Good morning. I’m sure most of you have read this already, but if you haven’t, Bari Weiss, who has worked at The New York Times since 2017 (she worked at the Wall Street Journal previously), has resigned, citing harassment and a “hostile work environment”:

My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how I’m ‘writing about the Jews again.’ Several colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by coworkers. My work and my character are openly demeaned on company-wide Slack channels where masthead editors regularly weigh in. There, some coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly ‘inclusive’ one, while others post ax emojis next to my name. Still other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action. They never are.

There are terms for all of this: unlawful discrimination, hostile work environment, and constructive discharge. I’m no legal expert. But I know that this is wrong.

I do not understand how you have allowed this kind of behavior to go on inside your company in full view of the paper’s entire staff and the public. And I certainly can’t square how you and other Times leaders have stood by while simultaneously praising me in private for my courage. Showing up for work as a centrist at an American newspaper should not require bravery.

Part of me wishes I could say that my experience was unique. But the truth is that intellectual curiosity—let alone risk-taking—is now a liability at The Times. Why edit something challenging to our readers, or write something bold only to go through the numbing process of making it ideologically kosher, when we can assure ourselves of job security (and clicks) by publishing our 4000th op-ed arguing that Donald Trump is a unique danger to the country and the world? And so self-censorship has become the norm.

Shortly after Weiss’s letter was published, Andrew Sullivan announced on Twitter that he has resigned from his position at New York magazine. “Sullivan, who had been a writer-at-large for New York since 2016, added he would address ‘the broader questions’ surrounding his departure in his final column Friday.”

All of this follows the Harper’s letter last week calling for more open debate, which many on the left continue to dismiss or mock. Will a letter and two resignations change anything? Nope. Will things get worse? I think so, because they can get worse—a lot worse. The diminished freedom that writers like Weiss and Sullivan and many others feel, including many academics, is bad and real enough, but we are still relatively free to say what we want, though, like Weiss and Sullivan, we may have to change jobs to say it. There may come a time when we can’t even do this.

In other news: Ross Douthat explains “cancel culture” for the perplexed: “Cancellation, properly understood, refers to an attack on someone’s employment and reputation by a determined collective of critics, based on an opinion or an action that is alleged to be disgraceful and disqualifying . . . All cultures cancel; the question is for what, how widely and through what means.”

Speaking of cancel culture, Alexandra Duncan cancelled her own novel—Ember Days—after another writer questioned her suitability, as a white woman, to write about the Gullah people. Then Publishers Weekly, which had posted an article about Duncan’s decision, canceled its article about the cancelation, because it mentioned the writer who questioned Duncan’s suitability by name. Where’s Tom Wolfe when you need him?

John McWhorter finally reads Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility. He is not impressed: “DiAngelo also writes as if certain shibboleths of the Black left—for instance, that all disparities between white and Black people are due to racism of some kind—represent the incontestable truth. This ideological bias is hardly unique to DiAngelo, and a reader could look past it, along with the other lapses in argumentation I have noted, if she offered some kind of higher wisdom. The problem is that White Fragility is the prayer book for what can only be described as a cult. We must consider what is required to pass muster as a non-fragile white person. Refer to a ‘bad neighborhood,’ and you’re using code for Black; call it a ‘Black neighborhood,’ and you’re a racist; by DiAngelo’s logic, you are not to describe such neighborhoods at all, even in your own head. You must not ask Black people about their experiences and feelings, because it isn’t their responsibility to educate you. Instead, you must consult books and websites. Never mind that upon doing this you will be accused of holding actual Black people at a remove, reading the wrong sources, or drawing the wrong lessons from them. You must never cry in Black people’s presence as you explore racism, not even in sympathy, because then all the attention goes to you instead of Black people. If you object to any of the ‘feedback’ that DiAngelo offers you about your racism, you are engaging in a type of bullying ‘whose function is to obscure racism, protect white dominance, and regain white equilibrium.’ That is a pretty strong charge to make against people who, according to DiAngelo, don’t even conceive of their own whiteness. But if you are white, make no mistake: You will never succeed in the ‘work’ she demands of you. It is lifelong, and you will die a racist just as you will die a sinner.”

John Wilson writes about walking and prayer: “Much as I value walking, I don’t want to sell it to anyone, and I don’t want anyone trying to sell it to me. But isn’t that attitude prideful, a bit too fastidious? Which brings me to the book under review. Mark Buchanan is a Canadian pastor and the author of many books. His latest, God Walk: Moving at the Speed of Your Soul, is unapologetically inspirational in its intent. He hopes to motivate readers who walk only when it’s obligatory (they are legion) to walk more, yes, but his goals extend well beyond that. He wants all of us to think about walking and practice walking with a new mindfulness, informed by God’s self-revelation in Scripture. To this end, Buchanan draws on a rich variety of biblical texts; the motif of walking, he argues, runs through the Bible in a way that most of us have never noticed. Before going further, I need to tell you two things. First, there is a lot in God Walk that rubs me the wrong way. Sometimes this is a matter of disagreement with an argument; in other instances, it’s a matter of taste or style (and the distinction between principled disagreement and ‘taste’ is often difficult to make). But, second, there is a lot in God Walk that I value; I’m not at all sorry to have spent time reading and thinking about the book.

Jeremy Beer revisits Silvestre Vélez de Escalante’s exploration of the American Southwest: “Almost a hundred years ago, the eminent historian Herbert Bolton complained that standard narratives of U.S. history left out the Spanish story almost entirely. Every schoolchild knew about Lewis and Clark; few if any, even in the schoolhouses of the West, knew of the equally, if not more, impressive expeditions and explorations of Junípero Serra, Juan Bautista de Anza, or Francisco Garcés. Furthermore, what little was taught about the entradas of the Spanish pioneers was inevitably colored by the Black Legend of their depredations and iniquity—a legend popular in the Protestant English-speaking world for centuries. Bolton’s response to this state of affairs was to undertake one of the most impressive scholarly projects in American intellectual history. In dusty, often disorganized archives scattered throughout Spain, Mexico, and elsewhere, he uncovered long-forgotten, never-translated manuscripts. Among them were documents related to Coronado’s conquest of New Mexico; the memoirs of the great Jesuit Eusebio Kino, charismatic missionary to the peoples of Baja California and New Spain’s northern frontier; the reports filed by Anza, Father Garcés, and others about the trails they had blazed into California and the unmapped wilderness north of Sonora; and the diary of Fr. Garcés’s Franciscan contemporary, Fray Silvestre Vélez de Escalante, which tells the story of the nine-month journey he and his companions made from Santa Fe into today’s Colorado, Utah, and Arizona. Bolton was no armchair historian. He retraced the paths of each of these explorers, often on horseback and under difficult conditions, the better to see the terrain through their eyes and to understand and more truthfully tell their stories. His 1951 book on the Escalante expedition draws on such firsthand knowledge. It is one of very few books devoted to this remarkable journey. Enter David Roberts, journalist and author of two dozen books of exploration and Southwestern history. His Escalante’s Dream: On the Trail of the Spanish Discovery of the Southwest offers a contemporary reinterpretation of the Escalante expedition.”

Jorge González-Gallarza Hernández reviews The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class.

Venice tests its $6 billion flood defense system: “Italy has successfully conducted the first full test of Venice’s flood defence system, a much-delayed project designed in 1984 but still incomplete a decade after it was due to come into service. Amid much fanfare, the Italian prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, activated the 78 mobile barriers of the Mose dam on Friday . . .  More tests will be carried out over the coming months and the barrier will not be fully functional until the end of 2021.”

Photos: Shortlist for Astronomy Photographer of the Year

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