Until now, I’d never thought that “Cancel Culture” could be considered a conspiracy theory.
I recently watched a lecture by Kansas State University professor and author, Philip Nel, who very briefly referred to Cancel Culture as a conspiracy theory. I was so intrigued by his lecture and his take on the recent news stories about Dr. Seuss Enterprises that I purchased his book, Was the Cat in the Hat Black? , and I look forward to better understanding racism in children’s literature, and how this ties into the potential conspiracy theory that is cancel culture. Before the more recent examples of what I think cancel culture refers to, my best understanding of the term was acquired from reading a book called The Coddling of the American Mind . In the book, authors Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt detail several stories about universities where faculty or guest speakers were “canceled”--either called upon to resign or uninvited from guest appearances--after student-led protests. The canceled parties were usually accused by students of expressing ideas that were racist, sexist, or