At the risk of outing myself as a skeptic of certain orthodoxies, I also found the Times op-ed in question to have a rather un-serious tone. However, I think t

At the risk of outing myself as a skeptic of certain orthodoxies, I also found the Times op-ed in question to have a rather un-serious tone. However, I think there were different things I latched onto than the author of this critique. I didn't find the lack of clear distinction between the legal definition of free speech and the common definition to be particularly problematic. As the author mentions, a lot of people felt it was reasonably clear that the Times was referring to the common notion of free speech. But I noticed passages such as this one from the Times op-ed: "Many on the left refuse to acknowledge that cancel culture exists at all, believing that those who complain about it are offering cover for bigots to peddle hate speech. Many on the right, for all their braying about cancel culture, have embraced an even more extreme version of censoriousness as a bulwark against a rapidly changing society, with laws that would ban books, stifle teachers and discourage open discussion in classrooms." For the supposed paper of record, I found the choice to use the decidedly contemptuous language to refer to the right wing (that I italicized above) very telling. There were a handful of other telling moments in the Times article where the authors clearly revealed their bias and intellectual stake on certain issues. Even if I mostly share those views, I found the overall article to be rather ineffective at encouraging any but the most sympathetic readers to reconsider their rhetoric. On some level, the Times authors seemed to want to continue to cling to a sense of righteousness that must actually be at the root of the problem in question.