Defending Free Expression -- In The Slightest -- Is Now "Hate Speech" On Campus
Precisely the sort of scholarly leaders you want at a university -- those who encourage students to think for themselves, express themselves freely, and be open to ideas and experience -- are now gone from Yale.

Zachary Young, a Yale student, writes in the WSJ:

Nicholas Christakis and his wife, Erika, came to Yale University in 2013 with high expectations. At Harvard, the couple had held prominent teaching and administrative roles. At Yale, Dr. Christakis, a sociologist and physician, received a laboratory directorship and four appointments; Ms. Christakis, an expert in early-childhood education, became a seminar instructor. Two years after their arrival at Yale, Dr. Christakis and Ms. Christakis were awarded positions as master and associate master of Silliman College, Yale's largest residential college. (I attend the university and reside at Silliman).

Last week, the Christakises resigned those posts.

Their departure comes as no surprise. For seven months, the couple has been subject to bullying, harassment and intimidation. They inadvertently became a national media story last fall and catalyzed a month of campus protests, prompting Yale President Peter Salovey to tell minority students: "We failed you."

No, Yale is failing the student body at large.

Here's the incident:

The Christakises encountered a witch-hunt mentality on a contemporary college campus. It began fittingly on the day before Halloween, when Ms. Christakis questioned guidelines from Yale's Intercultural Affairs Committee warning against "culturally unaware or insensitive" costumes. Ms. Christakis reasoned, in an email to Silliman residents, that students should decide for themselves how to dress for Halloween, without the administration's involvement.

Student radicals of the 1960s might have recognized her note as a defense of free expression, but those days are long gone. Instead, Ms. Christakis was denounced as a proponent of cultural insensitivity. Irate students circulated petitions, wrote editorials and posted social-media tirades. They scribbled criticisms in chalk outside the Christakises' home and posted degrading images of them online. Two student groups demanded their removal from Silliman.

Oh, and what sort of people are the Christakises?

The Christakises made remarkably unlikely targets for purging by student activists. The couple has a long record of advocating for minority students, and the Christakises have devoted much of their academic work to highlighting health and development problems facing underserved communities.

In announcing their resignation, Nicolas Christakis wrote:

"We remain hopeful that students at Yale can express themselves and engage complex ideas within an intellectually plural community."

I think there's less and less reason to think that will be the case at Yale and other universities.