Is cancel culture threatening universities?

Cancel culture can be defined as “the action or practice of publicly boycotting, ostracising, or withdrawing support from a person, institution, etc., thought to be promoting culturally unacceptable ideas” (OED, 2021). A recent example may be the student protest that eventually led Professor Kathleen Stock to resign from her job at the University of Sussex (Woman’s Hour, 2021). There’s no denying that cancel culture can turn nasty – at the University of Sussex, stickers were planted on toilet doors about “the transphobic shit coming out of Kathleen Stock’s mouth” (Woman’s Hour, 2021). At the UvA, cancel culture seems to be fairly more muted, with some ‘woke’ students asking critical questions about the biological factors in gender differences, or about the reading of texts in class containing the N-word (Schoenmacker, 2021), but with no teachers having been cancelled yet. UvA did have its moment in the lime-light when the controversial psychologist Jordan Peterson was invited to Room for Discussion – a student-led interview series held in the hall of building E. Protesters wrote open letters asking that a second speaker should be invited along with him to counterbalance some of his controversial ideas (Alinejad et al., 2018). Surely, this is friendlier than the no-platforming – denying a platform to someone – that cancel culture tends to do (Avanesi, 2018). In another recent example from the Netherlands, a lecturer at the University of Groningen was suspended temporarily this January – pending a review – for teaching conspiracy theories to first-year students (Hoogschagen, 2022). The lecturer dismissed initial complaints about his teaching as cancel culture (Tessari & Boomsma, 2022).

The debate on cancel culture touches on the tension between the human rights of freedom of expression (i.e., freedom of speech) and the right to equal treatment (the prohibition of discrimination). If I use my freedom of speech to incite hate against a group of people, I am discriminating them, and they are no longer treated equally. Therefore, if freedom of expression were absolute, it would impinge on the right to equal treatment. One way to illustrate this might be the expression: “The freedom to wave my fist ends at the tip of your nose” (Attributed to John Finch, 1882; Quoteresearch, 2011). I may wave my fist, but I may not use it to harm you (unless we were participating in a boxing competition, of course).

However, when it comes to academia, an important point is that academic freedom is not the same as freedom of speech. Academic freedom is in some ways more limited than freedom of expression. There are many rules to how to conduct research and how to report the results (Strikkers, 2019). From a freedom of speech perspective, there’s not much wrong with making up your data, but from an academic perspective, there clearly is. Whether or not things like Holocaust denial or white supremacy theories should be considered freedom of speech is a different question altogether, but by this definition they are definitely not academic freedom. From this perspective, suspending a lecturer for teaching conspiracy theories makes a lot of sense.

Coming back to the waving fist: it is possible to objectively decide whether my fist touched your nose, but this is no longer possible when I’m using words to harm you, instead of my hand. Where do you draw the line between merely saying something a person may not like to hear, and actually (intentionally?) harming them?

According to the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt (Intelligence2, 2018), the current generation of students is part of a ‘coddled,’ overprotected generation. This generation, he argues, was shielded from anything slightly uncomfortable during their childhood. Moreover, they grew up with the internet, a medium that allows you to block out any perspectives you don’t like with a click on a button (although the internet could potentially also bring you new information and different perspectives). Coming across ideas one may not agree with may feel uncomfortable, but in the long run, Haidt believes, this will help you grow. He considers university to be the place to come across many people and perspectives different from your own. Instead of trying to ban the teaching of those ideas that you disagree with, students should take this opportunity to learn about other perspectives. 

However, Haidt holds a fairly optimistic view of university life. University may not be as diverse a place as he believes it to be. For example, Dutch children are already admitted into pre-university or more vocational school tracks at the age of 12. In this process, children in low-income families or from rural areas are much more likely to receive a school advice lower than their scores on standardised tests (Frijters & Tieleman, 2021) – consequently making it less likely for them to get into a pre-university track. Children whose parents did not go to a university or college are at a disadvantage as well (Bouma & Ezzeroili, 2021). In addition, tuition fees can be prohibitive, even more so for those students who need to pay the higher international fees. As for the diversity of ideas: the UvA is sometimes referred to as a ‘links bolwerk’ – a fortress of leftist ideas (Schoenmacker, 2021). The international programmes at the UvA may be an exception, but for many students the chances of meeting a person with a very different background to their own may still be bigger at their student jobs than at their university course. 

Another thing to consider is that the extent to which students need to be resilient to ideas that may make them uncomfortable is not “fairly distributed.” As UvA professor of philosophy Yolande Jansen put it in an interview with Folia (Schoenmacker, 2021)  : 

“I find the suggestion that students should just put up with anything troubling. I don’t think it’s fair that the white majority, who don’t have to deal with racial issues so often, are allowed to determine the boundaries of what can and cannot be tolerated. Students who are in marginal positions have often been exposed to things that are hurtful very [often], which is why such words hurt. I also think that people should be resilient, but the question of how resilient you should be is not fairly distributed now: some groups are supposed to be much more resilient than others.”

Moreover, it is good to keep in mind that sometimes an issue may matter much more to a person on one side of the debate than to people on the other side. As one student at the University of Sussex when asked about the events leading to professor Stock’s resignation, put it: “I remember being sent emails about ‘listening to other’s opinions we may disagree with.’ If I’m perfectly honest, I found them quite stupid. My rights as a human being are not some opinion, and they should be respected.” (in Andersson, 2021)

While this debate is going on at universities, it should also be noted that woke students are not the only ones who may be attempting to de-platform or silence people they disagree with. People with very different political ideas may be doing the same, although using very different methods. When a group of UvA-researchers (Aizenberg et al., 2018) published an open letter to the UvA board of directors in protest of Jordan Peterson’s visit, they soon received an email containing death threats (Strikkers, 2018a). Moreover, researchers investigating politically fraught themes, such as racism or how to promote vaccination, may receive intimidating hate mail more often (Strikkers, 2019).  

And such developments are not limited to higher education. In the UK (Weale, 2020) and the US (Krugman, 2022; Slager, 2022), policymakers are increasingly prohibiting the teaching of critical race theory to school children. Critical race theory studies the idea of racism as a system in society, rather than as a thing individual people do, but teaching this theory is sometimes framed as: “teaching white children to be ashamed of their skin colour” (Slager, 2022). School boards in the US are also increasingly banning books on themes like LGBTQ rights and racism from school libraries (Krugman, 2022) – and they can go very far in their crusade against (children’s) books. This January, a school board in the US state Tennessee voted – unanimously – to ban the graphic novel Maus, depicting the author’s parents’s experiences and struggles to survive during the holocaust. In a reaction (in Gross, 2022) the author, Art Spiegelman said: “This is disturbing imagery. But you know what? It’s disturbing history.” Maybe some things should make us feel uncomfortable, and we should still learn about them.

When people worry about cancel culture or the ‘woke’ movement harming academic freedom, they should be equally worried about this development – perhaps even more so. University students are adults, who can decide for themselves if they wish to learn about new ideas or not. If they refuse to learn about other perspectives, that is ultimately their loss. Young children, however, do not get this choice. They may not even be aware that information is being withheld. And it should be noted that in most cases, at least at the UvA, protesting students (or researchers) don’t always get their way. Jordan Peterson still came to Room for Discussion, and did not share the stage (Strikkers, 2018b), students are still made to learn about the biological side to the nature-nurture question, or to read texts containing the N-word (Schoenmacker, 2021).

Should we be worried about cancel culture’s effect on universities? It’s a complicated question. On the one hand, some of the ideas or facts that make us uncomfortable may still be important to learn about – such as learning about the holocaust or the history of slavery. On the other hand, we should keep in mind that there is an imbalance in how often people are made to feel uncomfortable – and we could try to approach any discussion with compassion and consideration of this imbalance. Whichever side you are on, it should be possible to have this discussion without resorting to stickers on toilet doors, and especially without internet intimidation and hate mail. However, this does not mean that universities need to give a platform to every idea out there – nor should they, since the university platform may give credibility to ideas, even when those ideas hold no truth and may do much harm.

In January 2021, nearly a year before the events that led to Kathleen Stock’s resignation, she was awarded an OBE – a British knighthood. A group of scientists (Bettcher et al., 2021) opposed this award, writing:

“Academic freedom comes with responsibility; we should not use that freedom to harm people, particularly the more vulnerable members of our community. Conflating concern about [someone’s] work with threats to academic freedom obfuscates important issues.”

Academic freedom is a precious thing, that we should all strive to protect. But when thinking about cancel culture, we should not be blind to other, possibly much bigger, threats to academic freedom. <<