Notes from a Harper's Letter nobody

10,000 years ago, or in June 2020, someone emailed me a pro-free-expression open letter and asked if I wanted in, on the basis of a book I wrote that came out in 2017 and really really should have in 2020 but we all make mistakes. When I got this email, I was home with a baby, it was a pandemic, we had no childcare, it is a genuine miracle I read this document, although I’m sure my level of reading-focus at that moment was not at its peak.

I did read it, though, and have reread it since, and it seemed worth signing. I remember liking that it was anti-progressive-excesses but also anti-Trump. I remember (and just verified) that I was told a few of the other names on the list, and that none were the famous people it is now associated with. They were public intellectuals, I guess, some names I recognized, others no.

If someone had emailed me at that juncture and asked if I wanted to be part of some coterie that included J.K. Rowling, Salman Rushdie, and Gloria Steinem, I would have sent to spam like the prank it would have had to have been. And yet.