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.
