Response to Kara - Cancel culture/Social Punishment technically is speech

 I think free speech is a difficult line to navigate. There is free speech, but there is also responsible speech. When CMC decides to have a speaker at the atheneum that talks about how voting is a negligible action and will never have any impact, some argued that was not responsible of the college to do. When CMC decides to have a speaker at the atheneum who repeatedly invalidates sexual assault in a time where many women have expressed having experiences of sexual assault, there is a very powerful argument that having that speaker come caused harm to the students. Maybe firms and college campuses cannot police free speech but can/should they regulate speech so that all speech produced is responsible?

Even in the article shared by Marta, the girl specifically talked about how she feels as if her political opinions are unpopular. What is the college supposed to do about that? Make her classmates nod or force them to agree with her? That seems counterintuitive to the claims you described. Free speech laws empower her to voice her opinion, but it also empower her classmates to roll their eyes, verbally disagree, and/or distance themselves from her. You can't really regulate away cancel culture or being socially punished, because that is people's prerogative to do as individuals who have their own opinions and want to express them through speech or association. Sure you can set up structures so people cannot be fired for voicing an unpopular opinion but you can't protect them from social isolation or punishment. Policing people's ability to "cancel" people would literally be the type of rights violation that Anderson believes firms do. 

Also, firms and college campuses should definitely be able to fire and/or expel people for racist, sexist, homophobic, and any other problematic beliefs because people being able to express those beliefs impact the productivity of the workplace and the safety of the campus environment. Also being racist really isn't a right we have as individuals, so it really isn't something that can be encroached. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Development as White Saviorism

I used to be a libertarian and i think Nozick is full of shit

The other face of the father of capitalism?