Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket, has cancelled his plans to speak at Wesleyan for commencement, and will be replaced by Anita Hill. This is the correct outcome. If somehow you missed it, I wrote about Snicket and the allegations of sexual harassment last week.
Now the usual “free speech” folks are going to claim this is about intolerance for controversial speakers. We need to resist that framing. It’s about not putting a sexual harasser on stage with a woman who has spent her career fighting sexual harassment and giving them both honors. Fight the category error.
More to come on this. In the meantime, I really think Handler should just cancel his public events for awhile, do some work, and then come out with an affirmative statement about how he’s going to change his conduct, and then he should change his conduct.
Meanwhile, the silence from male authors on social media has been very, well, silent. Around this and far too many other abusers in their industry. Folks notice.