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Cancel Culture | Munk Debates

SEASON TWO - EPISODE #16

Cancel Culture

Be it resolved, cancel culture is not a threat to free speech.

Guests
Malaika Jabali
Jesse Singal

About this episode

Musician Ariel Pink is dropped by his label for attending a Trump rally. A top executive at Boeing loses his job because of an article he wrote decades ago opposing allowing women to serve as fighter pilots. JK Rowling is widely condemned for tweets her critics deem transphobic.

All the above were subject to social media ‘cancellation’ campaigns they experienced as attacks on their free speech rights and personal reputations. For cancel culture’s critics, shouting down a speaker in a lecture hall or labelling someone a racist for opposing affirmative action has nothing to do with social justice; it is about the intoxicating feeling of being part of a cultural mob motivated by grievance.

To many progressives, so-called ‘defenders of free speech’ are crying foul to protect their positions of power in society. It is high time, they argue, that people are held accountable for harmful words and actions including online. Cancel culture is not a threat to free speech, but a champion of it; it gives a voice to those who have been excluded for too long from important public conversations that challenge the power structures benefiting the privileged at the expense of everyone else.

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Guests

Malaika Jabali

"We're getting arguments from people who frequently have been locked out of these conversations altogether. What that does in my view is create a freer exchange of ideas."

Malaika Jabali

"We're getting arguments from people who frequently have been locked out of these conversations altogether. What that does in my view is create a freer exchange of ideas."

Malaika Jabali is a writer and activist whose work has appeared in Essence, The New Republic, GEN Mag, The Intercept, and The Guardian, where she is a columnist. Her debut political feature in Current Affairs Magazine, "The Color of Economic Anxiety", was awarded the New York Association of Black Journalists Media Award for Newspaper/Magazine feature. A Columbia Law School graduate, Malaika was an Articles Editor for the Columbia Journal of Race & Law

Jesse Singal

"Free speech can't survive if you can get fired for expressing your opinions, and that seems to be the direction in which we are headed."

Jesse Singal

"Free speech can't survive if you can get fired for expressing your opinions, and that seems to be the direction in which we are headed."

Jesse Singal is a contributing writer at New York Magazine, where he was previously on staff as a senior editor and writer-at-large, focusing mostly on social science. He is the cohost of the podcast Blocked and Reported and writes the newsletter Singal-Minded. His first book, The Quick Fix: Why Fad Psychology Can't Cure Our Social Ills, is coming out April 6.

Show Notes

Harper Magazine's "Letter on Justice and Open Debate", signed by Jesse and discussed during this debate, can be read here.

The counter letter that Malaika signed, "A More Specific Letter on Justice and Open Debate", can read here.

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