One Man Has a Surprising Solution to Cancel Culture

To pinpoint the birth of the cancel culture era one has to go back to shortly before Halloween 2015.

A group of Yale deans had sent an email urging students to avoid insensitive costume choices. Three days later, Erika Christakis, the co-director (then called “co-master”), of Silliman, one of Yale’s 12 residential colleges, sent her own email to students. Christakis acknowledged “genuine concerns about cultural and personal representation,” but, drawing upon her own experience and research as an expert in early childhood education, suggested the students themselves were best positioned to police their own conduct. She also mused about the consequences of delegating control over their behavior to bureaucrats.