Thank you
, , , , and many others for tuning into my live video with ! Others who may find this super-interesting include , , , , , , , , , , , …For background reading, the Harper’s Letter can be found here, and David’s recent article about us signatories five years later is here.
I’m going to re-watch this later, but I will endeavor right now to make a few observations:
It was a really civil conversation, and I am grateful to David, whom I have never met in person and only spoke to for the first time last week, for joining me.
I think that—and here, and elsewhere, I may be getting David wrong—David and I have fundamentally different conceptions of the job of a writer. I think the job of a writer (nonfiction writer, journalist) is to say true things; I sense that David thinks the job of a writer is to advance justice. If our job is to say true things, then we might well sign on to any letter or petition the text of which we believe to be true; if the job is to be an activist, to advance a cause, then one is obligated to discern, to the best of one’s ability, if the dissemination of the letter or petition or text will advance the cause.
I have an almost mystical, perhaps romantic belief that, in the end, saying true things—without worrying about who one’s bedfellows are, who will weaponize what one says, who will be cheered or angry, or in general what the world will do with what one says—actually advances justice more than factoring in all those worries. I believe this not least because I think none of us can predict very well how our words will reverberate, or how they will be used, and so it makes more sense to just say true things (caveat: I know that we never know perfect truth, or whole truth; but I think we can do our best) than to do somersaults trying to discern these other factors, and sometimes decide to hold one’s tongue out of fear of being misused. That just leads to fewer people speaking or writing honestly. It also means that some writers will be doing propaganda, hasbara, on purpose. That’s bad, right?
David’s position sounds like an exhausting one to hold. I don’t mean to imply that he, or people who hold his view, have to go through a rigorous calculus before they publish anything at all, always asking how it will land. But if they have to do that even a few times a year, or even once, well, it sounds like a lot of work. To put a finer point on it: he would have petition signers research, or somehow divine, who their fellow signatories are, what the intention of the authors of the text were, what causes the petition might advance (or might not), etc. Whereas when I was asked to sign this letter, I just head to read the text, decide it made sense and said something true and important, and sign.
As a factual matter, David’s construal of the letter as some sort of neo-liberal, anti-woke project—my words, not his—strikes me as dead wrong on the face of it. I don’t know about people on “the left,” a group whose members are always looking to purify and cleanse of apostates, but if one wants to talk about old-fashioned liberals—Mondale voters, people who want universal health care, people who are anti-nuke, pro-environment, pro-choice—that seems to be a huge number of the signatories. I mean, we are talking Michelle Goldberg, Katha Pollitt, Paul Starr, Gloria Steinem, Susie Linfied, Michael Walzer, Randi Weingarten, Sean Wilentz, Cornel West, Adam Hochschild. You could populate a Nation Chrismukkah party with this guest list. Or a Ms. magazine tribute dinner. Half the subscription list of Tikkun circa 1987 signed the letter.
I worry that if one construes the job of the writer, or public intellectual, as being a good member of a team (“the left,” for example), then one might withhold solid reporting that would hurt the team. If one sees one’s calling as, in part, being pro-choice, what happens when one is in possession of a scoop that would make Planned Parenthood look bad? You see my point. I think many would say that it’s fine for those stories to run, somewhere, but “that’s not where I choose to put my energies.” Well, okay. But that’s a bit of a dodge. The deeper question is will you stand up for stories—or people—even when they are bad for your cause?
Sub-point: might you not, in reporting or running stories that at first seem “bad” for the cause, learn something that would make you change your mind about the world? Might we not be obligated, as honest thinkers, to report or write stories that make us uncomfortable or seem threatening to our preconceptions?
But speaking just pragmatically: if you aren’t committed to outing truths no matter their provenance, and no matter the consequences, then aren’t you just part of the toxic polarization that gave us Donald Trump? If you only speak out from a “left” or “right” or “Zionist” or “pro-Palestinian” point of view (etc., etc.), then aren’t you basically saying that that’s how the discourse should go, with people divided into camps, yelling at each other, abjuring common ground? Is this a happy vision for the republic? Are you sure that this vision is the one that will make the world a better place?
When I see something—a petition, a magazine masthead, any sort of collaborative effort—that brings together people across ideological divides, I am cheered, excited, pleased. I feel a nice tingle. To see Katha Pollitt and Fareed Zakaria and Zephyr Teachout and Anthony Grafton and John McWhorter and Mia Bay—again, probably all Democratic voters, but diverse in sensibility—signing on to the same letter strikes me as hopeful. What does it say about some people that it makes them suspicious? That they’d rather the letter be ideologically homogeneous—that they’d only sign it if it were? That they strive for a greater purity rather than diversity?
One consequence of seeing the world as divided into camps is that you end up thinking everyone sees the world that way. Some people really seem to believe that this very bland, parve, unobjectionable statement of free-speech principles, the Harper’s Letter (as it came to be called, because of where it was published), was somehow coded right-wing, and we can know that in part because everything is coded something. After all, they are sure, there are no non-ideological people, speaking from first principles, which they’d apply in all possible cases. There are only (this line of thinking goes) ideological actors, who either admit to it or are sneaky about it. Hence the desire to figure out who really wrote the original text, who they really wanted to sign on, whom they added for ideological cover or plausible deniability, what they really hoped the effect of the letter would be (because it couldn’t be, simply, to fortify free speech). They were anti-BLM, or anti-woke, or secretly pro-Trump. One could tell by counting how many people who wrote the text came from the left, or the Left, or the Real Left. But that isn’t remotely how I see the world (and I think I am not alone). I am actually interested in free speech more than I am in any particular ideology. I am interested in other things, too, that at some times are promoted best by the left, other times by the right, often by a mix of different actors: joy, love, the quest for invisible truths (religion, ethics, etc.), dogs, leisure time, etc.
I realize that David’s original claim was that we know the signers are not interested in free speech, broadly applied, because they have been silent on Trump’s and ICE’s attacks on free speech—ergo, they are opportunistic and/or hypocritical, embracing free speech when it serves anti-woke-ism but not when it would serve the Palestinian cause (inter alia). And he knew that because so few of us spoke out. And he knew that by surveying social media accounts. Never mind that many of us don’t use social media. Or may be working on other projects, and thus not weighing in on a topic—illegal detentions—that plenty of articulate people are weighing in on. Or may be weighing in to our friends and communities, but not on platforms that David or others see. The certainty with which he (and writers for In These Times) speak about this presupposes that social media is where it’s at. Which feels very 2020. A lot of the best people I know will go nowhere near social media. (David made the point that I have a Substack, which is true, but as my regular readers know, I post more about music and swimming than I do about politics.)
Also, even those of us not on social media are pretty easily reachable. A more interesting way to do the essay Klion wrote would have been to reach out to us—if not all 100+ signatories, then maybe 25? He did not reach out to me, nor did In These Times. They both did web crawls rather than shoe-leather reporting. We all do that sometimes, but it’s worth saying that, in my case, it never yields my best work. As it happens, a reporter from The Intercept, Jessica Washington, was reporting a piece about the same topic: she was asking how the letter’s signatories felt about—well, here is what she wrote to me:
As one of the signatories of the Harper's Magazine letter, you were outspoken in 2020 about threats to free speech and rising censorship in the United States. I've reached out to everyone who signed the letter to get their perspective on these issues five years later.
Last month, the Trump administration detained a Tufts student, Rumeysa Ozturk, for publishing an op-ed in her school newspaper. Do you see Ozturk's arrest, and the arrests and visa revocations of other student protesters, as a fundamental threat to free speech? If not, why is this moment different? Where do you see the biggest threats to free speech emerging from now?
Because a reporter, doing thorough reporting, had reached out to me to ask what I thought, I felt obligated, as a professional courtesy, to reply. Here is what I wrote:
Dear Jessica:
I'm always happy to speak up for free speech, which is central to our democracy.
Nobody should ever be punished by the government for writing an op-ed unless, perhaps, that op-ed is an incitement to specific acts of violence (or falls under other well-known free-speech exceptions, like revealing classified information), which—as far as I can tell, from the little I have read—was not the case with Rumeysa Ozturk. The Trump Administration's attacks on free speech and its attempts to meddle with the practice of free academic inquiry are deplorable and anti-Constitutional. So, to answer your question, of course I see Ozturk's arrest as a fundamental threat to free speech. And to the extent that the government may be acting on information provided by immoral, shady actors like Canary Mission, that's all the more deplorable.
Beyond the legal questions, we should be concerned with the culture of free speech. That universities have fallen down badly in encouraging a culture of free speech, one in which dissenting and contrarian views are seen as healthy and welcome, is no excuse for the Trump Administration to try to squelch a culture of free speech, or to weaponize accusations of antisemitism to shut down debate.
The reality is that—alas—there are very few people who truly celebrate free speech as a positive good.
Regards,
Mark
Jessica’s piece never ran, or hasn’t run yet. Damned shame. I’d love to read what her reporting turned up.
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