The whole thing is a tempest in a teapot. No one’s First Amendment rights were abridged. Employees send stupid, ill-advised, e-mails in private industry all the time and get called on the carpet for them. This is news only because it happened at Yale.
Pizzagirl I suggest you browse the numerous writings of Andrew Carniege to Warren Buffet to Bill Gates, who all make the succinct posit that privilege and wealth have an added responsibility.
If I had the income of Andrew Carnegie, Warren Buffet or Bill Gates, I’d be happy to share! And if anyone here has that income level and would like to share, I am happy to be a recipient.
Great article in the WSJ about “Yale’s Little Robespierres.” Best quote from the article
http://www.wsj.com/articles/yales-little-robespierres-1447115476
pragmaticmom, no one on here has ever said that aren’t problematic and offensive costumes. To the contrary, examples have been given that we all agree on. However, the issue being raised is that no one at Yale actually wore such a costume, therefore the yelling and spitting and demands for firing seem a bit extreme and hypersensitive as a response to a polite e-mail that merely pointed out that some Yalies feel they didn’t need to be reminded of what every civil person should know.
^I think it was Justice Holmes who said that the First Amendment ends at “the tip of someone else’s nose.” Presumably, as master of Silliman, Christakis knew most of the people in the “mob”; no punches were thrown. There’s no issue here
“students within that particular residential college who essentially expressed the viewpoint that nobody should be telling them to be sensitive to the feelings of other students”
Critical distinction. The question was whether ADULTS in their official capacity should be instructing them about appropriate costumes, as opposed to whether students ought to be guiding one another about that. “Nobody should be telling them” is a mischaracterization to the official adult instruction they were given.
As I’ve said, I support the official instruction, but it’s hardly a litmus test of being a supportive/welcoming mentor.
I’m stupefied by reading that the student screaming at Christakis was a master’s aide and that she was on the search committee for master of Silliman. If this is true, then there may be more to this story. Normally a master’s aide would know the master pretty well, and it would be astonishing for one of them to act this way toward the master in public.
I continue to have mixed views about this situation, but I have some observations. First, it shows how easy it is to lose the moral high ground, even if you have valid complaints. One person can lose the moral high ground for a whole movement, if somebody makes a video, or if one idiot decides to spit on somebody else. Second, PR and choice of words matters: in this case, I’m thinking of the use of “safe” in this conversation. In what respect, specifically, are people of color not “safe” at Yale? I am not aware of any lack of physical safety–but I don’t think that’s what is meant. If what is meant is safety from discrimination, OK–but if what is meant is safety from disagreement or challenge, then I’m not persuaded. (As an aside, my personal view is that woman who was kept out of the SAE party was probably safer on the outside than on the inside, but that’s my bias showing.)
No. Given the history of racial violence in this country, they meant everything, including physical safety.
Here’s another commentary
If the student who was yelling was a master’s aide, then Christakis’ not knowing her name is an indictment. It’s been taken down now, but yesterday I looked at the page for the master’s aides, and there are something like 15 of them, maybe 20. It’s November. Christakis should know their names.
Don’t these students have anything else to do…like studying?
In what way does the Christakis e-mail threaten anybody’s physical safety? In what way does even a highly offensive Halloween costume threaten somebody’s physical safety? I guess I could see this level of reaction if it had happened last year after a police officer pulled a gun on a black student–but it didn’t happen then. Why, exactly, is it happening now?
"The concern expressed in some of these posts that no costume exists that offends no one is disingenuous. Are you seriously equating the mocking African Americans in blackface or Jewish Americans in an exaggerated costume of a jewish merchant or perhaps a holocaust survivor — to say, a superhero costume? "
No one said that there aren’t any costumes that aren’t offensive. I personally would find blackface very offensive, or at least in very bad taste. Stop conflating disagreement about the role of a univ in “policing” offensive costumes with the belief that we are saying there are no offensive costumes.
It’s rather like claiming that someone who felt the Nazis had the right to march in Skokie thus felt that the Nazi message wasn’t offensive, or that it was no big deal or that they supported it. It is possible to believe in free speech, even speech which one doesn’t like.
You have a short memory:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/yale-police-point-gun-columnists-son-bring-spotlight-back-racial-profiling-campus/
“No. Given the history of racial violence in this country, they meant everything, including physical safety.”
So there was a real, credible reason for students of color at Yale to feel that on Halloween, they were in physical danger? that what was going to happen was cross burnings and physical intimidation? That they were going to kicked around? I call bs. Other people were going to wear costumes. A tiny minority would be offensive, either inadvertently or deliberately.
I think “marginalized people” seem to think they can never feel uncomfortable in a situation and it’s everyone else’s responsibility to accommodate. Guess what? Every single one of us has had a situation in which others’ actions disturbed us (but didn’t threaten our physical safety). I think ignorant people think this happens only if you’re “marginalized.”
Circuit rider, hunt explicitly mentioned that case in a post posted before yours. He doesn’t have a short memory.
And I’m sorry, I just cannot remotely equate a Halloween costume to a physical threat involving the use of force.
The highest courts of our land take great care to publish dissenting opinions. They do so for many reasons, but one is that dissents illustrate that the majority opinion, that often defines what constitutes the “common good”, was arrived at through thoughtful deliberation, not by the mandate of a “few.” Presumably all views are considered and a reasoned discussion of the issue is undertaken. At the end of the day the majority opinion prevails and that becomes the law of the land - for now.
I view the initial email sent by Dean Howard as the opening of discussion or “deliberation.” And as an african american at Yale he was well positioned to open that discussion. There was no mandate or prohibition relative to costumes stated in the email, and no statement that the administration had come to any conclusions about what constituted the “common good.” It was an invitation to take certain considerations into account when choosing a costume.
I do not agree that the Christakis email limits her or her H’s effectiveness to do their jobs. Had Howard’s initial email stated a directive about what the administration had concluded was best for the community, and the Christakis’s then chose to subvert that message, I would agree their ability to do their jobs could be called into question. They weren’t there yet, no consensus had been reached and in fact the Christakis’s were getting complaints from their students.
Putting aside whether any of us agree with their position, the Christakis email was representing the voices of some portion of the campus community.
And, you don’t deal with fear by calling the fearful “ignorant” any more than you deal with a racist by calling them a racist. It just doesn’t work that way.
Interestingly, there is a student editorial on the Yale Daily News today that says that those who support the Christakis point of view are ignorant.
Here’s my amateur psychological evaluation of this situation: it doesn’t have to do with physical safety, really. What it has to do with is a feeling on the part of minority students that they are being belittled, that their views are being ignored or condescended to. Nobody likes this, and you are bound to like it even less if you think it’s being done because of your race. That’s really what was wrong with the Christakis e-mail–it was viewed, with some justification, as belittling concerns about offensive statements (in the form of Halloween costumes).
What I can’t answer is how often black students at Yale justifiably feel that they are being belittled. My daughter tells me that minority students all have examples of this. I do have a problem, here–on the one hand, it’s hard to put yourself in the shoes of another person, especially if you have not experienced those kinds of issues because of your own race and gender–but on the other hand, I am not willing to say that I can never, ever make any kind of evaluation for myself of whether someone else’s reactions seem reasonable or not.