Welcome to the New McCarthyism.
The writing I saw attributed to Erika Christakis was thoughtful, constructive, and polite. It didn't attack anybody, but promoted a viewpoint that talked about inclusion and the difficultly that can be experienced when attempting to understand the viewpoints of other groups. It's not at all combative.
I guess it just seems plainly self-evident to me that sensible discussion would be far more constructive towards solving the issues at hand. Harassment achieves almost nothing.
Perhaps because the conversation is being dominated by teenagers? The 'catastrophism' that the article cites is actually a normal psychological trait shared by teenagers. What's really at fault here I think is our binary definition of adulthood - none of the students excoriating their dorm 'master' here should really be considered psychological adults.
> With world-altering research to support, graduates who assume positions of extraordinary power, and a $24.9 billion endowment to marshal for better or worse, Yale administrators face huge opportunity costs as they parcel out their days.
or the text surrounding the e-mail
> Erika Christakis reflected on the frustrations of the students, drew on her scholarship and career experience, and composed an email inviting the community to think about the controversy through an intellectual lens that few if any had considered. Her message was a model of relevant, thoughtful, civil engagement.
> It’s hard to imagine a more deferential way to begin voicing her alternative view. And having shown her interlocutors that she*respects them and shares their ends, she explained her misgivings about the means of telling college kids what to wear on Halloween.
It's weird how much someone supposedly advocating having an open-mind are telling you what to think without explaining why. Then you get HN comments saying how respectful her e-mail was, without talking about the issues themselves. It's written for someone that agrees with the premise of the article and won't question all the embellishments. It's apparent even by the title.
Why shouldn't adult students be able to govern themselves with regard to Halloween costumes?
Why do adult students require guidance from administrators to determine what is and isn't allowed?
Why are adult students upset that someone has asked these questions?
2. Bogus premise. The original mass-email offered advice about choosing non-offensive costumes, and that advice was so general that nobody could have mistaken it for "guidance"; it was, rather, a set of questions to ask about your costume choices. It was Erika Christakis who reframed it as a set of guidelines, suggesting at the same time that Yale culture was going to police Mulan costumes.
3. The students are upset that the letter hand-waves away concerns about racial sensitivities and stereotypes by making comparisons between childrens costumes and choices made by adults in a climate where there had been real racist incidents at Halloween.
(I don't agree with the students but you should be able to summarize their arguments accurately if you hope to refute them.)
That the faculty offers guidance doesn't seem to be much of an issue since that is what the article commends Nicholas and Erika Christakis for doing. Why there should be guidance is argued in the original e-mail on costumes [0]. That someone is upset doesn't seem to concern the author much when they don't agree with his viewpoint.
This is the problem with basing discussions on low quality articles. Let's look at the e-mails instead.
The first e-mail is arguing it's point.
> Yale is a community that values free expression as well as inclusivity. And while students, undergraduate and graduate, definitely have a right to express themselves, we would hope that people would actively avoid those circumstances that threaten our sense of community or disrespects, alienates or ridicules segments of our population based on race, nationality, religious belief or gender expression.
The second e-mail offers:
> Which is my point. I don’t, actually, trust myself to foist my Halloweenish standards and motives on others. I can’t defend them anymore than you could defend yours. Why do we dress up on Halloween, anyway? [...] Is it okay if you are eight, but not 18? I don’t know the answer to these questions; they seem unanswerable. [...] Whose business is it to control the forms of costumes of young people? It’s not mine, I know that.
https://www.thefire.org/email-from-intercultural-affairs/ https://www.thefire.org/email-from-erika-christakis-dressing...
> Welcome to the New McCarthyism.
New? How does this differ from the Old McCarthyism?
I'm not the OP, but I think the OP's claim is that this McCarthyism pretends to be about social issues instead of pretending to be about communism.
To repeat: If you think even an incident like this Yale thing are reminiscent of McCarthyism, you should read more about the actual history of McCarthyism.
I understand the analogies in principle, but they leave out this key distinction.
> The harassers will gladly sign their own name to the actions, with the implication that if anyone should question them then their detractors will be the next target.
This characterizes a witch hunt. Old McCarthyism was a witch hunt. The satanic-abuse-slash-pedophilia day care scare was a witch hunt. What we have now is also a witch hunt. Cultural trappings may vary -- the House of Representatives was more heavily involved in hunting reds than usual; the day care scare saw more involvement from the judiciary.
This isn't a resurgence of McCarthyism, it's the same thing in new clothes. But I wouldn't think of this as coming from people remembering what happened in the 50s and thinking "I bet I could make this work today". It developed organically then, and it's developing organically now. This kind of thing is the natural state of human society; it will emerge when the culture doesn't restrain it, rather than being initiated by some unusual problem element.
1. The hunt is for something that doesn't really exist
2. Because the accusations have no base in reality, those targeted have no way to defend themselves
3. Those targeted are executed
I don't see how any of those apply here.
Comet guy's 'offensive' shirt was a big one