Why my classmates want me silenced

The notifications kept coming: “I hope you sit in the discomfort of the backlash you are rightfully receiving and realize that, even then, you are experiencing only a fraction of the pain, torment, and degradation that Jane Doe has been experiencing in every moment since that night.” “Brother you gotta kill yourself.” “What the fuck is wrong with you?” “I hope [you] are shown the same cruelty you carry in your heart for someone you don’t even know.” 

Over the past couple of years, a comforting narrative took hold: namely, that intolerant progressive identity politics and “cancel culture,” of the kind that characterized the mid-2010s and early 2020s, have receded. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that’s not always true, especially around certain topics. I’d know. I’m a junior at Columbia University, and I’ve spent the past 48 hours under a barrage of messages, like the ones above, urging me to commit suicide or demanding that my career and life be destroyed. 

My crime: publishing an essay in a student magazine, the Columbia Sundial, that questioned the ironclad narrative on campus that Jane Doe, of the “Cornell 7” controversy, is a victim of rape.