Interesting story out of Cambridge university.
A Cambridge University cancel culture row has sparked a new discussion about wokeness, offence and free speech.
From the article:
There are many more important things going on in the world, but it is worth noting that we seem to have moved to a post-cancellation phase, best described as pre-emptive self-cancellation.
John Cleese, a comedy god whose surname was originally “Cheese” (his father changed it because he deemed it embarrassing), withdrew from a speaking event last week, saying he wanted to “cancel” himself before someone did it for him.
Cleese was referring to the contemporary version of cancellation, where a person – usually with a public profile – is the subject of a social media pile-on for a transgression of morality or taste. They may be dropped by their publisher, network or advertisers. Their reputation may be badly damaged and they may lose work.
The man who gave us Basil Fawlty had been invited to speak at his alma mater, Cambridge University, but pulled out after the student union decided to “blacklist” the art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon. The historian had offended students when he performed a Hitler impersonation during a debate on the question of whether good taste exists.
Cleese pointed out that he had done a Hitler impression, too (you could say his career was made on it). The actor
tweeted: “I apologise to anyone at Cambridge who was hoping to talk with me, but perhaps some of you can find a venue where woke rules do not apply.”
Graham-Dixon had debated the affirmative case. He was trying to make the point that good taste exists because bad taste does, and bad taste is rooted in bad morals. Being an art historian, he made interesting points about how Hitler hated modern art, and the Nazis ripped Cubist and abstract works off gallery walls. The Nazis saw those forms of art as connected with gay, Jewish and African people, according to Graham-Dixon, so they annihilated the art before moving on to annihilating the people themselves.
I watched the speech. I struggle to see how anyone could have seen anything he said as endorsing Hitler, but the point failed to land. Graham-Dixon has since apologised, and said that he was trying “to underline the utterly evil nature of Hitler and his regime”.
For anyone who has ever attended a university debate, where precocity so often outweighs poise, it is hardly surprising that one of the speeches was a bit rubbish. But afterwards, the backlash began.
Cambridge Union president Keir Bradwell – who, it is worth noting, is only 21 – issued an apology, saying he should have intervened at the time.
“We will create a blacklist of speakers never to be invited back, and we will share it with other unions, too. Andrew will be on that list,” Bradwell said.
But then, perhaps realising what a massive own-goal it was to put potential speakers in fear of a blacklisting, Bradwell did a U-turn. He scrapped the blacklist, and said: “If there is a dichotomy between free speech and offence, I would defend free speech. I don’t want to create an impression that the union is against free speech.” It may be too late for that.
But the whole exercise underlines how hard it is, even for the younger generation, to navigate the etiquette they have helped create. If you elevate the taking of offence to the ultimate guiding principle, people will begin to operate out of fear of censure. That fear can impede creativity, especially in those who lack cultural power (which Cleese obviously does not).
It also makes it difficult to test your ideas in opposition to others’, something a university debating society should probably adopt as a priority.