Academic Survivors and Thrivers After Cancelation Attacks
Where are they now?
Summary Up Front
Data on the wave of cancelation attacks on academics circa 2015-2023 is briefly reviewed.
Recent research on the downstream consequences of being the target of such attacks is briefly reviewed.
Behind the scenes department tenure decisions as a severe form of cancelation attack.
Survivors and Thrivers: The stories of seven of us who survived and, in some cases, thrived, after these attacks.
The number of firings resulting from the wave of cancelation attacks on academics circa 2015-2023 was worse than during the McCarthy era, according to Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s CEO Greg Lukianoff. But firings are just the tip of a very large iceberg. The number of faculty investigated for what should have been legitimately protected speech is far far higher (and, as anyone who has ever been so investigated knows, these are often their own form of punishment). A 2024 FIRE Faculty Survey found that 14 percent of the approximately 5,000 respondents reported having been disciplined or threatened with discipline by their institutions for their teaching, research or other speech. If that response generalizes to the population of American faculty, it means there have been tens of thousands of such investigations (or threats) over the prior 10 years.
Jake Mackey, a professor of classics and co-founder of Free Black Thought (“there are black conservatives and liberals, socialists and free-marketeers, traditionalists and radicals, theists and atheists, everything in between, and more besides. FREE BLACK THOUGHT seeks to represent the rich diversity of black thought”) put it this way (and is well worth a full read):
Jake wrote:
It was a society-wide culture of left-authoritarian intolerance, not a fascist leader, that made me watch my words like a hawk in my classroom for half a decade.
It was fear of retaliation from the left, not from a fascist leader, that caused me to lay awake at night on more occasions than I can count, terrified that a student might have misinterpreted something I said in class and initiated a cancelation campaign against me.
It was not a fascist leader but fear of intolerant leftists among my colleagues that made me censor myself, as a yet-untenured faculty member, when I was asked to report on my findings about the efficacy—which is nil or worse—of diversity training.
The Reputational Harms Inflicted by Cancelation Attacks, Even When the Target is Vindicated
I received an advance copy of a paper that is not available online (as far as I can tell) titled “Cancel Culture” by Kris Gulati and Lorenzo Palladini, which analyzed the downstream consequences of being the victim of such an attack. This is from their abstract:
We find that, following a controversy, affected scholars experience a decline in their productivity, publishing 20% fewer new papers than the counterfactual. Furthermore, affected scholars experience a 4% decline in citations to their prior body of work, reflecting a form of peer-to-peer sanctioning. This decline is disproportionately driven by scholars who are closely connected to the affected individual, consistent with a mechanism of professional distancing. These findings highlight the professional costs of speech-related incidents and contribute to the literature on workplace and employee activism as well as the career consequences of speech-related scandals.
Some Good News
Public denunciations and attacks take their toll. But, despite this sort of sobering analysis, there is more than a little reason for optimism. First, a recent survey found that most psychology professors find these sorts of attacks contemptible (literally, the survey asked how much contempt they had for the attackers). I don’t know for sure, but I’d bet those results generalize to most academic fields.
Second, there is this, which is worth a full read because it is filled with all sorts of good news on these issues:
Despite the findings of Gulati & Palladini, which I do not dispute, quite a few academics have nicely survived these attacks, in some cases thrived, and in a few, gotten ample vengeance. I recount some of those cases here.
Mobs and Denial of Tenure/Promotions on Non-Merit-Based Grounds
Classic cancelation attacks include social media mobs and often letters and petitions denouncing the target and calling for punishment.
However, in academia, there is a more subtle form of cancelation — denial of tenure for reasons having nothing to do with competence (e.g., teaching or research). For an academic, denial of tenure is a sort of ultimate form of cancelation because, unless they find another academic job, they are then purged entirely. These sorts of attacks are far more subtle and rarely reach the public eye, because deliberations are almost always behind closed doors and the denouncers have plausible deniability. Two such attacks are included here.
Administrators are often depicted as craven cowards for caving to outrage mobs or their own petty faculty. And, as some of the examples below show, for good reasons. HOWEVER, some have shown integrity and courage, by refusing to do so. Some of those stories too are told here.
Dorian Abbot
Dorian has twice been the target of denunciation mobs. The first was from within his university (Chicago) and department (Geophysical Sciences). Dorian had the unmitigated gall to post YouTube videoos criticizing UC’s DEI programs in Fall, 2020 — right when the U.S. was in the midst of a full blown moral panic over racism after the killing of George Floyd. On cue, an internal mob launched a letter to the department, garnering over 100 signatures denouncing him, complete with the always absurd allegations of “harm.”
Back story: I was at the time teaching a grad seminar on radicalization and dissent, largely as a way to cope with the 2020 insanity. I had somehow gotten wind of these goings on and invited Dorian to be a guest at a class, which he accepted. Like most academics when they are first targeted by these sorts of mobs, including me when it first happened to me, Dorian was a bit naive about what was going on. Like a good academic, he sought discussion and debate. We had to school him about this. It was a denunciation, not a disagreement. His denouncers were not there for a civil discussion. It was more like, say, rules governing a knife fight:
This was a denunciation, not a knife fight, but similar rules apply. To mix the metaphor, you do not bring a knife to a gunfight and you do not bring a reasoned argument to a denunciation.
Your denouncers will exploit anything and everything you say and do as further evidence of how depraved you are. Had Dorian tried to reason with his denouncers, here is how it might have gone:
Dorian: Dear graduate students, DEI involves illegal discrimination. Science, in everything from graduate admissions to faculty hiring, should focus exclusively on merit, fairness, and equal treatment under the rules, which is a far cry from saying all applicants are similarly meritorious.
Denunciation Mob: (Does not respond on the merits of the arguments). Sends additional emails and complaints to the Dept. Chair and UC administration. Mischaracterizes Dorian’s arguments. Rather than quoting his actual words, they simply claim that Dorian made additional racist comments and “punched down” when talking to the graduate students confirming that no one can feel safe around him.
Fortunately, that did not happen. At my class, we urged him, in addition to NOT engaging with the denouncers, to seek allies. It was up to him if he wanted to contest this, but if he did, the way to do it was by going around the denouncers and appealing to the rest of the world, most of whom hate this sort of nonsense.
Dorian was a quick study. We gave him some contacts, people who might help. He mobilized potential supporters. Within a few days, a counter petition calling on UC to honor its commitment to free speech and academic freedom by rejecting all demands of the denouncers was signed by over 6000 people, and eventually by over 13000. Shortly thereafter, then UC President Zimmer issued a statement reminding the entire campus of UC’s commitment to free speech and academic freedom, without mentioning this incident. Things calmed down publicly, but things remained chilly for Dorian with his department.
AND THEN there was the BIG ONE. Dorian was invited by MIT to give a major lecture on his area of expertise (exoplanets — planets outside ours solar system) in Fall 2021. Both within MIT and on then-Twitter, outrage mobs called for MIT to rescind the invitation (full timeline of events here). The cowardly craven powers-that-be did so.
The Aftermath
The MIT nonsense inspired faculty there to create the MIT Free Speech Alliance, which has done great work ever since.
Dorian has since become a champion of merit-based policies, free speech and academic freedom. He and I even collaborated on this paper:
2021, he received the Hero of Intellectual Freedom Award from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni
2022, he received the Courage Award from the Heterodox Academy
2024, Dorian was promoted to full professor.
2025, he received the Columbia Academic Freedom Prize
Dorian’s experience contain some of the great messages of how to respond to these sorts of attacks:
Do not concede an inch (unless you are actually wrong)
Do not engage your denouncers, but do seek allies. Make your arguments available to the wider public.
Do not apologize.
Play the long game.
Dorian walked into the lair of the dragon. He got burned. But he walked away with the gold.
Nicholas Wolfinger
Nicholas Wolfinger is a sociologist and professor in the Family and Consumer Studies department at the University of Utah. He was never subjected to a mob, but, instead, was relentlessly harassed by his own department and university for … nothing. He retells these stories in his chapter in Professors Speak Out (more on this later), so I will just summarize the bizarre harassment:
When he came up for tenure, he had impeccable research and teaching records, but was denied tenure by his department for a slew of trivialities (like saying “fuck”1 and pointing out that research is more important than teaching for promotions, which it is). I mean, its entirely inappropriate to say “fuck” in academic contexts, right?
The administration overturned the dept. decision and he was ultimately granted tenure.
Round two, I will just quote from Nick’s chapter:
I was denied promotion to the rank of full professor the first time I sought it. The department chair who engineered this result was part of the dead wood, a permanent associate professor who became chair because no one else would (A year later the university removed him as department chair.) My dean supported this decision, rejecting me for promotion on the specious grounds that my file didn’t include my H-index (a quantitative measure of scholarly prominence). No one in my department knew what an H-index was; I contacted the three faculty members promoted that year in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, and none of them had included an H-index either. Meanwhile, my salary was frozen below $70,000 for six years.
He was ultimately promoted to full professor in 2014.
Nick was then subject to a Title IX investigation (Title IX covers sexual harassment and misconduct). Although no evidence of sexual misconduct was uncovered, evidence of Nick using occasional profanity was, as were miscellaneous complaints from faculty who found him annoying. After incurring $15k in legal bills fighting all this, this was enough for the dean to fine him $2500 for “unprofessional conduct.” The fine was eventually nullified by a VP who realized they really should not be in the business of fining faculty because some people found him annoying.
For Nick’s third investigation, I again quote from his chapter:
I’d disparaged an article whose authors happened to be women. In response, someone said that I was more or less a sexual predator. This someone turned out to be a masters student in another department at my university. I took the bait, tweeting about my research on gender equity in higher education, research that’s produced real changes in how universities treat their female faculty. I then suggested that students shouldn’t speak of their professors in the way this masters student had: “Finally, NAME, here’s some free ex cathedra advice: you should avoid publicly antagonizing the tenured faculty at your own institution, or elsewhere.” Twitter somehow construed this as me threatening her, and I was mobbed. Faculty from around the world demanded that I be punished for “punching down,” with some announcing their intention to alert my university about the monster in its midst…
Two days later I received an email signed by both my department chair and Dean Ratched (i.e., the scourge of hostile body language). Replete with passive voice—“ have been interpreted as threatening a student with retaliation “—I was informed that I had misbehaved. Without admitting to anything, I promised to do better. In a normal world, that would have been the end of it. Certainly I wasn’t given any indication at the time that matters hadn’t been resolved.
Based on the history I’ve described, I should have known better. The very same day I posted my tweet, Dean Ratched had sent the “threatened” student this email:
Two months later, a formal complaint arrived. Once more I was to be reprimanded for my “unprofessionalism.” Termination would follow if I didn’t straighten up and fly right. As before, I instantly secured an attorney…I retained out-of-state counsel who specialized in higher education cases, Samantha Harris. She and I had become acquainted with through my Title IX advocacy…
An attempt at internal conflict resolution failed. Then:
I was headed for the Consolidated Hearing Committee, apparently being convened for the first time in living memory…
… the hearing went on for over three hours, demonstrating something I already knew: for faculty investigations, the process is part of the punishment. Ratched spent a lot of time talking about all the harm I’d done, all the dishonor I’d brought to the good name of the University of Utah, and so on. The colleague who denounced me on Twitter appeared as a witness, where he idly speculated that my presence on the faculty had reduced the number of applicants for an open faculty position in our department. Dean Ratched upped the ante, claiming that my tweet had reduced graduate student application and faculty applications to the university. Ratched also denounced me for “chilling” student speech.
Ponder that one for a moment. Because of an intemperate tweet, I spent $10,000 more on counsel, had a hearing that lasted over three hours, and eventually received an official reprimand. Just whose speech was being chilled?
In the end, the Consolidated Hearing Committee failed to deliver a consolidated verdict on my case, instead deciding to reprimand me by a split vote. The official report made no mention of a threatening tweet, instead deciding I had failed to be collegial. It’s in the spirit of the book you’re reading that I was accused of one thing and then “convicted” of something else.
Even as the Committee was reprimanding me, it didn’t hold back about what it saw to be Dean Ratched’s true motivation:
During the hearing, the complainants indicated that their goals were to change behavior and have Dr. Wolfinger take responsibility for his actions; however, their apparent unwillingness to negotiate toward informal resolution suggest that their true objective is to set the stage for termination rather than seek to change Dr. Wolfinger's behavior.
The Aftermath
Nick is still a full professor at Utah.
He channeled his experiences into an edited book (which came out this year), inviting a slew of other professors who had also been subject to various sorts of investigations to tell their stories (disclosure: I have a chapter in this book).
The book has made quite a splash (google it and all sorts of laudatory stuff comes up).
He (like Dorian Abbot) received a 2025 Columbia Academic Freedom Prize
Wolfinger Epilogue
I’ll just quote his chapter:
My only contact with my new dean was exceedingly propitious: ten years ago, long before she came to the University of Utah, I’d autographed her copy of my 2013 book on gender equity in higher education. It would be hard to think of another small thing that would leave a dean better predisposed to, um, not investigate you. As for my new department chair, it helps that she lived through the Cultural Revolution in her native China. This experience has left her unusually suspicious of moral panics and persecutions. (emphasis mine, Lee).
Marisol Quintanilla
Marisol’s case has a family resemblance to that of Nick Wolfinger. She is a highly accomplished entomologist (studier of bugs, her specialty is nematodes) at Michigan State University, and yet was denied tenure by her department. Why? According to the University of North Carolina Alumni Free Speech Alliance:
A MSU faculty committee voted to deny her reappointment with tenure, citing “poor collegiality”—a likely mask for viewpoint discrimination over her stances on identity politics.
She has also refused to submit a DEI statement for annual review.
And she is outspokenly Christian. As Black sociologist George Yancey put it:
“Outside of academia I faced more problems as a black,” he told me. “But inside academia I face more problems as a Christian, and it is not even close.”
However, she is now tenured because the administration reversed her department’s petty decision. She has a bright bright future.
Charles Negy
Charles Negy is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Central Florida. After he tweeted about “Black privilege,” all Hell broke loose. Students protested. The Student Senate denounced him. A petition calling for his firing received over 30,000 signatures. The UCF President said he was “disgusted” by Charles’s tweets. On cue, UCF conducted a kangaroo investigation which found that Charles had engaged in years of misconduct toward students — despite his having received three awards for teaching. His prior five annual evaluations had rated him as “outstanding.”
UCF fired him. They did not fire him for the tweets, which started the mess. They found “other” reasons. Charles sued. For months, he was out a job. The case went to mediation. The mediator concluded the firing was illegitimate and instructed UCF to reinstate him with back pay. They admitted no wrongdoing but complied.
Charles then launched a second suit, suing the trustees and senior administrators, this time for violations of his academic freedom. UCF moved to dismiss the suit.
The court dismissed the suit against the trustees (as I understand it, because they had nothing to do with his firing), but allowed the suit against UCF senior administrators to continue. As of this writing, the suit is still ongoing. I predict that a settlement is reached before it is resolved, in which case, on cue, UCF will admit no wrongdoing. Still, I am rooting for a highly lucrative settlement. In the meantime, Charles is still at UCF.
Black Privilege
I do not use this particular turn of phrase, because it is too broad and I reject most “privilege” narratives anyway. But that is irrelevant because there is a grand irony in this entire mess. In Charles’ tweets that triggered the trouble, the core idea, that Black people sometimes have unearned advantages, an idea that for decades has been characterized within academia as itself racist, was shown to be dead-on target by the Supreme Court case, Students for Fair Admissions. In that case, SCOTUS ruled against the massive affirmative action policies of Harvard and the University of North Carolina. Black students needed far lower levels of achievement to get into Harvard and the University of North Carolina (and by extension, probably many other places as well) than it was for other students. Racial discrimination is illegal in the U.S.
Timothy Jackson
Timothy Jackson is a distinguished professor of music at the University of North Texas (UNT). He was director of the Center for Schenkerian Studies and editor of the Journal of Schenkerian Studies. Schenker was an early 20th century Austrian Jew who made important contributions to music theory – thus, the Center and the journal.
Jackson’s trouble started during the Summer of Floyd. A music professor at NYU had recently presented arguments that Schenker was a racist and emblematic of the racism that, he argued, was an obstacle to Black people entering the field of music theory (arguments that were eventually published, Ewell, 2021). Jackson organized a special issue of the Journal of Schenkerian Studies with 15 commentaries on the (de)merits of Ewell’s analysis, including his own. Most but not all supported Jackson’s views.
A full blown moral panic ensued:
1. Jackson was denounced by an academic music society
2. Graduate students at UNT Texas signed a petition denouncing Jackson and calling for the journal to be dissolved and for all those involved to be “held accountable” (plausibly a call for punishment)
3. He was also denounced by most of his music theory colleagues at UNT in another open letter, which endorsed the graduate student open letter.
4. Another entirely open letter (i.e., not restricted to UNT or members of a music society) received over 900 signatories, denounced Jackson as a racist and called for an investigation by the university into the Journal of Schenkerian Studies.
The University complied. After conducting an investigation, it removed Jackson from editorship of the journal and shut down the journal. The Center for Schenkerian Studies also closed.
Aftermath
That is not the end of the story. Jackson sued UNT for violating his academic freedom. In 2025, he and UNT reached a settlement that included UNT admitting no wrongdoing but: 1. Paying him $725,000; 2. Reinstating the journal; 3. Reinstating Jackson as editor of the journal. The Center for Schenkerian Studies can once again be found on the UNT website. The regressive/progressive witch hunters may have won the first rounds of this battle, but, ultimately, I call that a victory for Jackson, and for academic freedom, regardless of what UNT calls it.
Gordon Klein
Gordon Klein is a professor of accounting at UCLA. As insane as all these stories are, I think this one may be the best/worst, at least in the nature of his “offense” and the disproportionality of the response. His “offense” did not even rate up there with “Black privilege” and UCLA never found “other” things to get him on. But, in a tribute to how completely insane academia went in The Summer of Floyd, after teaching there for 40 years, they suspended him and banned him from campus. “For what?” you ask.
For in the summer of 2020 refusing to grade Black students more leniently than other students. Or, more exactly, for stating that he would not do so. Sounds insane, right? When I write that academia went insane during the Summer of Floyd, I am not being melodramatic.
A student wrote a letter to Klein. The student’s letter (it was one student, despite the use of the royal “we” here) was politically brilliant. During the moral panic of 2020, all one needed to do was “say their names!” and academic leadership folded like a cheap suit. Here is an excerpt:
“The unjust murders of Amhaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, the lifethreatening [sic] actions of Amy Cooper, and the violent conduct of the UCPD in our own neighborhood have led to fear and anxiety which is further compounded by the disproportionate effect of COVID-19 on the Black community. As we approach finals week, we recognize that these conditions will place Black students at an unfair academic disadvantage due to traumatic circumstances out of their control.”
…We implore you to mandate that our final exam is structured as noharm, where they will only benefit students’ grades if taken…
The letter went on to call for Klein to grade Black students (and Black students only) “on a curve” in compensation for their fear and anxiety.
Klein’s email response, sent on June 2, 2020, was a bit snarky perhaps yet also brilliant:
Thanks for your suggestion in your email below that I give black students special treatment, given the tragedy in Minnesota.
Do you know the names of the classmates that are black? How can I identify them since we’ve been having online classes only?
Are there any students of mixed parentage, such as half black-half Asian? What do you suggest I do with respect to them? A full concession or just half?
Also, do you have any idea if any students are from Minneapolis? I assume that they probably are especially devastated as well. I am thinking that a white student from there might possibly be even more devastated by this, especially because some might think that they’re racist even if they are not. My TA is from Minneapolis, so if you don’t know, I can probably ask her.
Can you guide me on how I should achieve a “no-harm” outcome since our sole course grade is from a final exam only?
One last thing strikes me: Remember that MLK famously said that people should not be evaluated based on the “color of their skin.” Do you think that your request would run afoul of MLK’s admonition?
(Here we go again…).
His response was posted on social media, producing a(nother) firestorm. A petition called for his firing and garnered over 20,000 signatures. His dean called Klein’s email “outrageous” and, on cue, launched an “investigation.” Within days, he was suspended.
Three weeks later, the UCLA administration came to its senses and reinstated him. However, by then, serious damage had been done to his reputation and income outside of academia. As Klein described it:
You see, most of my income comes not from teaching at UCLA but from consulting to law firms and other corporations. Several of those firms dropped me after they got wind that I’d been suspended — the better to put distance between themselves and a “racist.” That cost me the lion’s share of my annual income. The students involved in this escapade may have moved on to other causes. I have not. I’m not sure I ever will.
But That is Not the End of the Story
UCLA seems to have had no idea what they were getting themselves into. Klein has a law degree and is well-connected in the legal community. He is wealthy from his consulting business, in which he consults for legal cases on … wait for it … you can’t make this up … ready? Damages in lawsuits.
Klein sued UCLA. And he also named his dean personally in the suit, claiming defamation. In total, the suit is for $22 million. Of course, UCLA tried to get it dismissed, but failed.
Stay tuned. The trial concluded on 9/6/25, but, as of this writing, I can find no court decision. Perhaps they are negotiating a settlement. I do not know Klein personally, but from all the public info, my guess is that, if he does settle, it will be in 7 figures. Of course, UCLA will admit no wrongdoing.
I will update this when a conclusion is reached — or, if you know that one has been reached, please post it in the comments.
Let’s Talk About Me
I have been subjected to a slew of cancellation attacks since 2018 (though not since 2022, so … something has improved?). Go here for a summary of the various gory details and links to more extended coverage, which I won’t go through again here, because this essay is not on the attacks per se, but on those who survived or thrived afterward:
The last and worst attack was in 2022, so allow me to brag a bit about how things have gone since then:
In 2023, Rutgers either doubled my salary or raised it by 60% depending on how you count. This included the largest permanent raise in my career. It was a direct benefit of having weathered these sorts of attacks. When asking me to take on a difficult position, the associate dean said, paraphrasing from memory, “We know you can do it, you have a thick skin.”
In 2024, I was inducted into American Academy of Science and Letters, an honorary society that requires both extraordinary academic/scientific accomplishments, and intellectual courage.
Contra the idea that people would be afraid to work with me because I was somehow tainted, I have been involved in some of the largest collaboration papers I have ever published, three of which are screenshotted here:
I’ve published two edited books, meaning we had no trouble getting people on board to contribute chapters:
I have recently published two adversarial collaborations on politicized topics, which is, I suspect, more than the entire rest of of my field put together has published over the last year. One is in press, and can be found here:
The other came out recently:
And,
so far,in 2025, I published 1713papers(and one or two in press may still come out this year),making it the most I have ever published in a single year. Plenty of people do this and more all the time, but that’s not the point. The point is that, contra the attempts to damage my professional reputation and career, it is a personal best.Contra the “distancing” and “tainted” analysis, my lab is hopping, with four superb graduate students and a slew of undergrads (which is one reason the pubs are up so high). If anything, I have something approaching a monopoly on attracting students interested in social psychyology who do not uncritically accept the progessive/far left shibboleths that dominate academia (I mean, who else can they work with? The answer is not actually 0, but its close).
My work was mentioned by the House committee as one inspiration for their hearings on antisemitism and academic freedom that ultimately led to the downfalls of then-Harvard and Penn presidents Gay and Magill.
It is also now routinely covered by mainstream news and opinion outlets from across the political spectrum. This never happened before 2020, and it has accelerated post 2022.
This Substack has been vastly more successful than I would have ever predicted, attracting subscribers both within and outside of academia, and from across the political spectrum. It had a huge spike in subscriptions, both free and paid, during The Attack of the Racist Mule denunciation.
So if there are still any would-be denouncers out there, this is my message to you: Bring it on. Its really working for me.
ADDED NOTE
Many of the early comments on this post seem to be missing the main point, which is on how seven of us survived and thrived after these sorts of cancelation attacks. I believe making this point through the seven examples of survivors and thrivers has the following values:
People often know about the cancelation attacks. But attention spans tend to be short and the coverage of the aftermaths has often gone under the radar. And yet, some of those aftermaths are both interesting and edifying. As such, they seem worth knowing.
The best way to protect the right to publicly dissent is to publicly dissent. However, this carries all sorts of risks. The seven stories show how, in very different ways, targets of these attacks successfully navigated those risks. Understanding how to navigate those risks is, perhaps, something any academic who engages in public controversies might find useful.
The denunciation mobs usually win in the short run. Because that’s when the publicity happens, people, including the mobsters themselves, may come away with what is sometimes the false impression that the mob won. People, and in my fantasies, the mobsters themselves, need to know that, often enough, in the long run, they failed.
The main points are not:
“This is some sort of comprehensive list of academics subject to attacks, investigations punishment, or firing.” If you want such a list, go to FIRE’s Scholars Under FIRE data base, which has over 1500 and is regularly updated with more. Starting in 2024, plenty of faculty have also been fired or forced out for pro-Palestinian advocacy (see FIRE’s database). They are also not the topic of this post (see the first line under ADDED NOTE and the italicized line of this paragraph).
“Look how bad the left is.” I mean, the regressive/progressive left has been horrible, but one could easily argue that Trump’s deportations of faculty and graduate students for legitimate speech is worse. But Trump policies, no matter how bad you think they are, are not cancelation attacks and, as such, are not the topic of this post. Furthermore, for most academics, attacks from within are a far more serious problem than attacks from outside academia (see the section in the post titled Reputational Harms…). Being denounced by Fox viewers can be worn by most academics as a badge of courage. Being denounced by 10,000 other academics, not so much.
Commenting
Before commenting, please review my commenting guidelines. They will prevent your comments from being deleted. Here are the core ideas:
Don’t attack or insult the author or other commenters.
Stay relevant to the post.
Keep it short.
Do not dominate a comment thread.
Do not mindread, its a loser’s game.
Don’t tell me how to run Unsafe Science or what to post. (Guest essays are welcome and inquiries about doing one should be submitted by email).
Footnote
Fuck. I say fuck all the time, especially at lab meetings and collaborative working meetings. That is because academia is filled with the type of fucking assholes that thought they could fuck with free speech and academic freedom, not to mention relentlessly producing slimy and dubious “research” and turning academia into an engine for progressive politics. There is sometimes no fucking better way to fucking capture how fucked academia can be than to refer to it as generally fucked and/or to refer to the fucking idiots running the fucking show as fucking idiots. In my last essay here, a commenter upbraided me for referring to the Nature reviewers of a paper we submitted as “fucking idiots” for the idiocy of their reviews — the problem targeted being my use of “fuck” rather than my use of “idiots” (at least we seem to have agreed on that). Instead of telling the language police to go fuck themselves, I could avoid using the word “fuck” by writing something like: “The language police should engage in an auto-erotic act.”
This one made my day. Thank you for these stories of survival; I know, it seems profanatory to use the word in a no life/death situation, but surviving a cancelling mob is survival nonetheless.
Thank you, Lee, you were the first one to support me after the backlash I received when I wrote that gender ideology article (https://hxstem.substack.com/p/the-new-gender-ideology-is-being) that increased my troubles. I am so grateful for your help and for the help of all the individuals and organizations that helped me. I am also thankful to God and my family. It has been a crazy five years; it is like the world went mad.