Yale is Imploding over a Halloween Email

[cobrat]

Here’s some posters explicitly or implying the initial email is a form of censorship by the Yale administration:

Post 15

So, presidential costumes should be banned? No one can dress like Obama- like they have dressed for EVERY Halloween since the beginning of time? Or is it OK to dress like Obama if you wear a mask, but not if you put on makeup?

Post 18

@Warbrain

Censorship was implicit in the letter sent by the Yale students. And the protesters are not using speech…they are shouting, swearing, and acting like a mob.

Personally, I stop caring about someone’s message when it is delivered in that kind of way.

Post 47

Instead of sending out an email that says “don’t do this” (which we all know drives kids to do it even more) why
not have a campus-wide event talking about cultural sensitivity, where people can be educated and enlightened?

Post 54

In other words: Whose business is it to control the forms of costumes of young people? It’s not mine, I know that.

[prospect1]

@cobrat, none of those posts criticized the initial email that was sent by Yale to its students.

There have been many posts advocating the approach suggested in the EC email as being the better way to deal with minor offenses, but I don’t believe that anybody (explicitly OR implicitly) suggested that the initial Yale email constituted a form of censorship.

There is a difference between saying, (a) “I agree with EC’s approach to dealing with minor offenses rather than creating a list of things to be banned,” and saying, (b) “I like EC’s approach, and therefore any other approach should not be allowed to be expressed.”

There were posters who stated (a); I don’t believe anybody said (b).

Nobody has suggested that Yale should be prohibited from expressing its points of view, or should be prohibited from guiding its students in the way that it did. People HAVE suggested that EC should also be permitted to express views. People HAVE suggested that attempts to stifle EC - or anyone else - from expressing views would be a form of censorship.

[cobrat]

@prospect1

Post 18 explicitly said "Censorship is implicit in "the initial email in question. If that’s not criticism of the first email, I’d be interested to know what you’d consider it to be…

Post 47 also made a similar implicit criticism of that initial email by stating 'Instead of sending out an email that says “don’t do this”" which implies the poster viewed the initial email as the administration telling students to not wear offensive costumes and thus, effectively banning it.

[Nrdsb4]

@cobrat, in a thread with 82 pages, I don’t agree that you’ve illustrated that “many” people in the thread took Yale to task for the initial email. I think you are really exaggerating your point.

[prospect1]

@cobrat, post #18 was critical of the Yale kids’ response to the EC email as being an attempt at censorship. Post #18 was not critical of the initial Yale email.

As for post #47, the poster is expressing his/her opinion that the EC approach is the “better” approach. This is not an accusation that the initial Yale email was a form of censorship.

[cobrat]

@cobrat, in a thread with 82 pages, I don’t agree that you’ve illustrated that “many” people in the thread took Yale to task for the initial email. I think you are really exaggerating your point.

The four posts was around the first 2 pages. I don’t have enough time to go through all pages to find every example atm.

However, you asked if they existed and I found 4 posts as examples with two being so explicit I don’t know how prospect1 missed them.

[prospect1]

@cobrat,

I do admire the way you cut off your quote of post #18.

Post #18 stated in material part: “Censorship was implicit in the letter sent by the Yale students.”

Post #18 clearly was not critical of the initial Yale email. It was critical of the Yale students’ attempts at censorship.

And, I’m not sure how YOU missed that.

[jym626]

In NC’s “positive intent” message, he spoke to the concept of “institutional authority” or “administrative authority” to which was in part the impetus for his wife’s email. Don’t really recall posters here railing about “censorship” , but do think the whole firestorm began in part because there was a suggested heavy hand that the administration might have been seen as taking with the students re: reminders or guidelines for potentially insensitive costumes.

[PCHope]

@cobrat

In you own quote, #1221, "Censorship was implicit in the letter sent by the Yale students. " It is NOT the original Yale email sent by the Dean!

Why misquote in #1223?

At least be consistent, please.

[prospect1]

@cobrat,

I fear you might be tempted to now wade through 82 pages of over 1200 posts in order to prove your point.

Please don’t do that. Enjoy your Sunday (or whatever day it may be where you are).

I have been involved in this thread from the beginning, and I assure you that the overall tenor of the discussion has not been critical of the initial Yale email. I beg of you not to comb through to find some outlier sentence that might suggest otherwise.

This has been an amazingly insightful discussion in my opinion. I hope it continues, and these types of side events do tend to derail the train.

[Sue22]

This thread seems to be imploding…

[mcat2]

Not sure if this is relevant, since this is not about native Americans. Rather, it is about African Americans. (Also not about YLS, it is about YSM):

http://medicine.yale.edu/education/omca/diversity/africanamerican/graduates.aspx

[jym626]

prospect1,
There is not need to worry about it taking hours to do an exhaustive search. A quick search of the thread for the word “censorshop” (using the magnifying thing on the top righthand side of the thread) pulls up 19 posts, out of 1230. And just over half of these 19 posts here made in the last fuew hours of this thread, when this discussion began. http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/search?discussionid=1828617&search=censorship

[Zinhead]

Post 54
In other words: Whose business is it to control the forms of costumes of young people? It’s not mine, I know that.

That quote was from the text of the email that EC wrote in response to the Yale email.

[alh]

In the words of EC and NC, and you can read it all for context if you wish:

Is a satirical flyer distributed a few days ago at Harvard with joking references to anti-semitism, “coloreds,” and sexual assault worth defending? We think so. The protection of free speech is meaningless if what we really mean is “free speech we find appropriate.” When we prohibit or punish certain kinds of statements, even vile ones, then we are protecting speech only insofar as we agree with it or it does not offend us. This is not only a logically inconsistent position, but it is also one that harms our students.

Unfortunately, many well-intentioned policies to foster “civility” are counter-productive. Leaving aside the fact that some unpopular ideas may, in fact, be good ones, the real problem is that colleges are increasingly mistrustful that students have the analytic skills and moral character to decide for themselves. Paradoxically, this mistrust is the opposite of educational because it strips students of their own agency in vetting ideas in the public sphere. Even worse, when we get bogged down in concerns about safeguarding people’s feelings, we can lose sight of much more important values that protect all of us, first among them the right to think and speak freely.

http://ideas.time.com/2012/12/04/wither-goes-free-speech-at-harvard/

This is not the only writer who thinks EC criticized the original email:

Yet Erika Christakis, a faculty member at Yale and associate “master” of its Silliman College, wrote a public letter attacking the university’s email. In the letter she referenced her husband, Silliman College “master” Nicholas Christakis, saying, “Nicholas says, if you don’t like a costume someone is wearing, look away, or tell them you are offended. Talk to each other. Free speech and the ability to tolerate offense are the hallmarks of a free and open society.”

But consider this: Nicholas and Erika Christakis were implicitly endorsing the idea that students should be able to wear blackface or whatever other offensive costumes they want and that students of color should just suck it up. They’re suggesting the idea that the burden should shift away from white students to be considerate and not offensive, and expecting them to do otherwise would be offensive to the white students.

To put it differently, the university didn’t impinge on free speech or the ability of students to disagree with one another but simply discouraged students from offending each other. Erika Christakis’ response was to encourage being offensive as a form of free speech. It’s not hard to see why students of color at Yale found this problematic.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/12/opinions/kohn-yale-protests/

This is the debate many are seeing:

The debate has been framed as a conflict between two rights: the freedom of speech and the right not to be discriminated against—or, as the students at many universities put it, the right to “safe spaces” on campus. But that abstract argument leaves out the many contextual factors…

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/yales-unsafe-spaces

from classicalmama’s link (thank you!):

On this narrow issue: I also want to be clear that free speech does not mean harassment. Erika and I would find much of the same speech to be offensive or vile that most students would, and we would never countenance certain sorts of speech (e.g., the wearing of a Ku Klux Klan costume). We will explain this more later, and there are, as we are sure you can imagine, some difficult lines to draw.

http://silliman.yalecollege.yale.edu/news/idea-positive-intent

I like this. ^^ I will be very interested in their further explanation and where they draw the lines.

[cobrat]

I have been involved in this thread from the beginning, and I assure you that the overall tenor of the discussion has not been critical of the initial Yale email.

I’m not saying the overall tenor of the discussion has that orientation, but several posters have explicitly or implicitly argued either the initial email was censorship or that it was a heavy hand of the administration telling students what to wear for Halloween.

It’s one undercurrent of the thread which reminds me of some right-leaning groups online and ones I’ve seen on some campuses who not only feel any suggestions of civility/guidance from college authorities…including private ones is censorship.

There also seem to be an interesting double standard where students from marginalized groups protesting because some have stated the administration has not dealt with them meaningfully* are held to much higher behavioral standards than those who are viewed as more acceptable by those against the protesters…such as not expecting students complaining about protesters noise and feeling intimidated about voicing their concerns to follow EC’s advice about “ignoring them” or “confront them and discuss it”.

• It's also just as telling that Yale's President admitted flat out the institution failed the marginalized students. Very interesting as most institutions are usually loath to admit any failings/wrongs for fears of bad publicity and worse.
  

[prospect1]

I don’t see where EC or NC claimed that the initial Yale email was an act of censorship; I don’t read it that way at all. I do see that they both offered a different point of view vis a vis how to approach offensive speech. These are two different things; the coexistence of the Yale email and the EC email are a demonstration of free speech in action.

I am sure that there are published opinions out there claiming the Yale email was an act of censorship. You could probably cite to dozens. There are opinions out there about all sorts of things; good opinions, nutty opinions; opinions based on wrong facts; opinions based on prejudice, etc… I am saying that nobody on THIS thread made that claim, to my knowledge.

However, if somebody wants to make such a claim, I would defend their right to have that opinion, “right-leaning” or otherwise.

[classicalmama]

@alh 's great quotes in 1235 are perhaps too long to requote here, but I like the way the first one complicates the discussion of civility. When does a code of civility lead to better discussion and debate and when does it shut it down? IMO, the Woodward Report–widely available and referenced at Yale–draws that fine line admirably. There are schools with much more restrictive speech codes which might well feel safer. Should Yale make their stance a part of the admission process somehow?

Also, the CNN EC quote is precisely the one that has been repeatedly, incorrectly, taken out of context. The interpretation that those words are the Christakis’s “implicit endorsement” of other students wearing blackface doesn’t bear up to a reading of the letter as a whole. Tampa15’s point that it’s understandable how an already hurt college student might have gotten there is a good one, but Sally Kohn should do better.

[HarvestMoon1]

@@Classicalmam

IMO, the Woodward Report–widely available and referenced at Yale–draws that fine line admirably. There are schools with much more restrictive speech codes which might well feel safer. Should Yale make their stance a part of the admission process somehow?

It already is written into the Undergraduate Regulations in the section on Freedom of Expression - see my post #661. Also the following language is in the introduction to the Undergraduate Regulations:

Each student in Yale College is required as a condition of enrollment to comply with the Undergraduate Regulations. The University expects students to be familiar with the Undergraduate Regulations and to use this online version for reference during the course of the academic year. An assertion of ignorance of any of the rules published herein will not be accepted as an excuse for any violation of them. No student or group of students should expect to be individually warned to conform to any of the rules contained in the Undergraduate Regulations.

[Mastadon]

For what it is worth, here is my opinion:

In the grand scheme of things, this is not really about costumes and it is not really about Freedom of Speech.

It is about Yale defining what they believe creates the optimum environment for the creation and dissemination of knowledge. The Woodward Report provides a framework, but there is still room for interpretation of the relative importance of a number of contributing factors.

I would argue that “academia” is not the “real world” (by design) and that the notion of a “safe space” is not really new. Historically, in the name of enhancing the educational environment, colleges have provided a “safe space” for professors in the form of tenure.

I think the question that is on the table here is whether or not a cogent case can be made for the notion that an equivalent “safe space” for students would enhance the educational environment and what form it would take.

My belief is that such case can be made and that it would be consistent with the spirit of the Woodward report.

An organization called FIRE would disagree with me. Their mission is to promote the Freedom of Speech on colleges campuses across America. In their worldview Political Correctness is the enemy of Free Speech and it needs to be eliminated from the college campus.

The president of FIRE is the person who has been referenced as being a friend of NC. He is the one who took the video and posted it online. I have not had the time to piece together the exact timing of the FIRE visit(s) to the Silli
man College. If someone could do that it may provide additional context.

Here is some information on FIRE

https://www.thefire.org/about-us/mission/
https://www.thefire.org/about-us/staff/
https://www.thefire.org/progress-at-yale-but-a-conspicuous-omission/

It is not clear (at least to me) what NC and EC believe creates the optimum educational environment. I find NC to be an enigma because at this point in time, his actions don’t appear to be consistent with his words.

I reserve the right to change my opinion, but at this point in time, based on the information I have seen, I support the “shrieking woman” and her position more than I support NC.

I realize that this is an unconventional position, so in the spirit of gaining a better understanding, I encourage people to ask specific questions to challenge my position and/or provide my reasoning.