Leveraging a novel dataset of U.S.-based academics’ ‘cancelled’ for their speech, we employ a series of difference-in-differences designs to estimate the effects on individuals’ career outcomes. We find that, following a controversy, affected scholars experience a decline in their productivity, publishing 20% fewer new papers than the counterfactual. Furthermore, affected scholars experience a 4% decline in citations to their prior body of work, reflecting a form of peer-to-peer sanctioning. This decline is disproportionately driven by scholars who are closely connected to the affected individual, consistent with a mechanism of professional distancing. These findings highlight the professional costs of speech-related incidents and contribute to the literature on workplace and employee activism as well as the career consequences of speech-related scandals.

(2023) Title: Cancel Culture