(p. A1) The killing of George Floyd has brought an intense moment of racial reckoning in the United States. As protests spread across the country, they have been accompanied by open letters calling for — and promising — change at white-dominated institutions across the arts and academia.
But on Tuesday, a different type of letter appeared online. Titled “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate,” and signed by 153 prominent artists and intellectuals, it began with an acknowledgment of “powerful protests for racial and social justice” before pivoting to a warning against an “intolerant climate” engulfing the culture.
“The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted,” the letter declared, citing “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.”
“We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom, which cannot exist without each other,” it continues. “As writers we need a culture that leaves us room for experimentation, risk taking, and even mistakes.”
The letter, . . . was published by Harper’s Magazine and will also appear in several leading international publications, . . .
. . .
(p. A19) The debate over diversity, free expression and the limits of acceptable opinion is a long-burning one. But the letter, which was spearheaded by the writer Thomas Chatterton Williams, began taking shape about a month ago, as part of a long-running conversation about these issues with a small group of writers including the historian David Greenberg, the writer Mark Lilla and the journalists Robert Worth and George Packer.
. . .
“We’re not just a bunch of old white guys sitting around writing this letter,” Mr. Williams, who is African-American, said. “It includes plenty of Black thinkers, Muslim thinkers, Jewish thinkers, people who are trans and gay, old and young, right wing and left wing.” Continue reading “Diverse Distinguished Intellectuals Defend Free Speech”
Category: Free Speech
Ben Rogge’s Job
Ben Rogge would have turned 100 in 2020. He believed that we flourish through innovation and that truth emerges through…
Posted by Arthur Diamond on Sunday, August 9, 2020
FEE Features Three Articles Opposing Masks and One Article in Favor
On Thursday, August 6, 2020, the Foundation for Economic Education’s (FEE’s) web site featured four articles on masks, three opposed and one in favor. The web site provides further proof that the majority is not always right, but also proof that FEE is open to hearing minority arguments.
“Privileged Solipsistic Elites” Defend Their Opposition to Free Speech
(p. A17) Three days after an open letter signed by more than 150 cultural luminaires darkly warning of a growing “intolerant climate” stirred intense response on the internet, another group issued a counterblast on Friday [July 10, 2020] accusing them of elitism, hypocrisy and complicity in the bullying they decry.
The first letter, titled “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate,” was posted online on Tuesday [July 7, 2020] by Harper’s Magazine. Signed by prominent figures in the arts, media and academia, including Margaret Atwood, Wynton Marsalis and J.K. Rowling, it warned of a growing tide of illiberalism and a weakening of “our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity.”
. . .
On Friday, after the response letter was posted, the writer Thomas Chatterton Williams, who spearheaded the Harper’s letter, highlighted the more than two dozen Black and other nonwhite intellectuals who signed his letter.
“You know, just a bunch of privileged solipsistic elites worrying about problems that don’t exist,” Mr. Williams, who is Black, tweeted. “So far, haven’t seen any of the formerly imprisoned signatories or the ones who have experienced fatwas cave to the social media backlash, though,” he added.
His dig was a reference to the fact that criticism of the Harper’s letter centered as much on who signed it as its content.
For the full story, see:
(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed dates, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date July 10, 2020, and has the title “An Open Letter on Free Expression Draws a Counterblast.”)
The Courageous Flavor of Goya’s Frijoles Negros
In my new role as celebrity gourmet influencer, I announce that I recently switched from Trader Joe's Latin Style Black…
Posted by Arthur Diamond on Sunday, July 12, 2020
“All You Need Is a Pair of Eyes”
(p. 1) MUNICH — Dr. Camilla Rothe was about to leave for dinner when the government laboratory called with the surprising test result. Positive. It was Jan. 27 [2020]. She had just discovered Germany’s first case of the new coronavirus.
But the diagnosis made no sense. Her patient, a businessman from a nearby auto parts company, could have been infected by only one person: a colleague visiting from China. And that colleague should not have been contagious.
The visitor had seemed perfectly healthy during her stay in Germany. No coughing or sneezing, no signs of fatigue or fever during two days of long meetings. She told colleagues that she had started feeling ill after the flight back to China. Days later, she tested positive for the coronavirus.
. . .
Dr. Rothe and her colleagues were among the first to warn the world. But even as evidence accumulated from other scientists, leading health officials expressed unwavering confidence that symptomless spreading was not important.
In the days and weeks to come, politicians, public health officials and rival academics disparaged or ignored the Munich team. Some actively worked to undermine the warnings at a crucial moment, as the disease was spreading unnoticed in French churches, Italian soccer stadiums and Austrian ski bars. A cruise ship, the Diamond Princess, would become a deadly harbinger of symptomless spreading. Continue reading ““All You Need Is a Pair of Eyes””
Walt Disney (the Company) Evicts the Spirit of Walt Disney (the Entrepreneur)
I argue that Walt Disney (the company) should not evict the upbeat, resourceful, trickster rabbit who Walt Disney (the…
Posted by Arthur Diamond on Tuesday, July 7, 2020
“The New York Times Is Going to Basically Be a Monopoly”
(p. B1) The gulf between The Times and the rest of the industry is vast and keeps growing: The company now has more digital subscribers than The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and the 250 local Gannett papers combined, according to the most recent data. And The Times employs 1,700 journalists — a huge number in an industry where total employment nationally has fallen to somewhere between 20,000 and 38,000.
The Times so dominates the news business that it has absorbed many of the people who once threatened it: The former top editors of Gawker, Recode, and Quartz are all at The Times, as are many of the reporters who first made Politico a must-read in Washington.
I spent my whole career competing against The Times, so coming to work here feels a bit like giving in. And I worry that the success of The Times is crowding out the competition.
“The New York Times is going to basically be a monopoly,” predicted Jim VandeHei, the founder of Axios, which started in 2016 with plans to sell digital subscriptions but has yet to do so. “The Times will get bigger and the niche will get nichier, and nothing else will survive.”
For the full commentary, see:
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date March 1, 2020, and the title “Why the Success of The New York Times May Be Bad News for Journalism.”)
Anti-Hydroxychloroquine Lancet Study Retracted by Authors
(p. A7) Two major studies casting doubt on the ability of antimalaria drugs to treat Covid-19 patients based on data from a little-known Chicago company, Surgisphere Corp., were retracted Thursday [June 4, 2020].
The Lancet first pulled a study published late last month that found antimalarials provided no benefit as a treatment for Covid-19 infections while increasing the risk of heart problems and death. The New England Journal of Medicine then retracted a separate article, published in early May, that examined the impact of cardiovascular and blood-pressure drugs in Covid-19 patients.
. . .
Three of the Lancet paper’s authors said they decided to retract the paper after Surgisphere refused to share the full data set as part of a review triggered by concerns raised by outside researchers. The Lancet published a correction to the study on May 29.
“We always aspire to perform our research in accordance with the highest ethical and professional guidelines,” the authors, Drs. Mehra, Patel and Frank Ruschitzka said in a statement. “We can never forget the responsibility we have as researchers to scrupulously ensure that we rely on data sources that adhere to our high standards. Based on this development, we can no longer vouch for the veracity of the primary data sources.”
. . .
Following the study, the World Health Organization paused enrolling patients in clinical trials of hydroxychloroquine, although this week the organization said it resumed the trials.
In the days following publication of the study, however, other researchers began to raise questions about the Surgisphere data, first on social media and in emails, then in an open letter to The Lancet and the study’s authors. More than 100 researchers signed on to the letter.
For the full story, see:
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added. In the passages quoted above, where the online version differs from the print version, the quoted passages follow the online version.)
(Note: the online version of the story was updated June 5, 2020, and has the title “Hydroxychloroquine Studies Tied to Data Firm Surgisphere Retracted.”)
Ridley Quotes Petrovsky: “We Can’t Exclude the Possibility That This Came From a Laboratory Experiment”
(p. C3) What about the controversial claim that the virus may have originated in a laboratory? Both Ralph Baric’s team at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Shi Zhengli’s team at the Wuhan Institute of Virology have been working on SARS-like coronaviruses and testing their ability to infect human cells. They have for some years reported successful experiments in which they created new strains of the virus by manipulating the spike proteins that are now the focus of discovering the origin of SARS-CoV-2, and their research has included inserting furin cleavage sites.
The two teams made these so-called chimeric viruses in order to understand what makes viruses more or less dangerous and in the hope of being ready to protect people against a future SARS epidemic. In 2015 they published a joint experiment in which they combined parts of one mouse-adapted SARS-like coronavirus with a spike gene from a SARS-like coronavirus derived from Chinese bats.
In reporting their results, they expressed caution about continuing such risky experiments: “On the basis of these findings, scientific review panels may deem similar studies building chimeric viruses based on circulating strains too risky to pursue, as increased pathogenicity in mammalian models cannot be excluded.” They added: “The potential to prepare for and mitigate future outbreaks must be weighed against the risk of creating more dangerous pathogens.”
Nikolai Petrovsky and colleagues at Flinders University in Australia have found that SARS-CoV-2 has a higher affinity for human receptors than for any other animal species they tested, including pangolins and horseshoe bats. He suggests that this could have happened if the virus was being cultured in human cells, adding that “We can’t exclude the possibility that this came from a laboratory experiment.”
For the full commentary, see:
(Note: I corrected a misspelling of Petrovsky’s name.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary was the date May 29, 2020 and has the same title as the print version.)
The manuscript co-authored by Petrovsky, and mentioned above, is reported in:
YouTube, Vimeo, and Twitter Censor Firm Working on Ultraviolet Covid-19 Cure
(p. A15) Early in the Covid-19 pandemic, Aytu BioScience made a commitment to find ways to help. One of those ways came through our newly formed relationship with a prominent Los Angeles hospital.
On April 20 [2020] we put out a press release titled “Aytu BioScience Signs Exclusive Global License with Cedars-Sinai for Potential Coronavirus Treatment.” The treatment is called Healight, and it was developed by research physicians at the hospital’s Medically Associated Science and Technology Program. The technology, which has been in development since 2016, uses ultraviolet light as an antimicrobial and is a promising potential treatment for Covid-19.
Aytu and Cedars-Sinai have engaged with the Food and Drug Administration to pursue a rapid path to human use through an Emergency Use Authorization. But hardly anyone noticed—until Thursday, when President Trump mused, “. . . supposing you brought the light inside the body . . .”
My team and I knew the president’s comments could trigger a backlash against the idea of UV light as a treatment, which might hinder our ability to get the word out. We decided to create a YouTube account, upload a video animation we had created, and tweet it out. It received some 50,000 views in 24 hours.
Then YouTube took it down. So did Vimeo. Twitter suspended our account. The narrative changed from whether UV light can be used to treat Covid-19 to “Aytu is being censored.”
For the full commentary, see:
(Note: bracketed year added, ellipses in original.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date April 27, 2020, and the title “An Experimental Ultraviolet Light Treatment for Covid-19 Takes Political Heat.”)