Is Cancel Culture Really Happening?

Available October 17th
https://amzn.to/3RFCJ86

The Canceling of the American Mind
Cancel Culture Undermines Trust and Threatens Us All—But There Is a Solution
By Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott

About the book:
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Canceling-of-the-American-Mind/Greg-Lukianoff/9781668019146

Greg Lukianoff:
Is cancel culture really happening? Everyone knows it's happening. It's one of these things that is so well established, basically everybody watched it happen. And there are still people who are so ideological they're like, "This never happened. This is a hoax." It's just nonsense. I've been on campus watching this for 22 years. Oneof the things that we try to show in the book is not only is ithappening, it's happening on a historic scale. Take, for example,early in my career, 9/11. That was right when I started, peoplegetting in trouble for saying things about 9/11. It was really bad and people were losing their jobs for saying insensitive things about 9/11. Almost half a dozen professors were fired.

What we talk about inthe book are 1,000 attempts to get professor fired [or punished] with about two-thirds of them succeeding in getting them punished in some way.Almost 200 of them getting fired. That is twice as many people aswere fired during the Red Scare. This is nine and a half years ofcancel culture. That's 11 years of the Red Scare and we're almosttwice the number. And people are still trying to say this isn'thappening at all. That's nonsense.

Basically, what we have to understand is, there is no comparableperiod in the history of academic freedom since the law wasestablished, between 1957 and 1973, where you see this scale ofprofessors losing their jobs or otherwise getting punished. Andpeople are still saying that this didn't even happen – are beingwillfully blind.

Rikki Schlott:

Yeah. I would also add that Gen Z is obviously a younger andmore progressive generation and yet we've grown up with cancelculture and we have overwhelmingly the most negative view of itof anyone. I think that's just because it's taken for granted in my generationthat it's happening. We all grew up seeing it happen, especially when you're a teenager, too. Everyone does and says way less calculated and way more stupid things very frequently. So, cancel culture happens right and left. And young people know it, no matter what their politicalorientation. I think that's just further proof that indeed it's happening and there's a whole generation of people who have only known a world in which it does happen.