Flanked by administrators, Yale master apologizes to students for his wife’s Halloween comments

The master has become the slave … to political correctness.

Nicholas Christakis, the Yale University master of the Silliman residential college, apologized to students who were offended by his wife’s defense of free expression (via Halloween costumes) and tried to get both of them fired from Silliman.

It wasn’t a letter of apology – it was delivered orally as a man facing the threat of mob violence in his own home, with his own superiors glaring down, The Washington Post reports:

“I have disappointed you and I’m really sorry,” Nicholas Christakis told about 100 students gathered in his living room on Sunday for a meeting also attended by Jonathan Holloway, the dean of Yale College, and other university administrators. Christakis said his encounter on Thursday with students in the college’s courtyard, in which numerous black women upbraided him for being inattentive to them, broke his heart, according to a voice recording of the conversation provided to The Washington Post.

“I mean it just broke my heart,” Christakis said. “I thought that I had some credibility with you, you know? I care so much about the same issues you care about. I’ve spent my life taking care of these issues of injustice, of poverty, of racism. I have the same beliefs that you do … I’m genuinely sorry, and to have disappointed you. I’ve disappointed myself.”

Christakis endured abuse from a student days earlier, who cursed in his face in front of a crowd for not “creating a home here” at Silliman. (The recording of that and other embarrassing incidents has led Yale to propose a crackdown on unauthorized recording of any kind.)

The students wanted to talk more about how their antics were caught on camera than the “clash of ideas” that Christakis wanted to discuss, the Post says:

At the meeting with Christakis, students asked administrators to address threats that have been directed at individuals portrayed in the clips cursing and shouting at Christakis; some comments were comparisons of the students to animals and suggestions that they should be beaten, shot and strangled.

Days earlier Christakis told the Post that his job was to “try to foster an environment in which students can debate any issue with their peers.”

Judging by his abject apology for spurring exactly that debate, he failed.

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