Kerby Anderson

Last week I talked about the cancel culture on college campuses. I ended my commentary with an encouraging action by Professor Robert George at Princeton, who sponsored a lecture that had been canceled at MIT. The typical reaction to that news has been, “That’s great, but that is the exception, not the rule.” While that is true, there are more and more examples of people willing to push back against the cancel culture mob. The most visible example these days is Dave Chappelle. We can’t support his gross humor, but we can support his desire to push back against the trolls trying to push his series off Netflix. Following up on the attacks, he reminded everyone that the cancel culture mob has canceled Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling along with lots of people who aren’t celebrities who have been attacked for saying “Gender is a fact.” Another example is Bill Maher. He is criticized because he is weary of a younger generation acting like they are victims. More recently, he argued that words matter and that many words like hate, victim, and phobic have been completely misused. Bari Weiss (who has served as the op-ed editor at the New York Times) came on CNN to push back against the host about all the cancel culture offenses. We may disagree with her on many issues, though I do have a copy of her latest book on How to Fight Anti-Semitism. We should also support Boston Celtics star Enes Kanter, who is one of the few NBA stars to criticize China. This Muslim from Turkey has spoken out about slave labor and the two million Uyghurs in concentration camps. As Christians, we might not agree with any of the people I just mentioned, but we should support their right of free speech. And perhaps we should learn a lesson of courage from them.