No, or at least none is mentioned in the Washington Post article.
But you have to be pro-active and forward looking on these topics. Colleges and universities across the country have been hectoring and bullying students about making sure their costumes are appropriate. The media has been raising awareness of the issue. There are infographics to help you determine whether your costume is racist or not and toll-free hotlines to assist with the issue. Surely you don’t expect a progressive institution like Yale University to be behind the curve and focus on something like academics at the expense of Halloween costume sensitivity training, just because no one has actually worn an offensive costume.
The email in question has as its thesis statement that Halloween is “an occasion for adults to exert their control.”
Next paragraph: adults “seem afraid that college students are unable to decide how to dress themselves on Halloween.”
Building: we should reflect “on the consequences of an institutional (which is to say: bureaucratic and administrative) exercise of implied control over college students.”
Continuing in the next two she attempts to establish her credentials about what you kids need as she is an expert on the “developmental stages of childhood and young adulthood.” and analogizes to preschoolers pretend play. [Condescend much?]
Then the money shot: “Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious… 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. And the censure and prohibition come from above, not from yourselves! Are we all okay with this transfer of power?”
Ending with “Whose business is it to control the forms of costumes of young people?”
I find it impossible to read that as anything but a rebuttal against an imagined attempt by the administration to control the costumes, a rebuttal against an imagined attempt to censor and prohibit from above.
I am not sure what email you are reading that that is not extremely clear.
In 2008 the Intercultural Affairs Council (IAC) was formed at Yale after a few years of increased episodes of inclusive of Black face Halloween costumes. Its stated mission was to promote awareness of the need for intercultural sensitivity. It was to do that while staying within official university policy, which includes “the right to think the unthinkable, discuss the unmentionable, and challenge the unchallengeable.”
The IAC politely asked that students think about intercultural sensitivity as they chose their costumes. A pretty benign routine email.
It however was across the line for Professors Christakis and apparently her spouse.
Professor Christakis apparently argues that the IAC’s execution of their mission by simply promoting awareness of the need for intercultural sensitivity as one chooses a Halloween costume is adults exerting their control, not allowing the offensive behavior that is apparently in her mind at least a normal developmental stage for college students, that is censure and prohibition is coming “from above.”
Her husband, a current Master of a Residential College, agrees.
They are entitled to that opinion and to express it. It is however a response to something not said, to an action that they only imagine has been taken.
The very first sentence of her email: “Nicholas and I have heard from a number of students who were frustrated by the mass email sent to the student body about appropriate Halloween-wear.” Students indicated their frustration. She is responding to them. We don’t know what they said to her and her husband. Maybe they were asking if the school master was going to censor costumes during Silliman liquor-treating. We don’t know.
The “an occasion for adults to exert their control” was a topic of conversation she had with students in a class she teaches. It is not the “thesis statement” of her email.
If indeed some number (more than one) of students expressed “frustration” over the IAC politely requesting that they consider intercultural sensitivity as they choose their costumes then the student thin skin to worry about is theirs.
“Omigosh Professor! The IAC has asked that I consider whether or not my costume is going to be making someone else here the butt of an offensive joke before I wear it! I am SO frustrated!”
Seriously the correct response to that is “Grow up and get a life. No one says you are not allowed to be a jerk. They are just asking you to think about whether or not you want to be before you are.”
And if a response was required to some large number upset by those so horribly offended by the aggression of the IAC’s calm and polite request, then it is the job of the Master of the Residential College to address the college as a whole. She is not “Mom” by extension.
Yes I read that as the thesis then supported in the following paragraphs. The first sentence is what gets called “the hook.” I honestly cannot imagine anyone else reading it as anything other.
Astro posted the full email in post #50. Having read it, and then read the way you scissored out parts of it and interpreted them, your interpretation seems quite stretched, as if you are trying to find fault with Professor Christakis.
Here’s what happened, as I see it: 1. Administration sends out a ridiculous message, browbeating students about the need to consider cultural sensitivity when choosing a Halloween costume. 2. Some students talk informally to Prof. Christakis about how ridiculous this message was. 3. Prof. Christakis sends out a message politely and intellectually urging students to think about what “appropriation” is and why it should or shouldn’t be tolerated. 4. Unruly mobs of students accost Christakis’ husband and another administrator, there are demands for firings, and who knows where it will all end.
Your entire interpretation of Christakis’ email looks wrong to me, because you miss the fact that she wasn’t even talking specifically about anything happening at Yale. After mentioning the administration’s message as a jumping off point, she talks theoretically about appropriation, mentioning buying a sari in Bangladesh, about children dressing as Mulan, and so forth. None of this has anything to do with policy at Yale. It’s supposed to be intellectual food for thought.
Again, she’s a professor. Professors are supposed to prod students, into thinking, right? That’s what she’s doing. If she gets fired for doing her job, or anyone else gets fired for defending her, what would that say about the state of the American university?
I got through four Halloweens as a Yale undergraduate between 1978 and 1982. I saw hundreds of extremely clever and imaginative costumes, many of which could be termed “offensive,” but I can’t remember anyone in blackface or anything else that could be considered a denigration. One freshman girl dressed as a genie, which I suppose could be considered anti-Muslim, but I think her intent was just to wear a lot of sheer material over her naked body.
There WAS a lot of whiteface. Everyone seemed to like wearing Clown White makeup.
In 1978, Pope John Paul I had just died after about a month in office. That year, there were several Dead Popes.
I once chatted with two young ladies, one of whom was costumed as a 16th century Venetian prostitute (not sexy, but still, was she oppressing sex workers or women or both?). Her friend was dressed as a Potted Plant.
Sophomore year a friend and I were chased through the New Haven streets by four young men dressed (spectacularly well) as Alex and his Droogs from A Clockwork Orange. They seemed to be taking their roles very seriously.
My friend and I were portraying iconic representations of the antebellum U.S. North and South states. Think Boston vs. Charleston. I had on riding boots, a long green coat, brocaded vest, and wide brimmed hat. He was wearing a black frock coat, black neckscarf, and a black stovetop hat. We were also on LSD.
We took LSD every Halloween. It added to the ambiance.
Don’t know much about FIRE but in this case they reported false information …The open letter that they presented as demanding the professors to be fired did no such thing, did not even ask for any sort of action to be taken to them at all. It was in fact very polite. It merely articulated what they were taking offense at:
A large portion of the campus is telling the professor that they are offended. They are not telling her that she had no free speech right to offend.
Why did FIRE report this with the headline “Yale Students Demand Resignations from Faculty Members Over Halloween Email”? (Note: I am sure that is literally true … if you interviewed every student there I am sure you could find “a number” who believe that they should. And at least one upset enough to yell about it. But ethical reporting? Um not.)
WTF are you even trying to say at this point? It’s like the hipster, asked if he was being sarcastic, who sobbed, “I don’t even know anymore!”
So, yes. Sometimes free speech communicates hate, as you and others have so movingly done in this thread. Sure, the student in the video communicated it too, but you could teach a masterclass in it; she might not even meet the prereqs for your hate-on class.
And that hateful speech is protected.
I could, of course, flutter and twitter about what the world is coming to, how y’all are signs of the fascistic tendencies of the right in their attempt to muzzle free speech. But that would be ridiculous. Not as ridiculous as the tsking in this thread about liberals trying to muzzle free speech, but still ridiculous.
Yes. That student was being awful. She was being awful via a legitimate exercise of free speech. The idea of calling for disciplining her for her speech, in the same post as lamentations about how liberals attack free speech, is a great example of why using your irony meter on the Internet voids the warranty.
Students don’t know how to behave if they’re not explicitly told how to by SOMEONE. This is quite obvious when every single week there is a “frat/sorority throws a racist themed party” outrage. No university wants to be the setting for that weeks internet outrage, that email was perfectly justified.
Cracking a joke about SJWs being ridiculous is master class level of hate now? Funny how you prove my point.
And if she wants “consequences” for free speech she can also receive “consequences.” In time as rhetoric escalates and action naturally follows, I wonder how society will look?