RESISTING CANCEL CULTURE - Promoting Dialogue, Debate, and Free Speech in the College Classroom

Oct 15, 2026

An essay on resisting “cancel culture” in college classrooms, arguing for robust free speech grounded in constitutional civil liberties and intellectual pluralism. The work situates cancel culture as an old, recurring threat to open inquiry, citing classic defenses of free expression and social critique. It distinguishes principled criticism from coercive social punishment, showing how intimidation and deplatforming chill viewpoint diversity. It also frames cancel culture as a legal-adjacent civil liberties concern in today’s private academic and media spheres.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryReligion & Spirituality

FormatPDF

Pages28

Reading Time1 h 11 min

AccessFree to download

RESISTING CANCEL CULTURE

Promoting Dialogue, Debate, and Free Speech in the College Classroom

Foreword by Jonathan Rauch

RESISTING CANCEL CULTURE Promoting Dialogue, Debate, and Free Speech in the College Classroom BY NADINE STROSSEN Perspectives on Higher Education American Council of Trustees and Alumni | Institute for Effective Governance® ACTA is an independent, nonprofit organization committed to academic freedom, excellence, and accountability at America’s colleges and universities. Founded in 1995, ACTA is the only national organization dedicated to working with alumni, donors, trustees, and education leaders across the United States to support liberal arts education, uphold high academic standards, safeguard the free exchange of ideas on campus, and ensure that the next generation receives an intellectually rich, high-quality education at an affordable price. Our network consists of alumni and trustees from nearly 1,300 colleges and universities, including over 23,000 current board members. Our quarterly newsletter, Inside Academe, reaches more than 13,000 readers. ACTA’s Institute for Effective Governance® (IEG), founded in 2003 by college and university trustees for trustees, is devoted to enhancing boards’ effectiveness and helping trustees fulfill their fiduciary responsibilities fully and effectively. IEG offers a range of services tailored to the specific needs of individual boards and focuses on academic quality, academic freedom, and accountability. Through its Perspectives on Higher Education essays, the Institute for Effective Governance® seeks to stimulate discussion of key issues affecting America’s colleges and universities. © American Council of Trustees and Alumni 2020. All rights reserved. RESISTING CANCEL CULTURE Promoting Dialogue, Debate, and Free Speech in the College Classroom BY NADINE STROSSEN American Council of Trustees and Alumni Institute for Effective Governance® November 2020 NADINE STROSSEN Nadine Strossen is the John Marshall Harlan II Professor of Law Emerita at New York Law School and served as the first female president of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1991 to 2008. Professor Strossen is a stalwart defender of free speech and was named one of the National Law Journal’s “100 Most Influential Lawyers in America.” Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin Scalia, and David Souter participated in her retirement luncheon. Professor Strossen is a leading expert on constitutional law and civil liberties; she has given thousands of public presentations and has published over 300 works for both scholarly and general-interest publications. She is most recently the author of Hate: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship, published in 2018 by Oxford University Press. She currently serves on the advisory councils ofthe American Civil Liberties Union, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, the Heterodox Academy, and the National Coalition Against Censorship. Professor Strossen received her B.A. from Harvard College, where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1972, and her J.D. from Harvard Law School, where she served as editor of the Harvard Law Review and graduated magna cum laude in 1975. She has practiced law in her hometown of Minneapolis as well as in New York City. FOREWORD by Jonathan Rauch Nadine Strossen, a friend and mentor to me for almost 30 years, has built one of America’s most distinguished careers among defenders of free speech and civil liberties. She served for almost 18 years as the American Civil Liberties Union’s president (the first woman to serve in that post), taught law at New York Law School, writes elegantly and passionately (most recently, Hate: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship), and went to Harvard (well, no one is perfect). Now, in “Resisting Cancel Culture,” she puts us in her debt yet again. Cancel culture, as it has recently come to be known, may be a new dinnertable topic, but it is not a new phenomenon. Anything but. As Strossen points out, J.S. Mill warned against it

FAQs

What does the document argue cancel culture does to discussion on campus?

It argues cancel culture isolates, intimidates, deplatforms, or demoralizes adversaries, creating a chill that reduces willingness to voice real opinions.

How does the document distinguish criticism from cancel culture?

It states criticism uses rational, non-coercive persuasion to uncover truth and support viewpoint diversity, while cancel culture manipulates social or media environments in a coercive way.

Why does the author connect cancel culture to civil liberties even though it operates in private spaces?

The document claims that as government censorship protections expanded, the relevant actions shifted to campuses and media environments, making it a concern for civil libertarians.

Oct 15, 2026

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