Debatable: Is open debate under threat?

Noam Chomsky, left, and J.K. Rowling
"Last week, 153 writers, artists and academics — including J.K. Rowling, Noam Chomsky and Nell Irvin Painter — signed an open letter in Harper’s Magazine warning of a threat to intellectual life in the United States. 'The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted,' the letter reads, condemning 'a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity.' ..."
NY Times (Video)