A new mini-documentary chronicles Yale’s decline from an elite university to a college that panders to students’ feelings.
The video, titled Silence U Part 2: What Is Yale Becoming? and released through We The Internet TV, begins with the hysterical response of Yale students in 2015 to an email from then-associate head of Silliman College, Erika Christakis, speaking out against Yale’s guidelines to avoid so-called cultural appropriation.
Christakis’s husband, Nicholas Christakis, who was also an administrator at Yale, stood up for his wife, prompting outraged students to angrily confront him on campus with howls of rage and hurt feelings over his defense of free speech. The couple ended up stepping down from their respective positions and were replaced with administrators more willing to pander to the social justice warrior crowd.
That instance is symptomatic of a larger problem about how Yale has become what film director Rob Montz refers to as “a finishing school of the ruling class.”
“We’re here in order to give you fun and fleeting pleasures and then to provide you with a high-status degree that will ensure your easy ascendance into America’s elite,” Montz told the Daily Wire, “and it makes sense if you begin to realize that’s what this institution’s core function is; why it is that they would so easily capitulate to the forces of illiberalism, forces that reject sort of the essential features of the liberal arts project.”
Indeed, the film shows that while Yale has seen a four percent decline in professors over the last ten years, the number of administrators has increased by 25 percent, giving rise to what Montz calls “the squid monster.”
“It’s become this unlikely alliance between basically corporate middle-management and self-made student radicals,” said Montz, adding that the “symbiosis” between the two has resulted in the deteriorating “quality of these institutions, particularly the elite institutions.”
What was particularly shocking to Montz was how difficult it was to find students who disagreed with how Nicholas Christakis was treated and who were then willing to go on the record or even respond to his emails due to fear of jeopardizing their careers. He was able to find one: a student named Grace who was appalled that someone told her in a Facebook message that because she is “a queer woman of color,” she “should not think this way.” She also happens to be a liberal who has voiced support for the Standing Rock protesters on social media.
“It is instructive that even she has started to find the political culture at Yale to be oppressive,” said Montz. “If even someone like that is beginning to feel censored and beginning to feel incentives to self-censor and to feel bullied, then you know something is wrong.”
Montz hopes that the main takeaway from the film is that universities are essential for establishing civil discourse, which makes it all the more troubling that institutions like Yale are declining.
“If they’re not going to do it, I don’t think anyone else is,” Montz said.
Silence U Part 2: What Is Yale Becoming? and its predecessor, Silence U: Is The University Killing Free Speech? can be found on We The Internet‘s YouTube channel.