Remember Erika Christakis, who challenged the idiotic political correctness associated with Halloween costumes in an email at Yale. Well, the forces of progressive intolerance have won: she’s not going to teach at the institution anymore (via 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?”
She wrote the email in response to a directive from the Intercultural Affairs Committee at Yale that warned students that it would be insensitive to wear costumes that symbolized cultural appropriation or misrepresentation, or both, like feathered headdresses, turbans, war paint, blackface or redface, or costumes that made fun of people.
Ms. Christakis has made a “voluntary decision not to teach in the future,” according to a statement from the university on Monday. Her husband, Dr. Nicholas Christakis, a physician and a professor of sociology at Yale, will take a one-semester sabbatical, the university said. The statement said the administration hoped Ms. Christakis would reconsider.
Christakis and her husband, Nicholas, serve as associate master and master of Silliman College, which is part of Yale’s network of undergraduate communities. Nicholas was seen being swarmed by the legions of political correctness, calling his position that respected constitutional right to free speech “disgusting.” In one exchange, a student said he shouldn’t be able to sleep at night. Yes, Yale students, the elite of elites, are whining about…nothing.
The Yale firestorm was based off of this infamous email and an alleged racial incident at a frat party. In that case, a party hosted by Sigma Alpha Epsilon reportedly barred a student of color from entering because only “white girls” were allowed. As Jazz wrote over at Hot Air, Yale Dean Jonathan Holloway stated that the investigation into the matter showed “no evidence of systematic discrimination against people of color.”
So, it looks as if the scorn brought down on Mr. and Mrs. Christakis was unwarranted, inappropriate, and just plain idiotic. They were purged for supporting freedom of speech, and for not initially submitting to the authoritarian ethos of safe spaces, which is just a fancy way of entertaining a system of neo-segregationist tendencies. Institutions of higher learning need to put an end to this madness. They need to tell them that the real world has no safe spaces. That they should focus on learning as much as they can, even if it makes them uncomfortable, because they’ll most likely be graduating with student loans–and fighting for culturally appropriate Halloween costumes isn’t going to pay that debt. Higher education isn’t about comfortability; it’s about experimenting with new ideas, even if you disagree with them. I had a self-avowed anarchist as my political philosophy professor. I disagreed with most of his views politically–he was very good at keeping his opinions out of the classroom–but that doesn’t mean this person needed to go so I could feel at home.
It’s sad that we have this confederacy of liberal authoritarians, so focused on creating safe spaces, most notoriously racially-based ones, because they’re afraid of their fellow citizens’ rights to be whoever they want to be, though they’re too stupid to see that because they only look at one’s race, gender, or whatever inch-deep characteristic in order to divide the student body. If you can’t accept that, I can only pray for you–the world is going to eat you alive. This bunch may see their behavior as a source of strength; it’s not. It confirms what many on the right already think, which is that the overly educated are incredibly soft. If Halloween costumes cause you to almost have a stroke, you seriously need to get a grip on reality.