This will probably get buried but I am a current Yale student and I think I can provide some context. The original email that Christakis responded to came from the Inter-Cultural Affairs Committee. It pretty much said 'hey, be thoughtful about the costumes you wear this Halloween, things like blackface may cause offence'. They did not prescribe which costumes were or were not appropriate. They did not threaten any students with punishment for costumes that were deemed 'offensive', and no student has ever been punished for a costume (including blackface and Native American headdresses). Nobody said it wasn't ok to go as a character of a different race. In fact, the costumes that they suggested may be offensive are ones that have a long history of making fun of people's specific racial phenotypes ( like blackface). Even on this super-liberal campus, I've never heard someone getting mad that someone went as Mulan, and I've gone as characters of another race.

So many people, quite frankly, were really baffled as to why Christakis interpreted this as a free speech issue, and felt that she had minimised valid concerns. If she'd simply said hey let's sit down and talk about the fuzzy line here this whole thing might have blown over. But this came within a particularly bad time for race relations at Yale. In the past year or so, a student has been stopped at gunpoint for fitting the description of a petty thief, several other students have been stopped and frisked while just walking to class because of a new police program, low income students ( who are disproportionately non-white) have been put under financial pressure by raising the student income contribution, cultural centers have been defunded, we've had two suicides by students who told friends that their therapists weren't helping because they didn't really understand their cultural background etc etc.

I have seen this girl around campus and have honestly never seen her behave like this in my 3 years here. I am very, very shocked. But I am trying to be charitable in my interpretation because I honestly struggle to believe that anyone would behave like this for no reason.Maybe her anger is the result of all of these things combined. However, this was a COMPLETELY inappropriate way to express it.