A Letter on Justice and Open Debate has been signed by 150 high-profile figures.
Harper’s magazine has published an open letter warning against ‘cancelling’ public figures for sharing “opposing views”. Titled A Letter on Justice and Open Debate, the document has been signed by 150 high-profile writers, academics and activists.
The likes of Margaret Atwood, JK Rowling and Gloria Steinem have signed the letter, which argues that, “The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away.”
Rowling recently had her own brush with cancel culture after coming under public attack for her comments about transgender issues, in which she likened hormone treatment to gay conversion therapy and refused to “bow down to a movement that” she believes is “offering cover to predators like few before it”.
A Letter on Justice and Open Debate warns against restricting the free exchange of information and ideas, claiming that this type of censorship spreads, “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.”https://t.co/4zPjuQ5yt2
— Harper’s Magazine (@Harpers) July 8, 2020
Read the full letter here.
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