Here is an excerpt of what I consider the best analysis of the current events, Salon:
But Christakis went beyond personal musings, remarking instead on the social utility of trolling, and offering behavioral prescriptions to students who were offended by racially insensitive costumes, rather than those whose costumes are apt to cause offense. “Nicholas says, if you don’t like a costume someone is wearing, look away, or tell them you are offended. Talk to each other.” However reasonable the advice, it came in the context of an e-mail, also sent from a position of authority, lambasting college administrators for using their authority to offer guidelines of their own, and suggesting that to do so creates an environment of “censure and prohibition.”
The only way this isn’t morally inconsistent is if the feelings of minority students simply matter less to her than others’, if the alienation and discomfort of her students of color is less meaningful and important than the fun to be had from their peers’ provocations. One group deserves to be coddled, protected from the judgment of the ever-overreaching administration (of which she is a part). The other does not. Christakis’s e-mail was no less about shielding students, but it was about shielding students who need protection the least: those who might perceive a request for baseline levels of courtesy and civility as overly burdensome. She values the delicate sensibilities of the offender over the offended.
The very idea that this polite plea for tolerance is tantamount to administrative trouncing upon rights is, in and of itself, an inherently political view. It is also one that displays a fundamental misunderstanding of the mechanisms of free speech. (A repeat of the Christakises’ 2012 mistake.) Unchecked free speech does not result in better speech, as the Harvard incident illustrated, and can instead encourage language and behaviors that are inflammatory without being genuinely provocative. Yet the very reason why the government needn’t police speech is because evolving social norms dictate what speech is acceptable. Universities are entitled, compelled, even, to develop whatever cultures they see fit, to play their part in establishing those norms.
In the creation of this culture, students play a crucial role as well. In this case, students took issue with the ideas expressed in Christakis’s e-mail, and found those ideas prohibitively disrespectful for someone charged with promoting their well-being. They are not guilty of intolerance for suggesting that those who have used their positions of authority to advance their own offensive views are not fit to serve as House Masters. Nor are they spoiled brats who deserve to be scolded for having the gall to demand respect in their hard-earned home. They are entitled to express themselves, too. Shielding people from judgment based on their professed beliefs, and the means over and manner in which they choose to profess them, does not enhance the sanctity of free speech. It undermines it.
In Time, the Christakises accused Harvard of getting “bogged down in concerns about safeguarding people’s feelings.” Three years later, Erika Christakis lauded the good old days when college campuses were environments wherein people were free to be “a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive?” They are, and she was. But she cannot now demand that Yale safeguard her from the social and professional consequences of that offense; she is entitled to protection from neither. Yale owes no continued obligation to the Christakises as House Masters. As Friedersdorf has painstakingly noted, it has far better things to do. Their luxurious housing and prestigious positions are offered in exchange for a job well done. They are no more entitled to it than a student who is expelled for failing to meet academic standards. That is, failing to fulfill the duties of his role.
“If our brightest and most capable young adults can’t be trusted to think for themselves,” the Christakises implored three years ago, “who can? And if our greatest American universities won’t protect words, who will?” Yale’s responsibility is to the students who have, quite literally, bought into its promise. This does not include protection from discomfort, but does include a good faith effort to protect them from the very specific kind of discomfort that stems from having one’s feelings discounted on the basis of race. And, at the very least, that those feelings are not diminished, as they so often are, by the very adults tasked with their protection. It also includes an obligation to teach all of its students the values of tolerance, empathy, and inclusivity. But if these values can’t be imparted to our brightest and most capable young adults, then to whom can they be taught? And if not at our greatest universities, then where can they be learned?