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Nicholas Christakis in āThe New York Timesā: āTeaching Inclusion in a Divided Worldā
In , Yale University professor Nicholas Christakis adds a post-mortem to last fallās controversy that put him and his wife Erika Christakisāthen also a faculty member at Yaleāat the center of a national conversation over the role that free speech plays at colleges and universities.
My answer to question re free speech this year: "Disagreement is not oppression. Words are not violence."
ā Nicholas Christakis (@NAChristakis)
The piece, ā,ā provides both recognition and encouragement to historically marginalized students who say some of Americaās most cherished valuesālike free expressionāhave not been afforded to them. Nicholas Christakis said he struggled earlier this year with a Native American studentās question about embracing a system that has so often betrayed her people:
Why should she put any faith in institutions in our societyāincluding our judicial system and universitiesāwhen those institutions had clearly betrayed her people in generations past?
āThe same Constitution with its protection of the rights to free expression and assembly that you revere,ā she said, āwas previously of no use to people like me.ā
He said finding the answer to that question was ā[o]ne of the most difficult intellectual and emotional challenges I faced,ā but he ultimately concluded: āI wish I had told her ā¦ that her generation could make those [Enlightenment] values more true, not less. These institutions could be hers, and I believe she should want them to be hers.ā
Nicholas Christakis says students must understand that their demands for inclusion are predicated on First Amendment values like free speech and freedom of assembly. He warns against the āilliberal (even if permissible)ā impulse āto use these traditions to demand the censorship of others, to besmirch fellow students rather than refute the ideas that they express and to treat ideological claims as if they were perforce facts.ā
He also issues a call to action for faculty:
[T]he faculty must cut at the root of a set of ideas that are wholly illiberal. Disagreement is not oppression. Argument is not assault. Wordsāeven provocative or repugnant onesāare not violence. The answer to speech we do not like is more speech.
You can read Nicholas Christakisā full piece over at .
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