Halloween email sparks debate on race at Yale

Over a thousand Yale students in CT protested Monday against the university’s handling of a series of racially charged incidents. “Or at the least, they put us on slippery terrain that I, for one, prefer not to cross”.

Christakis’ email is worth reading in its entirety. And while students, undergraduate and graduate, definitely have a right to express themselves, we would hope that people would actively avoid those circumstances that threaten our sense of community or disrespects, alienates or ridicules segments of our population based on race, nationality, religious belief or gender expression.

Student: Then step down!

Just after midnight on Friday, October 30, Erika Christakis sent an email to the Silliman community in response to the Intercultural Affairs Committee’s Halloween email. The crimes imputed to Nicholas and Erika Christakis include tweeting links to an Atlantic magazine article, “The Coddling of the American Mind” – which criticized demands for dissent-free “safe spaces” on campuses – and to an article about President Barack Obama’s criticism of intolerant students.

“Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious … a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive?…Whose business is it to control the forms of costumes of young people?” “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”, she wrote.

The response to Christakis’ email was explosive.

“I think we have to be a better university”.

The ideal of free speech, even offensive free speech, is necessary for an open society.

It’s clear that many of today’s students-at Yale, Missouri, and other campuses-don’t value free expression the way their radical predecessors did.

Later Thursday night, in response to students’ calls for the dismissal of Christakis and his wife from their positions at the helm of Silliman, Salovey said that he had not yet spoken to the pair face-to-face and declined to make promises with respect to the leadership of the college, according to a person in the room.

“I apologize for causing pain, but I am not sorry for the statement”, Nicholas Christakis told the crowd. “I stand behind free speech”. She fondly recalled a time when universities were bastions of free speech. Never. But, to paraphrase a well-known biographer of Voltaire, although I may disagree with your offensive outfit, I nonetheless support your right to be offensive.

One campus group had been demanding that Wolfe write “a handwritten apology” to demonstrators and read it aloud at a press conference. We, however, simply ask that our existences not be invalidated on campus. A group of students questioned Nicholas Christakis on campus days after the emails were sent. The paper also reported that a few students “voiced their unwillingness to received their diplomas from Christakis at graduation”. I know that many decent people have proposed guidelines on Halloween costumes from a spirit of avoiding hurt and offense.

“Using a shredder, scissors, and bare hands to destroy the U.S. Constitution, makes you stop and think: where did we go wrong?” said Project Veritas founder and ACORN-slayer James O’Keefe III. Holloway said in an impromptu speech. “I’m here for you”. In her tirade, Luther screams “Who the f*** hired you?” at Christakis. Also, who is for cutting off debate, let alone being against someone trying to instigate more of it? Project Veritas caught officials at Yale, Cornell, and Syracuse universities on hidden camera badmouthing the U.S. Constitution and destroying copies of it.

Grant Mueller, the president of Yale’s SAE chapter, denied the allegations; he heard an entirely different version of events from several witnesses, he said. “Why the f*** did you accept the position?”

In September, at a town hall event on college education in Iowa, President Obama weighed in on the increasingly anti-intellectual tendencies of America’s young liberals, who still haven’t accepted, nor acknowledged, that there are other opinions that just aren’t printed inThe Nation magazine. If people at Yale are uncomfortable with supporting women of color, they are going against the stated mission of this college. Yale has the ability to implement cultural competency training for faculty and staff. It has the power to punish students who participate in banned organizations with long histories of racism, misogyny, classism and homophobia.