It is not usual to weave an editorial web around a single author who does not even have the 'merit' of being ancient. Greg Lukianoff's first book, 'Unlearning liberty: Campus censorship and end of American debate' appeared only in 2012. His latest, 'The cancelling of the American mind: The Cancel Culture undermines trust and threatens us all - But there is a solution' appeared earlier this year. The recent events at Harvard related to the war in Gaza have brought renewed attention on this writer who has forcefully brought into focus an issue that has, during the last decade, increasingly bedevilled the American civil society in general and the university campuses in particular. Freedom of speech is the quintessential ingredient of democracy even as its denial is a necessary criterion for defining the absence of democracy. By that yardstick, the Cancel Culture, that tries to shut out a person for expressing his views, aims to strike at the very roots of democracy. Lukianoff's book, 'Freedom from speech' from which we have borrowed the sub-title, refers to Paula Deen, a celebrated chef, whose travails resulting from the Cancel Culture were reported in the Los Angeles Times of June 19, 2013 under the headline, "Paula Deen admits using N-word, telling racist jokes". While explaining her words uttered eons ago, she said something that should become the motto for any anti-Cancel Culture movement, “I can’t
determine what offends another person”. If a person has to pre-judge the reaction of others before expressing herself, we shall take several steps towards the silence of the graveyard.

In February, 2021, in two successive editorials in this paper, "Cancel Culture: China's 'gift' to the world" and "China's cancel threats modulate the West" we had highlighted the plight of authors, Hollywood stars and producers, TV celebrities, sports bodies, the media and the elites of the corporate world, who had aired anything unpalatable to Beijing. They were promptly cancelled and receiving no support from their American peers, they soon grovelled and apologised or were put out of business. The latter were far and few, one of the examples being the star Richard Gere who was cancelled by China for speaking in 1993 at the Oscar ceremony about the plight of the Tibetans. Since then, during the last 30 years, Gere has not been invited as a presenter at the Oscars. In these thirty years, this 'gift' from China has permeated every democratic aspect of the US. It has become an integral part of the 'woke' culture, of the racist 'Black Lives Matter' that cancels anyone who says 'All Lives Matter' or speaks in favour of law enforcement by saying 'Blue Lives Matter'. It is almost impossible for a right-wing speaker to be invited to a major university and if so invited, the loud and often violent opposition sees to it that the invitation is withdrawn. Any campaign contribution to a pro-life organisation or one promoting the traditional family values will result in cancellation of the donor. Anybody speaking against biological males masquerading as females and using female public conveniences will similarly meet a cancellation fate as was found by Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling when she spoke in favour of biological women.

In "Unlearning Liberty", Lukianoff says, "Administrators [on campus] have been able to convince well-meaning students to accept  outright censorship by creating the impression that freedom of speech is somehow the enemy of social progress. ... The tactics and attitudes that shut down speech on campus are bleeding into the larger society and wreaking havoc on the way we talk among ourselves." The result of this cultural regression is the revealing title of a chapter in Lukianoff's "Freedom from Speech" - "Campus speech, disinvitation season, and the movement from the 'right not to be offended' to the 'expectation of confirmation'”. The long list of those who have been disinvited included Condoleezza Rice who has been United States Secretary of State and National Security Advisor of the United States and is at present director of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund.

In the 2018 book "The coddling of the American Mind: How good intentions and bad ideas are setting up a generation for failure" that Lukianoff co-authored with Jonathan Haidt, they talk about the three Great Untruths that have proliferated on many college campuses and are now spreading to the universities in the rest of the English-speaking world. They call them the untruth of fragility, the untruth of emotional reasoning and the untruth of ‘us’ versus ‘them’. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that what does not kill us makes us stronger, the first untruth preaches that all such perceived threats make us weaker. The second encourages overriding one's rational reasoning and letting emotions dominate. The third is the obvious outcome dividing the students into two irreconcilable camps. Rather than trust in their capability to filter ideas, the students demand protection against ideas that their emotions say are 'harmful'. Cancellation of speakers is one easy method for providing such protection. The whole process turns the fragility of the student mind into a desirable state that needs to be guarded against blows from 'them'.

Colleges and universities were conceptualised as havens for free-flowing ideas and even for the apparent absurdities of today that may turn out to be pearls of wisdom tomorrow. Instead, these are becoming bubbles in which students seek safety from ‘thought pollution’. Students’ minds are becoming fossilized into binary thinking, a symptom more associated with those who suffer from severe anxiety. This issue was raised before Obama when he was President. His response was straightforward. "I’ve heard some college campuses where they don’t want to have a guest speaker who is too conservative or they don’t want to read a book if it has language that is offensive to African-Americans or somehow sends a demeaning signal towards women. ... I don’t agree that you, when you become students at colleges, have to be coddled and protected from different points of view. ...  you should have an argument with ‘em. But you shouldn’t silence them by saying, "You can’t come because I'm too sensitive to hear what you have to say."

In the book "Cancelling the American Mind", co-authored with Rikki Schlott, Lukianoff sums up the fixed ideas in the echo chambers that used to be halls of learning reverberating with competing ideas, going through the convulsions of the Hegelian triad of thesis-antithesis-synthesis. “Bad people like you only have bad opinions!” screams one side at the other that responds, “No, only good people like me have good opinions!” The malady is not confined to the campuses anymore as students of yesterday are the components of civil society at various levels today. It has permeated politics, research institutions, science and business. Bipartisanship in politics is taking a back seat and more often research starts with conclusions looking for evidence and not vice versa. Issues of what constitutes gender, when is a foetus viable and whether parents are important in bringing up the child are being discussed from across rigid dividing lines. Political correctness is the new business of Hollywood and comedians often face cancellation, accused of tripping over the myriad red lines. The 'us' believe that 'them' have undergone Kafkaesque metamorphosis into a disgusting life form, co-existence or communication with which is unthinkable. Freedom of dissent has mutated into freedom from speech.