The philosopher Simone Weil posed a very insightful metaphor that I think is particularly apt today. To paraphrase greatly: Imagine if you were a mathematician trying to solve some very hard problems. If by chance you arrive at an odd number as an answer, everything is fine and life goes on as normal. But if you ever arrive at an even answer and tell others about it, you will be publicly shamed, fired from your job, and your career will be permanently stunted.
Let’s put aside the question of whether you deserve to be shamed and fired. Instead, ask yourself the following: How effective would the above society be at solving tough math problems and arriving at the correct solution?
Let me state something at the very outset. This article isn’t about the Israel-Palestine conflict. That is an immensely complex topic that I am eminently unqualified to offer an opinion on. Rather, this article is about the chilling ways in which free speech is being suppressed in the debate around this topic.
Regular readers of this blog would know that this is a topic I have consistently sounded alarms on. I am a staunch supporter of gay marriage and denounce racism – but I have previously argued that it is wrong to fire homophobes and racists. I also believe that Donald Trump is a despicable human being and a danger to this nation – but I have previously stood up for Trump supporters and donors who were facing economic persecution.
I have advocated this for one simple reason – society best learns and grows when people can freely participate in the marketplace of ideas without being censored, and without fearing persecution.
This is precisely why the First Amendment exists – to prevent state-censorship and state-persecution from interfering in the marketplace of ideas. But it doesn’t go far enough. The vast majority of people are very fearful for their careers and livelihoods. A society where mathematicians are fired for voicing unpopular answers is not going to progress very far mathematically. A society where people have to choose between expressing their controversial opinions, and having a successful career, is not a society with a flourishing marketplace of ideas.
Hence why I am in favor of both laws and social norms that prohibit economic discrimination on the basis of ideological beliefs – just like existing laws and social norms that prohibit economic discrimination on the basis of race, religion, gender, national origin, or veteran status.
I have faced tremendous pushback on this idea, especially from a number of progressives. Over the past decades, progressives have been very successful at “canceling” their ideological opponents. Conservatives are certainly not innocent – they gleefully canceled Budweiser over a one-off commemorative can sent to a transgender person. But progressives have certainly had the upper hand in the cancel-wars thanks to their superior numbers in academia, media, Hollywood, and major metropolitan areas. And nobody ever wants to surrender a weapon that gives their side an edge – hence the progressive embrace and conservative denouncement of “cancel culture”.
The last few weeks however should give progressives some food for thought. Just consider the following:
One of the art world’s top magazine editors was fired Thursday night after the publishers of Artforum said that the staff’s decision to post an open letter about the Israel-Hamas war failed to meet the organization’s standards… Thousands of artists, academics and cultural workers, including Velasco, signed the Oct. 19 open letter, which supported Palestinian liberation and criticized the silence of cultural institutions about the Israeli bombing of residents in Gaza… In it, the signatories “call for an end to the killing and harming of all civilians, an immediate cease-fire, the passage of humanitarian aid into Gaza, and the end of the complicity of our governing bodies in grave human rights violations and war crimes.” … The Oct. 19 open letter met condemnation, drawing responses by figures in the art world. On WhatsApp, campaigns were organized to dissuade advertisers from working with the magazine.
“I have never lived through a more chilling period,” said Goldin, who is one of the most celebrated living photographers and signed the open letter that called for Palestinian liberation and a cease-fire. “People are being blacklisted. People are losing their jobs.” … nearly 50 Artforum employees and contributors have signed a letter demanding that Velasco be reinstated, saying his termination “not only carries chilling implications for Artforum’s editorial independence but disaffirms the very mission of the magazine: to provide a forum for multiple perspectives and cultural debate.”
A sudden campaign of letters denounced the thousands of artists and cultural workers, including Velasco, who had signed the letter. Gallerists urged people to remove their names from the letter, and several collectors asked the Wexner Center for the Arts, at Ohio State University, to shut down an exhibition of Jumana Manna, a Palestinian artist who had signed the open letter… More than a dozen artists told The New York Times that threats of reprisal from collectors made it difficult to publicly defend their decision to sign the open letter, emphasizing that their intention was to call for peace
Some collectors tried to convince artists to retract their signatures. Others in the art world threatened to voice their concerns by selling works from those who signed the letter. “We have a deaccession plan” that would “diminish the artists’ status,” Sarah Lehat Blumenstein, who fund-raises for a major museum, wrote to members of a WhatsApp group organized as a response to the open letter.
92NY, one of New York City’s premier cultural venues, decided on Friday to abruptly pull an event that evening featuring the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen after he signed an open letter critical of Israel… Both Nguyen and Lee, {Schwartz} noted, have engaged with questions of war, memory, identity and trauma in their work. “Who else in a moment like this would you want to hear from?” he asked. “What’s changed between August and today at 2 p.m. that means that artists and thinkers and moral leaders like Viet and Min can’t come to the Y?” he asked. “I’m going to just let that question sit there.”
The event was the latest example of cultural fallout over the Israel-Hamas war, which has led to complex debates across college campuses and cultural organizations about free expression, solidarity and the limits of permitted debate over Israel. Events featuring Palestinian artists or culture have been canceled, some statements of support for Palestinians have drawn debate.
A law firm’s job offer to a New York University law student was rescinded on Tuesday for what the firm described as “inflammatory comments” about Hamas’s attack that killed at least 1,200 Israelis. And at Harvard, student groups began to take back their signatures on a letter that blamed Israel for the violence. The actions were part of a wave of fallout on campuses for students, who are deeply polarized over the fighting.
Mr. Griffin wasn’t alone in demanding that an elite university denounce its students for criticizing Israel so soon after the Hamas attack… The most intense demands have come behind the scenes from Wall Street financiers who make up a powerful block of donors to schools including the University of Pennsylvania, New York University, Stanford University and Cornell University.
The outspoken hedge-fund manager William Ackman, a Harvard alumnus and head of Pershing Square Capital Management, has called on executives to refuse to hire students who are members of groups that have signed statements singling out Israeli violence as the cause of the conflict, going further than any other major financier. In a string of posts on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, Mr. Ackman demanded that the university release a list of members of any student organizations who wrote the letter blaming Israel for Hamas’s attack, to ensure that he and others did not “inadvertently hire any of their members.”
Mr. Griffin said the students who signed pro-Palestinian letters … should be held responsible for their actions now. Asked if his hedge fund Citadel would hire the head of a student group that signed the Harvard letter, his answer was an unequivocal no. “Unforgivable,” he said.
Within days, students affiliated with those groups were being doxxed, their personal information posted online. Siblings back home were threatened. Wall Street executives demanded a list of student names to ban their hiring. And a truck with a digital billboard — paid for by a conservative group — circled Harvard Square, flashing student photos and names, under the headline, “Harvard’s Leading Antisemites.”
The group is not done. It has purchased domain names for Harvard students associated with the letter and is setting up individual websites for them. Each site will call for the university to punish the students… Students’ names were also exposed last week through a website featuring a “College Terror List, a Helpful Guide for Employers” compiled by Maxwell Meyer, a 2022 Stanford graduate. Other sites have picked up the list and passed it around.
The students had to contend with “people’s lives being ruined, people’s careers being ruined, people’s fellowships being ruined,” said one student whose organization signed the letter, in an interview… The outside pressure has created its own kind of heckler’s veto, dictating what can be said on campus and how institutions must respond. “You kind of feel like you’re responsible” for the harassment, said one of the Harvard students, whose family’s personal information was released. “That’s how silencing works, right? … Every single member of my family has been contacted, including my younger siblings,” said the student whose smiling face was on the truck.
The {Jewish} students said that in the past week, antisemitic comments had been uttered in dining halls and posted on social media. Harvard Hillel’s president, Jacob Miller, pushed a sheaf of examples across a table during an interview… Much as he condemned the truck and the doxxing, Mr. Miller said, the screeds on social media directed at Jewish students also had a chilling effect on speech. “I do think it cuts both ways,” he said. “A number of my friends tell me they feel intimidated and uncomfortable speaking on campus due to the hostile environment. It’s tragic that students on both sides feel afraid to voice their opinions,” Mr. Miller said. “Especially at a college that prides itself on the pursuit of truth.”
Weaponized economic-persecution feels oh-so-delightful when you’re the one wielding it against your ideological opponents. But once the tables are inevitably turned, you start to realize how incredibly dangerous and destructive it is to society. Stifling the free exchange of ideas, and punishing people for endorsing ideas you disagree with, is hardly conducive to the pursuit of truth.
To repeat what I said at the outset – I am not here to take sides in the Israel-Palestine debate. It is an immensely complex issue that I am unqualified to comment on. But regardless of your opinions on this topic, I hope you never have to fear for your physical safety or livelihood simply because of your beliefs.
Related links:
Dangerous Ideas
A Free Marketplace of Ideas Requires Economic Protections
Outlook Zen 
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