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So your standard is now “prove to me that you were forced out of your website/newspaper for ideological error, but my starting place is those concerned are [insert series of insults]?” https://twitter.com/popehat/status/1327348455530852353
It doesn’t concern you that big time names like @mattyglesias @sullydish @bariweiss @ggreenwald all departing just since JULY are saying pretty much the same thing? ( @JBennet & MANY others not included because they didn’t say anything or much)
I understand you are much more concerned about other aspects of the culture war. That’s fine. I am too. But you have a lot of friends & followers who have spent countless hours reporting on problems relating to unusually intense conformist norms coming from campus, like...
@conor64 @robbysoave @jessesingal @katrosenfield @kittypurrzog or people who follow you or you know who faced some pretty bad examples themselves like @NAChristakis @AliceDreger @laurakipnis @davidshor @BretWeinstein @HeatherEHeying @HMDatMI @AKStanger @ProfRonSullivan
Many of us have written on this, from a serious social science perspective (including my own work): @CassSunstein @jean_twenge @CampbellSocProf @sapinker @charlesmurray @JonHaidt @DavidAFrench @jon_rauch
And I know you’re fully capable of dismissing every single person I mention, every single book I mention, every single example I mention, which makes me hesitant to even put more examples. I put plenty in our debate @reason & it doesn’t budge anything
And now we’re just sort of laughable & dismissible despite the fact that the trends several of us saw coming have gotten so much more intense than frankly I ever would’ve imagined when I started in this business in 2001
So it’s probably as good a time as any to tell you something I’ve been chicken to tell you… People are scared of you. I’’M scared of you. That’s why I haven’t said this previously more forcefully. You are fast, funny, prolific, dogged, tenacious, with a hard-core following
& I know I will regret saying any of this. Your followers will make me regret it. I may lose you as a friend, which would be tremendously sad, but I should’ve told you earlier. You have A LOT of power now Ken. Even more then your average famous Harvard law/law firm partner.
I wish I didn’t have to spend so much energy fighting cynicism both about people who argue for #freespeech & now anybody who thinks that there’s some thing pernicious about the ideological conformism of both higher education & many extremely influential journalistic outfits
But I have to fight it from someone who I KNOW *is* genuinely great on free-speech, JUST LIKE practically every other professional I know who actually does free speech as they’re calling, breaks my heart.
