An interesting note-
Nicholas Christakis is a sociologist who does much of his work in the area of social contagion, for instance the idea that happiness and obesity are contagious within social networks.
Here’s the abstract of one of his papers:
I wonder what his professional opinion would be about the situation in which he and his wife find themselves.
Also, the Christakises have college age kids. I wonder what their reactions have been to this situation.
I was referring to Erika Christakises, not Emily. Sorry for the confusion.
College aged kids you say? Let the witch hunt begin. This has all been blown out of proportion sadly.
Yeah, but what free speech is supposed to be OK at Yale, and what free speech is supposed to be not OK? We have four different possible speech acts here:
It seems to me that if you say that yelling students are objectionable, and it’s legitimate to say that students should not yell and disrupt in pursuit of their free speech, then you are committed to saying that blackface students can be objectionable, and it’s right and reasonable for the Dean to say it. In which case, Christakis is wrong, and the students are right to object even though they are objecting in the wrong way.
If Yale is going to tell students how to behave, then they should be consistent. If Yale wants to have a code of conduct, or merely institutional norms, that say that students should behave themselves in a more civil manner when objecting, then Yale should also have a code of conduct, or institutional norms, that say that students shouldn’t wear blackface.
This is from: http://yalecollege.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/URs%202015-2016%281%29.pdf (Supposedly Yale’s Code of Conduct/Student Regulations)
Indeed, by formal vote the Yale
College Faculty has affirmed:
Note: peaceful and respect.
I don’t think Erika’s email was that ostentatious or disrespectful. Ill-considered, sure. But it wasn’t flagrantly disrespectful.
I don’t know how genuine that “openness” may be when Christakis was reported to have attempted to leave that very meeting when they brought up and criticized her email:
@cobrat My bad, I incorrectly read your paragraph. Apologies!
Well, to be honest, reading through the rest of the Twitter feed, there are some angry vitriolic people with what I can only describe as unfocused rage that would have kept her there until the next week just to have the opportunity to chastise her. It had devolved, from what I’m hearing, into a long line of students with little productive to add other than additional insults and calls for her immediate resignation. That’s not being constructive.
“Students wept as they recounted instances of mistreatment at the university, describing inadequate mental health resources and a patchwork process of responding to claims of sexual assault.”
They were throwing everything but the kitchen sink at the wrong person. I truly empathize with people who feel marginalized or discriminated against. In a perfect world, we could wave a wand and everyone would just sort of forget the past 200 years. But there is a process for these people to file their grievances. A whole handbook, in fact.
Why weren’t they taking these measures beforehand? This was just a match that lit the powder keg and the anger was squarely pointed at Christakis. I’m not sure how long I would have stood there just to be berated.
Things must change, yes. But why can’t we have an actual dialogue? Where are the student body officers? I want to know exactly how many times they have brought any of these concerns before the board before today. Why aren’t the students calling for their expulsion or at the very least resignation from office?
I understand the anger. But it’s not going to make anything better until we can calmly and rationally discuss the issues and how to improve them.
Not having been at the meeting it’s hard for me to know whether the AACC meeting was a respectful discussion or whether E. Christakis was feeling personally attacked or even unsafe. Imagine the confrontation between the Yale student and N. Christakis on the quad, then switch the genders. If a woman were being yelled at by a man the way Prof. C. was being yelled at by the female student I think we might have had a stronger visceral reaction to the video.
Not to belabor the point, but again from the Yale Student Handbook:
E. Procedures for complaints of acts of violence or physical force,
harassment, intimidation, or coercion
Town-gown relations are never easy, this is especially true at Yale. Race, class, and history are conflated, and the recent conversation to change the name of Calhoun college only make this an uber sensitive topic on campus…
Have you guys read Fahrenheit 451?
The fire chief gives Montag a speech about the origins of censorship that is actually pretty relevant to this situation.
One thing you keep ignoring despite the very reports and recent history is that the very marginalized students are so aggravated and angered precisely because those very measures and processes were tried and found to be seriously lacking considering cases such as the perceived light punishment that fraternity received for yelling pro-rape chants at female students and other incidents.
If those measures and processes worked so well, this entire incident would not have happened.
One other thing some on this thread are ignoring. Part of the role of older universities like Yale was precisely to prepare their students not only educationally, but also how to be better behaved in polite society to create what they considered a “cultivated moral educated person”. Albeit with some criteria we’d find problematic today.
One thing to think about is the current conflict is likely a contestation between those who preferred the older problematic standards(i.e. DKE) and those whose standards are more in tune with a 21st society where women and non-WASP/White minorities are no longer marginalized or in past history, barred altogether from colleges like Yale.
Post #76 I wonder what her “AND” was?
This along with the behavior of the DKEs are more examples of the all knowing, wise, “we are building the perfect class” Ivy ad com decision making worshipped here on CC. I think we should link to that video in the Yale rejection thread this spring.
http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2015/11/05/students-confront-christakis-about-halloween-email/ For those that want a first-hand account of what happened - pretty much what I had heard/expected.
@cobrat This was all I could find on recent history at Yale.
"“To be a student of color on Yale’s campus is to exist in a space that was not created for you,” concludes the student open letter responding to Christakis. “From the Eurocentric courses, to the lack of diversity in the faculty, to the names of slave owners and traders that adorn most of the buildings on campus — all are reminders that Yale’s history is one of exclusion.”
One of Yale’s 12 residential colleges is still named after John C. Calhoun, the virulent racist and secessionist who once defended slavery as a “positive good”; it was given that name in 1933, and it was only this summer, after the Charleston shootings, that the university seriously began to consider changing it.
At Yale, just 7 percent of students are black. Black faculty are even scarcer, and their share of total faculty positions has been virtually unchanged since the 1970s."
======
I’m not really sure how you can teach Renaissance history from the perspective of Africa, but it might make for an interesting intellectual exercise. I will admit that it is a shame that slave owners and traders are on buildings or that one of the colleges is named after a “virulent racist”. It’s not usually as easy as getting up on a ladder and chiseling the name off the building. Some of those buildings are attached to trusts which require buildings in their benefactor’s name. Also, yes, it is a shameful horrible part of our past, but would you have Germany wipe away all records or remnants of the Holocaust? Those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it. I do concede that there should be more minority faculty, but a lot of that is old white men teaching old white men to succeed them. Now that we can change.
The higher education system is broken. It’s overpriced, social unfair, relatively pointless and a burden to our economy. But yet we send our kids to schools in droves. I’m not really sure why yet, but I appreciate it.
And in closing, this tidbit from thefire.org:
Recall that Yale is the source of one of the most glowing statements in support of free expression in higher education. The statement, based on the university’s 1975 Woodward Report, demonstrates the need to be free to “think the unthinkable, discuss the unmentionable, and challenge the unchallengeable.” It even goes so far as to inform Yale students that “when you agree to matriculate, you join a community where ‘the provocative, the disturbing, and the unorthodox’ must be tolerated. When you encounter people who think differently than you do, you will be expected to honor their free expression, even when what they have to say seems wrong or offensive to you.”
Cardinal Fang - Perhaps they should have a code of conduct / institutional norms that prohibit blackface. If I were a faculty member at a university that had incidents of blackface, I could see myself voting that wearing blackface is generally outside of the “broad limits” of protected academic speech for two reasons (1) the clear racist history behind its use (2) I’m not aware of any serious academic inquiry that requires the use of blackface (though a course on the history of racism in American theater might be an exception to this). Frankly, I’m not a 100% sure, but that’s my instinct.
However, I would never endorse the idea that the mere questioning of a ban on blackface is outside the bounds of permitted discourse. That’s the issue here, and the difference between the two concepts is vital. That’s why I don’t believe my position is inconsistent at all.
Wow–between this incident and those mentioned early on in the following article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3309259/Yale-students-come-forward-share-experiences-campus-racism-Whites-Girls-fraternity-party-claims.html
I am getting the impression that the top schools are not much better than places like UA and UO when it comes to race relations (by the way, I am hoping one of my kids considers UA, partly b/c of their great merit aid).
Banning black face at Yale would be antithetical to their stated mission I mentioned above. The lesson to be learned here is where to draw the line between common respect/decency versus placing limits on the free expression of newly minted adults whose brains aren’t fully formed yet. It’s not as easy as you would think; it turns into muck quickly.
I would be quite disappointed if my research were stopped (it’s of a somewhat controversial nature and could be misconstrued) because someone decided it was outside the “broad limits” of protected speech. This is exactly why we give professors tenure, so they can be controversial and push the limits to explore and understand.
I don’t endorse the idea that questioning the ban on blackface is outside the bounds of permitted discourse either. I just think that the same idea of civility that leads to official disapproval of abusive protest should lead to official disapproval of blackface. If you don’t expect students to be civil, don’t be surprised when they protest abusively. If you do expect students to be civil (and I think Yale does and should) then you should expect them to refrain from wearing demeaning Halloween costumes.
And, since Yale students are young and still learning how to be responsible adults, the administration is well within their mandate to remind students how to behave when occasions come up where misbehavior is likely.