I was surprised when I learned that the Yale Free Press had an Editor in chief. With its off-putting images produced by artificial intelligence, haphazard layout and thoughtless regurgitation of right-wing soundbites, a flip through the “Free Speech Edition” feels more like my uncle’s Facebook feed than a print publication of serious political thought.

The most recent print edition of the magazine, published on Oct. 24, begins with an article from the Editor in Chief. The introductory column says that YFP covers topics other outlets do not and require “nuance and complexity” to understand. After reading the Yale Free Press, however, I found little nuance and even less complexity. 

One article complains about the awkwardness of pronoun-sharing during class introductions at the beginning of each semester. The author says the act of sharing his pronouns goes against his religious, philosophical, linguistic and scientific beliefs. “I sit waiting to be marginalized for my religious beliefs,” he writes. I promise you, it’s not that deep. Choosing to share your pronouns is literally the easiest thing we can all do to build an inclusive community. Choosing not to share your pronouns is senselessly contrarian and downright unnecessary. 

At Yale, you have the freedom to say or to refuse to say your pronouns, but you should expect to get weird looks for doing the latter. Weird looks are not an infringement on your freedom of expression. We’re all big kids here.

The author proposes a solution to his awkwardness problem — he says Yale should institute policies “preventing seminar and discussion leaders from requesting the pronouns of students publicly.” So, since it’s so awkward that he has to refuse to share his pronouns, professors should be banned from asking him. The Editor in Chief wrote that we are all students capable of “grappling with contentious topics with maturity.” Clearly, that is not true for all of us. Thank you, Yale Free Press, for remaining steadfast in your commitment to free speech.

Ideas like these are enabled by extensive conservative echo chambers. No religious text will tell you not to say “he/him” on the first day of class. But Ben Shapiro or Matt Walsh or Michael Knowles will.

It’s precisely organizations like the Yale Free Press — organizations which purport to stand for the freedom of speech and the diversity of viewpoints — that only seem to highlight one type of thinking. Only one article in this edition of the Yale Free Press does not include a barrage of conservative talking points, instead arguing Yale students should just be more open about their beliefs. That piece was published anonymously. 

The magazine is funded by The Collegiate Network, which purports itself to be a non-partisan educational organization. The Collegiate Network is part of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, which has the stated purpose of allowing students to “explore intellectual conservatism.” The organization started in the early 1950s when the organization noticed a “gaping void” in higher education.

The website even reads:“Progressive ideas were in vogue; conservative ones were ignored or attacked. (Sound familiar?).”

Take a moment to think about what conservative ideas were in the early 1950s, when Brown v. Board of Education was decided and segregation persisted across the Southern United States. This organization was created to defend the ideas of conservatives on college campuses in the 1950s. This is the organization that funds the Yale Free Press.

The faux-intellectual-diversity problem is not unique to the Yale Free Press, however. The Buckley Institute, with the mission of promoting “Intellectual diversity and freedom of speech” at Yale, has fallen short of this goal during my time at Yale. My first year, they brought Ted Cruz to speak. My sophomore year, Mike Pompeo. This year, they invited Ben Carson. A scroll through past speakers shows that true engagement with progressive ideas is few and far between.

I attended a Buckley Institute event on Oct. 5 titled “The State of K-12 Education in America,” with three panelists. I naively expected this to be a nuanced conversation about education with some disagreement between the panelists. Instead, all three speakers spouted classic conservative talking points on topics like school choice, vouchers and Critical Race Theory. That is not intellectual diversity.

Organizations like the Yale Free Press and The Buckley Institute seem much more interested in promoting conservative thought than real, pressing free speech issues. Will any Yale Free Press writers express concern over students afraid to speak on the Israel-Hamas war for fear of being doxxed? Over how often sexual assault goes unreported for fear of retaliation? Or about the teachers in Florida living through persistent attacks on their speech? Instead, we’re still talking about pronouns in 2023. Give me a break. From the Buckley Society to the Yale Free Press, organizations promenading as “free speech” champions tend to act as soundboards for sloppy bigotry. 

CARTER DEWEES is an opinion columnist for the News. He is a junior in Saybrook College majoring in American Studies. Contact him at carter.dewees@yale.edu.