I read this letter with growing unease as it seems to be participating in the increasingly common rhetoric where otherwise well-meaning progressives get caught up in what I think is a "panic" manufactured by rightist propaganda. The panic about "cancel culture" and a progressive undermining of free speech seems like the evolution of the older rightist culture wars panic about "political correctness".

A couple of other readings have helped me think about this more deeply. You can read and respond to my annotations on each at the following links:

• Atlantic writer Hannah Giorgis's A Deeply Provincial View of Free Speech
• A More Specific Letter on Justice and Open Debate in The Objective that was a "group effort, started by journalists of color with contributions from the larger journalism, academic, and publishing community". 30 Jan 2022 Note: The original letter seems now unavailable at the link above, but one can view it in the Internet Archive, though annotations are apparently only available while using the Hypothesis Chrome extension.
• And most powerfully, writer @gabbybellot's more personal take on the whole thing: Freedom Means Can Rather Than Should: What the Harper’s Open Letter Gets Wrong in Literary Hub
• And although I didn't find myself totally in agreement with it, Lili Loofbourow's Illiberalism Isn’t to Blame for the Death of Good-Faith Debate in Slate
• Adding Meredith Clark's DRAG THEM: A brief etymology of so-called “cancel culture” in Communication and the Public

Wow. Clark takes the Harper's letter signatories to task for not understanding how public spheres work now with social media in the mix. Reminded of how nostalgia for "the way things used to be" (but never really existed) runs deep in all critiques like that letter...

See my growing list of works I read to augment my thinking about the cancel culture moral panic and that letter in Harper's.

Full article available as PDF here:

http://kk.org/writings/the-electronic-hive-embrace-it.php