Harvard students must understand speech has consequences.
The Skin of Belief
In the spring of 1986, I took a History of Christianity course at Cal. In his introductory lecture, Professor Bouwsma acknowledged that many students might come from Christian backgrounds. We might have deeply held beliefs, he said, but we should expect to be challenged and discomfited. He invited the believers in the class to think of their faith like a warm jacket.
“When you’re out and about in the chill, you need to wear your coat,” Bouwsma said. “When you come in here, I ask you to take off the coat of your faith and hang it on the back of your chair. You can put it right back on when you leave, but while you’re here, you don’t need it.”
The young woman next to me said, under her breath, with a mixture of pain and wonder that I can vividly remember almost forty years later, “But it’s not a coat. It’s my skin.”
I didn’t say anything. I remember I felt sorry for her. Raised an agnostic in a culture that valued skepticism and rationality not just as servants but as masters, college-aged Hugo pitied deeply religious people. Imagine walking through the world “blinded by your priors!” Imagine taking your faith so seriously you couldn’t let go of it for a sixty-minute lecture! No wonder the world is a mess — even here at Berkeley, fanatics and fundies abound! I bet she doesn’t believe in sex before marriage either!
It would take me years before I realized that my own upbringing as the son of two atheist philosophers (who met in grad school at Berkeley) was a coat I wore without knowing. I never took it off because I didn’t realize I had it on. In the circles in which I traveled, everyone I admired wore the same coat, and none of them knew it either.
It would take me years to consider that Professor Bouwsma’s request, as elegantly and politely couched as it was, was a monumental overask. It would take me years to understand that the ability to take one’s core beliefs on and off like a jacket is not, in fact, an unmistakable marker of high intelligence and sophistication.
Conservatives For Cancel Culture
I would grow, in time, to envy the people I’d once pitied.
I often think of that young woman in that class. I thought of her again this week as I read story after story about the backlash against various college students and celebrities who have issued statements in support of what Hamas did in Israel last Saturday.
The first story came when the Arab American porn star Mia Khalifa was fired by Playboy. Even as the massacres were still happening last weekend, Khalifa — who is of Lebanese descent — used her Twitter account to cheer Hamas on. On Monday, Playboy announced:
Over the past few days, Mia has made disgusting and reprehensible comments celebrating Hamas’ attacks on Israel and the murder of innocent men, women, and children. At Playboy, we encourage free expression and constructive political debate, but we have a zero tolerance policy for hate speech. We expect Mia to understand that her words and actions have consequences.
(This ain’t your father’s Playboy! Old folks like me might remember that Playboy founder Hugh Hefner once published a nuanced and lengthy interview with the American Nazi leader, George Lincoln Rockwell. There was huge outrage at the time, but Hefner — who did not think much of the slippery distinction between free expression and “hate speech” — stuck to his proverbial guns.)
Not to be outdone by the likes of Playboy, the billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman said on Tuesday that he was starting a campaign to name and shame Ivy League students who had signed letters of support for Hamas. Several CEOs joined the campaign. At least one student had a job offer withdrawn. Some students howled in protest, others hastily retracted (or tried to retract) their signatures on the pro-Hamas letters.
Noting that students at Harvard and other Ivy League campuses have been some of the most effective wielders of “cancel culture” in recent years, some thought this was “just desserts.” Many of my conservative friends have remarked that while they are against cancel culture in general and dislike the idea of people losing job opportunities for their political views, they are prepared to make an exception for those who celebrate burning babies to death.
I have been a free speech zealot for as long as I can remember. As a boy, I joined the ACLU after reading about their successful defense of the right of Nazis to march through the streets of Skokie, Illinois. The first time I wrote a letter to a politician was to protest the work of Tipper Gore and the Parents Music Resource Center. My adolescent hero was Larry Flynt, the publisher of Hustler. While I confess I did like his magazine, what I really admired was that Flynt had lost the use of his legs after being shot by a religious zealot.
That free speech zealotry wasn’t just because I liked porn. It certainly wasn’t because I was sympathetic to Nazis. I was keenly aware of my father’s family’s Jewish history. It was because I believed that the bedrock of a good society was freedom of expression, and that the hallmark of maturity and sophistication was to be unoffended by ideas, images, or words. I believed we should police actions, of course, but not language or beliefs.
Right to Free Speech and the Right to Be Offended
My family encouraged this stance, at least in part. I like to tell my conservative friends the story of the time I brought a copy of the aforementioned Hustler magazine to the family ranch. I generally hid it in my duffel bag, but one day, left it out on the bedside table. That afternoon, a grave-faced aunt pulled me aside.
“Darling,” she said, “You really must tuck all your unmentionables away each morning. Please do be more careful.” In other words, there was nothing wrong with a thirteen-year-old boy looking at Hustler. There was something wrong with forcing others to confront the fact that one looked at Hustler. As I’ve written before, in families like mine, the primary moral binary wasn’t clean/unclean or good/bad, it was public/private. All things were permitted in the latter.
I didn’t feel guilty about looking at Hustler or pleasuring myself to what I saw. I did feel very guilty that I had not better concealed the evidence. That’s the WASP moral code, and it explains why I felt perfectly at home with Professor Bouwsma’s suggestion that faith was like a coat that one could and should take off in certain settings.
The Architect of Your Own Adversity
One more thing, from personal experience. Sometimes, when the world turns on you because of your words or your conduct, you double down. You become defensive and intransigent. Other times, though, when you experience enough loss as a consequence of what you’ve said or done, you reconsider. You begin to wonder if maybe, just maybe, you are not a victim of a bigoted and intolerant culture. You begin to think it possible that you are the architect of your own adversity. Having burned a bridge, you start building another one, perhaps in a different place — and with a great deal more humility.
It has been a devastating week. Nerves are raw. Many of us shift from outrage to fear to grief and back to outrage several times a day. We may not all agree on the Middle East, but most of us agree that all of that emotion feels more like “skin” than “coat.” We cannot all easily divest ourselves of our convictions and sit —cheerful, polite, and unflappable— in the presence of someone who holds radically different views about what happened in Israel on October 7.
We cannot use the force of the law to silence those whose views appall us. We can, however, say to ourselves that these are people with whom we do not wish to associate. We know ourselves, and we know basic psychology. As a result, we are not wrong to assume that what repels the conscience is “skin,” not “coat.”
This article was originally published on the author’s Substack.
How does cancel culture impact free speech and open dialogue, according to its critics?
E dialogue, but we do not condone hate speech or the celebration of violence. As a result, we have made the decision to end our collaboration with Mia Khalifa.
Similarly, several university students who expressed support for Hamas on social media have faced consequences. One student at Stanford University was reprimanded by the university for her posts, while another student at Johns Hopkins University was suspended and subjected to online harassment.
These incidents have sparked a heated debate about cancel culture and its role in our society. On one hand, many argue that individuals should be held accountable for their actions and statements, especially when they promote hate and violence. They believe that consequences such as job loss and academic discipline are necessary to ensure a safe and inclusive environment for all.
On the other hand, critics of cancel culture argue that it stifles free speech and discourages open dialogue. They believe that individuals should be allowed to express their opinions, even if they are controversial or offensive, without fear of severe repercussions. They argue that canceling someone for their beliefs only further divides society and prevents us from engaging in meaningful conversations that could lead to understanding and growth.
As I reflect on these debates, I can’t help but recall the young woman in my History of Christianity class. I now understand that her faith was not just a coat to be taken on and off, but an integral part of her identity and worldview. I realize that dismissing and pitying her for her deeply held beliefs was a form of intellectual arrogance and a failure to recognize the complexity of human experience.
Similarly, I see now that cancel culture can be a harmful and reductive approach to addressing differences of opinion. While it is important to hold individuals accountable for their actions, we must also strive to foster a society where diverse perspectives can coexist and be respectfully engaged with. Instead of canceling, perhaps we should focus on promoting dialogue, empathy, and understanding.
This does not mean condoning hate speech or violence. It means creating spaces where difficult conversations can take place, where people can learn from each other, challenge their own beliefs, and find common ground. It means recognizing that just as faith can be integral to one’s identity, so can beliefs and opinions that may differ from our own.
As I continue to learn and grow, I hope to shed the coat of intellectual arrogance and embrace the complexity and diversity of human thought. I hope that we can move beyond cancel culture and towards a culture of genuine dialogue, where we can listen and learn from each other, even when our beliefs and perspectives seem worlds apart.
The young woman in that class all those years ago had a wisdom that I was blind to at the time. Her faith was not just a coat; it was her skin. And she had every right to wear it proudly and unapologetically, just as we all have the right to express our beliefs and thoughts.
So let us strive to create a society where the skin of belief is respected and celebrated, where cancel culture gives way to curiosity and understanding, and where we can engage with each other’s differences with empathy and respect. Only then can we truly embrace the richness of our shared humanity.
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