In Defense of The Letter

The chilly climate for dissent is real

When I was asked to sign an open letter in support of both racial equity and free exchange of ideas to be published in Harper’s, I figured it would land with a fairly big impact, considering some of the names attached: Salman Rushdie, Gloria Steinem, Wynton Marsalis, Margaret Atwood.

To be honest, I had no idea how big. Turns out it was big enough to be on the front page of The New York Times and to kick off a debate that is still going more than a week later.

Predictably, the letter, which notes right-wing threats to democracy but focuses on the rise of left-wing illiberalism, has been met with a storm of criticism — from a counter-letter signed by dozens of progressive pundits to numerous articles (including one by Elizabeth Picciuto in Arc Digital) to innumerable tweets. Even progressive political star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic congresswoman from New York, weighed in with her own Twitter thread.

The Letter and the responses — including positive ones such as Oliver Traldi’s and Berny Belvedere’s separate essays in Arc — raise far too many questions for one article. But a few…