(I am sorry if this is uninteresting and/or off-topic for PEN-L. Just let me know if that's the case and I will stop bothering the list with so many messages on this topic.)
https://twitter.com/CoreyRobin/status/672959459526885377 Cory Robin, formerly a stalwart defender of student activists' demands after Missouri thinks this incident "crosses the line". More analysis here: http://academeblog.org/2015/12/07/on-the-resignation-of-erika-christakis/ ----------------------------snip And while I still believe that the Halloween controversy was more about concerns over racial insensitivity than free speech, I find news of Erika Christakis’s resignation deeply troubling. In an email to the Washington Post <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2015/12/04/with-her-words-this-instructor-helped-set-off-protests-over-race-and-a-debate-over-free-speech-now-shes-leaving-yale/>, she wrote: “I have great respect and affection for my students, but I worry that the current climate at Yale is not, in my view, conducive to the civil dialogue and open inquiry required to solve our urgent societal problems.” To be sure, Yale’s administration has publicly declared its support for the Christakises and pledged that it would take no disciplinary action against either of them, but Erika’s resignation from her teaching position (as a non-tenured lecturer) cannot help but raise concern that the administration’s behavior behind the scenes might have been less supportive than its public stance. Douglas Stone, a professor of physics at Yale, told media that Christakis’s resignation from teaching was “a very disturbing development. Last year,” he wrote, Erika Christakis’s classes were shopped by over 300 students and many who wished to take them were turned away. She has received truly exceptional teaching evaluations. This year she planned to teach additional sections to handle the demand. The attacks she has received, not just on her ideas, but on her character and integrity, have led to the decision not to teach …. Those who mounted the campaign against her have significantly reduced educational choice for all Yale undergrads. “Several undergraduates have told me in conversation or by email that they feel scared to express their honest opinions relating to current events that have raised racial issues because of the likely negative and aggressive response of peers,” Stone added, suggesting that there may be “substantial barriers to free exchange of views on these issues at Yale in the current climate.” -raghu.
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