The story is crazy because it's clear the venue was aware the titles would cause a controversy and so deliberately didn't print them. Printing Eastman's titles would let people know if they wanted to go or not--not printing them was cowardly. Not talking with Leach about their
very clear discomfort about the titles is also a problem: you ask her to come talk about works and then set her up, in many ways, for failure. The titles should have obviously been a point of conversation right from the beginning.
Regarding
Quillette, Mark, it is surely right of center and is for "free speech." It's a strange little publication. Still, I'd argue that, contra the idea that "the article itself seems completely free of any 'culture war' hysteria," it too wears its biases on its sleeve:
"The OBEY Convention—at least this year, the first time I had attended—very much wore its politics on its sleeve. Performances began with a statement regarding the indigenous people who had previously occupied the land. Acts represented not just a range of musical tastes but a range of racial, cultural and gender identities and sexual orientations."
The idea that having a racially and sexually diverse group of people is, by default, "liberal," for instance, strikes me as problematic. So, too, is the suggestion that recognizing the actual history of the land is liberal. Both highlight a writer and venue deliberately playing into the culture wars for clicks, and doing it decisively from a "white cishet is the cultural norm" POV.