“WHEN PEOPLE BELIEVE THERE’S A CONSPIRACY TO SHUT THEM UP, DO ABSOLUTELY NOTHING THAT LOOKS LIKE A CONSPIRACY TO SHUT THEM UP.” I have a new profile in the weekend Wall Street Journal by Emily Bobrow.

THE SELECTIVE MEMORY OF THE “NEW MCCARTHYISM” CROWD. I have a new piece up today in The Atlantic and on Substack: “as far as free speech is concerned, 2023 has been a relatively normal year for colleges and universities. Just don’t confuse ‘normal’ with ‘good.'”

CHECK ME OUT AT MY MOST CYNICAL AND DEPRESSED ABOUT THE STATE OF FREE SPEECH ON CAMPUS ON DAD SAVES AMERICA!

“Parents should be less worried about their kid being canceled than about their kid being a canceler.”

GEORGE WILL CHEERING THE END OF 2023, TALKS DEPRESSING FIRE CASES (BUT ALSO A NICE SHOUT OF FOR MY BOOK): “An indispensable 2023 book, ‘The Canceling of the American Mind’ by Greg Lukianoff & Rikki Schlott, reports that Yale has ‘1 administrator for every 4 students. That’s the same ratio the government recommends for child care of infants under 12 months.’” 

THIS NEEDS TO HAPPEN AT EVERY UNIVERSITY, EVERY TIME: “Every time there is a shout-down, a de-platforming, or a canceling on campus, the school needs to do an investigation asking two questions: Did administrators do anything to stop it? Did administrators do anything to encourage it? Failing at the first should get an administrator in trouble. Failing at the second should get them fired.”

DID I MENTION THAT I MET MY HERO AND MONTY PYTHON LEGEND JOHN CLEESE — WHILE NAKED? Well, I did, and the interview about FIRE and my new book— which may disappoint some viewers with a shocking lack of nudity — is now available to watch! (Check out the closing section of the post, my “Shot for the Road,” for the video)

HOW DOES THE SEDITION ACT OF 1798 COMPARE TO CANCEL CULTURE? The 10 convictions under the Sedition Act was really bad. Cancel culture has a much higher body count. This is part two of my ongoing series putting cancel culture in historical perspective to show the simple fact that it’s big, it’s real, and we’re going to be studying it in 100 years.

HOW AMERICAN COLLEGES GAVE BIRTH TO CANCEL CULTURE:
“In 2010, FIRE saw 19 attempts to get professors punished. But then came an explosion. From 2014 to mid-2023, we know of more than 1,000 attempts to get professors fired, punished, or otherwise silenced. About two thirds of these attempts are successful, resulting in consequences from investigation to termination. But even unsuccessful attempts matter, because they are more than sufficient in chilling speech [….]

To give a sense of proportion, only three professors were fired or forced out of schools over something they said in the post-9/11 panic. The modern era of cancel culture (2014 to present), by contrast, has resulted in almost 200 professor terminations. That exceeds even the standard estimate of 100 professors terminated in the second Red Scare (1947 to 1957).

To gauge a better sense of the actual scale, FIRE surveyed college faculty and found that 16 percent of professors said they have either been disciplined or threatened with discipline for their speech, teaching, or academic research. Seven percent even said they have actually been investigated. And a whopping 29 percent said they’ve been pressured by administrators to avoid controversial research.

It’s especially alarming that cancel culture is concentrated in the most influential universities in the country. The top 10 of U.S News & World Report’s top-ranked colleges account for more than 10 percent of all cancellation attempts. The top 100 account for more than 40 percent. At the top 10 colleges, less than a quarter of cancellation attempts are launched by conservatives.”

MEET MY “CANCELING OF THE AMERICAN MIND” CO-AUTHOR: 23-year-old wunderkind Rikki Schlott

GREAT NEWS! If you read my Eternally Radical Idea newsletter and want to support free speech you can now sign up for a paid subscription with all proceeds going directly to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).

‘CANCEL CULTURE IS HAPPENING ON A HISTORIC SCALE, PART 1‘. Part 2 coming soon!

JESSE WATTERS PRIMETIME: Using the “perfect rhetorical fortress” to get out of a DUI.

MEETING JOHN CLEESE WHILE NAKED

My interview with the comedic legend premieres Sunday night on GB News. Follow the link for the whole surreal tale (w/ pics!)

THE PERFECT GIFT FOR SOMEONE WHO ASSURES YOU CANCEL CULTURE IS A HOAX.

GALILEO’S REPLACEMENT SPEAKER: What cancel culture does to trust and expertise.

Imagine an anachronistically modern university in 1633 Italy. Your school is hosting a debate about whether the Earth goes around the Sun or vice versa. Galileo is supposed to speak on a panel defending heliocentrism, but a different scholar enters the room instead…

COME OUT TOMORROW NIGHT IN MIAMI to join FIRE, me, Rikki Schlott, & Jim Brady from the Knight Foundation to talk about Rikki & my new book The Canceling of the American Mind.

You can RSVP here.

THE TRILLION DOLLAR UNDERDOGS: “It’s become popular to claim that ‘free speech is the tool of the powerful’ because higher ed institutions don’t like to admit that they possess unparalleled wealth and influence. Simply, higher ed would much rather think of itself as ‘speaking truth to power’ than ‘rationalizing its influence from a position of power.’”

THE HAPPINESS CURVE: Past your prime? Not at all. Research shows that happiness follows a U-shaped trajectory. Happiness starts high with youthful optimism and declines throughout middle age before rising once more — a revelation to those of us who have been raised fearing the “second half” of life. Check out Jonathan Rauch’s fantastic new book about why life gets better after 50. Reading it felt less like a book and more like a start of a movement to take better advantage of the gifts, resources and wisdom of people who we once would say were “past their prime.”

AN (IL)LIBERAL ARTS EDUCATION: At Wellesley College, self-expression is rapidly being replaced by self-censorship. FIRE’s video team investigates.

PROFESSOR IN EXILE: Fifty students disrupted his class and demanded his resignation. The police chief said she could not protect him. He had to hold his biology course in a public park. Former Evergreen State College Professor Bret Weinstein discusses the state of higher education in a new episode of So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast.

10 WORST FOR FREE SPEECH: FIRE’s annual list of America’s worst colleges for free speech was published today. After a year filled with campus speech controversies, the competition to appear on the ignoble list was stiff.

TODAY IN CAMPUS CRAZINESS: A student at Michigan’s Albion College is under investigation for a joke about getting “ANTIFA and ISIS hunting permits” (which, of course, don’t exist).

THANK YOU FOR HELPING ME REACH MY FUNDRAISING GOAL! Thanks to your generous support, as well as shoutouts from Glenn and Popehat.com, my $3,000 matching fundraiser on Facebook for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education met its goal almost a week early. Perhaps, more than ever, free speech on campus needs all the help it can get, so your support is greatly appreciated!

FIRE, PENN JILLETTE, AND OTHERS DEMAND BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY NOT CENSOR PLAY ABOUT CENSORSHIP: At a university named for one of the greatest free speech champions in American history, faculty and administrators decided to cancel a play about the perils of easily offended students…due to outrage from offended students. Penn Jillette, Kitty Bruce (daughter of Lenny), Ron Collins, and Bob Corn-Revere joined FIRE today to ask Brandeis to live up to its promises of free speech, and its supposed veneration of the late, great comedian Lenny Bruce whose iconoclastic comedy inspired the play.