Yale’s continuing retreat from academic freedom

I have to admit, looking in at the situation in the USA from my own deeply, historically complicated position in Australia… it seems like “freedom of speech” the concept and “freedom of speech” the legal doctrine are frequently confused, however in this case Yale definitely seems to be failing to uphold its promise of “freedom of speech” the concept. Not necessarily in its actions, but in its failure to educate students enough they can look beyond their own filter bubble, think critically about if they have actually been oppressed in some way, and react with proportionate response to the events they have been aggrieved by. The students involved in that Ohio thing seem detached from reality.<p>Also… I feel sorry for the quoted Asian student who was afraid to ask their questions. When members of minorities are afraid to ask about the wider experience of their own community, you’re out of bounds.

This article was really hard to read. I generally hate sources that are dripping with opinion that I need to get five or six paragraphs in to bypass the “of COURSE they did X, like we covered last Thursday”.<p>Also obligatory academic freedom -&gt; actually free speech argument in that article that leads to the common misconception of the 1st amendment applying to literally everything “for curiosity’s sake”.

&quot;Through its graduates, Yale exerts an outsized influence on the daily lives of most Americans — for example, Yale educated three of the last six U.S. presidents, and eight sitting Supreme Court Justices attended either Harvard or Yale at some point.&quot;<p>Three of six presidents: Bush, Bush, and (law school only) and Clinton. None of the three seems or seemed much afflicted by wokeness.<p>Of the eight sitting Supreme Court justices indicated, five are conservative to deeply conservative.<p>I would say that all graduated from these colleges or law schools when the tone was more or less liberal. In G.H.W. Bush&#x27;s day maybe it was less, but even then William F. Buckley used Yale as bad example in <i>Up From Liberalism</i>.