Free Republic

The defense of free speech has always been a bedrock bipartisan principle. So it’s unusual to hear a veteran liberal politician excuse campus outrage squads that shout down dissent. But that’s exactly what former Vermont governor and Democratic National Committee head Howard Dean did in a recent appearance.. Dean’s take on this was that there are “consequences to free speech.” He caricatured Erika Christakis’s thoughtful, sensitive letter as an ugly screed mocking “snowflake” students and defending racist costumes. He also described the protesters as well-behaved, despite their screaming and bullying. ... Dean is hardly alone...progressives on and off campus are...

Half a century ago, student activists liberated themselves—partly, at least—from in loco parentis: the paternalistic notion that college administrators should serve as watchful guardians, restricting students’ activities and rights in order to provide a safe environment for them, the way a mother or father would. Today, students across the country are determined to undo this liberation. At Yale University, a group of aggrieved minority students have demanded the resignations of administrators who wisely rejected calls for emotional coddling. Nicholas Christakis, the master of Yale’s Silliman College, and his wife, Erika Christakis, an early childhood educator at Yale, conveyed to students...

Erika and Nicholas Christakis are too good for Yale – I recommend they work at Montessori instead I read the email that Erika Christakis sent to Yale students, defending their right to wear Halloween costumes, and, more importantly, their right to think for themselves.I also watched the video where her husband, Nicholas Christakis, behaved with grace and dignity as a Yale student conducted a profanity laden temper tantrum directed at him.The Christakises are too good for Yale. I recommend that they become Montessori teachers. They deserve to work at a real school that values intellectual freedom and independent thinking, and which...