EDITORS' CORNER
Key Takeaways
- The column discusses the backlash against 'cancel culture' following the assassination of Charlie Kirk, suggesting that the Left is facing consequences for their actions over the past decade.
- Examples are provided from The College Fix's Cancel Culture Database, including cases where academics and professionals faced job losses for expressing controversial opinions or adhering to political correctness.
- The author argues perceived double standard in handling speech in educational institutions reflects broader societal tensions, particularly between conservative and liberal viewpoints.
- The piece concludes with a hope that the current backlash will lead to a more balanced understanding of free speech and its implications in public discourse.
OPINION: Remember the Left’s free speech hypocrisy with their pro-Hamas protests? They’re at it again.
Here we are, a week and a half since Charlie Kirk was assassinated, and the Left is discovering what happens when you test “the fury of the patient man” (John Dryden, 1681).
We warned the Left what would happen if they persisted in their ridiculous cancel culture campaigns against those who offended them even the slightest over the last decade or so. We told them it would come back to bite them in their collective posterior.
And here we are. If you’re skeptical, merely peruse The College Fix’s Cancel Culture Database.
In it you’ll find the Harvard professor who said academics “critical of ‘gender-affirming care’ should be fired and lose their academic titles.” And the executive editor of the Columbia Journalism Review who (allegedly) was sacked for “insist[ing] on ethics, deadlines, and showing up in the office for work.”
There’s also a professor fired for using the N-word in an educational context, the Duke University physician axed for questioning whether racism is a “public health crisis,” and the USC professor who was required to teach via Zoom the rest of a semester because he made comments critical of the (designated terrorist group) Hamas.
Regarding the Duke doctor, note that he received a letter which stated “We believe your behavior is negatively impacting the emergency physician team, which could jeopardize the care of patients. Given this, we are choosing not to renew your contract for employment.”
For questioning data that was used to declare a racism “health crisis.”
Now consider what happened to school counselor Bryan Craig. He was terminated from his job after it was revealed he had written a “sexually provocative” and “sexually explicit” book.
The Seventh Circuit ruled that “the school district’s interest in ensuring the effective delivery of counseling services outweighed Craig’s speech interest,” and “the district reasonably predicted that [the book] would disrupt the learning environment at Craig’s school because some students, learning of the book’s hypersexualized content would be reluctant to seek Craig’s advice.”
Using the same logic, would not students, especially those from politically conservative families, be reluctant to sit in a classroom helmed by a teacher who celebrated the assassination of someone with whom he disagreed?
The cases Pickering v. Board of Education and Connick v. Myers also speak to this very issue.
Even the left-leaning Education Week recently highlighted the former, noting “teachers and other public school employees […] can be censured for speech that is so inflammatory it interferes with their effectiveness as public workers.”
I’m no fan of cancel culture, but as Greg Gutfeld said on Tuesday, the pendulum is swinging back the other way now … and hopefully, eventually it will lead to both sides saying “enough!”
MORE: Leftists want everyone’s speech and actions policed – except theirs
MORE: Israel-hating radicals suddenly concerned about free speech rights
