After the independent student newspaper The Sundial ran a column by deputy editor Nikos Mohammadi and writer Christina Ma criticizing the one-sided coverage of the allegations, the Columbia students went into a familiar groupthink, cancel mode. The students were shocked that Mohammadi and Ma took the invitation to “tell the story” literally by offering a different perspective on the still developing case.

The event, “Who Gets to Tell the Story? Press Freedom & the Public Square,” was billed as an inclusive panel of student journalists from various campus publications that included the editor-in-chief of The Sundial.

However, just hours before the event, the Columbia Open Discourse Alliance, a student “free speech and open dialogue” group,  canceled the event. It issued an announcement that was long on virtue-signaling and short on journalistic values:  “We felt that we couldn’t host a conversation about who gets to tell a story at this sort of a moment when so many survivors felt that their stories were under attack or weren’t being believed.”

The editors dragged out the old saw of cancel campaigns, saying that they could not guarantee the safety of the event in light of the recent publication. However, it was worse than yielding to the mob. The Alliance seems indistinguishable from the mob.

Notably, if security were such a concern, the Alliance did not explain whether the university had been asked to supply greater security or why the event could not be held virtually.

The triggering event was the publication of the student column, which was notably part of a two-column display of opposing views on the coverage. In other words, Sundial did precisely what the event seemed to advocate: it allowed all voices to be heard. The response to such a balanced discussion was that Columbia students went into collective vapors and immediately canceled the event.

I have previously written about the Cornell case and raised concerns over what I saw as the same pattern emerging that we saw in the Duke rape case.

When that allegation was first raised, press, pundits and professors quickly joined a chorus of condemnation of the accused students. When some of us raised doubts about the allegations (including the total absence of supporting forensic and other evidence of a gang rape), we were attacked as being insensitive to rape victims.

Duke University abandoned its students as the media whipped the public into a frenzy.

The media quickly lionized Durham District Attorney Michael B. Nifong as he pandered to the mob in portraying the students as personifying a racist rape culture in the United States.

Then the case collapsed. Crystal Mangum later admitted that she had lied.

Nifong was disbarred and Mangum later went to jail for murder in an unrelated case.

All the politicians and pundits who declared the Duke students guilty simply shrugged and moved on to the next scandal, demanding instant, uninformed judgments.

I have stated that the Cornell case is different and has a stronger foundation than the Duke case. However, there are conflicting accounts and major questions that must still be answered.

Nevertheless, the same voices are being heard in denouncing those who want to wait for the evidence before passing judgment.

Even high schools are now engaging in censorship. I just wrote a column about a high school student in California who was disciplined for simply writing “Free the Cornell 7” on his personal Instagram account. Hundreds of students called for their fellow student to be expelled or suspended for expressing his opposing views of the case.

In their column, Ma and Mohammadi criticized the immediate judgments reached over the case and the orthodox narrative that now pervades the coverage. They asked why there was not greater discussion of difficult issues of consent and personal responsibility:

“In a liberal society, women are allowed to make bad decisions, ones that may later reveal themselves as deleterious. The discourse, nonetheless, seems to omit the possibility that consensual sex, to the woman participating in it, can later reveal itself as traumatic and immoral.”

I understand that such views are provocative and triggering for some. However, this is a case that touches on difficult social and legal questions. Universities are supposed to be places where such questions can be discussed openly and freely.

Unfortunately, the response is all too familiar: those claiming to advocate understanding and empathy unleashed a vicious cancel campaign against these two students.

In a column in UnHeard, Mohammadi said he has been inundated by threats “urging me to commit suicide or demanding that my career and life be destroyed.” He added:

Even the Columbia Open Discourse Alliance, or CODA, of which I was once a board member, has condemned us. The group wrote in a statement that “CODA exists because we believe in free expression and the open exchange of ideas, including ideas we disagree with.” But, you know, not really.

Alliance president Aum Desai has responded to the controversy with an explanation of the cancellation that is perfectly Orwellian: “We did so not in spite of, but because of our commitment to free expression.”

Ok, let’s unpack this: You canceled a free press event after two student writers expressed an opposing view of a story because of your “commitment to free expression”? That is akin to saying that your commitment to free exercise of religion compelled you to cancel religious services until others felt comfortable with the exercise of the right by different faiths.

Desai offered the same excuse of past cancel campaigns that preventing these voices from being heard was the only way to ensure that all voices could “feel safe to come forward and be heard.” All voices, that is, except Mohammadi and Mo, or others with opposing views of the coverage.

The Alliance had to choose between the values of the media and the demands of the mob. They chose the mob by canceling this event.

As the famed journalist Edward R. Murrow once said, “Anyone who isn’t confused really doesn’t understand the situation.”