The Cancel Culture Panic: Understanding How an American Obsession Went Global (Half the Answer #80, with Adrian Daub)

You can't say anything these days! Especially not on a college campus, and especially not if you're a white man. For evidence, please enjoy this loose assemblage of sixth-hand anecdotes with no detail or reporting to back it up. This is the discursive form that Caitlin and Trent brought Stanford professor Adrian Daub on to discuss, described in his 2024 book The Cancel Culture Panic: How an American Obsession Went Global.

The Cancel Culture Panic: Understanding How an American Obsession Went Global (with Adrian Daub)

Podcast Episode · Half the Answer · April 28 · 1h 55m

Apple Podcasts

Half the Answer can be heard on Spotify, on Apple, on YouTube, on Amazon, and elsewhere via its RSS feed.

Resources

The Cancel Culture Panic: How an American Obsession Went Global

How an American Obsession Went Global

Stanford University PressAdrian Daub

The Open Letter: Responses and recommendations | Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America

Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America

Podcasts | The Clayman Institute for Gender Research

Stanford University

A Letter on Justice and Open Debate

July 7, 2020 The below letter will be appearing in the Letters section of the magazine’s October issue. We welcome responses at letters@harpers.org Our cultural institutions are facing a moment of trial. Powerful protests for racial and social justice are leading to overdue demands for police reform, along with wider calls for greater equality and […]

Harper's Magazine

The New Puritans

Social codes are changing, in many ways for the better. But for those whose behavior doesn’t adapt fast enough to the new norms, judgment can be swift—and merciless.

The AtlanticAnne Applebaum

The Chilling Effect of an Attack on a Scholar

Steven Pinker will be fine, but a letter from his critics signals less powerful scholars that certain opinions, publicly stated, could result in professional sanction.

The AtlanticConor Friedersdorf

Steven Pinker won’t be cancelled – but you could be

The point of denouncing him is to dissuade the next generation of academics from dissent.

spikedShaun Cammack

Good news about that factually flawed anti-Pinker letter: Its dishonesty has been widely exposed.

So much for factual accuracy, sound reasoning, moral clarity, and transparency, or any other value that academics aim to uphold. How quickly each principle was traded in by a handful of linguists who co-signed a factually flawed, short-sighted letter this week calling to rescind Steven Pinker’s fellowship at the Linguistics Society of America. The letter […]

Mother JonesDaniel King

Bad News About That Pro-Pinker Mother Jones Piece: It Doesn’t Make Any Fucking Sense

Daniel King, a copy editor at Mother Jones, wrote this smug little sigh of an op-ed calling the authors and signers of the LSA open letter…

MediumCaitlin Green

Why Woke Failed

The movement was based on flawed understandings of human nature.

PersuasionMichael Shermer

Democrats May Have Finally Learned How to Deal With Their Worst Instincts. This Senate Race Is Proof.

Never has there been greater clarity about the distance between voters and the moral purists who lurk online.

SlateLuke Winkie

We're fixing it with the help of our wealthy donors

Harvard Asks Donors to Endow $10 Million Professorships for ‘Viewpoint Diversity’ Initiative | News | The Harvard Crimson

Harvard is quietly asking donors for $10 million gifts to establish new endowed professorships in a sweeping bid to reshape its faculty under the banner of “viewpoint diversity,” according to two people familiar with the initiative.

The Harvard Crimson

This university’s ‘intellectual freedom’ center creates the problem it claims to solve

The right’s characterization of higher education is a fiction. Students across the ideological spectrum feel free to express themselves.

Yahoo NewsVictor Ray

Steven Pinker: I’m pinned between cancel culture and Trump

The Harvard psychologist talks to James Marriott about the campus ‘woke’ left and the Republican campaign to defund universities

The TimesJames Marriott

Why I’m Excited About the White House’s Proposal for a Higher Ed Compact – Ash Center

Ash Center<img src=“https://ash.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/DanielleAllen-500x333.jpg” alt=”″> Danielle Allen

Tennessee’s Charlie Kirk Act bans student walkouts, protects conservative speakers

College students who participate in walkouts could be suspended or expelled under a new measure passed by the Tennessee General Assembly on Monday. The

WPLN NewsMarianna Bacallao

Tenn. Passes “Charlie Kirk Act” Defending Campus Speakers

Lawmakers in multiple states named bills after Turning Point USA’s controversial founder following his shooting death on a campus in September.

Inside Higher Ed | Higher Education News, Events and JobsRyan Quinn