J. K. Rowling, the Harry Potter author, is well known for her advocacy of keeping men, including those who "identify" as women, out of real, biological women's spaces and sports. In general I agree with her views.
Here she takes to X to excoriate Gladwell who moderated a panel where some people called such advocacy hateful and bigoted. He thought those on the pro-trans side were extreme but said nothing at the time, and has said so now. She dumps on him big time, maybe too much.
I think she is right to point he was engaging in butt-covering when he said nothing in order to protect his job. He readily admits as much.
Just maybe we should conclude he merely decided the issue being discussed wasn't the proverbial "bridge he chose to die on." There are fights we choose to join, and many more that we may think have some merit but are sufficiently peripheral to our lives that we don't get into the fight.
I liked being a professor enough to refrain from flaunting my conservative views before colleagues and students. The culture of the university held otherwise, and I didn't argue.
However, I wasn't teaching politics or sociology, I taught business management. I don't apologize for keeping unpopular views to myself, since they were mostly peripheral to my subject matter.
There are certainly things I oppose about which I've not bothered to write in this blog I've posted for the last 18+ years. Either I think there is nothing to be done, or I can't influence the outcome or even I have no skin in that particular game.
Let the person who has never done this "issue triage" cast the first stone.
