This weekend, HBO host and Cornell alumnus Bill Maher ‘78 praised those who refused to yield to “cancel culture.”
Maher announced the “Cojones Awards” to honor “the individuals and organizations who others have tried to silence and who answered, ‘That’s not a rule, f— you!” Recipients of the award included supermarket chain Trader Joe’s, actor Ben Stiller, and Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos.
Cornell University president Martha Pollack was given the first award for rejecting the Student Assembly’s resolution mandating content warnings. Earlier this month, Pollack rejected Assembly Resolution 31, “Mandating Content Warnings for Traumatic Content in the Classroom,” which would have required professors to provide content warnings for “graphic traumatic” content.
In their response to the Assembly, Pollack and Provost Kotlikoff noted that the policy “would violate our faculty’s fundamental right to determine what and how to teach, preventing them from adding, throughout the semester, any content that any student might find upsetting.” They added, “Learning to engage with difficult and challenging ideas is a core part of a university education: essential to our students’ intellectual growth, and to their future ability to lead and thrive in a diverse society.”
“She didn’t cave in,” Maher said of Pollack, “Or hire a new dean of sensitivity. She just said, ‘No, college is for introducing you to new ideas, not for kissing your a–, and making you feel wonderful and always right.’” “You’re thinking about brunch with your parents,” he quipped.
At the beginning of the segment, Maher explained that he was asked to moderate a discussion on cancel culture at a Hollywood home a year ago. “It’s funny. If this was ten years ago, this group would’ve been talking about censorship from the right,” he remarked. “The book banners and boycotters then were Republicans,” Maher noted. And he argued that Republicans still engaged in “cancel culture,” citing the recent Bud Light boycott and Liz Cheney’s removal from Republican leadership.
However, Maher insisted, “…what was on the mind of the liberals that night… was that the most powerful witch hunters now were coming from Twitter, the Ivy League, and the progressive left.” He added, “So that was the point of the evening, how do we take a stand against cancel culture,” to which he suggested an awards show. “And then, of course, being Hollywood, nothing happened.”
Maher decided to move forward with the idea by devoting a segment to it on his show, Real Time with Bill Maher. “And knowing that, we’re going to do it every year,” the comedian vowed.
“Ladies and gentlemen, you know the Emmys, you know the Grammys, you know the Tonys, so now say hello to the Cojones!” Maher declared to a cheering studio audience.
