On Tuesday, the great and the good of the cultural sphere co-signed a letter. Some 153 artists and intellectuals attached their name to a letter entitled “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate”.
The letter read, in part: “The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted,” continuing that: “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.”
The missive continued: “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.”
Published in Harper’s Magazine, the letter is also due to appear in a range of international publications.
The letter was spearheaded by Thomas Chatterton Williams, a columnist for Harper’s and a contributor for The New York Times. He said: “We didn’t want to be seen as reacting to the protests we believe are in response to egregious abuses by the police,” continuing, “But for some time, there’s been a mood all of us have been quite concerned with.”
For Williams, cancel culture is mimicked in politics. “Donald Trump is the Canceler in Chief,” he notes. “But the correction of Trump’s abuses cannot become an overcorrection that stifles the principles we believe in.”
He concludes: “We believe these are values that are widespread and shared, and we wanted the list to reflect that.”
