Thomas Chatterton Williams, along with more than 150 prominent journalists, authors and writers, published a letter decrying what it called the “intolerant climate that has set in on all sides” of debate in Harper’s Magazine on Tuesday, fueling a heated controversy over free speech, privilege and the role of social media in public discourse. “The free exchange of information and ideas,the lifeblood of a liberal society is daily becoming more constricted,” the letter states . “While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty.” The letter cites various harms it says have been caused by this state of affairs and concludes that “the restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes
The Y'allywood Reporter
Your Next Scene