The Canceling of the American Cootie: Greg Lukianoff on Why We Discount People We Dislike

“I feel like I’m cheating when I’m defending people I agree with.” — Greg Lukianoff

Three years ago, free speech advocate Greg Lukianoff, CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), came on the show to discuss The Canceling of the American Mind. Co-authored with Rikki Schlott, the book argued that the crisis of free speech in America existed mostly on the campus left with students shouting speakers down and administrators doing nothing about it.

Three years is a mighty long time in American politics. Today, as Lukianoff recently argued in the Washington Post, the crisis of free speech has gone off campus and is now being spread by mostly conservative politicians.

FIRE has quantified this new virus of intolerance. It points to over two hundred attempts in the last year to punish the opinions of a scholar, student or speaker. The state of free speech in America has never been worse, Lukianoff asserts, citing the case of a former cop in Tennessee who did thirty-seven days for forwarding a meme of an actual Trump quote.

Greg Lukianoff has an uncute term for this intolerance. Political cooties. It’s the habit of discounting an argument because of who’s making it. A word on cooties for non-Americans. It’s playground slang for an imaginary disease you catch by touching the wrong child. But its etymology is actually more grown-up. British soldiers in World War One invented it to describe body lice. Then the doughboys carried the word (not the lice) back to 1918 America. From real to imaginary vermin in a single generation.

Lukianoff admits he caught the bug himself, once writing off the conservative opinions of Alan Charles Kors, a man who helped found FIRE. So what to do? He thinks identifying today’s epidemic of intolerance is the key. Maybe there’s a book in it. The Shaming of the American Cootie?

FURTHER READING

•   “Universities normalized attacks on free speech. Now it’s all-out war.” (Washington Post, October 29, 2026), by Greg Lukianoff.

•   Lukianoff’s Substack, where The Academic Filibuster is being published in installments.

•   The Coddling of the American Mind (Penguin Press), with Jonathan Haidt, and The Canceling of the American Mind (Simon & Schuster), with Rikki Schlott.

•   KEEN ON AMERICA episodes cited: Jacob Weisberg on eight profiles in cowardice, and Greg Lukianoff’s previous appearance.

ABOUT THE GUEST

Greg Lukianoff is president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which he has led since 2001, and a graduate of Stanford Law School. He is the co-author, with Jonathan Haidt, of The Coddling of the American Mind, and, with Rikki Schlott, of The Canceling of the American Mind. He is currently s