Cancel Culture: Safety or Censorship? Freedom of Speech, Higher Education, and the Fate of America’s Public Square

Cancel culture. De-platforming. Calling out. These are increasingly common terms for what may be a defining battle for our contentious society: the fight over who can say what and when.

Yet what do these terms really mean? Are there limits to free expression? Or are we on the slippery slope to some Orwellian dystopia? This is no abstract argument. The future of university education, political discourse, and civil society—not to mention individual careers and personal relationships—will be defined by what we can say, how we say it, and what effect our words, or our silences, have on each other.

This panel discussion will explore the state of the issue and what’s at stake.

Panelists:

Laura Specker Sullivan is an assistant professor of philosophy at Fordham and a bioethicist specializing in culture and neuroethics.

Jon Baskin is a founding editor at The Point magazine and the associate director of the creative publishing and critical journalism master’s program at The New School for Social Research.

Mary McNamara is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and culture critic at the Los Angeles Times. She wrote a column last year titled, “‘Cancel culture’ is not the problem. The Harper’s letter is.”

David Gibson, director of Fordham’s Center on Religion and Culture, will moderate the discussion, including questions from the online audience.