Two Yale professors no longer feel comfortable teaching next semester after campus protestors harassed them incessantly.
Earlier in the semester Erika Christakis who is associate master of Silliman College at Yale, whose husband, Nicholas Christakis is the master, caused quite a stir. Students had been complaining about the lack of a Halloween ‘safe space.’ Erika sent out an e-mail which in part asked “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? If you don’t like a costume someone is wearing, look away, or tell them you are offended.”
Soon after the e-mail was sent, which both the Christakis’ defended, students demanded their firing and forced a meeting with administrators, where the president even admitted “we failed you.” The Christakis’ were also interrupted, yelled and cursed at by students.
Campus protests followed suit, including one which interrupted a conference on free speech, where attendees were spat upon.
When it comes to bowing to unruly students, the Christakis’ seem like the last people who would do so. As BuzzFeed reported Monday night, however, Erika Christakis will not be teaching next semester and her husband will be taking a sabbatical.
In a statement, Yale stood by the Christakis’, though emphasized they were not actually resigning:
Erika Christakis, lecturer in the Child Study Center, is a well-regarded instructor whose teaching is highly valued. Although she has chosen not to teach her class in the spring term, she is welcome to resume teaching anytime at Yale — where freedom of expression and academic inquiry are the paramount principle and practice — and has the encouragement of the university administration to do so. Nicholas Christakis, the Sol Goldman Family Professor of Sociology and professor in the Institution for Social and Policy Studies, of biomedical engineering, of ecology and evolutionary biology, and of medicine, is taking a scheduled leave from part of his teaching duties in the spring semester. His appointment as college master will be uninterrupted, and he will continue his work as co-director of the Yale Institute for Network Science and director of the Human Nature Lab.
The Christakises are deeply valued members of the university community, and Yale looks forward to their ongoing contributions as scholars, educators, and citizens.
Such sentiments would have been nice when the Christakis’ were being treated inappropriately by students. Rather than caving into protests, universities need to stand by their faculty more consistently.
