(NewsNation) — NewsNation’s “On Balance” host Leland Vittert says the people at the heart of the “cancel culture” movement are now the ones getting canceled.
Billionaires who pumped $500 million into Ivy League schools have backed out over the institutions’ failure to condemn the Hamas terror attack on Israel. Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania now face losing hundreds of millions in future endowments.
New York Post columnist Rikki Schlott and Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Right and Expression, both co-authors of the book “The Canceling of the American Mind: Cancel Culture Undermines Trust and Threatens Us All – But There Is A Solution,” joined “On Balance With Leland Vittert” on Wednesday to weigh in.
Schlott and Lukianoff discussed the challenges free speech advocates face due to cancel culture.
Schlott stressed that people who are genuinely committed to free speech are quite often put in very uncomfortable positions.
Some activist groups and higher education institutions are facing a backlash for voicing support for Palestinian causes amid the war in Israel, for example.
A Chicago chapter of Black Lives Matter has been criticized for a social media post in the wake of the Hamas attacks that depicted a paraglider with a flag of Palestine, seemingly celebrating the Hamas attack on civilians at an Israeli music festival. The post has since been taken down.
A group of students at Harvard published a letter in which the writers held the “Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” The university took several days to address it.
Lukianoff discussed where he saw the line between a First Amendment right, protected by the government, and an organization’s right to say, ‘We’re not going to have people who express certain points of view.'”
“Our definition of canceled culture is the uptick in campaigns to get people fired since 2014. So by our definition, that fits,” Lukianoff said. “Because we are talking about things that maybe a company can legally do, but we should, it should still give us some pause.”
However, Lukianoff stressed a company’s right to decide who they hire.
“That is 100% within their call,” he said. “So I just want people to pause and think for a second if you want it to end up in a situation where basically you can’t have a job and an opinion at the same time.”
Lukianoff said he understands the outrage, saying, “Universities have been incredibly hypocritical about freedom of speech.”
Multiple campus groups at UC Berkeley adopted a rule last year that bans pro-Israel speakers at events. Other institutions including Harvard and New York University have also recently come under fire after some student groups said Israelis should be held responsible for unfolding violence following the attack by Hamas.
“And the fact that Harvard is now actually trying to claim it’s good on free speech is, you know, unbelievable,” Lukianoff said. “They finish dead last in our campus free speech ranking. And it’s very convenient that now they’re discovering it, but they have a lot to prove.”
Watch more of the interview with Rikki Schlott and Greg Lukianoff in the video player at the top of the page.