The YCC’s progressive activism is incoherent and blatantly partisan.
Memorial Quadrangle Gate at Branford College on Yale’s Campus in New Haven, Conn. (Credit: Owen Tilman)
Corinne Cowan
Opinions Editor, The Buckley Beacon
Following the Trump administration’s claims that the Yale School of Medicine’s admissions policies are racially discriminatory, Yale has spent the past several months negotiating with the federal government. Meanwhile, our student government, the Yale College Council, has emerged to demand that Yale stand up to the Trump administration.
Between the months of July and September, the YCC has hosted protests, teach-ins, press conferences, phone banks, and more to voice dissent against the Trump administration’s actions. The YCC’s latest and greatest move was approving four statements that call for Yale to adopt measures ranging from noninterference with demonstrations to exiting settlement negotiations with the Department of Justice.
The YCC’s communications paint these measures as a form of democratic advocacy. This programming is intended to “uphold the values of democracy” or to “Democratize Yale.” In doing so, the YCC reveals its own incompetence.
In the first place, the spirit of the YCC’s push for “democracy” in the abstract is incoherent. One of the YCC’s demands is for faculty to have the freedom to research, advocate, and teach as they so choose, without interference. Free expression policies like these require that universities and governments protect the rights of the individual.
It’s easy for the YCC and the leaders of the other progressive organizations to advocate for faculty free expression when it’s threatened by a president with which they disagree politically. The real test for champions of freedom, however, is whether or not they can fight for the academic freedom of someone they disagree with. If a conservative professor espouses traditional viewpoints or publishes research that contradicts the progressive orthodoxy at Yale, will the YCC stand up for his right to academic freedom? I doubt it.
A community with guaranteed freedoms must take an actively anti-democratic stance. Once we commit to protecting freedom, we automatically commit to protecting the freedom of minorities to contradict the majority opinion. Otherwise, our freedoms disappear the moment a majority decides they don’t like them.
Secondly, as has been pointed out before, Yale is not a democracy. Classes, professorships, and rules are not decided on the basis of student opinion. The YCC has provided little justification for why they believe that this institution should be more democratic, other than that “democracy = good, therefore more democracy = better.”
This is especially apparent in their first demand, which is to replace the successor trustee system with a more democratic process. If implemented, this would give members of the Yale community power in the decision making process. Why they believe that students will be able to make better decisions about the complex issues of university governance than university officials themselves, I’m unsure, and they have failed to justify that belief.
It is clear that the YCC did not adequately consider the issues at hand before spending our dollars to fund blatant left-wing activism. But perhaps the YCC never aimed at coherence. Student activism at Yale and other college campuses is largely based on overbroad ideas of “right” and “wrong,” with little respect for the complexity of the issues.
Activists champion vague buzzwords like “democracy” and “the people” without stopping to question whether or not their demands are in line with these notions, or even to wonder if their ideals are appropriate given the circumstances. It would have been more accurate and sincere if the YCC had just announced that it was opposed to the Trump administration, instead of appealing to “democracy.”
Nowhere is the lack of nuance more apparent than in their insistence that Yale immediately exit from talks of deals with the Trump administration. Even more laughable is their insistence that Yale defend its admissions principles to the American people. The end of affirmative action was three years ago, a decision which the majority of Americans held favorable views on, according to one poll. What good could possibly come from a public defense of racially biased admissions practices?
Perhaps the actual issue with the YCC is merely a structural one. Since our student body leaders are democratically elected, each year feels that they need to outdo the last with vague promises and lots of pizazz. Maybe it’s time that the YCC leaders accept that their power is very limited, and that they ought to stick to practical matters instead, like their recent win making laundry free for on-campus students. Thumbs up on that one, YCC!