Forbidden thoughts, forbidden speech

Andrew Sullivan, longtime columnist, resigns from New York magazine

I had forgotten this.

"This will be my last week at New York Magazine," Sullivan tweeted. "I'm sad because the editors I worked with there are among the finest in the country, and I am immensely grateful to them for vastly improving my work. I'm also proud of the essays and columns I wrote at NYM - some of which will be published in a collection of my writing scheduled for next year."

. . . .

But while at The New Republic, Sullivan published excerpts from "The Bell Curve," a book that argues there are IQ score differentials among racial groups that can be explained by genetics. 

Even at the time, the book and the excerpts were controversial, but more than 20 years later Sullivan has continued to defend them, sparking more controversy and criticism of himself and New York.

Though neither Haskell nor Sullivan addressed these issues in their public statements, they may have played some role, especially at a time when the media is examining its own issues with diversity, both in its staffs and in its coverage. 

Controversial opinion writer Bari Weiss resigns from The New York Times, blasting paper for 'illiberal environment'

Bari Weiss, a controversial opinion writer for The New York Times, resigned from the newspaper on Monday, blasting the institution on her way out in a scathing letter explaining why she chose to leave her job.

[She is one of many who signed this.

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Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a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.

To my knowledge, none of this is characteristic of the radical right. 

On the other hand, I have little familiarity with everyday discourse or internecine battles of the radical right.]

In the resignation letter Weiss posted online Tuesday, the self-described "politically homeless" writer criticized The Times for fostering what she called an "illiberal environment" that she said was "especially heartbreaking."

"Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times," Weiss wrote. "But Twitter has become its ultimate editor."

"Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions," Weiss added.

. . . .

Weiss generated controversy for her criticism of aspects of progressive culture, particularly with regards to free speech. 

Last week, she was one of the dozens of writers who signed an open letter published in Harper's Magazine that spoke out against so-called cancel culture.

Weiss faced criticism in June when the newspaper faced backlash over the publication of Republican Sen. 

Tom Cotton's op-ed, which argued for sending in military troops to U.S. cities to quash unrest that had broken out in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd. 

In a series of tweets, Weiss tweeted that there was a "civil war" that has been "raging" inside The Times between the "wokes" and older "liberals." 

The tweets drew public backlash from some of Weiss' own colleagues.

Weiss said in her resignation letter that she was subject to "constant bullying" by her colleagues at The Times who disagreed with her views. 

She wrote that colleagues have called her a Nazi and racist and that she was "demeaned on company-wide Slack channels."

New York Times publisher responds to staff outrage over Tom Cotton op-ed

The publisher of The New York Times sent a memo to employees on Thursday morning after dozens of staffers publicly revolted over an opinion piece in which Republican Sen. Tom Cotton called for the US military to be deployed to cities across the country during the current protests.

. . . .

Cotton's piece, published Wednesday and titled "Send In the Troops," argued the Insurrection Act could be invoked to deploy the military across the country to assist local law enforcement with unrest sparked by the death of George Floyd.

The op-ed was published in The Times opinion section, but staffers from both opinion and the newsroom — which operate separate from one another — publicly dissented on Wednesday night.

. . . .

In his note, Sulzberger wrote, "The Op-Ed page exists to offer views from across the spectrum, with a special focus on those that challenge the positions taken by our Editorial Board."

. . . .

Sulzberger added, "I believe in the principle of openness to a range of opinions, even those we may disagree with, and this piece was published in that spirit."