Free Speech in Comedy Clubs and on Campus

The author William Deresiewicz, who formerly taught English at Yale University, describes what he sees as essential threats to free speech—and ultimately to the process of education—on campuses across the country. Students, he says, are afraid to speak their minds, in fear of a backlash. Deresiewicz sees the impact of cancel culture extending well beyond newsworthy cancellations of prominent people. “For every high-profile cancellation . . . there are a hundred, say, low-profile cancellations that don’t get picked up,” Deresiewicz tells David Remnick. “And, even more importantly, for every one of those, there are a thousand people . . . who just keep their mouth shut.”

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, on the other hand, argues that cancel culture isn’t real. It’s largely, she says, an excuse made by those on the political right to lodge their own restrictions on what can be said in the public sphere. Kliph Nesteroff, a historian of comedy, agrees with that assessment. “There used to be this conceit, a few years ago—‘They’re going to take your guns away,’ ” he says; now the refrain is “ ‘They’re going to take your jokes away. They’re going to take your comedians!’ It’s the same sort of element driving the narrative.” Pushback to jokes at the expense of marginalized people is nothing new, Nesteroff explains. He offers the example of Native Americans protesting insulting portrayals in silent films more than a century ago. But social media has brought these criticisms into the public consciousness. “It’s not even cancel culture. It’s just culture,” Nesteroff says. “The history of America is a tug-of-war between opposing forces—powerful forces versus weak forces.”