Draft:Canceling of the American Mind

The Canceling of the American Mind: How Cancel Culture Undermines Trust is a 2023 book by Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott that serves as a sequel of sorts to Lukianoff's 2018 book The Coddling of the American Mind, which he co-authored with Jonathan Haidt; as such, much of the book builds off of ideas that had been introduced in the latter text. Given its focus on cancel culture, the book also includes a number of case studies of figures who have been "canceled" (that is, publicly shamed and harassed) on social media and/or in real life for promoting controversial views related to hot-button sociopolitical issues, and discusses how freedom of speech can be maintained as an ideal in American civic life in spite of such incidents as these.

With that being said, however, the book is not without its flaws, chief among them being its discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic, which contains several errors of fact. Interestingly, it would seem that these errors all happen to point in the same direction, painting the likes of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya as misunderstood thinkers whose work was unfairly dismissed by the medical establishment.