Dean of Yale College refuses to defend the Woodward Report

This evening the Dean's office presented its third installment in a series of panel discussions about hate, sparked in response to last semester's graffiti outside of Pierson College. The panel featured your typical liberal/neo-Marxist faculty members talking about identity politics and discrimination, but the discussion took a disturbing turn when one girl in the back asked why our country prohibits physical harm but not emotional harm, particularly the kind created by "hate speech."

Dean Salovey finished the panel response by referencing the Woodward Report, the defining document about how Yale treats conflicts between speech and tolerance at an institutional level. He put the most emphasis on how the Woodward Report says that when mutual respect and friendship have to be weighed against freedom of speech, mutual respect and friendship ought to be sacrificed. He only went as far as calling it "provocative" and "interesting," but made an explicit point of stating that he was not defending the Woodward Report's argument. (Indeed, it was quite telling that he called it an "argument" at all.)

Long after the angry vigils and apologetic panels have faded, the memory that will stick with me is the night that the Dean of Yale College refused to publicly defend the University's policy towards free speech. It is absolutely unacceptable, disturbing behavior by a Yale administrator. I hope other people take notice and try to fight "The Death Camp of Tolerance," both at Yale and in American society, before these freedoms are irretrievably lost.
Jake McGuire | 8:31 PM | 1 comments|