Yale Lecturer Resigns After Email on Halloween Costumes

[MadDAsHell]

Source: NYT

A Yale lecturer who came under attack for challenging students to stand up for their right to decide what Halloween costumes to wear, even to the point of being offensive, has resigned from teaching at the college, the university said Monday.

The lecturer, Erika Christakis, an expert in early childhood education, wrote an email in October suggesting that there could be negative consequences to students ceding “implied control” over Halloween costumes to institutional forces. “I wonder, and I am not trying to be provocative: Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious,” she wrote, “a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive? American universities were once a safe space not only for maturation but also for a certain regressive, or even transgressive, experience; increasingly, it seems, they have become places of censure and prohibition."

After the email, a group of students confronted Dr. (Nicholas) Christakis. One student was shown in a video posted on YouTube confronting Dr. Christakis as he clasped his hands. “It is not about creating an intellectual space! It is not!” the student was heard yelling. “Do you understand that? It is about creating a home here!”

“Erika Christakis is a well-regarded instructor, and the university’s leadership is disappointed that she has chosen not to continue teaching in the spring semester,” the statement said. “Her teaching is highly valued and she is welcome to resume teaching anytime at Yale, where freedom of expression and academic inquiry are the paramount principle and practice.”


Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/08/us/yale-lecturer-resigns-after-email-on-halloween-costumes.html?_r=0

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From a separate article on Fusion.com: "In a letter to Inside Higher Ed, Yale professor Douglas Stone said Christakis’ resignation is a loss for students. “Last year Erika Christakis’s classes were shopped by over 300 students and many who wished to take them were turned away,” Stone said of the well-regarded early childhood specialist. Stone continued, “she has received truly exceptional teaching evaluations… Those who mounted the campaign against her have significantly reduced educational choice for all Yale undergrads.”

Interesting that Yale's official statement noted that "freedom of expression and academic inquiry are the paramount principle and practice," yet in an email to the Washington Post Christakis stated "I have great respect and affection for my students, but I worry that the current climate at Yale is not, in my view, conducive to the civil dialogue and open inquiry required to solve our urgent societal problems.”

So professor and school are saying opposite things about what the climate at Yale is truly like. I'd tend to trust a professor over Administration any day of the week.

These kids did an awful good job of chasing the scary monsters off campus; apparently her husband is also taking a sabbatical.

[underpants]

1. *sigh* the War on Christakis continues

[Fuddnik]

3. Oh, you're sneaky.

My wife would pinch me if I said that.

[tblue37]

16. Oh, for Christakis' sake! nt

[deathrind]

2. The future of America...

Does not look good if that future is offended by an email of this nature.

[LanternWaste]

8. Future looks even worse if we rationalize not accepting the consequences of our actions.

Future looks even worse if we rationalize not accepting the consequences of our actions.

[MadDAsHell]

11. 100% agree. She told students to wear what they wanted, and if it was offensive, to accept...

the consequences of making the decision to wear it.

Students from the 60's would have been all over that.

Students from 2015 (who ironically enough fancy themselves progressives and world-changers in the image of the patriots of the 60's) instead responded with outrage, demanding the University exercise more control over their lives.

They hated the idea of not having their dress/decorum dictated to them, of having to look through their own closets each morning and make their own decisions, consequences be damned.

Oh, how college campuses have changed in 50 years...

[jtuck004]

10. All little children want their protected little group. Works as long as there is an adult to pay

for it, keep them out of everyone else's hair, which is handy. The whiny little snots won't accomplish anything when they leave, just release more greenhouse gas and help off the rest of the population earlier than they should have had to die.

"The future of America..."

[ForgoTheConsequence]

4. RIP academic freedom.

...

[bluestateguy]

5. She was absolutely railroaded by a small crowd of crybaby students

What a shame.

[ForgoTheConsequence]

6. Howard Dean tweeted that he supported the firing.

He's been a real disappointment lately.

[TipTok]

7. Just lately?

[JI7]

13. the OP says she resigned. did Dean explain why ? maybe there is more to this

based on the bit i read that is posted in the OP i can't figure out what the controversy is.

[KittyWampus]

14. She wasn't fired.

[KamaAina]

9. Yale '85 here. If these students are truly concerned about diversity on campus,

they've got bigger fish to fry than this. We have been losing minority faculty at an alarming rate. And one such faculty member tells me that Yale's $50 million initiative to retain them is bogus. She should know; she's Japanese-American and is on her way to Cal. For lack of a better word, I call this "blackwashing", like when polluters "greenwash" by making a token donation to an environmental group.

So where, I ask you, are the throngs of students gathered in Beinecke Plaza (the traditional protest site, in front of the Yale Corporation's offices) to protest this?

[AngryAmish]

17. Yale has an incredible golf course.

CB MacDonald with Seth Raynor building it. With perhaps the best Biarritz/Chasm hole in the world. With the restoration and tree removal (George Bahto should be honored if they take Calhoun's name off the building).

Yale has a lot going for it.

[KamaAina]

18. It is the only golf course in the world that spans four towns.

New Haven, West Haven, Orange and Woodbridge.

[romanic]

12. Can the crybaby students

just resign from Yale instead?

[TexasMommaWithAHat]

15. And these are our best and brightest?

This does not bode well for the future of this country.

[Elmergantry]

19. The Brownshirts win.

Trump would be proud.

Next up; A good 'ole collegiate bonfire fueled by books from the Yale library deemed to have "trigger words"

[MadDAsHell]

20. What's devastating is that these idiotic students consider themselves liberal progressives.

They give us all a bad name because they're the exact opposite.

[LeftishBrit]

21. Assuming that the story is as given...

I can't see why she should have had to resign.

Perhaps it was the last straw in a long saga, or perhaps she was looking for a reason to resign, but otherwise it's pretty scary.

Do the students really want to go into a world where they can be compelled to resign if they ever say something that disagrees with the majority or with the boss? Because that's what they are helping to happen.