 while I was there, the famous Halloween costume controversy took place where he didn't prepare it. Can we play a clip of that really fast of the pop? I've pulled that clip actually, because I want you to reflect on how this informed your worldview. The Halloween costume controversy was that a letter had gone out suggesting culturally sensitive Halloween costumes and some of the faculty had objected to the idea that administrators would tell college students or adults what is appropriate to wear for Halloween. And one of those people was Erica Christakis, whose husband Nicholas Christakis was sort of a dean of housing and he was confronted by a bunch of angry students who thought that administrators should dictate or set some parameters for what isn't a Halloween costume. And this is a clip from that confrontation provided by Fire, the campus free speech group. So let's play that clip. Walk away, walk away, walk away. I didn't not. I did not. As your position and master in your job, to be in the place of comfort and home for the students that live in Zillman. You have not done that by sending out that email that goes against your position as master. Do you understand that? No, I don't agree with that. Then why the fuck did you accept the position? So you so you were you were on campus when all that drama unfolded not not only not only was I on campus but a I actually saw a part of that interaction unfold from across the street because I lived in the residential college across the street from Solomon and B I was the opinion editor of the Yale Daily News which meant that I not only had to solicit and edit op-eds from angry students upset about all the systemic racism allegedly permeating Yale but I also had to write the paper's official editorial about the protests and the way the editorial process worked was that it was basically just a democratic vote by the the editorial board and then the opinion editor had to kind of execute the will of the editorial board and write the op-ed even if the opinion editor didn't agree with the will of the editorial board and has happened in this case right you know I'm not actually sure it was meaningfully a democratic vote because we got into the meeting to discuss things and it it became clear within seconds that anyone who dissented was going to get called racist and shout it down so nobody did even though I think a lot of people privately thought this was going too far they didn't say anything either it was it was very clear that like if I had tried sort of I tried to gently push back on some things but it was quite clear that had I pushed it too far it would have just devolved and the outcome would have been the same but even worse uh and so I kind of made a tactical decision alright like you know I'm not going to win this fight so the best I can do is sort of try to moderate whatever we end up writing um so I had to actually write a bonding editorial saying oh my god these protesters are so brave and you know why does the university you know should listen to their pain blah blah blah blah blah and then when I tried to even sneak in a line about free speech uh what happened was it was being there was like a google doc that was that was effectively being uh stealth not stealth edited but like everyone was looking at the google doc so then I throw in the line and people come over to me and say I think this sounds you know like you're blaming the protesters how could you and then that line gets taken out so it was it was a shit show it was terrible sitting at a keyboard just sweating right you know carefully writing sentences as if people are watching the google doc that's pretty I'm not joking that is what happened and uh look it was it was it was a preview of what happened to the new york times and other big media outlets in 2020 media outlets that of course employ a lot of alums of the daily news and the harvard crimson and other such did this did this radicalize you this is the origin story I I you know radicalized is a bit of a strong word because I it's not like it's not like I was a normal I mean I was kind of a moderate democrat who was just pro free speech but but you know it's not like I went from moderate democrat to you know fight or breathing maga or anything like that but yeah it it made me much more concerned about who the future leaders of the country would be um I it definitely pushed me right and subsequent developments after college further pushed me right um but yeah this was sort of a inflection point maybe maybe radicalizations too strong but certainly an inflection point in my political structure well so I came to college in 2014 same time as you and I think for me the environment there was extraordinarily radicalizing to the point that it even inspired me one could say to graduate early which was not my plan to do so because I just had a miserable time on campus I went to the college of William & Mary and to set the stage for old geezers like Zach and our viewers and listeners who might not know you know 2014 was a weird time it was right after I guess the officer who had stood accused of killing Michael Brown had been acquitted there were all of these riots related to Ferguson Ferguson was basically on fire sort of a precursor to the George Floyd summer 2020 protests obviously we've seen these bubbling ups of the protest movement surrounding cop killings and police brutality in the United States this was not the first incarnation of it and it was also not the last one but 2013-2014 was a very hot time for that type of thing and so I recall that fall being really intense on campus for that reason for all of the racial and police brutality reasons and then Rolling Stone published the now widely discredited a rape on campus um rape hoax story that basically describes and I think this was talked about at many college campuses you know I went to William & Mary and obviously this had occurred on UVA's campus uh very very close by you know lots of friends there and so I think it made a huge splash not just in that sort of college microcosm but on other campuses too because there was essentially I think a little bit of this precursor to me too happening where you know suddenly these sort of twin issues of race relations police brutality and campus sexual assault and sexual harassment were sort of not exactly entering the public consciousness but certainly having this huge moment and to be 18 years old and to have these two issues where so many people were saying hey you're either with us or you're against us you're either fired up about this or you're you know an evil you know trump tar didn't exist yet but like an evil right winger um it very much made it so I think many people were I don't want to say forced into submission but very much given all of the social incentives to believe what the herd believes to go with the herd and not their descent and I was one of the people I was writing from my college newspaper and dissenting from this and a lot of activists really made my life hell as a result it ended up becoming very quickly apparent it was made apparent quite quickly to me that this would not actually be a healthy thriving place of intellectual discourse and I should just cut my losses and get the hell out because being part of the working world is so much better you know being an actual journalist to be able to engage more thoughtfully with these things I agree but did you have a similar experience like were you doing the exact same thing that I was just a little bit north yeah it was it was similar um one time when I was the opinion editor of the paper I published a op-ed criticizing migration to Europe which was admittedly I think a defensible but also pretty fire and brimstone restrictionist hate on the issue but you know we published crazy far left things all the time that were just completely completely bad shit so I thought all right you know this is a little over the top in the other direction but that's fine you know he's not calling for genocide or anything like it's he's just saying that Europe should stop accepting migrants because they're destroying like the culture of Europe and creating safety issues okay it's a little much but you know if you can say that I published it and then a girl came up to me in the coffee shop like in public and started berating me for publishing the op-ed and and to be honest I didn't care that much because like what was this girl gonna do to me but but that that I think gives you a sense of what the climate was like I was lucky that I Gale had a good network of conservatives unit groups especially this thing called the ill political union which contains a lot of conservative political parties and so I was in one of those and I kind of had a friend group that I knew was not going to cancel me or so me and in fact within that friend group I was like the token live so if anything they were like they'd be like Aaron you know okay yeah it's nice that you believe in free speech but really what you should believe is that we need a Catholic monarch who will suppress free speech in the interest of creating you know our lady of Guadalupe empire from from North America to South America or whatever like like it sounds it sounds like a joke but there were actually people who believe that um so you know they all for me they were like oh yeah you know you you think that maybe uh maybe title line is going a little too far right like oh you know you think you're controversial well wait till you hear what we believe um so how are they treated on campus though like like you're saying there are people they they well because they had the social group like they were fine they also weren't as outspoken though like they weren't writing their takes committing them to paper I think people probably knew that they were Catholic and conservative but they they typically I think were pretty good about just just knowing when and where to to share that so yeah look I had a similar experience although I would say that I didn't feel as socially isolated as I think some people felt and I actually especially at Yale where there is this kind of conservative infrastructure you know I would probably advise students to be a little less afraid of getting canceled because as long as you have the friends who won't cancel you like it doesn't really matter if someone calls you a mean name on Facebook it just should learn to get over that um but yeah look these these these universities often do have a very cycle and climate for free speech and I do know people at other elite schools where there was not I think as healthy a network of dissident students and at those schools people who spoke out really you know faced of a steep social price um yeah no it's it's a it's a problem um and so and then you asked earlier do I think there's anything to the conservative critique well having seen it up close I mean yeah you know these you really will see kids get piled on for saying things that are if anything way to the left of Fox News but just not quite the left of Bernie Sanders and you know you don't see anything like that pile on um triggered by students saying that rationality is a tool of white male oppression which someone literally wrote almost exactly that in in op-ed for me that I had to edit right I was sitting next to the girl and editing it with her line by line and the thesis of the op-ed was that demands for rational discourse are a way of policing the emotionality of women of color right like it's pretty crazy and you know that was what you were expected to say oh that's an important perspective thank you so much for writing this op-ed like no I mean come on hey thanks for watching that clip from our new show just asking questions you can watch another clip here or the full episode here new episodes drop every week so subscribe to recent tv's youtube channel to get notified when that happens or to the just asking questions podcast on apple spotify or any other podcatcher