Harpers - A Letter on Justice and Open Debate

[patman post]

The Harper's letter attempts reason, but it's going to attract "support" from people who have different objectives.

Hopefully, the current worldwide awareness of the way that Black people across the world are frequently denied certain rights will continue — in the last few days in the UK there have been instances of Police Forces having to apologise for their attitudes to Black drivers:

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/suffolk-police-question-middleaged-black-couple-driving-car-a4466906.html
https://news.sky.com/story/bianca-williams-met-chief-apologises-to-sprinter-after-stop-and-search-12023936

These cases were publicised. But many go unrecorded — except they're remembered by those who suffer constant indignity.

Unfortunately, some of the demands from those seeking reform are OTT, but it's understandable. Changes have been promised for so long with little happening. Now there's an active, receptive and large audience, the movement is pushing more extreme demands. There's a danger this will be counter productive. But as with Poland's Solidarity, extreme demands can bring change. The feeling among those who want things to change is that pussy-footing around with more inquiries and gently-gently approaches will only satisfy those who don't want change...

[Good old]

It's always a worry to see people's backs turned on wisdom and truth , if only because it asks what it is they would sooner pay homage to?

[Nalaar]

I have only heard of five people on that list.

That's unsurprising. Many of those listed are academics, and I would guess that most people would only know a handful of them. Again it's not really the names that are important, it's the statement that's important. However the attached names that have chosen to remove their signature help illustrate the problem that the statement is highlighting.

[papasmurf]

As was almost inevitable - a number of the public figures who signed the statement are now withdrawing their signature.

I have only heard of five people on that list.

[Nalaar]

As was almost inevitable - a number of the public figures who signed the statement are now withdrawing their signature. The inability for progressive liberalism to embrace even these blandly non-hostile sentiments is very concerning.

[cromwell]

Great post and yes an important message,the Internet has brought the freedom to search and find things not previously easily available.

It's brought so much freedom and so much intolerance outlined above,along with the truth the lies the love and hate.

[Nalaar]

Sharing an open letter that will be printed later in the year in Harpers, the 150 people who have signed the letter can be viewed via a link to the page, but more important is the message which I have posted below.

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 inclusion across our society, not least in higher education, journalism, philanthropy, and the arts. But this needed reckoning has also intensified a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favour of ideological conformity. As we applaud the first development, we also raise our voices against the second. The forces of illiberalism are gaining strength throughout the world and have a powerful ally in Donald Trump, who represents a real threat to democracy. But resistance must not be allowed to harden into its own brand of dogma or coercion—which right-wing demagogues are already exploiting. The democratic inclusion we want can be achieved only if we speak out against the intolerant climate that has set in on all sides.

The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty. We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes. Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal. 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.

This stifling atmosphere will ultimately harm the most vital causes of our time. The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation. The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away. We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom, which cannot exist without each other. As writers we need a culture that leaves us room for experimentation, risk taking, and even mistakes. We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences. If we won't defend the very thing on which our work depends, we shouldn't expect the public or the state to defend it for us.

https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/