On Being Blacklisted
aaronkunin.medium.com
aaronkunin.medium.com
It's interesting that some academic literary magazines are now being forced to admit they have political agendas, which is a step in the right direction.
People like Kunin are the conscience of our generation, daring to stand up to the mobs and tell the truth - a political act that conflicts with the Chicago Review's agenda. But it is the truth tellers, not the political enforcers, who will be acknowledged as heroes, as the future belongs to the truth, not to the political lie.
Perhaps give it a read?
blackshirt and brown
strut-mince and stink-rag
have all come to town
Also, cummings would struggle to be published in today's literary world, since he leaned to the right and was an ardent anti-communist (which began after visiting the Soviet Union in the early 30s).
Great art and comedy both can illuminate truth in a way that prose and rhetoric can't touch, because they can approach it obliquely and not get hung up on the details.
This get missed by the overly ideological, and you can tell because they produce bad art and no comedy.
Seriously?
All you citizens of Boston, don't you think it's a scandal
how the people have to pay and pay
Fight the fare increase, vote for George O'Brien
and get Charlie off the M.T.A.!
It's like any other art: sometimes it's just a aesthetically pleasing series of words (or musical notes, or colours, or shapes) with no real deeper meaning, or just because it's funny. And other times it's something aesthetically pleasing intended to provoke thought about some aspect of life such as love, the nature of humanity, or something else – some of these might be deemed "political".
Different people like different sort of art, and that's okay. Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0la5DBtOVNI
THE HEART of the rulers is sick, and the high-priest covers his head:
For this is the song of the quick that is heard in the ears of the dead.
The poor and the halt and the blind are keen and mighty and fleet:
Like the noise of the blowing of wind is the sound of the noise of their feet.
The wind has the sound of a laugh in the clamour of days and of deeds:
The priests are scattered like chaff, and the rulers broken like reeds.
Violets are blue
Political poetry is dumb
TS Eliot disliked Swinburne and so should you"
me, 2021
Not all of Swinburne's poetry is so explicitly political as that poem. And some of his poems are better than others. But I don't see any correlation between how good (in my opinion) some of poem of his is and how explicitly political it is.
I dislike TS Eliot. I'd much rather read Swinburne than TS Eliot.
To quote the many times canceled Orwell: And this tolerance or plain dishonesty means much more than that admiration for the USSR happens to be fashionable at this moment. Quite possibly that particular fashion will not last. For all I know, by the time this book is published my view of the Soviet régime may be the generally-accepted one. But what use would that be in itself? To exchange one orthodoxy for another is not necessarily an advance. The enemy is the gramophone mind, whether or not one agrees with the record that is being played at the moment.
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
Orwell is pretty the much the one-stop gramophone record for quotes when someone wants to express concern about censorship or authoritarianism in a vague, semi-lyrical way
He was cancelled in Britain from when he went to fight in the Spanish civil war until the end of WWII and the start of the cold war.
Which is what makes his quote so noteworthy, he was right, his view became the dominant one, but it still wasn't an improvement because the people repeating it did so without thinking.
Future generations will probably have a frame of reference completely different from what we expect them to have now. Come to think of it, it would be hard to explain all the motivations of life in 2021 to someone in 1984 who had yet to live through the intervening years...
That is something Cicero would understand, let alone someone with a working brain from 1984. Of course one need to have a working brain first, something very few manage in any time.
I think "have political agendas" is a logical leap. If your employees or customers are going to be angry with you for working with someone, you don't work with that person. To go against the wishes of your employees and customers would be having a political agenda.
we believe the essay does not align with Chicago Review’s editorial and political agenda
This is the moral and intellectual equal of the 14 year old girl who won’t sit with Suzy in the cafeteria because some of the other 14 year old girls think that Suzy is weird.
I'm convinced that they are lgbt friendly because it lets them have twice the drama since they aren't limited to sleeping with only half their acquaintances.
Edit: in case you're too stupid to realize: I'm not attacking lgbt's I'm attacking the vapid vampires that are sucking the life out of the movement.
[0] https://arcdigital.media/self-censorship-in-the-academy-5241...
I'm sure Kunin would have been very happy for them to burn their project down for his sake. Kunin's sake is not the only one at play here.
As for the larger case of "blacklisting", as Kunin describes it, the moral case is that amplification is bad, that by appearing onstage with a villain, you dignify his villainy by taking it seriously, when it should be rejected out of hand; you provide a platform for odious ideas that, even met with a superior response, get more airtime and borrowed legitimacy than they would otherwise.
You can certainly disagree that avoiding amplification justifies cancel culture, but acting like there isn't a moral case for not getting onstage with someone you don't want to amplify, begs the question.
Kunin opposed the idea of blacklisting in general, he didn't even endorse any person.
So now, for those who refuse to be published in the same magazine as him, the chain goes "unspecified other" -> Kunin didn't disavow -> they can't publish anything where Kunin might also publish? There's not even a specific idea they're condemning besides general open-mindedness.
What about if the magazine had allowed him to publish, and you had been in there as well? Would you deserve censure as the third link? After all, you shared a stage with someone, and god only knows how many stages they've shared with how many people.
Kunin's target is really the other contributors who effectively strongarmed the editors into ejecting him, and he later in his essay falls back on the old chestnut that the best response to terrible speech is better speech--an idea that the amplification argument is explicitly trying to reject.
So what's really being discussed here is whether the other contributors leaving is justified, and I think that this is the best form of freedom of expression. It's the most powerful form of expression to walk away from someone uttering something you find terrible to express. And when they sputter that you should engage them to demonstrate your own superiority of thinking, that's just demanding you amplify them as the price of showing off yourself. Sometimes, the better response is really to just walk away. This is the marketplace of ideas at its most effective.
If you're one million percent sure that you're right about everything, that's justifiable. You're maximizing inclusivity. But if you're not?
I think what a lot of the commenters are missing is that this article, and statements like "If I must revise my teaching to conform to a popular view of inclusivity that I do not share" have an impact on not just his research, but also sends a message to his students: that he doesn't whether they feel safe being there matters, and that they don't deserve to have representation in studied works.
I know a lot of people (mostly white, mostly men) don't think that's true, but these types of attitudes can easily allow harmful messages to fester in academic classrooms. Just because an idea is controversial doesn't mean it's worthy of debate. The idea that we should want more students to feel welcome in academia, and that we should study history and literature that has largely been ignored (or often, deliberately destroyed) is one such idea to many people.
So I know most of the people on this forum will disagree, but I think it's perfectly reasonable for an organization to say that they don't want their name associated with that.
The position in that article isn't a new or particularly interesting idea: it's been rehashed over and over, and studied, and it's an idea that many people have decided is harmful and they don't want to associate with it or people who continue to spread those ideas.
I probably don't have the eloquence to properly convey these thoughts, but there's a whole field out there that cares deeply about these things and has been working on making them better for, literally, centuries. In tech I often see people frustrated that the public doesn't understand what they're talking about when they discuss technologies (see the 5G conspiracy theories!). If you're interested in understanding why many people think doubling down on these ideas that inclusivity is in contradiction to good research/teaching/whatever, there's a whole field of literature out there to read up on that can help explain that. If you're in the US, one decent starting place is the history of black people in the US, and the history of women in the US. I've heard really good things about this series, for example: http://www.sceneonradio.org/seeing-white/
You're making a jump there: from whether Kunin's class covers works from authors with certain demographics, to whether his students feel safe. The character sequence "saf" doesn't appear in either of Kunin's articles. I think if it had been conveyed to him that his students' feeling of safety depends on his choice of curriculum, then he would have mentioned this argument (he'd probably call it absurd but I expect he'd mention it). His impression was: "That way, students from underrepresented minority communities will see themselves reflected in the readings. The students will feel included, and empowered to succeed, when they read works by writers who look like them."
Do you think it's really true that a significant number of students were feeling unsafe as a result of curriculum choices, and if so, why hadn't Kunin heard of it?
To my understanding (and as a disclaimer, I advocate strongly for it), "inclusivity" in general means making an environment safe for people of marginalized backgrounds. So to me, his declaration that inclusivity as a value ought to be up for debate seems to indicate he doesn't think it's a top priority that students of marginalized backgrounds feel welcome in his classroom.
Is that a jump? A bit, but it's based on seeing similar situations play out in other areas.
But the choice of curriculum was to my second point: I think students deserve the chance to study a wide variety of history and literary viewpoints, including when feasible some from backgrounds similar to theirs. There has been tons of literature written by black authors, written by women, written by LGBTQ folx. Often times those works have been, in the past, deliberately destroyed (like the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft) or not considered for publication (George Elliot choosing a pseudonym to publish outside romance), which is a significant component to why there are so many more white men authors historically.
If you teach a course where all the literature you choose is from white men, you really limit what history you are teaching, and you can subtly reinforce that others may not be welcome to succeed in literature. Inclusivity asks us to consider those implications and pick some variety of authors--there are many great writers of so many different backgrounds to choose from.
I take it you aren’t saying that students believe that an assailant will be hiding in the classroom with a bat ready to assault them as the enter the classroom.
Rather I take you and others to be using safe to mean something like comfortable. But unsafe and uncomfortable are two different words. There’s rarely or never good cause to make someone feel unsafe, but sometimes being uncomfortable can lead to growth. Or at least people used to believe so.
I'm a visible minority, and my rights are frequently a part of political debate. In spaces where those debates are allowed to happen, it's often not safe for me to participate. It's a hard feeling to describe or put into words for someone who hasn't experienced others saying that they shouldn't be allowed to do participate in some aspects of society because of a characteristic they can't change.
Well. What happened when Kunin took a risk and published an essay asking some questions and offering what he thought was a new idea? He faced verbal bullying and was punished. Is the point to give psychological safety to minority students but not bother about other people? (In fact, I suspect many of the minority students who happen to agree with Kunin would not feel psychologically safe saying so.)
At this point the classic rejoinder would be to say "look at these suffering minorities; your argument is invalid" or to talk about Kunin's privilege, but you seem to make better arguments than that.
Well, Kunin says: "My sense is that students and faculty are unsure of the meaning of inclusive teaching. To the extent that we feel any certainty, we do not agree with one another." I don't think he ever says that he thinks inclusivity, the way he interprets it, is a bad thing or isn't worthwhile.
Is that a distinction without a difference? Suppose, for illustration, that I declare that "inclusivity" means everyone has to sit in a circle for the whole class, because otherwise some people won't be seen by others and therefore won't be properly included in the classroom experience. Kunin protests that this would make it impossible for him to write on a chalkboard or project an image onto a screen. I tell everyone that this means Kunin opposes inclusivity, and the minority students start to feel unsafe. Is this Kunin's fault, or mine? Is the solution for Kunin to buckle up, or for me to stop scaring the students?
If you think that's a silly idea, consider this: "Last year when I proposed to teach a seminar in which the syllabus would include essays by Ralph Ellison, two of my colleagues wrote to the Curriculum Committee, as well as to the dean and the president of the college, objecting that it would be “literary blackface” for me to study Ellison." (The more general term "cultural appropriation" could be used if Ellison were a non-black minority.) I wouldn't be surprised if someone had actually proposed sitting in a circle.
Is there some source of truth, that all responsible people should obviously recognize as the source of truth, about what is the ideal "inclusivity"? If it were a serious attempt at "making an environment safe for people of marginalized backgrounds", then one thing I would expect to see is for these recommendations to be backed by studies; is that usually the case?
Also, by the way, receiving a failing grade on a test is probably very distressing to many people (perhaps a majority), and failing a class even more so. Surely making students feel "safe", at this level, would imply eliminating the possibility of such distress and making sure the students knew it was gone?
That is some very serious gaslighting.
To suggest that somehow students would be 'unsafe' around writers such as him or his works, is a toxic form of rhetoric.
That term - 'unsafe' - used in in an intellectual context such as it is is anti-intellectual and oppressive.
There is no 'harm' in his words.
Even if the publication felt it wasn't exactly perfect - they could have published it anyhow at very least on the basis of erring in the side of expression.
Then people cold read it, make up their own minds, disagree, not care, whatever. We're adults, we can do that, that's the point.
And FYI nobody is arguing that any real, material history should not be taught.
This is in the context of his literature courses. There are so many literary authors that aren't white men, that arguing that he should have the right to decide to only teach works from white men (if he deems them to be the best works), does seem to me like arguing that we shouldn't teach the history of marginalized people.
If you only mean non-literary history, the history of black people and LGBTQ people are both very under-taught in United States schools. That's a real thing that some people do want to continue, and argue for. (But this seems a bit outside the topic at hand)
No, it does not remotely seem like arguing that we shouldn't teach the history of marginalized people. How do you go from "I should be able to decide to only teach works from white men" to "other people shouldn't teach anyone other than white men"? To go from "I should be allowed to _____" to "nobody should do anything except ______" is a massive leap.
A course in classics is going to have overwhelmingly male authors, likely exclusively so. The reality of the ancient Mediterranean was that patriarchy was extensive, and women were not afforded the opportunity to contribute in that space. This is in now way saying that other courses in other fields should feature women or minority authors.
I mean, if you were teaching physics, you wouldn't teach ideas based on what race or nationality the person was who came up with the idea. I know, literature is different - it's more subjective, it's not empirically verifiable to determine the quality. Still, the desire to pick the best books based on the content of the books rather than the race of the author does not seem to me to be that horrible of an idea.
"I have a dream that one day my children will be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." And let books be judged not by the color of their author's skin, but by their content.
Not of necessity; there are plenty of known women writers of the period (it's hard to imagine a broad survey excluding Sappho, but she's far from the only example.)
> The reality of the ancient Mediterranean was that patriarchy was extensive.
Perhaps, but also much less so than in the exclusively male, until very recently, academic society which did so much to shape the lens through which we see the classics.
> 88 percent of students agreed or strongly agreed with the statement that “the climate on my campus prevents students/faculty from saying things they believe because others might find them offensive.” Sixty-three percent of faculty agreed or strongly agreed with the same statement.
No, it's not mostly white men, 88% is a figure large enough that it necessarily includes large swathes of other demographics.
Say someone who is very much in favor of legal abortion stays silent as one of their co-workers goes on about how abortion should be banned, for fear of offending said co-worker. Is the fact that this person held back from sharing their beliefs an example of inclusivity? I'd say that this is not only false, it is the opposite of what is true. The fact that this person self-censored out of fear of causing offense is evidence of an environment intolerant of pro-choice people.
Inclusivity is a worthwhile goal. That is why such extensive self-censoring beliefs is a prominent concern, it's strong evidence that we are not being inclusive of people of different beliefs.
Well, first, “blacklisting” for an exclusionary practice is a poorly chosen term for an act by a single actor and not a coordinated action across a group of theoretically competing actors.
Second, are you looking for a defense of the act within Chicago Review’s “editorial and political agenda” (which is difficult for any outside actor since they haven't specified what it is) or are you looking for a debate on that agenda (again, difficult for any outside actor for the same reason) or an argument for why a similarly situated might be justified on the basis of some set of goals which may not be Chicago Review’s agenda or for defense of a set of goals which might justify it that may not be Chicago Review’s agenda?
Because the last two seem like a pure waste of time while the first two seem like a waste of time if you aren't specifically asking the Chicago Review editorial staff.
Also, let's not be coy -- it's pretty obvious what their agenda is. At the very least you and I both know. I've seen you round these parts before, partner.
Each of Chicago Review's two choices (to publish, or not to publish) will generate disapproval.
My personal view is that deplatforming intolerance is ok -- that the Chicago Review are right to deplatform intolerance.
Was Kunin's article intolerant and who decides? I have no idea, an uninformed opinion at best.
People advocating "deplatforming intolerance", a.k.a. applying censorship, should ponder this quote.
There are parallels to what’s happening on the right: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2017/05/return-of-the-st.... This essay posits that the milquetoast nature of late 20th century liberal causes people (in that case in the right) to pine for the return of “strong gods.” It describes the status quo ante as follows: “All of this is summed up in his catchphrase the ‘weakening of Being,’ which he sees as a happy unburdening of the West, for weakening promotes tolerance, peace, and freedom. If there are no strong truths, nobody will judge others or limit their freedom. If nothing is worth fighting for, nobody will fight. Vattimo looks forward to a disenchanted world that encourages us to adopt a ‘moderate and generous’ approach to life.”
The essay argues that this absence of hard moral truths is unsatisfying to many, and is giving rise to thinking in the right wing that seeks a return to moral clarity. Kunin’ experience suggests similar things may be happening on the left as well.
That sort of reminds me of Rorty's Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (although I read it when I was much younger and felt that I didn't full understand it, so maybe the connection isn't as strong as I imagine), or Singer's Unsanctifying Human Life (though maybe I'm reminded of the latter just because of the "disenchanted world"). Or, in another rather different direction, Haidt's moral foundations theory.
In my recollection Rorty and Singer (both writing from academic philosophical backgrounds and mostly associating themselves with the secular left) feel that, as we've lost touch with certainties and transcendent values, we've gained an opportunity to be nicer and more thoughtful, as well as less apt to fight each other. A rival view, which I think has been expressed on the right for generations, is that losing touch with certainties and transcendent values will mainly leave people casting around for other certainties and other transcendent values that will let them rediscover something to fight for!
For me, defending good old liberalism from the loonies will never get boring.
1. Content creators. People that share viewpoints. They are motivated by influencing others who read their pieces.
2. Content consumers. People that read what is published by creators. You can split these in 2 groups:
2a. Non-activist consumers. They don't have much free time and generally just skip over something they don't like. They are the majority.
2b. Activist consumers. They have lots of free time and want their share of influence. By influencing what content creators can write they feel an influence over what non-activist consumers can consume.
3. Providers. They provide platforms connecting content creators and consumers. They generally just care about making money and rely on partnerships with other providers (banks, payment processors, hosting companies, domain registries, etc). They would gladly cut off business that brings negative PR to them.
So what is happening recently is a very small vocal minority of activist consumers is getting increased control over what content creators (1) can share to regular consumers (2a). They do it by forcing big providers (banks, cloud providers, etc) to cut ties with smaller providers that are not aligned with the activist consumers' viewpoints. Hence, many other providers are forced to self-censor in fear of losing access to banking and other vital services.
It's a rather weird negative selection process powered by the social media. Instead of encouraging the unhappy unproductive people to learn from their more successful peers and knock off what worked for them, we are giving them increasing control over the media space, so they can make their views (that lead to unhappiness) more mainstream, resulting in more unhappiness and more social tension.
Back in the day conservatives alleged that “free inquiry” was a pretext and universities were a Trojan horse for radical leftism. This strain of thought vindicates those critics.
Seriously? Which brand called you a rapist?
Also if you aren't using safety razors and cheap sharp blades like Astras then you're already wasting ££ so I cannot consider you truely rational
You Sir, are in fact suggesting we create a cancel, cancel culture.
Instead of eradicating the evil, you are embracing it.
(And on the other hand, not tolerating these ideas also opens the door to making other beliefs shared with any of these belief systems taboo.)
I don't think that is a very useful definition of tolerance. The only stable system here, if there is one, might be something like hardcoded self-defense actions, plus otherwise general tolerance. Not saying it's logically or morally consistent.
I feel like I've often heard the paradox of tolerance invoked in regard to what U.S. free expression law would call "pure speech", but it seems like your point is more along the lines that there's no group or society that would literally do nothing at all to defend itself in any circumstances, and that that's an unachievable or unsustainable extreme. Maybe something like the most extreme form of pacificism, where people imply that they will literally allow themselves to be killed without trying to prevent it in any way.
Second, I think of tolerance as a personal thing. But on a level of society or government, that you're talking about - I don't know, you tell me.
Let me ask you, do you tolerate sexist jokes? Because I really doubt many of the today's proponents of this theory do. Sexist jokes are not intolerant, making them is not an attempt to overthrow any kind of system, it's just jokes. But yet, a lot of people do not tolerate them. Either don't want to be in the same room as the person who makes them or will even try to harm this person in some way. Both fit the definition of intolerance. Former is completely fine, latter probably not so much.
But as I understand it, it's not so much about petty things like this, but about intolerant ideologies. Well, communism happens to be one of those ideologies. It does not tolerate anyone who owns or argues for private ownership and seeks to overthrow any system that protects it. And if we were honest, that would mean that we should also get rid of a large part of Antifa (ironically a manifestation of this theory), because many of them self-identify as communists or subscribe to ideologies derived from it.
> Where do laws fit in here?
Speech laws, freedom of association. Criminal law in case a real harm was done. The word "tolerance" should not appear anywhere in the law.
Not that i agree with your conclusions.
In the recent past, this idea was much less accepted in the U.S. because it was not assumed that allowing people who were intolerant in some regard to express their ideas (or people who were hostile in some regard to U.S. society or culture) would inevitably lead to destroying the tolerant social order. Instead, the "marketplace of ideas" theory was usually taken to mean that people would consider various ideas (including intolerant ideas, or ideas aimed at radically changing the social order) and, in most cases, largely find them unappealing and not act on them.
In the Cold War era, there were lots of civil libertarians who thought Communism was gravely evil and threatening, but that there was no "paradox" in allowing Communists to advocate their views because those views would lose an open discussion. The fact that Communists didn't necessarily believe in free speech or intend to reciprocate this tolerance did nothing to undermine this confidence; it was like "Communism is a bad idea and it's not going to win in a free marketplace of ideas; only the Communists need to use censorship to shore up their bad ideas, whereas we don't".
Similarly, the ACLU defending Nazis in Skokie (etc.) didn't think that it was a paradox to defend and tolerate people who themselves would not tolerate the ACLU or other minorities. They believed that those people had pretty crummy ideas and that most Americans would see through those ideas.
Similarly, there have always been religious groups that are wildly intolerant in the sense that they believe that their religion is the only true religion, that everyone should follow it, and even that ideally people should be forced to follow it, if that were possible. (To say nothing of the harshness with which they may treat people who disbelieve or mock their religions, or of people who flout their precepts.) Nonetheless, tolerating these religions isn't really a "paradox" except in the case where they're capable of taking over a whole society. Which is not never, but also not always.
The stability question is subtle because it depends a lot on your assumptions. But isn't the paradigmatic unstable equilibrium case where most people in the society are willing or eager to become more intolerant, and tolerance is only maintained because they're kept from hearing suggestions that would move them in that direction? As I've been noticing more and more, that's what the west said about our adversaries in the Cold War: rickety societies propped up by lies and suppression!
My main point was that the GGP's concept of tolerance, as something which can have no line at all, has never been the case in the US, and doesn't seem advisable, since his argument that any resistance is invalidation of tolerance would lead it to be easily destroyed.
I guess I don't understand the "any resistance is invalidation of tolerance" and "would lead it to be easily destroyed" part. Is it like this classic Onion article from 2003?
https://politics.theonion.com/aclu-defends-nazis-right-to-bu...
Like if you actively make a point of never opposing people who disagree with you in any way whatsoever, eventually they can take advantage of that in a more harmful or dramatic way?
It's hard to make self-modifying systems stable! I simultaneously want to preserve open debate, but also do want to reduce prevalence of views proposing easier rules to shut down debate (by defeating them in debate, not by law).
Yet it seems like, in this day and age, they don't. The propaganda machines are on scales and intensities that most people's minds don't appear able to keep up.
Imagine we invited Stormfront to join HN for a day? Would these opposing ideas cause growth? Of course not.
I find this "revisionism" frightening. I fear it'll continue to get worse. I hope it does not.
Edit: The etymology of these words have nothing to do with skincolor, Blackness or Whiteness.
To believe otherwise is a willful victimhood fantasy.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_savior
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47245/the-cambridge-l...
Are you Muslim or just from a mostly Muslim country?
Many Muslims have said America's treatment of Muslims is abhorrent and damaging. Why should she listen to you over them?
It's a pattern in part because of the way white women get socialized and the role they get assigned.
I'm not excusing it or saying it's okay. I'm just saying widespread patterns tend to be driven by larger forces.
I'm not going to say more than that because it tends to be a shit show to try to say anything about the whys and wherefores.
Yes, it needs to stop. Helping white women escape the role society assigns them would be a more effective means to address this than just pointing fingers and being blamey.
Just because something isn't specifically connected to race doesn't mean it is innocuous.
No one said otherwise. Luckily, "blacklist" is innocuous, and the only ones calling for its replacement and removal are neurotic leftists.
Dragons breathe fire, and my family burned to death. For my safety, please change your username to something that won't trigger me, your username is not innocuous. I see your username and all I can think about is my family burning.
Just because something isn't specifically connected to race doesn't mean it is innocuous.
According to wsj:
> Online marketplace eBay Inc. said it is working to prevent the resale of six Dr. Seuss books that were pulled earlier this week by the company in charge of the late author’s works because they contain offensive imagery.
It's laughably hypocritical in an era where pop culture is full of all kinds of 'offensive' material.
Go here, right now [1] to the Billboard Hot 100 and cruise down that list.
Over 50% of those songs are chock full of brutal misogyny, racism, sexism, violence, and all of the most vile and derelict behaviours we wold ever want to see in any person.
To think that EBay is 'banning' Dr. Seuss, but happily selling music that literally glorifies young men for murdering random people for looking at them the wrong way is a definite sign of social decline.
The author of this post is effectively correct.
The OP is correct to use Dr. Seuss as a point of concern eve if the owners of the IP have every right to stop publishing.
The author is dead, so couldn't. The IP is owned by Dr. Seuss Enterprises, which was founded by his wife. It's not some random corporation who swooped up the copyrights at an auction, but literally the organization created to manage them.
> Go here, right now [1] to the Billboard Hot 100 and cruise down that list.
Presumably those IP holders have decided to continue selling their stuff, which is also their right.
> To think that EBay is 'banning' Dr. Seuss
They're doing no such thing. They've decided to stop selling the specific books that are being pulled from publication.
Every last bit of this stuff is garden variety free market capitalism: an IP holder decided to stop publishing certain works, and a market decided to stop selling them. Because I support capitalism, I have to support their rights to make these kinda of business decisions.
The biggest takeaway that I got from his December essay, and this one? A sense of self righteous entitlement, that whatever he writes must be of such great import and merit that of course publishers should be falling all over themselves to print it. Has he taken the time to sit back and consider that maybe he's not as critically important to the English language literature scene as he believes himself to be?
In general, insulting your potential publishing platform only serves to burn bridges. So, good luck with that, guy.
Thats not my read of the situation. I agree that if his goal was to convince the authors, it would make sense for him to be more accomodating. And it wouldn't make sense to call them out in public.
But thats not his goal here. To my eyes, this piece takes a shot at the culture which produced their editorial decision. He's calling cancel culture (and its adherents) craven and scared, using this situation as an example.
rap music and any music with "vulgar" lyrics (PARENTAL WARNING labels on CDs)
harry potter (satanic magic messages offending the christian right)
construction of neighborhood mosques (we can't have a foreign religion in our white christian suburb, can we???)
french fries (remember freedom fries???)
lgbtq rights
womens' reproductive rights
frank discussion of endemic police brutality
just about anything new, foreign, liberal, confusing or ethnically diverse else that would upset the sensibilities of a deep red state bible belt voter.
It's wrong when people on the right do it, as well as now when those on the left do it.
Except that one of these can only be criticized anonymously.
Some people just don't like censorship.
It's a delicate balance and not one that is so black and white.
Deplatforming someone over this isn't "bravely standing up to intolerance". Deplatforming the author is just simple anti-intellectual intolerance of the diversity of ideas that (used to) make the academy so great.
[1] https://arcdigital.media/self-censorship-in-the-academy-5241...
Judging by the list you wrote, you seem to be very much opposed to moral panics and moralistic censorship. I find it surprising that you're not concurring with the people you're responding to on this. I would've taken you for a liberal person.
I was convinced that it's a good thing that the right is most impacted by the censorship, as the right was more supportive of capitalism and it caused them to notice some of its problems, while the left is already against it. Needless to say, it didn't turned out exactly how I expected and apparently we're bound to repeat this vicious cycle forever, only normalizing the worst possible tactics along the way.
I won't spend the time to go through and contradict every single one of your points, but let's not forget that Tipper Gore (Al Gore's wife at the time) was the main push behind the parental advisory labels, freedom fries is a joke to 100% of the people I've talked to about it, and just because not everyone agrees at what point (or whether) an abortion becomes synonymous with a murder does not mean that everyone on the right wants to rule over women (unlike some cultures that do exist to this day in other countries).
That was Tipper Gore and her cronies (from both parties). The same Tipper Gore that married Al Gore the left-wing/Democrat. I don't think this example supports your argument.
Al Gore also participated in that shit-show of attempted censorship.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipper_Gore [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parents_Music_Resource_Center