Adjust Share July 7, 2020 The below letter will be appearing in the Letters section of the magazine’s October issue. But this needed reckoning has also intensified a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity. Friday’s response letter claims that the original letter’s “great concern” appears to be that “Black, brown, and LGBTQ+ people – particularly Black and trans people – can now critique elites publicly and hold them accountable socially.”The response letter pushes back on claims from the original letter, including that: “editors are fired for running controversial pieces,” “books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity,” “journalists are barred from writing on certain topics,” “professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class,” a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 was “fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study” and that “the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes.”“In fact, a number of the signatories have made a point of punishing people who have spoken out against them,” the response letter reads.

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. If we won’t defend the very thing on which our work depends, we shouldn’t expect the public or the state to defend it for us.

The forces of illiberalism are gaining strength throughout the world and have a powerful ally in Donald Trump, who represents a real threat to democracy. Our cultural institutions are facing a moment of trial. I don’t agree with everything in either letter but it’s worth reading this one if you read the first one. Our cultural institutions are facing a moment of trial. Get Access to Print and Digital for $23.99.

The democratic inclusion we want can be achieved only if we speak out against the intolerant climate that has set in on all sides.The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted.

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. Over 150 people, including many journalists and writers, signed a response letter to Harper’s letter Friday following major criticism over the original one, which pushed for “justice and open debate.”“They write, in the pages of a prominent magazine that’s infamous for being “The signatories, many of them white, wealthy, and endowed with massive platforms, argue that they are afraid of being silenced, that so-called cancel culture is out of control, and that they fear for their jobs and free exchange of ideas, even as they speak from one of the most prestigious magazines in the country.”A longish response to the Harper’s letter. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. "A Letter on Justice and Open Debate", also known as the Harper's Letter, is an open letter defending free speech published on the Harper's Magazine website on July 7, 2020, with 153 signatories, including J. K. Rowling, Steven Pinker, Gloria Steinem, Noam Chomsky, and Margaret Atwood. A Letter on Justice and Open Debate. We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences. Get Access to Print and Digital for $23.99. The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation. This one was headlined a more specific letter on Justice and open debate, and it reads in part their letter, meaning the first one seeks to uphold a stifling atmosphere and prioritizes signal blasting their discomfort in the face of valid. ... “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate.” CNN…

But resistance must not be allowed to harden into its own brand of dogma or coercion—which right-wing demagogues are already exploiting. We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom, which cannot exist without each other.