Rikki Schlott
New York Post Columnist & Co-Author of The Canceling of the American Mind
Rikki Schlott
New York Post Columnist & Co-Author of The Canceling of the American Mind
Biography
Rikki Schlott is a free speech activist, a columnist for the New York Post, co-author of a bestselling book—The Canceling of the American Mind--and a political commentator. Her commentary focuses on free speech, campus culture, civil liberties and youth issues from a Generation Z perspective—who they are, how they think and what they care about.
Rikki, 23, first became an activist for free speech after seeing it under siege at NYU. She felt like a political outsider—she calls herself a “right-leaning libertarian”—and didn’t share her political beliefs with others for fear of being attacked on social media or canceled for thinking differently. She hid what she believed. “I was afraid to have Thomas Sowell and Jordan Peterson books on my bookshelf,” she says.
So Rikki took time away from school to start a career fighting for free speech—by contributing articles to the New York Post and taking a fellowship at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). Disillusioned with academia, she dropped out of NYU to pursue a career in journalism full-time.
Rikki’s passion for free speech led her to co-author a book with FIRE president Greg Lukianoff. Together, the pair wrote The Canceling of the American Mind, released in 2023. In it, Rikki and Greg share how cancel culture can crush people who think differently, short-circuit debate and give concrete steps toward reclaiming a free speech culture.
The Canceling of the American Mind was named one of the Wall Street Journal’s Best Books of 2023, the Wall Street Journal’s Top Five Books on Education, the New York Post’s 30 Best Books of the Year and The Free Press's Favorite Titles from 2023. The Economist called it “bold, timely and buttressed with data.”
In addition to the Post, Rikki is a contributing writer for Reason magazine, Newsweek, the National Review, The Telegraph, the Daily Mail, The Spectator, Quillette, The Free Press and the Daily Wire. She has been featured on Fox News, Fox Business, the BBC, NewsNation, OAN, Newsmax and HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher. She is a host of an upcoming podcast in Bill Maher’s new network of shows.
Speaker Videos
Intellectual Diversity Online
Common Ground
Societal Wisdom
Opportunities Within Diversity
How to Talk to People That Want to Kill Me
48th ALEC Annual Meeting Rikki Schlott Friday Remarks
Sticks and Stones
Why are college kids terrified? Q&A with Rikki Schlott and Greg Lukianoff
Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott: The Canceling of the American Mind
Speech Topics
The Canceling of the American Mind
Rikki Schlott will change how you view cancel culture. Rather than a moral panic, we should consider it a dysfunctional part of how Americans battle for power, status and dominance. It is just one symptom of a much larger problem: The use of cheap rhetorical tactics to “win” arguments without actually winning arguments. After all, why bother refuting your opponents when you can just take away their platform or career?
The good news is that we can beat back this threat to democracy through better citizenship. In this talk, Rikki offers concrete steps toward reclaiming a free speech culture, with materials specifically tailored for parents, teachers, business leaders and everyone who uses social media.
Rethinking Democracy: The Case for Abandoning the Two-Party System
Since 2020, young voter participation, which was at a record high, has dropped drastically. According to a poll by Harvard Kennedy School, Young Americans appear less likely to vote in 2024. So what’s the problem? Gen Zer Rikki Schlott believes that her generation is done with the two-party system. One, they feel, that has abandoned them. In this talk, Rikki shares why her generation is dumping our partisan system and looking for alternatives, how it can shift our electoral landscape for years to come and why it matters to everyone in the country, as well as what the future holds for us all.
The New Feminine: Reclaiming Happiness in an Era of False Empowerment
The current generation of young women is disproportionately affected by mental health conditions, with research indicating they’re more likely to experience anxiety, depression, and self-harm compared to previous generations of women and their male counterparts. The romantic landscape they’re facing surely isn’t helping. Today’s young women are confronted with hookup culture, dating apps, and situationships, none of which are boosting their self-esteem. In response to repressive historical norms, feminism has long taught women not to allow sex negativity or internalized misogyny to curb their freedoms. But, by upending dating norms, gender relations, sexual standards, marriage dynamics, and family formation, modern feminism has inadvertently endorsed harmful behaviors in the name of empowerment that are directly opposed to female flourishing.
Today, the “new feminine” faces an era of entirely novel challenges, including dating apps, digital porn, birth control and fertility tech, and a digitized and atomized society. As many young women attempt to write their own scripts for an unprecedented era, many are foundering — and suffering the emotional consequences. However, for Gen Zer Rikki Schlott, the answer isn’t to turn back time. In this talk, Rikki inspires with a call for true feminists to make their mark on history and a final plea that women recenter the female fantasy—their demands in dating, their desires in love, and their ambitions in life. Women can’t keep pretending the status quo is working. It’s time to be autonomous and demanding, not reactive. It’s time for women to learn from one another and to take control of their destinies. Isn’t that what feminism is about after all?
Keeping Your Corporation Out of the Culture War
By 2025, Gen Z will make up nearly 30% of the workforce and many companies are finding it difficult to navigate the challenges of working with the most populous, diverse and outspoken generation in history. Many expect their values and politics to be reflected by the company. A 2022 Deloitte survey found that 37% of Gen Z have already rejected a job or assignment based on personal ethics, and more than one in three would quit a job without another lined up. So how do you keep your employees happy and still avoid being dragged into the culture war? In this talk, Gen Zer Rikki Schlott, co-author of The Canceling of the American Mind, gives you the steps to avoid getting mired in today’s politics, from making a commitment to free speech to hiring more broadly to practicing what you preach.
Finding Common Ground
Conservative. Liberal. Libertarian. Independent. We all may have widely diverse opinions and political leanings. And yet, despite the many things we may disagree on, we can always find common ground—allowing us to move forward and make the world a better place. In this lively and fun talk, Rikki Schlott partners with a fellow Gen Zer to debate today’s most important issues and prove, as she says, “that dissenting views are worth being heard and that free speech is a value that we should uphold.”
Discovering Your Voice
Is it possible to be authentic when the majority of your peers are not on your side? Absolutely, says Rikki Schlott, who has steadfastly held on to her views despite feeling like an ideological outsider for most of her years. In this talk, Rikki shares her journey, from finding her voice in college and not caving into society’s norms to always being her authentic self, which has led to a successful career as a journalist and author. She’ll share valuable insights into the importance of staying true to one's core values and beliefs, even in the face of adversity and how to unlock the potential within yourself.
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