Cancellation and Silence
Cancellation and Silence
I have now written three pieces for this blog on cancellation, focusing on my own case (but including Ed Erwin). I have condemned it. Meanwhile Brian Leiter posted a link to my first piece on his blog, and also condemned it. (It isn’t only me—we could also talk about Ludlow, Pogge, and Ketland within philosophy, but I don’t want to step on any toes speaking for others.) Many people have read these posts by now. But there has been almost total silence from members of the philosophy profession. No one has tried to defend the cancellation, and no one has admitted that it is wrong. The cancellers themselves have said nothing publicly that I know of. Why is this? You would think if they could defend it, they would. You would think that those who find it indefensible might speak up. But no, silence is the response. Do I need to say that this is utterly contemptible? Do the cancellers know they have nothing to say in defense of their actions and just hope no one notices? Do the people who disagree with the cancellation simply want to hide in case they get criticized? Silence is the new immorality (not so new of course).
I see that on Leiter’s blog there is not a single comment on his post on this subject. Not one. He states that this kind of cancelling is “not defensible”, effectively challenging people to agree or disagree. Nothing. Pathetic.
Leiter didn’t invite comments on his post titled “On being cancelled in philosophy.” He only occasionally invites comments. He invited comments on the post “Graduate school writing samples,” which is immediately under “On being cancelled in philosophy,” and no one made any — it says “Comments (0).”
Not inviting comments is not the same as prohibiting them. A quick survey reveals cases of comments without the explicit invitation to submit them. There are no comments from the philosophy profession on this blog. I get no emails on the subject. Silence reigns.
Leiter evaluates every comment to decide whether to post it. Therefore, he’s free to post comments he hasn’t invited, but I hadn’t noticed that he did so. I’m glad that you allow us to post comments without approving them first, and you don’t get junk comments.
For all I know, he had many comments on his cancelling post and decided not to post them. Junk comments are excluded here, simply because I don’t want this blog swamped with rubbish. There is an approval process.