Last fall, Yale University’s Intercultural Affairs Committee sent an email to the student body, urging them to avoid wearing “culturally unaware” Halloween costumes that could be offensive to certain nationalities, races, genders, or religions. In a response email, a professor, Erika Christakis, questioned the “institutional exercise of implied control over college students.”
She went on to explain that a young white child dressing up as Mulan is not “objectionably appropriative” and asked why that type of costume is okay when you’re 8 years old, but not when you’re 18. She also made sure to acknowledge that concerns about cultural representation were valid, but argued that the school should not try to control the Halloween costumes of its students, as they should be mature enough to properly censor themselves.
“Talk to each other,” she suggested. “Free speech and the ability to tolerate offense are the hallmarks of a free and open society.”
Her remarks were not well received by many students and led about 100 of them to harass Christakis’ husband, Nicholas, who is also a professor at the school, insisting that he apologize for his wife’s “racism,” as seen in this video that went viral soon after it was posted. Four new videos have resurfaced recently that show what happened just before the first video took place. Together, the footage totals to about 26 minutes, much of which consists of the students screaming at their professor without giving him much of a chance to respond.
“First of all, I would like to apologize for hurting your feelings,” Nicholas Christakis finally said. “In addition I will acknowledge that comes from a very deep and legitimate source of complaint. I understand it. I understand to the extent that I can some of the struggles that many of you have had.”
Rather than accepting his apology, the students instead said that the phrase “hurting your feelings” trivialized the pain they were caused by Halloween costumes that include feathered headdresses and turbans. They continued to demand that he take his apology further and admit that his wife’s email was racist (one African-American student even claimed that Christakis himself is racist because he does not know her name, even though he repeatedly pointed out that he has over 500 students and cannot remember all of their names).
When he does not call his wife racist, a student named Lisa burst into literal tears and left hysterically. Towards the end of the videos, another student said that it was clear that Christakis wasn’t going to apologize (even though he already did) and also stormed off.
“I’m going to live my life knowing that you’re going to be the disgusting man you were 20 seconds ago, a minute ago, 30 minutes ago, an hour ago, a week ago, and onward,” she said, leaving just as the footage ends, because apparently promoting freedom of choice, speech, and expression is disgusting.
