The Tyrants Run Rampant on Campus
For centuries, the university has been a place of learning, extensive debate, and an incubator for new ideas that will one day permeate the public sphere. “All schools, all colleges, have two great functions: to confer, and to conceal valuable knowledge,” said Mark Twain. Conservatives have, especially in recent years, focused heavily on the absurd and outlandish behavior in the universities. What attracts such scrutiny is the tyrannical, anti-free speech nature of many of the universities in defending the indefensible.
In 2015, lecturer Erika Christakis decided to compose an email, responding to students complaining about heavy-handed advice on Halloween costumes to avoid, to the Yale community inviting them “to think about the controversy through an intellectual lens that few if any had considered.” Erika and her husband, Professor Nicholas Christakis, were immediately met with hundreds of Yale students attacking them, “some with hateful insults, shouted epithets, and a campaign of public shaming. In doing so, they have shown an illiberal streak that flows from flaws in their well-intentioned ideology.” The result of this incident? Erika Christakis gave up teaching at Yale despite her expertise in early childhood education, where she has “been critical of ways that adults deprive children of learning experiences by over-policing their behavior.”
