At the risk of belaboring the subject, I can’t help but recall that at my freshman assembly three years ago the Yale administration saw fit to use Professor Kenji Yoshino to suggest that the class of 2010, America at large and American institutions were guilty of systematic oppression against Muslims.

We were then urged to create a world free from anti-Muslim bigotry and repression.

Since that time, I have seen no evidence of bigotry against Muslims on the part of Yale students or our lovely American institution, Yale University. We have, however, seen the repression of key subject matter of a scholarly publication under the anticipated threat of Islamist umbrage and violence.

I wonder, then, whether speakers at next year’s freshman assembly will address the real repression faced by our university — and its ideals of free speech, dispassionate inquiry and the pursuit of knowledge — from extremists hostile to Western values and institutions. I wonder if they will condemn all those guilty of anti-Western bigotry and all those who enable it to flourish. I wonder if they will exhort the class of 2014 to create a world free from the repression of Western values and institutions — including Yale University itself.

For some reason, I suspect the administration won’t.

Even if it wanted to, it has lost the moral authority it would need.

Matthew Shaffer
Aug. 30
The writer is a senior in Davenport College.