Update: Eric Zorn’s Surrender To The Cancel Mob and DePaul University’s Gutless Response – Wirepoints

By: Mark Glennon*

What a shameful episode for Eric Zorn, DePaul University and journalism.

First, you need the background.

Zorn, a prominent, former Chicago Tribune columnist, was scheduled to be on a panel ironically titled “Tough times for local journalism.” The panel was sponsored by DePaul University’s Center for Journalism Integrity and Excellence (CJIE) and a group called the DePaul University Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ).

Two DePaul students led the charge to silence Zorn last Sunday. Writing in the school paper, The DePaulia, Sonal Soni and Nadia Hernandez said Zorn, while writing for the Tribune, “expressed racist views about Latinx youth and great insensitivity towards police brutality,” has shown racial bias, “made publicly racist sentiments” and “contributes to racist ideologies.”

Those claims are absurd. Zorn is none of that, as we wrote in our Tuesday column defending him.

But Zorn has decided to run away, declining to appear on the panel. That’s because, he wrote, that he “learned that some of those in attendance would like to turn this into a forum to protest some of my columns pertaining to the justice system, and I concluded that my presence here would distract from the agenda and be unfair to my friends on the panel.”

The sponsors, along with the rest of the university, should have provided all needed assurance against any disruption by the anybody trying to silence him. More fundamentally, they should long ago have made clear that opinion diversity is sacrosanct, as it should be at any university, and that any students who don’t agree should leave.

Zorn had already groveled enough. Regarding one of his earlier columns that didn’t sit well with his woke accusers, he wrote in April that he regretted his “chilly, analytical tone” in an earlier column about a police shooting.  Writing news columns with a “chilly, analytical tone” is now an offense?

Zorn should have appeared despite any concern about disruptive protests. But blame also goes to the sponsors and the university for permitting that concern to arise.

First, there’s SPJ, the Society of Professional Journalists. It initially had advised students to attend the in-person panel and publicly voice their concerns, according to the DePaulia column. That sounds like an invitation for disruption.

SPJ then went further, withdrawing as a sponsor entirely. Why? Their Wednesday statement says “SPJ DePaul does not agree with or support the sentiments Eric Zorn expressed in his April 6 column on the death of Adam Toledo.”

Got that? A “society of professional journalists” won’t have anything to do with a panel that was to include one person with sentiments they don’t agree with.

Finally, we have Carol Marin and Don Mosely. Both are directors of DePaul’s Center for Journalism Integrity and Excellence. Marin is well-known around Chicago, having had a long career in journalism both on television and in print. Moseley, too, has a long bio.

In a Wednesday DePaulia letter they defended Zorn and reiterated their invitation to let Zorn speak at DePaul.

That’s nice, but it was already too late. Zorn had already written that he was withdrawing from the panel, which they quoted in their letter.

Some of Marin’s and Moseley’s reasoning why Zorn should be allowed to speak are also mighty strange. Their letter defended his character by noting that he believes man-made climate change is real; that it’s vile to discriminate based on gender identity; that he thinks access to quality public health care is a right; and that he’s against the death penalty.

Apparently, one’s right to speak depends in part on whether he is on record for those viewpoints, as Marin and Mosely see things.

Marin and Mosely appear to have been in charge of the panel and how the controversy was handled by the university. Their letter says “we” and “our” often but it clearly purports to be on behalf of DePaul’s CJEI. I wrote to both of them for clarification on that, and for further comment on what I see as Zorn’s cowardice, but Marin wrote back only to say that she had nothing to add to their letter.

Most importantly, their letter claims this: “Among the things we admire and respect about journalism is the ability (and responsibility) to talk to and listen to a wide variety of voices with a diversity of opinions. As reporters and columnists, that is what we do. Or what we are supposed to do.” Blocking Zorn, they wrote, “runs counter to basic tenets of journalism.”

Yet that is precisely what they allowed to happen. The cancel mob won, as it routinely does in universities and media outlets across America. Marin and Mosely merely rattled off a list of pieties that they ignore.

DePaul should have been firm that order would be maintained and that any students who tried to disrupt the panel would be punished. If they wanted to set this right they would schedule another panel, this time about the assault on free speech and media misconduct, and make sure Zorn is invited.

“Tough times for local journalism” was the name of the panel from which Zorn was offed. Tough times indeed, locally and nationally, and many of its problems are self-inflicted.

*Mark Glennon is founder of Wirepoints.

UPDATE: Jonathan Turley has written another column here on Zorn’s cancellation.