Last month, Danny Mamlok, a friend of mine and an Israeli professor from Tel Aviv University, was scheduled to give a talk at Concordia University in Montreal on the topic of education for tolerance. Four days before the presentation was supposed to take place, the organizers of this event said they were subjected to significant pressure from pro-Palestinian activist groups at McGill and Concordia to cancel Mamlok’s presentation.
Not wanting to give in to this pressure, the organizers insisted that Mamlok, who has advocated for peace for decades and as an Israeli soldier even refused to serve in the West Bank, be allowed to deliver his talk.
Ironically, in order to attend a presentation on tolerance, the audience was directed to enter the venue through the basement, since the pro-Palestinian activists had blocked the main access and later disrupted the talk on Zoom.
This effort to cancel individuals or silence free speech on college campuses has become a more common occurrence in the days since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack. But even before, it was a growing phenomenon in higher education and the media across America.
A 2023 report by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression in Education, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting free speech, found that “attempts to punish college and university scholars for their speech skyrocketed over the past two decades, from only four in 2000 to 145 in 2022.” That report also showed that censorship of professors has come from both sides of the American political spectrum and that a majority of these cases led to some form of sanction, including about 20% that resulted in termination.
In her 2021 Atlantic magazine article titled “The New Puritans,” Anne Applebaum documented more than a dozen cases of professors and journalists who were punished for saying or writing controversial statements. Applebaum focused on the cases of Donald McNeil, science reporter from The New York Times; Laura Kipnis, an academic at Northwestern; and Ian Buruma, editor of The New York Review of Books. Applebaum’s investigative report concluded that these individuals were victims of mob justice and online campaigns that demanded the swift firing of “offenders.” Moreover, she noted that these campaigns lacked just cause and did not grant the canceled individuals the right to due process.
The issue of canceling and cancel culture has received considerable attention in the media and among various scholars, with a focus on the personal consequences suffered by those who have been canceled, the political risks, and the legal issues raised by this practice. Yet, I believe that the educational dangers for democracy that can come about from attempts to cancel individuals or ideas, though profound, have received less attention.
Last month, Danny Mamlok, a friend of mine and an Israeli professor from Tel Aviv University, was scheduled to give a talk at Concordia University in Montreal on the topic of education for tolerance. Four days before the presentation was supposed to take place, the organizers of this event said they were subjected to significant pressure from pro-Palestinian activist groups at McGill and Concordia to cancel Mamlok’s presentation.
Not wanting to give in to this pressure, the organizers insisted that Mamlok, who has advocated for peace for decades and as an Israeli soldier even refused to serve in the West Bank, be allowed to deliver his talk.
Ironically, in order to attend a presentation on tolerance, the audience was directed to enter the venue through the basement, since the pro-Palestinian activists had blocked the main access and later disrupted the talk on Zoom.
This effort to cancel individuals or silence free speech on college campuses has become a more common occurrence in the days since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack. But even before, it was a growing phenomenon in higher education and the media across America.
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