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| A group of Yale students scream and curse at Yale sociologist Nicholas Christakis (right in blue) for what seems like an eternity, preventing him from addressing them. 'Be quiet,' shrieks one, 'you are disgusting!' |
This piece is adapted from Heather Mac Donald's remarks at the 2022 Encounter Books Gala, upon receiving the Jeane Kirkpatrick Prize for Academic Freedom. A longer version appeared on EncounterBooks.com
In 1982, student agitators protesting U.S. policy in Central America silenced Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick at the University of California, Berkeley, and at the University of Minnesota. Smith College told her that it could not assure her safety during a commencement address, so that address was cancelled too.
Business as usual, you may be thinking.
In fact, the reaction of campus administrators, and even of students themselves, to these shutdowns seems to come from a different world.
The chancellor of the University of California announced his embarrassment that his university had 'succumbed to mob rule.' That university's Board of Regents demanded that an apology be sent to Kirkpatrick. Even the group that organized the Berkeley protest, Students Against Intervention in El Salvador, admitted that the heckling had gone too far.
The group had no intent, it said, to curtail the speech of 'those who disagree with us.'
As anti-military protests spread across the country, the American Association of University Professors, the United States Student Association, and other academic bodies denounced the use of the 'hecklers' veto' and asked faculty and students 'to reaffirm our traditional commitment to freedom to speak and to listen.'
Fast forward to 2015.
A group of Yale students scream and curse at Yale sociologist Nicholas Christakis for what seems like an eternity, preventing him from addressing them. 'Be quiet,' shrieks one, 'you are disgusting!'
Christakis had defended his wife, another Yale professor, who had suggested that students could choose their own Halloween costumes without bureaucratic oversight.
'It's not a debate!' screamed another Yale student. Merely invoking free speech, said a third, creates a 'space to allow for violence to happen on this campus.'
Yale's President Peter Salovey rushed to express his sympathy–not with the beleaguered Christakis–but with his tormentors and their allies: 'their concerns and cries for help made clear that some students find life on our campus profoundly difficult.'
As if this were not nauseating enough, Salovey thanked Yale's students for offering him the opportunity to 'listen to and learn from you.'
This episode proved a template.
In 2016, students at Atlanta's Emory University demanded protection from a few Trump 2016 slogans that had been chalked on campus sidewalks. Trump's name exacerbated the 'unsafety of minority students,' they said.
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| The chalkers (writing above) would be tracked down and potentially subjected to the 'conduct violation process,' and Emory would implement yet more diversity bureaucracy to protect students from 'harmful speech.' |
Emory's president validated what he called the students' 'pain in the face of this perceived intimidation.' The chalkers would be tracked down and potentially subjected to the 'conduct violation process,' and Emory would implement yet more diversity bureaucracy to protect students from 'harmful speech.'
