When Nicholas Christakis, professor and housemaster of Yale’s Silliman College, stood surrounded by angry students on November 6, he still believed in settling differences through civil discourse, tolerating offense and soldiering on in the name of free speech—these “hallmarks of a free and open society” were valued and needed at Yale, he must have thought. Why else would he have reasoned with students, listened to them and respectfully endured an undergraduate’s violent demands that he resign?
Monday May 23, at Yale College commencement, Silliman seniors stalked past Christakis, refusing to accept their diplomas from his hand. The following Wednesday, he publicly announced that his resignation from Silliman, officially tendered days earlier, would take effect in July.
For anyone continuing to soldier on in the name of free speech, Nicholas Christakis’ resignation represents another battle lost.
In late October, Christakis was quoted in an email from his wife, Erika Christakis, then a lecturer and associate master along with her husband (she left both posts in December), to all “Sillimanders” in response to a central directive that undergraduates think twice about whether their Halloween costumes will offend anyone. A thoughtful, sensitive, classically liberal and at times personally anecdotal challenge to administrative interference, her now-famous email was also a defense of young adults’ right (and developmental need) to make their own mistakes.
Invoking her husband, she wrote: “Nicholas says, if you don’t like a costume someone is wearing, look away, or tell them you are offended. Talk to each other. Free speech and the ability to tolerate offence are the hallmarks of a free and open society.” The sensible sentiment sparked student protests in New Haven and at schools around the country in solidarity with offended undergraduates.
And despite consistent support from faculty and the president’s refusal to cave to student demands, Christakis’ suggestion that students might look away from an offense or engage their offender civilly—rather than shout them down, for instance—sealed his fate as a former master of Silliman.
