Nicholas Christakis responds by vehemently supporting his wife’s right to freedom of speech, noting that “I stand behind free speech, especially when it’s offensive”. During the protests on Thursday, many students described the experience of being the sole black person in a class, and the unequal responsibilities foisted on them to speak on behalf of their race.
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This is the same campus that conservative icon Buckley, one of its most famous alumni, savaged in his seminal 1951 jeremiad, God and Man at Yale. It’s not as if Yale was trying to ban such costumes, or otherwise dictate what its students could or couldn’t do; the email simply urged them to think carefully about what they wore.
During the fifth annual private Buckley conference on “The Future of Free Speech”, student Gian-Paul Bergeron posted on the Facebook group “Overheard at Yale” a quip by Buckley Program speaker Greg Lukianoff: “Looking at the reaction to [lecturer and Yale associate master] Erika Christakis’ email, you would have thought someone wiped out an entire Indian village”.
Yale University students and faculty rally to demand that Yale University become more inclusive to a …
“In other words: Whose business is it to control the forms of costumes of young people?”
As Erika Christakis wrote in her email, “American universities were once a safe space not only for maturation but also for a certain regressive, or even transgressive, experience; increasingly, it seems, they have become places of censure and prohibition”.
“Nicholas says, if you don’t like a costume someone is wearing, look away, or tell them you are offended”. Talk to each other.
Ms. Christakiss email touched on a long-running debate over the balance between upholding free speech and protecting students from hurt feelings or personal offense.
Soon after, all hell broke loose in New Haven.
Next, a group of roughly 100 students convened in the Silliman courtyard to hold Nicholas and Erika Christakis to account.
One of the latest shticks among college liberals is the need to create “safe spaces” on campuses.
She shouted: ‘Be quiet!
“It is your job to create a place of comfort and home for the students that live in Silliman …”
Christakis attempts to dissent, saying “No, I don’t agree with that”, unleashing a torrent of shrieks from the student.
Student: Then why the fuck did you accept the position?!
“You should step down. It is not!” she cried out.
This year, the issue of offensive Halloween costumes seemed to be an extremely hot-button issue across North America, as the email from the Intercultural Affairs Committee of Yale pointed out, and as Bill Maher tackled on HBO’s Real Time (starting at the 2:53 mark). Lukianoff recorded several videos of the confrontation between students and Christakis.
The Yale Daily News reports that one Buckley event participant “said he was spat on and called a racist. Both asked to remain anonymous because they were afraid of attracting backlash”.
Meanwhile, Yale’s Divinity School is now home to Black Lives Matter movement agitator DeRay Mckesson who was awarded a sinecure to promote the violent racist movement.
“Looting for me isn’t violent, it’s an expression of anger”, the guest lecturer recently preached to students. Another way to dissolve consent.
The Yale campus in New Haven, Connecticut. The leadership of Yale College and the university are working on next steps. “Have we lost faith in young people’s capacity – in your capacity – to exercise self-censure, through social norming, and also in your capacity to ignore or reject things that trouble you?” Title IX officers Elizabeth McGrath of Cornell and Sheila Johnson-Willis of Syracuse also shredded the Constitution when given the chance. “Or at the least, they put us on slippery terrain that I, for one, prefer not to cross”. The students DO want to be coddled and protected in a safe little bubble which won’t offend them. It is entirely possible a few of the events complained of – largely name-calling – were fabricated or staged by the activists themselves. Similar demonstrations have forced the University of Missouri system president and chancellor to resign. The ignorant are among our administrators, staff, faculty, students, parents and donors.
This set off a torrent of complaints from students just a day before the next incident took place. In one case a swastika was drawn in feces in a campus bathroom.
This was not the “apology” the students were demanding. But they exploded at the center of campus on Thursday afternoon, when hundreds of students encircled Jonathan Holloway, the first black dean of Yale College, outside of the main library and demanded to know why he had not communicated with the college community about allegations within the past week that a university fraternity chapter had turned away black women from a party the week before.
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He said he would continue to seek the input of students without placing the burden on them to fix the university.
