Mr. Buruma was my editor at The Review, so perhaps I’m not objective enough. And I don’t know what precise calculations informed the decisions concerning his departure. But I have sympathy for The Review’s owner-publishers, who perhaps feared possible economic repercussions (rumors circulated about advertisers threatening to flee). As someone who has occasionally taken controversial stances on sexual harassment policies, I myself fear the possible economic repercussions that being on “the wrong side” of this moment could entail: Will my own opportunities to write and publish, in The Review or elsewhere, be curtailed? Self-censorship is the pragmatic move right now.

It would also be craven. What I found, writing for The Review under Mr. Buruma, was a rare opportunity — or rare in a periodical with significant circulation — to take intellectual and stylistic risks, be offbeat in my opinions and get the last word in editorial scuffles. I also got the chance to enthuse about the impact and necessity of the #MeToo movement in an essay commissioned by Mr. Buruma last November, shortly after the first wave of accused men starting falling. I hear there are now a lot of victory dances about bringing down Mr. Buruma, too. What’s painful about the stance of many now claiming the #MeToo mantle is the apparent commitment to shutting down voices and discussions that might prove distasteful or unnerving. What use is such an intellectually stifled version of feminism to anyone?

I recall, as a teenager, reading the former Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver’s prison memoir “Soul on Ice” and being beside myself with fury at his description of raping white women as a political act (and black women for practice). It shook me up. It also demanded that I grapple with the experience of someone — a criminal, a rapist, an enraged black man — entirely unlike myself. Is this a book that could still be published at the moment?

What about Joan Didion’s famously tough-minded essay in The Review in 1991 on the Central Park jogger case, which raised doubts about the guilt of the five accused teenagers, all of whom were black or Hispanic, while parsing the sentimentalized stories told about white rape victims? Would the savvy editor of today publish such an article?