150多名欧美知识界名人联署发声反对不宽容的社会氛围（英汉双语）

近日，美国文化界名人一百五十多人联名发表了一封《关于正义和公开辩论的信》，联署者有 哈利波特的作者J.K.罗琳，知名学者福山，语言学家乔姆斯基，加拿大作家玛格丽特.艾特伍，黑人爵士乐音乐家温顿.马沙利斯等。针对当前压迫言论自由、思想自由的现象发声，反对日趋不宽容的社会氛围。

在席卷欧美的BLM运动(“黑人生命也重要”)中，“政治正确”的舆论力量已扩张到压制言论、思想和创作自由的程度。

“政治正确”本意是避免冒犯少数和弱势群体，纠正对于不同种族、性别、性取向、身心障碍、宗教的群体的歧视，然而当它成为一个优先等级最高且不容置疑的教条，就越来越多地成为一种审查制度，被用来限制言论自由、思想自由、学术自由、创作自由。

洛杉矶加大(UCLA)安德森管理学院会计系教授GordonKlein因一封拒绝为班上黑人学生放宽成绩的电邮，而遭2万人上网联署抗议，然后被学校停职。

原先在约翰霍普金斯大学任教的全球AI语音大牛DanielPovey不堪美国政治正确，被学生排挤，转投小米。

J.K.罗琳在推特上被网民指责歧视跨性别群体，只因她在评论中指“来月经的人”是女人，而忽略了跨性别者。政治正确创造了一套新语言，不使用这套新语言的名人会在网上被围攻。

言论自由以肉眼可见的速度收缩。激进的政治正确催生了道德审判、道德绑架，逼迫表态和站队。甚至没有积极应和"正确"主张的态度也是不被允许的。然而谁有权决定什么是正确呢？群众运动的规则是越激进就越正确。

确实需要更多的人发声了。在这个价值观分裂严重的世界，温和派的声音总是不如激进派的声音响亮。

以下是福山、罗琳等人的公开信，译文来自网络，我对照原文略作了一些改动。

关于正义和公开辩论的公开信

2020年7月7日

我们的文化机构正面临考验的时刻。强力的种族和社会正义抗议活动，带来对警察系统改革的更多要求，以及对整个社会更大程度的平等和包容的广泛呼吁，这些呼声尤其出现在高等教育，新闻业，慈善事业和艺术领域。

但是，这类重要的行动也同时加剧了一套新的道德标准和政治承诺的出现，这些倾向和态度在削弱我们对公开辩论和对分歧的容忍尺度，表现为要求意识形态的统一整合。

当我们为前者的现象喝彩时，我们也同时反对第二种情况的发展。

反自由主义的力量正在全世界范围内回潮，并在川普（DonaldTrump）集团中拥有强大的盟友，这对民主构成了真正的威胁。但是，我们不能让对此的抵抗变成另一个品牌的教条或压迫——而右翼煽动者已经在使用这些手段。我们只有反对在四面八方出现的不宽容现象，才能维护民主的包容。

知名学者 福山  

信息和思想的自由交换，本是自由社会的命脉，而现在每天都变得越来越受限。虽然我们早已期望对极端的权利加以限制，但在我们的文化中，审查做派也越来越广泛地传播起来：不宽容反对的声音，将公开羞辱和排斥作为一种新时尚，以及试图用盲目的道德确定性去解决复杂的政策问题。

我们曾经坚持维护来自各个角度的声音的价值，包括那些大声的甚至是苛刻的反对。但是现在，那些呼吁以迅速而严厉的报复来回应被视为逾矩的言论和思想的声音，开始变得很普遍。更令人不安的是，一些机构的领导们，为了控制损害，采取草率而过度的方式施行惩罚，而不是进行深思熟虑的改革。

音乐家 温顿.马沙利斯

编辑因发表有争议的文章而被解雇；书籍因所谓的不真实信息而遭到撤回；记者被禁止发表某些话题；教授因为课堂上引用某些文学作品而被调查；研究员因传播一个被同行评审的学术研究而被解雇；组织负责人因偶然的笨拙错误而被赶下台。

无论围绕每个特定事件的争论如何，其结果都是，言论自由且不用担心被惩罚的后果的范围进一步缩小。我们已经为规避风险付出了更多的代价，在作家、艺术家和新闻记者圈子里，他们担心如果自己偏离共识，甚至如果没有对共识表现出来足够的热情，就无法维持生计。

 语言学家 乔姆斯基

这种令人窒息的气氛，最终将损害我们这个时代最重要的东西。无论是出于压迫性的政府还是不宽容的社会，限制辩论总是首先会伤害到那些缺乏权力的人，并使每个人都减少民主参与的能动性。对于错误的思想，打败它们的方法是通过曝光、争论和说服，而不是通过消音或希望他们消失。我们拒绝在正义与自由之间做虚假选择，正义和自由离不开彼此。

作为作家，我们需要一种文化，让我们有进行实践、冒险甚至犯错误的空间。我们需要保留真诚分歧而且不会因此严重影响职业的可能性。如果我们不捍卫我们的职业所依赖的这种生命线，那么我们就不要指望公众或国家替我们去捍卫。

 英国作家 JK罗琳

A Letter on Justice and Open Debate 

July 7, 2020

Our cultural institutions are facing a moment of trial.Powerful protests for racial and social justice are leading to overdue demandsfor police reform, along with wider calls for greater equality and inclusionacross our society, not least in higher education, journalism, philanthropy,and the arts. But this needed reckoning has also intensified a new set of moralattitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of opendebate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity. As weapplaud the first development, we also raise our voices against the second. Theforces of illiberalism are gaining strength throughout the world and have apowerful ally in Donald Trump, who represents a real threat to democracy. Butresistance must not be allowed to harden into its own brand of dogma orcoercion—which right-wing demagogues are already exploiting. The democraticinclusion we want can be achieved only if we speak out against the intolerantclimate that has set in on all sides.

The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood ofa liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. While we have come toexpect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widelyin our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shamingand ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blindingmoral certainty. We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speechfrom all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift andsevere retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech andthought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panickeddamage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments insteadof considered reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces;books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred fromwriting on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works ofliterature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewedacademic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what aresometimes just clumsy mistakes. Whatever the arguments around each particularincident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can besaid without the threat of reprisal. We are already paying the price in greaterrisk aversion among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for theirlivelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal inagreement.

This stifling atmosphere will ultimately harm the most vitalcauses of our time. The restriction of debate, whether by a repressivegovernment or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power andmakes everyone less capable of democratic participation. The way to defeat badideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence orwish them away. We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom, whichcannot exist without each other. As writers we need a culture that leaves usroom for experimentation, risk taking, and even mistakes. We need to preservethe possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professionalconsequences. If we won’t defend the very thing on which our work depends, weshouldn’t expect the public or the state to defend it for us.

Elliot Ackerman

Saladin Ambar, Rutgers University

Martin Amis

Anne Applebaum

Marie Arana, author

Margaret Atwood

John Banville

Mia Bay, historian

Louis Begley, writer

Roger Berkowitz, Bard College

Paul Berman, writer

Sheri Berman, Barnard College

Reginald Dwayne Betts, poet

Neil Blair, agent

David W. Blight, Yale University

Jennifer Finney Boylan, author

David Bromwich

David Brooks, columnist

Ian Buruma, Bard College

Lea Carpenter

Noam Chomsky, MIT (emeritus)

Nicholas A. Christakis, Yale University

Roger Cohen, writer

Ambassador Frances D. Cook, ret.

Drucilla Cornell, Founder, uBuntu Project

Kamel Daoud

Meghan Daum, writer

Gerald Early, Washington University-St. Louis

Jeffrey Eugenides, writer

Dexter Filkins

Federico Finchelstein, The New School

Caitlin Flanagan

Richard T. Ford, Stanford Law School

Kmele Foster

David Frum, journalist

Francis Fukuyama, Stanford University

Atul Gawande, Harvard University

Todd Gitlin, Columbia University

Kim Ghattas

Malcolm Gladwell

Michelle Goldberg, columnist

Rebecca Goldstein, writer

Anthony Grafton, Princeton University

David Greenberg, Rutgers University

Linda Greenhouse

Rinne B. Groff, playwright

Sarah Haider, activist

Jonathan Haidt, NYU-Stern

Roya Hakakian, writer

Shadi Hamid, Brookings Institution

Jeet Heer, The Nation

Katie Herzog, podcast host

Susannah Heschel, Dartmouth College

Adam Hochschild, author

Arlie Russell Hochschild, author

Eva Hoffman, writer

Coleman Hughes, writer/Manhattan Institute

Hussein Ibish, Arab Gulf States Institute

Michael Ignatieff

Zaid Jilani, journalist

Bill T. Jones, New York Live Arts

Wendy Kaminer, writer

Matthew Karp, Princeton University

Garry Kasparov, Renew Democracy Initiative

Daniel Kehlmann, writer

Randall Kennedy

Khaled Khalifa, writer

Parag Khanna, author

Laura Kipnis, Northwestern University

Frances Kissling, Center for Health, Ethics, Social Policy

Enrique Krauze, historian

Anthony Kronman, Yale University

Joy Ladin, Yeshiva University

Nicholas Lemann, Columbia University

Mark Lilla, Columbia University

Susie Linfield, New York University

Damon Linker, writer

Dahlia Lithwick, Slate

Steven Lukes, New York University

John R. MacArthur, publisher, writer

Susan Madrak, writer

Phoebe Maltz Bovy, writer

Greil Marcus

Wynton Marsalis, Jazz at Lincoln Center

Kati Marton, author

Debra Mashek, scholar

Deirdre McCloskey, University of Illinois at Chicago

John McWhorter, Columbia University

Uday Mehta, City University of New York

Andrew Moravcsik, Princeton University

Yascha Mounk, Persuasion

Samuel Moyn, Yale University

Meera Nanda, writer and teacher

Cary Nelson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Olivia Nuzzi, New York Magazine

Mark Oppenheimer, Yale University

Dael Orlandersmith, writer/performer

George Packer

Nell Irvin Painter, Princeton University (emerita)

Greg Pardlo, Rutgers University – Camden

Orlando Patterson, Harvard University

Steven Pinker, Harvard University

Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Katha Pollitt, writer

Claire Bond Potter, The New School

Taufiq Rahim

Zia Haider Rahman, writer

Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, University of Wisconsin

Jonathan Rauch, Brookings Institution/The Atlantic

Neil Roberts, political theorist

Melvin Rogers, Brown University

Kat Rosenfield, writer

Loretta J. Ross, Smith College

J.K. Rowling

Salman Rushdie, New York University

Karim Sadjadpour, Carnegie Endowment

Daryl Michael Scott, Howard University

Diana Senechal, teacher and writer

Jennifer Senior, columnist

Judith Shulevitz, writer

Jesse Singal, journalist

Anne-Marie Slaughter

Andrew Solomon, writer

Deborah Solomon, critic and biographer

Allison Stanger, Middlebury College

Paul Starr, American Prospect/Princeton University

Wendell Steavenson, writer

Gloria Steinem, writer and activist

Nadine Strossen, New York Law School

Ronald S. Sullivan Jr., Harvard Law School

Kian Tajbakhsh, Columbia University

Zephyr Teachout, Fordham University

Cynthia Tucker, University of South Alabama

Adaner Usmani, Harvard University

Chloe Valdary

Helen Vendler, Harvard University

Judy B. Walzer

Michael Walzer

Eric K. Washington, historian

Caroline Weber, historian

Randi Weingarten, American Federation of Teachers

Bari Weiss

Sean Wilentz, Princeton University

Garry Wills

Thomas Chatterton Williams, writer

Robert F. Worth, journalist and author

Molly Worthen, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Matthew Yglesias

Emily Yoffe, journalist

Cathy Young, journalist

Fareed Zakaria

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原文出处：https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/

来源：猫本的闲暇时光

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