13 Culture Wars and Campus Wars

As Halloween approached in 2015, Yale was one of many universities that advised its students how to avoid choosing costumes that might offend anyone’s sensitivities, for instance by exploiting racial or sexual stereotypes. In response, the academic couple in charge of one of Yale’s residential undergraduate colleges issued a thoughtful email justifying the legitimacy and even usefulness of acts or symbols that some might find offensive, when presented as parody or satire. Erika Christakis urged that potential conflicts should be dealt with through rational discussion, and might actually serve as effective teaching moments. This call for tolerance sparked an uproar, as students en masse confronted and harangued her husband, Nicholas Christakis, shrieking abuse in ugly moments that circulated widely on video. Protesters aggressively scorned any suggestion that the matters at issue should be the subject of intellectual disagreement, demanding instead that colleges should offer their students emotional comfort and security. The couple was forced to resign from Yale. Together with many similar incidents in these years, the Yale affair demonstrated how very radical views had become entrenched on many liberal or progressive college campuses. In other events, speakers who were deemed controversial or insensitive were silenced by what critics denounced as the state of mob rule that appeared to exist on many campuses.