Cancel culture has been most prominently, and shamefully, practiced by progressives at the country’s leading universities. Speakers at major universities with conservative cultural and economic policy positions have been harassed, insulted and threatened at schools such as Stanford and those in the Ivy League.
I disagree with many of the policy positions and viewpoints of these conservative speakers. But they deserve to be heard, and heard in a respectful manner. The country’s leading universities are the quintessential and crucial places for presenting a wide diversity of ideas, philosophies and policy positions. Exposure to this diversity of viewpoints is one of the key reasons that one goes to college in the first place. College is the time to vigorously challenge one’s own ideas and principals and obtain exposure to many other ideas and philosophies.
Here is my tongue-in-cheek, hyperbole-focused suggestion for all those students, faculty and administrators that can’t tolerate hearing conservatives or other contrary viewpoints on campus: Start, and then attend, your own new college called Safe Cocoon University, with the new school’s mascot being a snowflake. Both conservatives and liberals have practiced cancel culture, but progressives control the country’s major universities, and it is at those major universities where cancel culture is the most inexcusable and damaging.
The Utah Senate’s Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment Confirmation Committee declined to approve Gov. Spencer Cox’s nomination of Salt Lake County Council member Suzanne Harrison to the Utah Air Quality Board. As I understand it, those Republicans on the committee who voted against Harrison did so on the basis of policy position disagreements with Harrison regarding things such as Tier 3 gasoline and tax breaks for Utah refineries.
Really? So only policy positions deemed appropriate by Republicans should be heard in the Utah Air Quality Board? There is no valid basis for her viewpoint to be excluded and thereby cancelled.
Harrison, in a now years-long tenure as a public servant, has demonstrated a high level of energy and dedication to the policy issues she feels are important. Her background as a physician and a public servant give her a valuable and insightful viewpoint on clean air issues. Her viewpoints have always been expressed in good faith. That does not mean her viewpoints are infallible. But a lack of infallibility is not a reason to be excluded from the Air Quality Board. Let any such infallible public servant metaphorically cast the first stone by opposing her on this basis.
Whether one is a university student or a member of a government board, one’s viewpoints and policy positions are enhanced by hearing different and at times contrary positions. If nothing else, hearing contrary views, and then in one’s own mind refuting such contrary viewpoints only strengthens and reconfirms one’s own viewpoint. At times, perhaps, hearing a contrary viewpoint will cause one to adjust and improve one’s own views.
It is unquestionable that organizations with a diversity of views, life experiences and ideas produce superior results. There is the well-known concept of the “marketplace of ideas.” Creating and allowing a marketplace of ideas, principally via the First Amendment, is a key reason for the superiority of liberal democracies such as the United States. Every entity, company or organization should strive to create its own internal, robust marketplace of ideas.
Placing Harrison on the Utah Air Quality Board will enhance the board’s marketplace of ideas, and thus improve the quality of whatever ideas and proposals are produced by the board. The Utah Air Quality Board has nine members. Harrison’s appointment to the board would hardly turn over control of it to her.
I feel confident that reasoning along the lines of what is presented herein was a key reason for Cox’s original nomination of Harrison.
It is time to free Suzanne Harrison and for the Utah Legislature to cease participating in cancel culture. I call on Cox to renominate Harrison for the Air Quality Board. I respectfully ask the Utah Legislature vote her onto the board and thereby enhance the board’s marketplace of ideas and thus improve the board’s results.
Eric Rumple
Eric Rumple lives in Sandy. He has an MBA from the University of Chicago and is the author of the novel “Forgive Our Debts.”