JK Rowling among high-profile names fearing for free speech

JK Rowling, Sir Salman Rushdie and Margaret Atwood are among prominent figures from the arts world who have signed a letter warning of an “intolerant climate” for free speech.

The 150 high-profile signatories say recent protests for racial and social justice are a “needed reckoning” but decried what they describe as the weakening of open debate in favour of “ideological conformity”.

The letter, published in Harper’s

Magazine, comes amid a debate over so-called cancel culture, where public figures face criticism for perceived acts of offence.

It states: “The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted.

“While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty.”

As well as Gloucestershire-raised Harry Potter creator Rowling, others to put their name to the statement include academics and intellectuals Noam Chomsky, Gloria Steinem and Garry Kasparov.

Rowling has attracted stern criticism recently for her comments on biological sex, though she strongly denies being transphobic.

And Atwood, a two-time winner of the Booker Prize, has placed herself on the opposite side of the debate, telling fans to “Rejoice in Nature’s infinite variety!”

The letter in Harper’s Magazine criticised the current state of public debate and the “swift and severe retribution” dealt out to any perceived wrongs.