionic. Continue reading →

Waking Up to “Woke Princeton”

Posted on by under cancel culture

If you do a Google search on the term “Woke Princeton,” you’ll find dozens of hits, in both the mainstream and conservative media, laboring to prove that Princeton University is a “woke” place dominated by “The Left.” So powerful is this dominance, it’s alleged, that Princeton’s beleagured conservatives are afraid to speak their minds on campus. The poor dears are obliged to creep their way through campus life, blending in with the ivy, habitually looking over their shoulders, fearful of cancellation or even physical assault, unable to exercise their rights of free speech, or to engage in authentic discussion of the contested issues of the day. Continue reading →

Greg Lukianoff on “Cancel Culture”

Posted on by under cancel culture, moralism

In a much quoted tweet, Greg Lukianoff, CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), has defined (“defined”) “cancel culture” as follows:

We define cancel culture as “the measurable uptick, since roughly 2014, of campaigns to get people fired, disinvited, deplatformed, or otherwise punished for speech that is — or *would be* — protected by the First Amendment.”

That’s from a tweet posted in 2022, but Lukianoff has repeated that “definition” many times since then. I’ve seen it in FIRE’s Facebook posts as recently as yesterday. Continue reading →

An Open Letter to the Jewish Community of Northern New Jersey

Posted on by under cancel culture, Palestine

An Open Letter to the Jewish Community of Northern New Jersey
From Jewish Voice for Peace of Northern New Jersey
May 5, 2023Jewish Voice for Peace logo

Massive demonstrations have been taking place in Israel over the future of its judiciary amid rising authoritarianism. Democratic activism is most welcome, but, overwhelmingly, the protests do not focus on the more than half-century occupation that Israel has imposed on the Palestinian people or the continued second-class status of those Palestinians who are Israeli citizens. Still less do the demonstrations draw attention to the Nakba (the “catastrophe”), the ethnic cleansing that the indigenous Palestinian population experienced seventy-five years ago at the founding of the Israeli state. Continue reading →

The Man Who Laughs

Posted on by under cancel culture, moralism, Studies in Objectivist Propaganda

Humor is a funny thing. What we find funny–what we spontaneously laugh at–tells others more about us than might be revealed by an extended interview. Consider this passage from a blog post dedicated to the defense of what its author regards as “Enlightenment values.” The author quotes a passage from Zeev Sternhell’s The Anti-Enlightenment Tradition, and comments as follows:

Sternhell takes Rousseau and Kant to be Enlightenment figures, though he is very aware of their being “complex and ambiguous figures in the history of Western political thought.”

(By contrast, I take Rousseau and Kant to be Counter-Enlightenment figures, though I agree very much with Sternhell that those are difficult judgment calls. And I laughed out loud at his quoting from Judith Shklar’s Men and Citizens on Rousseau as “the Homer of the losers.” Perfect.)

So “the Homer of the losers” is supposed to be funny. Maybe because losers are?

Continue reading →

Pedagogy of the Oppressors

Posted on by under cancel culture, moralism

From a statement by the National Association of Scholars, a right-wing lobbying group: 

Just last week, Ohio State Senator Jerry Cirino introduced Senate Bill 83—also known as the Ohio Higher Education Enhancement Act. This is one of many bills introduced across the U.S., both for K–12 and higher education, that are inspired by model legislation drafted by the National Association of Scholars and the Civics Alliance. In response to SB 83’s introduction, NAS promptly published an enthusiastic endorsement. SB 83 and our Model Higher Education Code provide a solid foundation upon which to rebuild Ohio’s colleges and universities, and to fight back against overreach by diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) activists. …

SB 83 would prohibit state-funded colleges and universities from requiring diversity statements for promotion, hire, and admissions, and would ban DEI concepts in classrooms and on campus. The bill would also mandate syllabus transparency and further commit to intellectual diversity and institutional neutrality. …

In a day and age where free speech is a nonstarter in higher education, legislation like SB 83 offers hope for the preservation of American ideals, as well as the restoration of institutional integrity and academic freedom.

Freedom isn’t free. There’s a hefty fucking fee.

Defining “Wokeness”: Socratic Dialogues with Bethany Mandel

Posted on by under cancel culture, moralism

The Bethany Mandel “define wokeness” controversy manages to be illuminating and absurd at the same time. Mandel, for the uninitiated, is an American anti-woke polemicist who’s apparently written a book on the subject of wokeness, and generally made a sophistical career of attacking it. She was recently invited to a YouTube talk show on wokeness, and asked to define the term. Turns out she didn’t have a definition. When asked for one, she managed instead to draw an embarrassing blank on her would-be area of specialization, babble a bit, and look like an all-round idiot. Continue reading →

Sleepwalking Through Affirmation Culture

Posted on by under cancel culture, moralism, Palestine

For years now, we’ve heard a hue and cry over “woke cancel culture.” There are, no doubt, many subtleties, twists, and turns involved in this controversy, all worth discussing. But it’s clarifying to ask whether there are sufficient conditions for cancellation. Should nothing ever be canceled? Or are there some things, sometimes, somewhere, under some circumstances however carefully defined and delimited, that should be canceled? We have, I think, now reached the reductio ad absurdum of the “never cancel” position in the debate over Bezalel Smotrich’s forthcoming trip to the United States. Continue reading →

The Sins of the Father

Posted on by under cancel culture, moralism

Below the fold is a short letter of mine in Princeton Alumni Weekly (PAW), responding to a critique by Yoram Hazony of “liberalism” in an earlier article in PAW. I kept the letter brief to maximize the chances of its getting printed, but there’s more to say; I’ll say it here when I get the chance. Most of what’s said in the article is head-shaking nonsense, but Hazony in particular takes the gaslighting to outlandish extremes. Leave it to these allegedly child-loving sophists to use their children as rhetorical props when ideology demands it. Continue reading →