How Times Opinion is covering two vital issues.
Russia's war on Ukraine has been top of mind across Times Opinion as we've sought ways to capture and understand this intensely brutal and deeply consequential moment. We've just published the latest in our new series of round tables bringing together Opinion columnists, editorial writers and others, looking at the war and its repercussions; the round table, available as a podcast episode and as an edited transcript, includes Michelle Goldberg (just back from reporting in Germany and Hungary), Bret Stephens, David Brooks and Lulu Garcia-Navarro. |
The war has caused roughly three million of Ukraine's 44 million residents to flee — a rate of exodus that is unprecedented in recent history, as our graphics team showed in a piece this week. The invasion has also left many Russians in despair as Vladimir Putin has closed off the last vestiges of freedom of expression and turned Russia into an international pariah. As the author Sophie Pinkham writes in a guest essay, this has fueled the flight of Russians, too, at a speed most likely not seen since the collapse of the Soviet Union. |
Pinkham argues that just as the United States and Europe are opening their arms to Ukrainian refugees, they must also accept and support Russians who oppose Putin. His war and his repressions at home are "emptying his neo-Russian empire of its remaining freethinkers and opposition movements," Pinkham says. |
Ilia Krasilshchik, the former publisher of Meduza, an independent news outlet, writes that Russians who oppose Putin are also struggling to deal with the collective failure of not succeeding in stopping him. "Though we protested, organized, lobbied, spread information and built honest lives in the shadow of a corrupt regime, we must accept the truth: We failed. We failed to prevent a catastrophe, and we failed to change the country for the better. And now we must bear that failure," Krasilshchik writes. |
As the war unfolds, Opinion will continue examining the humanitarian toll; the changing geopolitical dynamics, particularly in Europe; and the political conversation in the United States about how far America should go to support Ukraine. At the same time, we are also writing about ideas and arguments that are driving other vital conversations across the nation. |
In this week's Sunday Review, that discussion turns to the state of free speech in America. Between cancel culture on the left and outright censorship from conservative state legislatures, Americans are holding their tongues, and they're concerned about it. |
That's the upshot of a national poll commissioned by Times Opinion and Siena College and the basis for an editorial about free speech in 2022 that we published online this morning. (The editorial includes some sample poll questions so you can see how your answers compare to those surveyed.) |
"Many Americans are understandably confused," the Times editorial board writes, "about what they can say and where they can say it. People should be able to put forward viewpoints, ask questions and make mistakes, and take unpopular but good-faith positions on issues that society is still working through — all without fearing cancellation." |
Easier said than done. Changing the culture around free speech is going to require a lot of effort that Americans seem ill suited to at the moment — greater tolerance for diversity of thought, more debate and a clearer path to redemption for those who have transgressed. |
The editorial board hopes to jump-start that much-needed conversation with this new data about what Americans would like to talk about but feel they can't. |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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