A diverse group of 150 writers, academics and activists have signed an open letter denouncing the ‘restriction of debate’.
They say they applaud a recent ‘needed reckoning’ on racial justice, but argue it has fuelled the stifling of open debate.
The letter, published by Harper’s Magazine, denounces ‘a vogue for public shaming and ostracism’ and ‘a blinding moral certainty’.
Signatories include JK Rowling, Salman Rushdie, Martin Amis, Margaret Atwood, John Banville, Noam Chomsky, Gloria Steinem, Garry Kasparov, Malcolm Gladwell, Syrian writer Khalid Khalifa and New York Times opinion contributors David Brooks and Bari Weiss.
Another signatory is David Blight, head of Yale University’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition.
The letter states that the free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. The signatories condemn ‘disproportionate punishments’ meted out to targets of public shaming by institutional leaders conducting ‘panicked damage control’.
‘We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement.’
One signatory, Matthew Yglesias, co-founder of liberal news analysis website Vox, was rebuked by colleague Emily Van Der Werff, a trans woman, because his signing the letter ‘makes me feel less safe at Vox’.
But Van Der Werff said she did not want Yglesias to be fired or apologise because it would only convince him he was being ‘martyred’.
Signatory Jennifer Finney Boylan, an author and transgender activist, apologised for signing the letter, tweeting: ‘I did not know who else had signed that letter’.
Journalist Osita Nwanevu tweeted: ‘It’s hard to take claims like this [in the letter] seriously, especially when it’s plain that people are complaining about an unprecedentedly free and open speech environment.’