I’ve written a few pieces about the Halloween costume fracas at Yale (see here and here), in which student anger, possibly kindled by reported incidents of racism on campus, finally exploded after the university’s Intercultural Affairs Committee issued an email giving guidelines for “sensitive” Halloween costumes, followed by a thoughtful and temperate email response by Silliman College housemaster Erika Christakis. Christakis questioned whether all “offensive” costumes were really offensive and, at any rate, there was no clear answer about who has the right and power to determine which costumes are verboten. Christakis’s email made many students finally lose control.
Her husband and co-master Nicholas Christakis defended their “free speech” view in a conversation with Yalies on the quad, but was excoriated by tantrum-throwing students. A petition was signed by over 700 members of the University accusing Erika Christakis of “invalidating the existences” of marginalized students and disrespecting their cultures and livelihood. Then, inevitably, the student began calling for the Christakises to resign or be fired because they didn’t create a “safe space” in their college.
And just a few days ago, there was a symposium at Silliman College on free speech (I believe it’s the Buckley Forum at which Jon Haidt spoke), and some Yale students didn’t like that, either. I was astounded to see this headline in the Washington Post at the column “The Volokh Conspiracy” (click on screenshot to go to the article):
What? How can you protest a forum on free speech? But the students did, and it was more than just a protest. Multiple sources, include the Yale Daily News, report that protesters spit on the attendees:
Around 5:45 p.m., as attendees began to leave the conference, students outside chanted the phrase “Genocide is not a joke” and held up written signs of the same words. Taking [Dean of Student Engagement Burgwell] Howard’s reminder into account, protesters formed a clear path through which attendants could leave. A large group of students eventually gathered outside of the building on High Street. According to Buckley fellows present during the conference, several attendees were spat on as they left. One Buckley fellow said he was spat on and called a racist. Another, who is a minority himself, said he has been labeled a “traitor” by several fellow minority students. Both asked to remain anonymous because they were afraid of attracting backlash.
Genocide? That’s what a free speech symposium and a defense of Halloween costumes means to these students? Perhaps they should look up the meaning of “genocide.”
At any rate, reader and anthropology grad student Dorsa Amir forwarded me an email that was sent yesterday to everyone at Yale by the university’s President and College Dean. (The message can also be seen at this link). It’s a remarkably thoughtful and temperate letter. While trying to placate all parties, and to affirm Yale’s commitment to being a diverse community (an admirable goal), it also pulls no punches in also affirming Yale’s commitment to free speech as well. I reproduce it in its entirety; the bits in bold are my own emphases:
From: President Peter Salovey and Dean Jonathan Holloway
Date: Tuesday, November 10, 2015
Subject: Affirming our community’s values
To: Yale Community
Dear Members of the Yale Community,
In the past week, many of you have written to us to express your support for two of Yale’s central values: respect for our diverse community and the freedom to speak and be heard. You have written as students, staff, faculty, alumni, and friends of the university, in many cases to share personal struggles that stretch far before any of last week’s events, in other cases to stand by ideas that define the university’s mission, and in still others to do both. As we plan the next steps, we want you to know that you have our full attention and support.
We cannot overstate the importance we put on our community’s diversity, and the need to increase it, support it, and respect it. We know we have work to do, for example in increasing diversity in the faculty, and the initiatives announced last week move us closer toward that goal. At the same time, we are proud of the diversity on our campus and the vibrant communities at the Afro-Am House, the Asian American Cultural Center, La Casa Cultural, and the Native American Cultural Center. We are proud to support our lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer students, staff, and faculty. We are proud to support women. And we are proud to attract students and scholars from around the world, of all faiths and traditions, and with all levels of physical ability. We are committed to supporting all of these communities not only by attending to their safety and well-being but in the expectation that they will be treated with respect.
We also affirm Yale’s bedrock principle of the freedom to speak and be heard, without fear of intimidation, threats, or harm, and we renew our commitment to this freedom not as a special exception for unpopular or controversial ideas but for them especially. We expect thinkers, scholars, and speakers, whether they come from our community or as invited guests, to be treated with respect and in the expectation that they can speak their minds fully and openly. By preventing anyone from bringing ideas into the light of day, we deny a fundamental freedom — and rob ourselves of the right to engage with those ideas in a way that gets to the core of Yale’s educational mission. We make this expectation as a condition of belonging to or visiting our community.
Protest and counter-protest are woven into the warp and weft of the Yale that you see around you today, and we embrace the right of every member of this community to engage in protest. The news and social media have reported threats, coercion, and overtly disrespectful acts, and these actions have added to the distress in our community. They are unacceptable. But we have also seen affirming and effective forms of protest, most notably in Monday’s march for resilience, which brought together over 1,000 students, faculty, and administrators to show solidarity for students of color. Students are gathering to share thoughts and feelings in helpful and supportive ways, faculty are offering teach-ins, and those affiliated with the cultural houses are championing change in constructive ways.
Forty years ago, explosive debates about race and war divided Yale’s campus, and in response the university formed a core set of principles to support protest and counter-protest. Those principles, available in a document known as the Woodward Report, apply today just as they did then. C. Vann Woodward, who chaired the committee that produced the report, recognized that “It may sometimes be necessary in a university for civility and mutual respect to be superseded by the need to guarantee free expression,” but he also cautioned that, “The values superseded are nevertheless important, and every member of the university community should consider them in exercising the fundamental right to free expression.” We give the principles in this report our fullest support, and we urge you to read this document. You can find it here. As an institution of higher learning, we must protect the right to the free and open exchange of ideas – even those ideas with which we disagree. At the same time, we do this on a campus that values civility and respect. We do not believe these are necessarily mutually exclusive.
We are grateful for your questions, your involvement, and your engagement, and we renew our pledge to take further actions to improve the climate on campus and support and enhance diversity; we will share those steps with you before Thanksgiving.
Sincerely,
Peter Salovey
President
Chris Argyris Professor of Psychology
Jonathan Holloway
Dean of Yale College
Edmund S. Morgan Professor of African American Studies, History, and American Studies
Well, I’m not sure I agree with the last bit about “civility and respect” being perfectly compatible with “free and open exchange of ideas.”
That’s surely not true if the latter leads to people feeling offended, even if no personal offense was intended. Is criticizing Islam, for instance, a form of free speech? For surely that is construed by some Muslim students as incivility and disrespect. Too, a perfectly reasonable debate about the appropriateness of Halloween costumes is seen by minority groups as making them feel “psychologically unsafe,” or even as a form of genocide!
But what is clear is that Yale’s administration is fed up with student tantrums. It’s equally clear that the Christakises will suffer no punishment for what they did, which is as it should be. And the statement below implies that Yale will not tolerate those who try to censor others by acts like spitting on others or having conniptions in front of professors:
By preventing anyone from bringing ideas into the light of day, we deny a fundamental freedom — and rob ourselves of the right to engage with those ideas in a way that gets to the core of Yale’s educational mission. We make this expectation as a condition of belonging to or visiting our community.
Without free speech, those students wouldn’t be able to hold their asinine protest. Isn’t it remarkable how opponents of free speech won’t shut up?
I believe in free speech…for me. Everyone who disagrees with me needs to shut up, lest you hurt my precious feelings.
lol…I mean +1
Will the student that yelled at the Professor get punished?
As a free speech advocate, I hope not. They treated the Cristakis’ badly but basically stayed within the bounds of verbal back and forth. It was angry and often involved interruptions and over-talking, but still I think the best strategy when that happens is to note it as not ideal conduct and just move on. The spitters, on the other hand…I have no sympathy or use for them. That’s not speech, that’s a (very mild) form of assault. Punish away (within reason).
I have not see the video of the confrontation, but I thought, based on descriptions, that a student was exceptionally rude to the point of using profanity. I can respect elevation of emotions and voice volume, and even interrupting, but I felt that that was sufficiently over a line and that the student should be brought to task for it.
Rudeness and profanity are still free speech.
You may be right on general principle, but I am not sure when it is directed to a single, badly outnumbered person. Focusing on the profanity bit.. there is no question of its right of use when hollered into the ether, or perhaps to another group (but even then there would be instances where that would be frightening and I think sanctionable). But from one person standing in a crowd of supporters, directed to a single person? This sort of expression easily crosses over into a hostile and borderline threatening environment. Surely there are (or ought to be) prohibitions against free expression that creates fear. Again, I have not seen the video and I probably should to get a better picture of this instance.
He was “badly outnumbered” because he decided to make a public statement! Its not like they forced their way into his living room to jeer at him; he chose to come out to them. If you choose to speak in front of a crowd, you have little to no right to punish that crowd for jeering rudely at you. And no, profane name calling /= threats.
I’m going to risk making an inappropriate and insulting (to the students) analogy here, so please take this *only* for its analogy value and not as me calling them racists, but this is basically like someone who goes to a Klan rally, preaches civil rights, and then wants the crowd punished for ‘creating a fearful atmosphere.’ Sorry, but no. You certainly have a right to personal safety in that situation, but IMO you left any ‘right’ or expectation to be treated in an above-board manner when you chose to address that particular audience in that way.
Would you care to also give your take on Bernie Sanders’s Seattle rally being commandeered and shut down by protesters a month or two ago? Is it that “he chose to come out to them,” or that they chose to come out to him?
I don’t know the details of the situation, but my initial thinking based on your description is that there is a difference between ‘commandeering’ (which implies you shut down the speaker or prevent him from being heard) and ‘insulting’ (where his message can be heard, you’re just responding to it negatively). Crowd actions to shut down the speaker cross the line. However that’s not what the Yale kids did.
I agree with Diane. No administrative punishment for rudeness and profanity in this setting. Counter it with good speech; write an op-ed in the student newspaper saying how crappy the students behaved. I see no reason for punishment.
Yep, unlike speaking before a group of such noble souls, ones writing in a campus newspaper cannot be interrupted (short of the paper being removed from the rack).
“I can respect elevation of emotions and voice volume, and even interrupting . . . .”
To congenially inquire, how is interrupting okay? I can see interrupting if one unreasonably goes on and on and won’t have the decency to conclude. But repeatedly interrupting so that one cannot reasonably make a point is unreasonable.
My subjective perception is that interruption seems to be more and more the prevailing conversational modus operandi.
All else being equal, I perceive that, the more self-regarding and entitled one fancies oneself, the less confident one is in the rectitude of her/his opinion/position, the more likely one will interrupt another. But someone like that will surely take umbrage at being interrupted.
I’ve gotten to the point that I respond to an interruption by asking if the interrupter would care to give me advance notice of when s/he will be interrupting me. Or, that if I wanted to put myself in a position to be repeatedly, unreasonably, interrupted, I’d go visit my mother.
With you. I’m OK with cursing as well (I’d better be, I do enough of it!).
Yep. That link is busted. It’s an article in yesterday’s Daily Caller, signed by Blake Neff. Let’s see if this works.
She has been identified and has apparently spent the last few days erasing all her information from social media. Apparently the backlash against her has forced her to do this, and in this day and age this is probably punishment enough for her!! She comes from a relatively privileged background mixed-race marriage (mother is white, and dad is black; she uses her mother’s surname, not her father’s). More info here.
I can’t get your link to open, Luis.
That link gives a ‘Web server is down’ message. Obviously another attack on free speech… ; )
cr
Yeah, “server is down” message.
Do we know how old this person is? What’s the latest on the development of brains, something to the effect that they’re not really mature until one’s mid-twenties?
I wonder if she’s thought of the impact this all might have on future job interviews…
There is something odd when I post the URL, which hasn’t happened before. It seems the Daily Caller has some protection against posting links the way it’s done here (I’ve posted links before so I know hot to do it!!). If you copy and paste this URL in your browser it should work:
http://dailycaller.com/2015/11/09/meet-the-privileged-yale-student-who-shrieked-at-her-professor/
Thank you for persisting–that was well worth it. I’m just shaking my head; oh, the horror of a privileged background and a Yale education! How on earth will she overcome these obstacles?!
Good man, Luis. It works. Thanks for your patience. x
“I wonder if she’s thought of the impact this all might have on future job interviews…”
This should not be an issue. If the interviewer asks – what’s this that happened when you were at Yale? She can just say – Oh that…that was before my brain was mature…and, she’s off the hook.
Oh, good point.
🙄
Apparently she’s been busy deleting much of her online presence, which is understandable. Given her privileged circumstances, I’ll bet there will be few, if any, significant negative consequences from her paedomorphic outburst. It will soon be forgotten, she’ll graduate from Yale, and likely get a decent job with good prospects.
If she were from a less privileged or marginalized background, however, it would almost certainly be Game Over.
About civility and respect. We have a social responsibility to be civil. Respect (aka esteem, admiration) is earned, not a right. I feel no need to respect people who spit on others.
With respect, I disagree. I believe respect to others should be automatic. We get it for being human and alive. But I also believe that it is provisional. It can increase or decrease (or vaporize altogether) depending on one’s actions and thoughts.
Huh. I’d say that everyone deserves respect. That’s just part of treating someone as a human being, with dignity. Quite different to esteem and admiration, which are indeed earned.
Look up the definition of respect.
I guess people do use ‘respect’ as a synonym for ‘admire’ or ‘esteem’ but clearly they aren’t replaceable for each other universally. I can respect your wishes, for example, without admiring or esteeming your wishes. I was thinking of ‘respect’ in terms of giving people due consideration. The students who spat were behaving disrespectfully, because the people they spat at didn’t deserve it, not matter how little they were admired or esteemed by the students.
Isn’t treating people politely covered already by the word civility? Adding the word respect suggests we must provide something more, like deference. As in “we should respect someone’s religious beliefs.” Tolerate would be a better word.
Well said.
I agree. I’ve never understood why it is that everyone deserves respect. It seems like it’s based on a wrong definition of that word, or a meaning of “everyone” that strips away all identity beyond being a person.
It’s odd to me that this is so muddy. Civility is not the same as respect. I can be civil to people I don’t respect and treat those I do with incivility. IMO, respect in the sense that people should be accorded the same degree of deference to things like our rights and our person we expect for ourselves is due to all unless and until they do or say things that undermine it. It ought to be automatic – the default approach to everyone we have only just met. Respect ought to be something we lose, not gain (though it is possible to gain more).
I should clarify that I think people deserve a priori respect not ideas. Ideas must always earn it.
I took it as civility toward the person, but respect their right to have an opinion.
You don’t have to respect the person, or even the opinion itself
So, we’ve crossed a bizarre line of demarcation beyond which college students are less tolerant of free speech than the Bush Administration. They allowed “free speech zones” across the street.
At least they’ve stopped calling these fascistic post-modernists liberals, there’s something I suppose.
Its always been the case that the far right and far left appear to curve around and meet each other. When leftists protest against free speech, I think it’s a sign we’re seeing that meeting point.
That makes a lot of sense.
Yes.
That does seem true here! I cannot think of another case where this has happened, except maybe where socialism (far far left) wound up overlapping far right fascism in terms of suppressing rights to free speech.
An extreme example, but I’ve always thought of the DPRK in those terms. Not that I’m comparing exasperating college students to the horrors inflicted by the Kim Dynasty, but in terms of far left overlapping the right.
Authoritarianism. If you are sufficiently convinced in your personal righteousness and the wickedness of all others, you feel licensed to impose yourself on others without restraint. When people argue, as I’ve seen some do, over whether Nazis were liberal fascists or conservative fascists, they are missing the real point that it is not their economic policy that launched a global war and Holocaust and many other horrors besides, but autocracy. It hardly matters what end you are pursuing when you go down that path.
Yes. Rather than seeing left/right as a one-dimensional axis that wraps around and rejoins ‘in the back,’ people have instead proposed a 2D model of political ideology called the political compass. Using this model, the Yale students and authoritarian conservatives would have the same y-axis value but opposite x-axis values.
I am trying to bend my head around the argument of Hitlers’ regime as an example of liberal fascism. Well, maybe if they had programs to care for the poor, workmens’ comp., and job training…
Yes, normally the liberal authoritarian government example that people think of is soviet communism, and if there is one thing we know for sure about the Nazis, communists were their arch enemies.
Nevertheless, I think a few conservatives noticed that the Nazis called themselves “National Socialists” and a lightbulb went on. Hey, we’re fighting socialists in *this* country! Joanh Goldberg wrote a book on this theme:
Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Change
It’s a circle with liberalism on one side and totalitarianism on the other. Left and right are equivalently effective routes from a here (as I perhaps optomistically still like to think) to the far side.
These students seem to have forgotten how to think and how to argue. It’s far easier to decide that every single issue is a case of “no compromise” and “shout down” rather than understand, consider, decide, argue.
I would understand their behavior if they were protesting endemic racism, exemplified in the article linked to in an earlier post on this (where journalist Charles Blow’s own son was held at gun point by a Yale cop because he “looked like a suspect”). (Of course it’s not just a racism issue, it’s also very much an issue of poor police training and gun madness.)
I wanted to link to that article–
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/26/opinion/charles-blow-at-yale-the-police-detained-my-son.html?_r=1
It isn’t what it first seemed
http://www.nhregister.com/general-news/20150303/yale-police-cop-who-drew-gun-on-charles-blows-son-cleared
My guess is that, in their minds, they are protesting endemic racism. The logic being that students being allowed to wear the costumes they want is racist because it doesn’t actively prevent racist costumes (which they think is the only non-racist option), and those who support the freedom of students to wear what they want – like the Cristakis’ – are basically attacking minorities and making them less safe on campus when they voice their support.
Yes, that’s probably their thinking, but what’s missing is a clear analysis of the problem, estimation of the culpability of the various miscreants, and a clear solution. Get police better trained in general; screen them more thoroughly; educate them about the way that their perceptions of certain groups affects their judgment, etc. Campaign for that kind of stuff — concrete effective goals. None of that is in conflict with free speech.
Funny 10-minute video, tweeted yesterday by Dave Rubin: Modern Educayshun’ on this subject. x
Dagnabit: sorry about the embed; I’m usually good at that. x
priceless video!
excellent.
Obviously this video’s point is invalid because the actors include no truly oppressed people: African Americans, Native Americans, Muslims, etc.
We need to end the idea of banning this thing called “hate speech.” Hate speech, so long as it is not directly inciting violence, should be protected like any other speech. People need to know that their only recourse against hate speech is counter speech. Banning hate speech is the dumbest thing a society can do, because we can not ban thoughts. If people are thinking something, we need to hear it so we can address it with ideas.
Recently, in my area, a ( woman assaulted a Somali immigrant in a restaurant. The Somali woman was with her family, speaking their native tongue amongst themselves.
The assaulting woman told her, “You’re in America, you need to speak English!”
The Somali woman replied, “I do speak English, and Somali, and [another language]. But, within our family, we choose to speak Somali.”
At which point the assaulting woman whacked her in the face with a beer mug.
The assaulter is being charged — with assault, and, apparently, a “hate crime”.
I seriously do not get this. Basically, everything she did, right up until she hit her, is constitutionally protected. You have a right to be an asshole in this country. How does her anti-immigrant attitude make this a “hate crime” or worse than what it is, an assault? This is precious close to thought crime in my book.
It seems to me that her dislike of the person’s immigrant status is irrelevant to the case — unless it somehow shows that she is more likely to assault again because of it (which seems mighty tenuous to me).
Don’t get me wrong, I think she is an asshole and I don’t like her attitude one bit. But does she deserve more punishment because of her thoughts?
Would it be equivalently bad if she were a Green bay Packers fan and the person she hit was a Minnesota Vikings fan and they were arguing about (American) football? Why or why not? Who gets to decide what thought is an aggravating factor?
I thought we punished deeds not thoughts.
I think I was unclear on one point: Motive is important in showing that someone is guilty of a crime. But it is the crime they are guilty of, not the motive. We punish a crime not its motive.
(As I noted, someone’s motives might bear on their likelihood of re-offending and could affect sentencing for that reason. But it’s not a crime in itself.)
We punish crime and motive. The difference between first degree murder, second degree murder, and manslaughter is largely about what the person was thinking about the victim, not what physically occurred. And obviously we punish attempted murder even when its unsuccessful, which is a punishment for only motive, no actual criminal act.
So IMO considering motivation in assaults is not really any different from what we already do, and makes a lot of sense from a ‘public threat’ perspective; a person with such a strong bias against a specific group of people that they target them for violence is different from a person with generalized anger management issues or who got in a bar fight because they were drinking. Motive matters for both duration and type of punishment.
I think the US has threaded the needle correctly here, because under our laws there must first be a secular crime. Only after it’s been determined that a ‘regular’ crime has been committed does the issue or evidence of ‘hate speech’ or bias come in, and that’s primarily for sentencing. Hate speech absent a robbery or vandalization or assault or murder is perfectly legal and noncriminal; performed in conjunction with a crime, it may get you a longer sentence.
I think we are in agreement.
I think the murder degree example is a good one. Premeditation and planning indicate a stronger likelihood of recommission, a lesser degree of conformity to social norms, than does a non-premeditated act.
Does her (likely) racism, anti-Muslim feelings, anti-immigrant feelings make her more likely to re-offend (commit another similar assault)? I doubt it. But maybe.
I’m pretty sure drinking was a factor here as well (beer mug).
As you noted, there has to be a “regular” crime committed before motive can come into it. And then it can be important for sentencing, as you noted.
Seems like an asshole with anger management issues to me.
This incident is in Minnesota, where I live.
Minnesota defines 3rd degree Assault (the perp. was charged with 3rd degree assault) as:
There is also a statute on Assault motivated by bias (see 609.2231, Subdiv. 4)
What is the exact reason, in criminology or psychology, for making this a special crime, different from other types of 4th degree assault? Why is it worse or more remarkable than garden-variety assault?
Maybe it lies in para (b) — punishing a pattern of such deeds. That I can see.
Replace Somali with Swedish. Would she have done the same to a white woman speaking swedish to her white blonde and blue-eyed family?
Could be. She is likely as racist asshole. But being a racist isn’t illegal.
The “hate crime” label applies to a criminal act, motivated by bias, against a member of a “protected group”.
From Wikepedia: Penalty-enhancement hate crime laws are traditionally justified on the grounds that, in Chief Justice Rehnquist’s words, “this conduct is thought to inflict greater individual and societal harm…. bias-motivated crimes are more likely to provoke retaliatory crimes, inflict distinct emotional harms on their victims, and incite community unrest.” A hate crime conviction will tack on additional punishment.
I agree that, in many cases (including the Coon Rapids MN case you cite) it might require some serious mind reading on the part of a jury. I myself thought that it was likely the victim was assaulted for speaking in her native tongue and for wearing a hijab identifying her as a Muslim.
The attack was disgusting, and punishment for the act itself – smashing someone’s face with a beer mug – should be enough without having to determine the thoughts flowing through the perpetrators mind at the critical moment.
I agree.
I think it’s a mistake to separate ‘hate crime’ form comparable crimes, it makes some victims less valuable than others, it also opens bizarre and unnecessary sideshows where the perpetrator tries to demonstrate other ‘reasons’ for the crime.
Is someone less of a victim because they were killed for their wallet instead of their race? And is not a holdup perpetrator or rapist not only a more common threat to us all but more likely to repeat a crime?
It is also very different from degrees of crime as mentioned. Degrees apply to intent, rather than motivation. Assaulting someone that results in death is still murder but is less intentional. You can remove tha absurd ‘hate crime’ modifier and certainly have a more fair and consistent form of justice.
Yes.
In the case I mentioned, the prosecutor announced yesterday that they will not pursue the hate crime charge. Their reason given was that it was a misdemeanor and the assault is a felony.
Well played.
The link to the Woodward report is broken – it links to a UChicago login.
The link is, however, findable through the original Yale letter, and is http://yalecollege.yale.edu/faculty-staff/faculty/policies-reports/report-committee-freedom-expression-yale.
Spitting is assault. Those students should be charged. I guess irony is lost on them when they use free speech to protest free speech.
Truly despicable behaviour that should not be tolerated by Yale.
I totally agree, spitting is nasty and revolting behaviour, a truly disgusting thing to do. As you say it is assault and if a student would be expelled for hitting someone they should also be expelled for spitting.
Yep. Charge ’em, and automatic expulsion. Send ’em right to frontal lobe development school.
> Too, a perfectly reasonable debate about the appropriateness of Halloween costumes is seen by minority groups as making them feel “psychologically unsafe,” or even as a form of genocide!
I doubt even these students are that crazy. I would rather think the “Genocide is not a joke” bit meant that somehow someone did something which was construed as making light of genocide.
I would rather think the “Genocide is not a joke” bit meant that somehow someone did something which was construed as making light of genocide.
I might be wrong, but my guess is that they think a white person wearing (for example) a stereotypical Native American costume for Halloween does just that–make light of genocide. But maybe there’s a more specific incident or remark that the students are alluding to.
I don;t see that example at all.
If they were play-acting a scene from Wounded Knee (1890), then I’d see it as making light/fun of genocide.
dfj79 – my thoughts exactly. Or maybe it’s something along the lines “Defending genocide = free speech, therefore, defending free speech = defending defenders of genocide.”
An attendee of the Buckley conference made the comment
“Looking at the reaction to [Silliman College Associate Master] Erika Christakis’ email, you would have thought someone wiped out an entire Indian village.”
Students then protested (and committed assault) saying “Genocide is not a joke.”
Here’s a link to WaPo with more details:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/11/10/yale-students-protest-forum-on-free-speech/
Another good commentary
http://patch.com/new-hampshire/portsmouth-nh/mcpherson-barbarians-gate
If only these students *were* protesting the war…
They aren’t being drafted. Ergo, no harm no foul.
I couldn’t agree more!
Yale’s formal responses to the student agitation, both Erika Christakis’s as Silliman’s “Associate Master” and now that of the President and Dean, are eminently reasonable.
Yet agitation and complaint (I hesitate to call it protest, because that assumes something wrong to protest against) continue. As a commentators here and elsewhere have noted, there seems to be a real sense among some of the agitators that anything other than craven acquiescence to their demands is to be a reactionary, one to be swept away by the revolution (shades of Tom Courtenay as Pasha Antipov/Strelnikov in “Doctor Zhivago”, but without the wounding by the Cossacks as justification).
There do seem to be real wrongs to protest, even at Yale, but treating every sometimes imagined slight as an insult worthy of a duel to the death is just massive overreaction.
I’d be curious to know what proportion of the Yale student body participate in these exercises – I suspect not that many.
I’m curious about that myself. Is it a few loudmouth rabble rousers, or is this attitude prevalent among the student body? Actually, what do these attitudes look like across all colleges and universities? Is there a higher prevalence at small(er) private colleges than large state universities? (That was my experience back in the day, but I’m curious if my experience matches any sort of trend.)
way ta go, Yale!!
I would love to interview one of these students or watch an interview by a skilled interviewer. I want to understand their thinking. Until then, it just seems like these students are nuts.
I took that part of the letter as a jab at the protestors. Basically saying that the administration supports the students’ rights to disagree with the Christakis, but not to call them names, yell over them, engage in insult and ad homs, etc. Drawing the distinction between “In my opinion you’re wrong, and here’s why…” and “Listen doofus, you’re wrong and here’s why…” Or maybe more germane, drawing the distinction between verbally disagreeing with someone and spitting at them.
I suspect that the late Christopher Hitchens and others like him would disagree with even that position. I think he was one who thought that absurd positions deserved a good insult now and then. Its the ‘you can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason into’ idea. However, personally I have no problem with a University administrator suggesting that – at least when it comes to on-campus discussions about campul policies – people conduct themselves in a more academic manner. Its kind of the reason you’re there, right? To hone your skills at analyzing and debating subjects from a more academic, objective distance. Dance at the disco, push on the football field…and be academic on the quad.
I am not so sure there really is such a thing as an academic manner, at least not as in a manner that is particularly more respectful and objective than any other “manner.” Not using curse words and slang, while using bigger words, using technical terms, using a more stilted grammar, none of that is any impediment to being rude, mean and derogatory. Some of the nastiest behavior I have seen has been delivered in an academic manner.
In my experience it is as common for well educated people, including accomplished professors, to resort to rudeness and insult as most any other group. The best I could say is that perhaps being rude and insulting in an academic manner demonstrates better style, all though that is largely subjective. For example I think highly of George Carlin’s style, which is definitely not an “academic manner.”
I think when people are motivated to be nasty, and some people are just more easily motivated to or predisposed to nastiness than others, that it doesn’t matter what manner they are utilizing, they can readily express nastiness. What I dislike is those people who think that because they are utilizing an academic manner that their rudeness and insults are somehow okay while, at the same time, they think similar nastiness delivered by someone else in a more “low brow” manner is not.
Okay so I guess I wasn’t clear. I think the administrator was saying something like “you can disagree, just don’t throw ad homs.” I do not think either the administrator or my post represented the position “you can disagree and throw ad homs, but all ad homs should use words at least three syllables in length.”
I didn’t think either of you meant that. I was merely going off on a tangent inspired by the term “academic manner.” I should have clarified in particular that my last sentence was not pointed at you or any specific person.
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A bit of clarification if no one mentioned it. The chant “Genocide is not a joke” was in response to a comment by Greg Lukianoff a speaker at the free speech conference. He commented on Christakis hullabaloo saying that based on students reaction you would have thought Mrs. Christakis had “burned down an Indian village” or something.
I wanted to add I’m not real sure how I feel about the comment, but it was rather provocative, and certainly not the wisest thing to say to students who were already riled up.
I think the students’ behaviour was just begging for that comment to be made.
They’re the joke, if there is one, and a bad joke at that.
cr
“I think the students’ behaviour was just begging for that comment to be made.”
My thoughts exactly! Let’s put all these kids in Remedial English and let them rehash (or learn about for the first time?) hyperbole as a rhetorical device.
Precisely – it was a rhetorical device!
He was commenting on the disproportionate response of the students to a very mild, temperate, and balanced email.
The entire context of his comment was that ‘burning of an Indian village’ is an example of something truly terrible that should provoke outrage.
Somehow that gets parsed by these people as laughing at Indian genocide?
These people don’t just need a lecture on the fundamental importance of free speech – they need to brush up on basic reading and listening comprehension.
And precisely to you as well–that describes the situation perfectly!
I can see how someone could call Lukianoff’s comment offensive or at least inappropriate. I’m not sure how that leads to attendees at the conference being spat on and called race traitors.
The more I hear about it, the more it reminds me of a leftist Tea Party. When John Boehner isn’t sufficiently conservative enough for you and doesn’t pass your ideological purity test, you’ve moved into loony territory. Likewise when Greg Lukianoff of FIRE or a professor opposing administrative regulation of student Halloween costumes isn’t sufficiently left enough for you…
Meanwhile at U of Missouri, students are told to report ‘hurtful’ (not ‘hateful’) speech to police. Get licence number if possible.
Thought police — coming to a university near you.
They should welcome Ben Carson’s ideas.
See, we’re not such a divided country after all. We can look forward to a time when *everyone* agrees that the content of your speech is a police matter. In that age of harmony we need only hammer out a few minor details about which speech, exactly, is criminal.
Well, that’s easy. It’s any speech I disagree with. Oh…you thought it was speech YOU disagree with? Well, I can see we’re going to have a problem until you come ’round to my point of view.
Forgot the link
https://mobile.twitter.com/Thomas_Bradbury/status/664115347021139968
This is a couple of months old and I believe Jerry has already recommended it, but anyone who is interested in this subject and hasn’t yet read it should read the Atlantic article The Coddling of the American Mind by Lukianoff and Haidt. Its a somewhat longish article but contains a lot of good stuff. One of their main points is that this coddling may be actively contributing to psychopathy rather than helping people with trauma get over it.