Yale lecturer Erika Christakis has resigned from her teaching position at the university, following a controversial email about Halloween costumes that sparked student protest and a public confrontation. Her husband Dr. Nicholas Christakis, who also lectures and is the Master of Yale’s Silliman College, will be taking a semester-long sabbatical.
Remember that email? Reacting to a statement by the Intercultural Affairs Committee at Yale that discouraged students from donning culturally offensive costumes this Halloween—such as those that include blackface, redface and feathered headdresses—Christakis questioned whether university authorities should step in and exercise “censure and prohibition” when students dress offensively.
Beyond that, she also challenged the wrongness of dressing up as a different ethnicity and compared it to child’s play, saying, “Pretend play is the foundation of most cognitive tasks, and it seems to me that we want to be in the business of encouraging the exercise of imagination, not constraining it.”
Many students were upset by the email, saying they shouldn’t have to put up with racism and cultural appropriation without administrative support. Culturally and racially insensitive costumes have been unfortunately common this year—We’ve probably all heard about the “Kanye Western” party that took place at UCLA in October, and it’s only an example of what’s been circulating around college campuses nationwide. Similar incidents have occurred at Claremont McKenna, the University of Louisville, the University of Oklahoma, and others (here’s a handy timeline if you want to be really horrified).
It’s totally understandable to react to Christakis’ email with outrage and disbelief. But it’s worth reading the whole letter before making judgments. Though her choice of words was questionable, it seems that Christakis really was ultimately concerned with students’ freedom on campus to make decisions for themselves. But while she believed that the power to stop offensive costumes should come from the student body itself, the Halloween problem is only the tip of the iceberg. Cultural appropriation touches upon larger systemic issues of racism, historic oppression, and ignorance of others’ experiences. When it comes to tackling those, we need all the support we can get.