At Yale, Painful Rifts Emerge Over Diversity and Free Speech

“Black women matter.” “History is watching.” “I refuse to be complicit.”

Dozens of messages like those were scrawled in chalk on a wide swath of stone in front of Yale University’s largest library on Thursday. By Friday evening they had begun to fade, rubbed out in places by the steady stream of students’ shoes.

But the tensions that have flared on the campus for the past week and a half seem likely to leave a more permanent mark on this elite institution, which finds itself roiled by a heated debate about race relations and free speech.

At the heart of the controversy are two emails and a Facebook post. On October 28, Yale’s Intercultural Affairs Council sent a message that urged students to reconsider wearing cultural costumes on Halloween that might offend some students.

Erika Christakis, a Yale lecturer who serves as an associate master at one of the university’s 12 residential colleges, wrote a response questioning the need to exercise “implied control” over students’ choice of garb: “Is there no room anymore for a child to be a little bit obnoxious … a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive?”

Her email generated significant backlash. And a Facebook post on an unrelated matter soon added fuel to the fire. The post accused members of a Yale fraternity, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, of turning away black and Latina women from a party, saying, “White girls only.” The chapter’s leaders have denied the allegations, but the post went viral. Yale is investigating the fraternity, which had already been suspended until next fall after a campus committee found it had violated the university’s sexual-misconduct policy.

The incidents have boiled over into widespread anger among students of color here, who say that Yale officials have not sufficiently dealt with the challenges that minority students, particularly women, face in academic and social circles. They condemn university leaders for taking several days to respond publicly to the controversies, and are imploring them to do more to support racial-minority groups.

Students’ frustration reached a peak on Thursday, when two gatherings of students writing chalk messages turned into spontaneous forums with university officials. Videos posted online show dozens of students demanding answers from Jonathan Holloway, an African-American-studies professor who is the first black dean of Yale College, the university’s undergraduate division. They are also seen confronting Nicholas A. Christakis, a professor of social and natural science who is master of Silliman College, one of the residential communities; his wife wrote the email that sparked students’ ire. Students frequently raised their voices and used expletives during the encounters.

Yale’s president, Peter Salovey, and Mr. Holloway met with about four dozen students later on Thursday. According to students who were present, Mr. Salovey told them that the university had failed them. In a message to the campus on Friday, Mr. Salovey wrote that the meeting had “left me deeply troubled” and had “caused me to realize that we must act to create at Yale greater inclusion, healing, mutual respect, and understanding.”

Mr. Holloway did not return a request for comment as of Sunday night. Mr. Salovey was not made available for an interview.

In an email to The Chronicle, Dr. Christakis said that he and his wife “care deeply about students” and “have spent a lifetime caring for diverse, underprivileged populations, and serving as educators.”

‘Yale, Where Do You Stand?’

The controversy that erupted here does not fall easily along racial lines. Many white students stand in solidarity with the protesting students of color. Some nonwhite students don’t agree with the heated reactions of their community.

Senior administrators, too, seem conflicted. Mr. Holloway has defended the email advocating against potentially offensive costumes, while Dr. Christakis has defended how his wife responded to that message.

On Friday, Yale’s campus featured vivid reminders of the tensions. Fliers posted on bulletin boards stressed, in capital letters, that “we stand with our sisters of color” and asked a question: “Yale, where do you stand?” Signs left hanging outside of a building after a protest asserted that “my race is not an intellectual debate” and that “this is what free speech looks like!”

Some students weren’t talking about what had happened. Others were; they sat on benches or strolled around the campus, wondering whether this was a turning point for race relations at Yale.

Jose Rodriguez, a freshman, said he had just discussed the controversy at length with a friend. Mr. Rodriguez, who is Hispanic, said he understood why some minority students were upset, but he personally couldn’t relate.

He found Yale’s campus to be safe and welcoming, which contradicts how many of his peers expect him to feel. “I feel like a lot of what has happened over the course of this week has turned into fighting, and that’s not OK,” he added.

On the other hand, Isaiah Genece, a junior, said that “people have gone through so much in all their time here, and have just never talked about it.” He said in this case he supported students’ use of strong language. “It’s absolutely crucial that people saw the raw emotion and the raw pain that came out as a result of this.”

The next step should be a constructive dialogue about the treatment of minority students on the campus, said Nicole A. Tinson, a second-year student in the divinity school who wrote a widely shared open letter to Yale last week. Contrary to what many observers believe, Ms. Tinson said in an interview, “students are not asking to be accepted into parties where they are not wanted.” They are asking to be respected, she said.

Around 11 p.m. on Friday, one week after the fraternity party at the center of the “white girls only” accusations, the SAE chapter’s house was quiet. And Grant Mueller, its president, wasn’t there; he was headed home to Houston.

“On Wednesday, I was walking down the sidewalk, and an African-American man spat at me and told me to check my privilege,” Mr. Mueller said in a phone interview. “After that, I thought it would be best to get off campus for a couple of days.”

There was no “white girls only” policy at the party, he said. The party was too crowded, Mr. Mueller said,
so a fraternity member began turning students away. He said an African-American woman then retorted, “It’s because I’m black, isn’t it?”

The fraternity has a diverse membership, he said. Still, he stressed that “just because we’re a diverse group of people doesn’t mean something like this couldn’t happen.”

Mr. Mueller wanted his fraternity to help lead future conversations about race relations at Yale, and said that his chapter and other Greek organizations were planning a campuswide forum that would take place this week.

Speech and Consequences

The debate at Yale also touches on common themes of free speech: Is asking some students to avoid offending others with their costumes or their words a form of censorship? No, many students say; it is simply a matter of respect.

Requesting that students consider their costume choices more thoughtfully was not asking a lot, said Dara Huggins, a junior who is president of the Yale Black Women’s Coalition. “Can you wear it? Technically, absolutely,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean you are absolved of responsibility when someone confronts you and says, Hey, that’s offensive. That doesn’t mean you get to holler, Oh, it’s free speech.”

But Mr. Rodriguez, the freshman, disagreed with how some Yale students had tried to make that point. “If somebody says something offensive to me, yeah, I’ll have a conversation about it, but I don’t see a reason to fight,” he said.

Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, said by phone that he witnessed part of Thursday’s encounters between the students, Mr. Holloway, and Dr. Christakis. The confrontation was “one of the most intense free-speech controversies I’ve ever seen,” said Mr. Lukianoff, who was in New Haven to speak at a conference on free speech. (About 100 students protested outside of the conference on Friday, after Mr. Lukianoff allegedly commented that “looking at the reaction to Erika Christakis’s email, you would have thought someone wiped out an entire Indian village.”)

Ms. Christakis’s concerns about policing Halloween costumes, Mr. Lukianoff said in the interview, are not uncommon. “But on campus, students treated it like Erika committed a war crime,” he said. “There were a lot of things being said that were completely dismissive of any argument about freedom of speech.”

Still, Ms. Huggins said that the exchange with Mr. Holloway, at least, was productive. “There is a lot more expected of him,” as one of the few black administrators at Yale, she said. And she appreciated how he had reacted. “He didn’t argue. He didn’t get defensive. He just listened.” Dr. Christakis, she said, “was, frankly, more aggressive.”

Ms. Huggins is among a number of students who are urging Yale’s administration to make changes, including required cultural-diversity training for all students, faculty, and staff. Attracting more minority professors to the campus is also important, the students say. (Yale had previously announced that it would devote $50 million toward such efforts.)

Jacqueline Goldsby, chair of the African-American-studies department, said she attended an on-campus forum last Wednesday where students of color shared “sobering accounts” of what they had experienced. Ms. Goldsby said she had left the event “deeply worried for the intellectual and personal welfare of black undergraduates at Yale.”

In his email to The Chronicle, Dr. Christakis wrote that “it is quite a shock to be in the position we are facing, but we entirely understand the pain many students are expressing.”

Ms. Huggins did not think Dr. Christakis understood at all. She wanted him to resign from his administrative role. “Perhaps there is another way that he can contribute to the Yale community,” she said. But as far as serving as a residential college’s master, which involves supporting students more directly, she said, “he might not be equipped for it.”

What did she hope Yale’s senior administrators would take away from the past week? “I already told them,” she said, referring to outspoken remarks she made to Mr. Holloway and Dr. Christakis during the confrontation. “And they should remember what I said.”