The event — which received over 700 submissions of student-made films from all over the world — will feature mostly Yale alumni and affiliated community members who have been trailblazers across different sectors of the industry, from media executives to directors and writers. 

“It’s so refreshing to see Yale being recognized not just as a place of academic excellence, but also a place that’s a real hub for creatives,” YSFF co-director Daliya Habib ’25 said. “Though we’re not a film school, there are people here who are cultivating a high level of technical filmmaking to tell their own stories.” 

Habib will co-direct the festival alongside Molly Smith ’25. They are bringing the festival back to a fully in-person program after years of COVID-19-related restrictions forced organizers to hold the event in remote or hybrid formats. 

The festival will feature opportunities for students to connect with industry professionals through a series of panels, Q&As and networking opportunities. There will also be several viewing opportunities for student-submitted films, which will be judged by a panel of directors, festival heads, writers and Yale faculty for the purpose of determining awards. This is the first time that YSFF has allowed for submissions from students outside of Yale. 

“We’ve worked very hard this year to create an event that prioritizes building connections with our fellow filmmakers at other schools,” Smith said. “I want Yalies to see the amazing work created by nearby schools and I hope this will be the start of more filmmaking partnerships outside Yale.” 

Panelists will include industry leaders such as Kristen Schwarz, vice president of original comedy series at HBO Max, and Ramaa Mosley, winner of the prestigious United Nations Global 500 Award.

Smith highlighted a new feature for this year’s program: a high school submission category. The winning high schooler will be awarded a scholarship to the Prodigy Camp, a weeklong intensive program outside of Seattle dedicated to helping young filmmakers and songwriters further develop their craft. 

“This is a life changing opportunity and it’s been a goal to bring more talented and diverse filmmakers to the camp,” Smith said. 

The program will kick off with an opening reception on Thursday, Apr. 20 at 6 p.m., which will be followed by the first screening block of the festival, dedicated exclusively to Yale filmmakers. Friday will then feature two screening blocks: “The Natural World” at 2 p.m. and “The Self” at 7 p.m.. In between the two blocks, Schwartz will lead a workshop on development and pitching. 

There will be two more screening blocks on Saturday, titled “Day(dreams) and Memories” at 2 p.m. and “Centerpiece Films Screening” at 7 p.m.. Other Saturday events will include an editing workshop at 1 p.m, hosted by festival co-director Smith, and Mosley’s workshop on TV directing. Saturday’s program will close with the festival’s award ceremony at 9 p.m. and an after-party at 10 p.m..

“I think coming out of a period of time where there was so much isolation — especially for artists and filmmakers — I think creative people really suffered,” Habib said. “So I think it’s been really important that we cultivate the idea of community and create a space where filmmakers can connect and explore their own ideas for films they want to make while meeting people they can create those projects with.” 

The last day of the program will feature two final screening blocks. The first, hosted at 12 p.m., will be exclusively dedicated to Yale filmmakers. The second block, scheduled for 2 p.m., is titled “Matters of Family.” Also on Sunday, the directors will introduce a new feature of the film festival: a series of coffee chats for student entrants with invited industry professionals at the Silliman Acorn at 10 a.m.. 

All screening blocks and workshops with industry professionals will be hosted in the Alice Room, also known as HQ L01, and will be open to Yale students and New Haven community members alike. 

“Film is essentially a collaborative process,” Habib said. “And whether you’re making a film, watching and appreciating film, or discussing the impact of film, there’s a real essence of community that needs to be there.” 

YSFF Director of Programming Idone Rhodes ’25 said she combed through the hundreds of submissions to select which films would be featured and sent to the judges panel for consideration. 

Among the films being featured is a short from Josh Leong, who graduated from NYU in 2021 and whose film “Chicken” was screened at the Tribeca Film Festival. 

“As an international festival, we have the exciting opportunity to highlight a wide range of perspectives and experiences that span far outside the boundaries of Yale’s campus,” Rhodes wrote to the News. “Amongst so many phenomenal films, the ones ultimately selected for the program exhibited a thoughtful, innovative vision of their chosen subject. I gravitated towards films that challenged my expectations as a viewer, and I can’t wait for audiences at the film festival to get to experience these films for themselves this week.” 

The Humanities Quadrangle is located at 320 York St. 

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The decision to suspend commutation came in response to a movement of people claiming to represent the interests of families of victims affected by crime. Community members at the Yale Law School have been pushing Connecticut higher-ups to reinstate the process since its suspension. 

“We’re hoping that the governor and the new board chair will understand how important and serious this is, and that they’re going to do the right thing,” said YLS professor Miriam Gohara. “So we’re hoping the conversation will end and we won’t continue to have any disagreement about this.” 

Gohara explained to the News that she had become aware of the change in commutation policy because of her work with the Challenging Mass Incarceration Clinic, where she and law school students were working in teams representing incarcerated individuals in their application for commutation. Though the commutation process had been temporarily suspended during the COVID-19 pandemic, it was then reinstated in 2021. 

Gohara said she had already been put on alert to the political pressures the Board of Pardons and Paroles was facing when in August, the Board announced a narrowing of the eligibility criteria for commutation applications: commutation would no longer be available to individuals sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

“Over the course of the fall and earlier this year, we became aware that the board’s work on commutation generally … was under attack,” Gohara said. “Not by many people, but by some vocal people who staged a press conference where some crime victims expressed their disapproval of the Board’s considering applications for commutation.”  

The press conference in question took place on March 6, and featured, among others, Audrey Carlson, mother of Elizabeth Carlson, who was murdered by her ex-boyfriend in 2002. 

One criticism highlighted was the role that commutation allegedly plays in undermining the terms stipulated in plea bargains. Speakers said that these plea bargains themselves often involve families compromising on sentencing length to avoid the emotional burden of sitting through long trials. 

“Imagine the unimaginable for just a second: your world crashes in around you, you’re caught in a riptide, you can’t breathe and just when you think and you feel you might find your way, you learn that your killer might be set free,” Carlson said at the conference. 

In an April 12 open letter authored and signed by various YLS faculty, including Gohara, professors expressed concern with the indefinite suspension of commutation, describing the process as a “critical safety valve.” 

The letter describes how, even while making sentencing decisions to the best of their ability, judges cannot be absolutely certain that a particular sentence will make sense years or decades later. 

“Justices are not clairvoyant,” the letter reads. “They cannot anticipate whether the sentence meted out on sentencing day will continue to serve the purposes of punishment years later.” 

The letter goes on to highlight the historical precedent of deferring commutation power to the Board of Pardons and Paroles, which has been reflected in Connecticut’s governing structure since the late 19th century. 

Additionally, the authors wrote that commutation works as a counterbalance against crimes that have mandatory minimum sentences, meaning that no matter the position of judge and jury on recommended sentencing, an individual found guilty must serve the amount of time designated as necessary by law. 

“Commutation also serves as a mechanism to ensure the fairness and proportionality of criminal sentences,” the letter explains. “Many of the people positioned to seek commutation today were tried and sentenced in the 1990s and early 2000s.” 

A key point of the letter is the judiciousness of the commutation process and the checks in place to make sure that commutation is being granted responsibly. From 2021 to 2022, the letter notes, the Board received 328 commutation applications, with only 27 percent of those cases resulting in a successful commutation. 

Among the factors taken into account when an incarcerated person applies for commutation is their institutional record, an assessment of rehabilitation, the seriousness and recentness of the conviction, the impact on the victim and the length of the applicant’s sentence. Age at the time of conviction is also a key consideration, with the Board taking care to think about what stage of brain development an applicant was experiencing at the time of the committed crime. From 2021 to 2022, the average age of the commuted individual at the time of offense was 22.6 years old. 

“Policies that prevent parole and commutation do not advance public safety,” the letter reads. “This is especially true for older people serving long sentences for crimes they committed when they were young. Evidence suggests that most people who commit crimes—even very serious crimes—age out of criminal behavior as they mature.”

Chisato Kimura LAW ’25 — one of the students involved with Gohara’s clinic — told the News that once the suspension was announced, her team immediately launched into advocacy work, sending out emails to stakeholders and officials in Connecticut about the importance of pushing back against an indefinite suspension. 

The clinic also sent out the published open letter as a template — to be used by criminal justice organizers and other stakeholders — addressed to Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, Board of Paroles and Pardons Chairperson Jennifer M. Zaccagnini and State Sen. Gary Winfield, among others. 

“I do think that this is part of a larger conversation where people talk about rising crime rates and things like that without the data to back it up,” Kimura said. “And it’s a continuation and perpetuation of the over criminalization of black and brown people, because obviously there is a huge racial component to this. When we look at the rates of incarceration, specifically in Connecticut and obviously nationwide, there is a huge racial disparity.” 

In an email from the Board of Pardons and Paroles, several individuals involved in the clinic were informed that the Connecticut commutation policy was currently in the process of being updated and that the Board would resume considering applications within the next few months. 

The letter directed individuals to an updated policy listed on the Board’s website, which lists the same information contained in the email: “We are currently in the process of updating the commutation policy.” 

“[The email] was really encouraging,” Kimura said. “It shows that they’re hearing us and feeling the pressure, and that we’re being successful in our advocacy. That’s why we really want to continue making sure that people are aware that this is happening, and that there are a lot of advocates pushing back.” 

Jennifer Zaccagnini was elected chairperson of the Board of Pardons and Paroles on April 10 2023. 

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The preliminary round of the Yale Hindi Debate took place on Apr. 7, and the national debate will be held on Apr.  14. A first and second-place prize are awarded in each of the event’s three categories: Native Speakers, Heritage Speakers, and Non-Native Speakers. Thirty-two students — from schools ranging as far as Los Angeles — participated in the preliminary round, and about 25 will compete in the national round this weekend.

“Born as a student’s idea in a Yale classroom, the Yale Hindi Debate has grown exponentially, from an ambitious venture to an intellectual, cultural, and social institution,” the debate’s website reads. 

This year, the debate includes three separate topics for each category for a total of three resolutions. These topics include whether or not to eliminate the prison system, if arranged or love marriages are more successful and if only the government can control climate change. 

For co-presidents Daevan Mangalmurti ’24 and Bilal Moin ’24, this year’s topics reflect YHD’s goal of allowing students to select what topics most interest them. 

“The Hindi Debate was and remains a student driven idea, as our topics around things like arranged marriage suggest, and we think that’s key to the event: it’s a good time for the people who participate and who come to listen,” Mangalmurti told the News. 

Only one student from each participating university is able to qualify to nationals within each category, a stipulation that also applies to Yale competitors. 

Moin told the News that the YHD program works to provide travel grants for students whose universities may not be able to financially support their participation.

Mangalmurti and Moin worked with the South Asian Studies Council and the University’s “robust Hindi program,” as Mangalmurti wrote, to put on the event. Mangalmurti specifically named Hindi lectors Swapna Sharma, Seema Khurana and Mansi Bajaj as key figures in organizing YHD. 

“They build student interest in the debate, integrate it into Hindi classes’ curricula, and provide the overall vision for the event,” Mangalmurti wrote.

Sharma is the SASC language program director. Khurana initiated the debate in 2008 and, though she has since retired, continues to attend each year. 

Bajaj formerly competed in YHD, and — having joined Yale’s Hindi department this year — now is involved in an organizational capacity. 

“I have participated in the debate since 2014 from the University of Texas, Austin and this is the first time, I am in the organizing committee,” Bajaj wrote to the News. “I am very excited to attend the debate in-person for the first time and see our enthusiastic Hindi learners debate. It is a different feeling to be in the auditorium.”

YHD is the United States’ only national Hindi debate. To Moin, the fact that Yale specifically hosts the event is interesting because other schools — such as the University of Texas, he noted — have greater promotion of and emphasis on Hindi education within their academic life. 

The organizing committee works to make the debate a cultural event as well as an academic one. South Asian a cappella group Yale Avaaz and dance team Yale monstRAASity performed at the preliminary round earlier in the month, as did juggler Arnav Narula ’25. 

At the national event this weekend, monstRAASity will make a return, joined this time by dance team Yale Jashan Bhangra and classical music group Yale Dhvani.

“It forms part of a larger effort to create a space for South Asian dialogue, culture, and study on campus, and we feel that holding the debate in Hindi provides a special experience,” Mangalmurti wrote. “The event is totally unique in the US, and this year we’ve tried to build it out by increasing outreach to other universities. There simply isn’t enough of an academic focus on the teaching of Hindi in the US—to say nothing of other South Asian languages—and this helps institutionalize language study of and in South Asia in the United States.”

During the debate, each speaker gives a three-minute speech which they have previously prepared. During the speech, they are allowed to consult notes and resort to more conversational language. Though use of English is strongly discouraged, clarity of thought is emphasized. After three minutes, students are interrupted. After students deliver their speeches, they are prompted to respond to one audience-member question off-the-cuff. 

Sharma explained that all students in the L5 level of Yale’s Hindi language program participate in the preliminary round, and that many students in lower levels elect to participate as well. Though Sharma said a majority of Hindi students at Yale have some Indian heritage, many students from diverse cultural backgrounds elect to study the language as well. 

“They [Yale students] get a very good chance to meet other Hindi students from different parts of the U.S. and ask how they are doing in their Hindi classes,” Sharma said.  

Sharma also reflected on the importance of bringing together students through the debate, explaining that students from other Universities are hosted by Yale students during their stay in New Haven instead of staying at hotels. During the 2022 debate, students were not hosted on Yale’s campus due to COVID restrictions, and so Sharma expressed her excitement about returning to the hosting system. 

For Moin, YHD offers a community through which Hindi students can stay connected to the language even after completing their Yale-mandated distributional language requirement.

“It’s a way of getting Hindi students together and a way to keep students engaged with the language,” Moin said. “You don’t see that with a lot of [other] languages at Yale.”

The YHD team also organizes dinners, chais and other events that are open to all students — whether they are organizing, participating or just interested in spending time together. 

The first Yale Hindi Debate was in 2008. 

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The Yale Political Union hosted the author and spiritual adviser Marianne Williamson for an April 11 discussion titled “A Conversation on Spirituality & Politics.” Williamson, who rose to prominence during her 2020 bid for president, is an advocate for progressive political reforms and has centered her candidacy for office around humanitarian concerns.

“If you think politics has nothing to do with religion, you don’t understand religion,” Williamson said at the event. 

The Tuesday evening discussion was attended by approximately 300 students and community members, as well as supporters and volunteers for Williamson’s 2024 campaign. Jean Wang ’24 – president of the YPU and an opinion editor at the News – began the event by clarifying the group’s status as 501(c)(3), meaning that it is a non-partisan and non-profit group that was neither endorsing Williamson’s candidacy nor hosting the event as an opportunity for political fundraising. 

Williamson began her address by laying out the fundamentals of her political ideology, before responding to questions from the event’s moderators and attendees. The YPU typically hosts politicians and political thinkers to discuss a resolution in a debate format, but Williamson declined to adhere to this structure.

“I was told that the YPU usually hosts debates,” Williamson said. “But I don’t know how you could debate whether love should rule the world.” 

She made clear that her definition of spirituality was not dependent on a particular religious creed, but rather a view of the self as something greater than the physical form of the body. 

Williamson dropped out of the 2020 election in Jan. 2020 after her support in the polls dropped to around 1 percent. During the Democratic primary, she was criticized for referring to a vaccine mandate as “Orwellian,” though she later apologized for those comments. 

Though her emphasis on love and spirituality has been met with some skepticism within the Democratic party, Williamson was emphatic that historical precedent is on her side. Politics – specifically humanitarian reform – and religion have more often than not been intertwined, she said. She referenced the religious convictions underlying the American Civil Rights movement and the Indian Independence Movement as well as the influence of Quakerism on American suffragettes.  

“Progressive politics today being so devoid of this [spiritual] conviction is actually an aberration,” Williamson said. 

Williamson took her spiritual conviction one step further by saying that without spirituality, America’s founding ideals were untenable. 

Her argument was that the claims of the Declaration of Independence, namely that all men are created equal, evidently stem from an understanding of humans’ spiritual rather than physical equality. Therefore, Williamson argued, to uphold the Declaration of Independence was to uphold that humans are more than flesh and blood.

“That was the first time a nation has ever been founded on the principle of equality of all human beings,” Williamson reflected.  

Many of Williamson’s most controversial views surround mental illness and psychiatric interventions. The presidential candidate has routinely expressed skepticism about the efficacy of antidepressants, and has labeled the difference between sadness and clinical depression “artificial.” 

During her talk, Williamson expressed chagrin about how often people today – especially women – complain of struggles with anxiety. “Of course you’re anxious,” she told the crowd, insisting that people ought to view their anxiety not as an individual ailment but as a product of dysfunctional society. From there, Williamson encouraged individuals to use their anxiety to motivate political protest and reform.  

“I’ve been very disappointed over the last few years, and how many people I’ve heard, particularly women, who just claim to be so traumatized by the state of America today,” Williamson said. “I remind you that the people who walked across the bridge at Selma were traumatized too.” 

Tuesday’s discussion was the second time Williamson has visited campus, the first being in 2019 during her first bid for the presidency.

Williamson told the News that she enjoyed visiting college campuses because it allowed her to address a group of people almost exclusively born in the 21st rather than 20th century. This was crucial to Williamson because of her view that each century has its own particular consciousness. 

“You’re the first generation of the new millennium,” Williamson said, “So, young people today are carrying with them the burden — a particular burden — of individuation, not just from a previous generation but from a previous way of looking at the world.”   

Several attendees of Tuesday’s talk were neither students nor affiliates of the University, but rather supporters of Williamson or active volunteers for her campaign. 

In interviews with the News, five of these supporters expressed their admiration for Williamson’s message and her commitment to love and humanitarianism. 

“I was very inspired by her tonight,” said Nancy Ladish, who attended the event. “I would think that young people would be very inspired by her too. I thought her message was very hopeful, and the fact that she’s not status quo is what we need today. We need somebody different.”

Three of the Williamson supporters in attendance told the News that they had been following Williamson for over a decade, and became interested in her politics after reading her 2007 book “The Age of Miracles.” They all communicated a willingness to move across state boundaries and follow Williamson throughout the course of her presidential run. 

“I’m so proud of her for saying what everyone’s thinking and not saying,” Williamson volunteer Cindy Nye told the News. “She has a very clear idea of where this country came from, how we landed in the mess that we’re in, and what we need to do to get out of it. 

The 2024 election will be the 60th quadrennial presidential election. 

The post 2024 presidential candidate Marianne Williamson talks spirituality and politics at YPU event appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Bouteldja’s invitation was met with backlash from community members who accused the activist of bigotry, bringing up comments they interpreted as homophobic and antisemitic. In conversations with the News, students expressed issue not only with her invitation, but also with her lecture taking place during the night of the second seder of Passover, meaning that Jewish students observing the holiday were unable to attend. 

“Often, on this campus, I feel like my voice and perspective as a Jewish person is ignored, or not taken seriously,” Emily Zenner ’24 told the News. “By scheduling such a controversial guest, and one especially worrying to many Jewish people, during a Jewish holiday, it feels to me as if Yale, once again, completely ignored us.” 

In a April 3 tweet from the non-profit watchdog organization StopAntisemitism, the group decried Yale’s invitation of Bouteldja, labeling her “an atrocious antisemite and homophobe.” The tweet, which was viewed over 100,000 times, also condemned numerous past statements from the invited guest on topics ranging from Zionism and Israel to interracial relationships. 

The Decolonizing Europe Lecture Series is the brainchild of Professor Fatima El-Tayeb, who teaches in the Ethnicity, Race and Migration and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies departments.

The lecture was sponsored by the MacMillan Center, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration. Bouteldja, El-Tayeb and leadership at the MacMillan Center and RITM all either declined or did not respond to requests for comment. 

Houria Bouteldja, her critics and controversies

Houria Bouteldja was born in Algeria in 1973 before migrating to France as a child. She entered the activism world in 2004, when she led a movement against a French ban on female public schoolers wearing hijabs and niqabs after a law prohibited students from wearing conspicuous religious symbols to school.

In 2005, Bouteldja co-founded the Indigènes de la République or the Party of the Indigenous of the Republic, a social movement that formally consolidated into a political party in 2010. The PIR — much like Bouteldja — defines itself as “decolonial” and anti-racist, but accusations that the group is antisemitic, anti-feminist and homophobic are as old as the group itself. At the heart of this controversy lies the party’s stance that the left centers social issues to avoid addressing the material conditions of the socio-economically and racially disenfranchised. 

Bouteldja has designated movements for LGBTQ+ rights, including the fight for gay marriage, under the label of “a homonationalist project.” Homonationalism, a theory introduced in 2007 by Jasbir K. Puar, criticizes a purported alliance between nationalistic ideology and advocacy for LGBTQ+ rights. 

Bouteldja resigned from the PIR in 2020, citing the group’s devolvement into “radioactivity,” though she continues to advocate for its original talking points. 

“What bothers me is that ‘Marriage for All’ is considered revolutionary, whereas it is globally part of a homonationalist project,” Bouteldja said in a 2020 interview with the French publication Ekho. “What bothers me most is that the defense of completely legitimate causes (and I include here the fight against homophobia) is most of the time to the detriment of the class struggle in general.” 

Accusations charging Bouteldja with antisemitism stem from another one of the activist’s highly contentious beliefs: that Western governments impose a hierarchy in which “Jews are in some sense better treated.” Bouteldja maintains that this simultaneously feeds resentment towards Jews among non-white people while still situating Jews as inferior to the white majority. 

In 2012, Bouteldja publicly self-identified with Mohammed Merah, whose terrorist attacks partly targeted teachers and students at a Jewish school. 

“On the 21st of March 2012, I went to bed as myself, and woke up as Mohamed Merah,” Bouteldja declared in a 2012 speech. “Mohammed Merah is me … Like me, he has been subjected to the incredible Islamophobic political and media campaign that followed the attacks against the twin towers.” 

Two of the most striking claims in the StopAntisemitism tweet can be traced to a 2016 televised debate between Bouteldja and French political scientist Thomas Guénolé. Guénolé prompted the activist to respond to a picture of her holding two thumbs up next to a graffiti slogan reading “sionistes au goulag” or “zionists to the gulag.” The debate — linked in a 2016 blog post — has since been removed from the television channel’s website and Youtube.  

According to the Anti Defamation League, the term Zionism initially described the ideology underlying the re-establishment of a protected Jewish nation in Israel. Contemporarily, it refers to a belief in the importance of an Israeli state. Zionism does not amount to unequivocal support for the Israeli government nor does it preclude support for a two-state solution and Palestinian self-determination. 

In the same debate, Guénolé claims to have challenged Bouteldja to explain a past comment about sexual violence in the Banlieu, a term for suburbs on the outskirts of large French cities that has come to evoke an image of poverty and sizable immigrant populations.

“If a Black woman is raped by a Black man, it is right that she does not go to the police in order to protect the Black community,” reads a translation of the comment, which has earned Bouteldja accusations of misogyny and racism in addition to antisemitism and homophobia. 

Invitation and backlash

In an email to the News, StopAntisemitism Executive Director Liora Rez doubled down on her position following the organization’s April 3 tweet. 

Rez highlighted that Yale had received an F grade in her organization’s 2022 annual college report of campus antisemitism, which claims to be based on “hundreds of first-person narratives by students at [graded] schools.” The report ranks universities based on four categories: protection, allyship, identity and policy. Yale and Columbia  were the only Ivy League institutions out of the five covered by the report to receive an F grade.

“Yale received an ‘F’ in StopAntisemitism’s latest college report because its Jewish students don’t feel protected or heard by the administration,” Rez wrote. “Rather than taking action to fix its grade, Yale is proudly promoting Ms. Bouteldja’s appearance via an event page that cites her hateful bibliography.” 

In the days leading up to Bouteldja’s talk, numerous members and allies of the LGBTQ+ and Jewish communities sent emails to administrators expressing their concerns about the activist coming to campus during a Jewish holiday. Concerned students passed around a template email for other community members — including donors and alumni — to adapt in communicating their concerns to administration.

The template email, which has been obtained by the News, references the April 3 tweet by StopAntisemitism, clarifying that the watch-dog group is not affiliated with the University. It goes on to emphasize that concerned students were advocating for a postponement rather than cancellation, and affirmed students’ belief in freedom of speech and the right of any Yale student or faculty member to bring speakers of their choice to campus.

“Given the controversial nature of this speaker, it would be highly unfortunate if she were brought in on a holy day of the Jewish calendar” the template email reads. “Time and time again, Jews have been caught off guard or unable to participate in activities, whether on Oct. 6, 1973 when Israel was attacked by Egypt and Syria on the holiest day in Judaism, Yom Kippur, or in more recent memory of antisemitic BDS resolutions presented on Shabat. I can only hope that the timing of this event is a coincidence.” 

In the week before Bouteldja’s talk, a post announcing the event on the “Belonging at Yale” website — which highlights University events that “enhance diversity, support equity and promote an environment of welcome, inclusion and respect” — was removed. 

In an email sent to protesting students, Assistant Vice President for University Life Pilar Montalvo laid out the administration’s response to student protests: because of the University’s stance on free speech, nothing could be done to accommodate the concerns of students. The email, which has been obtained by the News, avowed an administrative commitment to combating antisemitism and looped in Jewish University leaders as a resource for dealing with any residual concerns. Nonetheless, Montalvo confirmed that the event would not be moved to a date outside of Passover. 

“Antisemitism has no place at this university,” the email concludes. “There is a great deal of work underway to support the Jewish community on campus.” 

Zenner was one of many students who wrote emails to University administration expressing their disappointment about the event. In an email to the News, Zenner explained that despite her opposition to Bouteldja’s beliefs, she above all considered herself a defender of free speech. 

However, Zenner went on to identify Passover Seder as one of the most important events of the year for practicing Jews. Passover, viewed as one of the most sacred Jewish holidays, stretches from April 5 to 13, with observers typically attending seder on the first two nights.

In her email, Zenner emphasized that she, alongside many other students who sent in emails, had advocated only for a rescheduling of the talk — in the name of protecting Jewish students’ free speech — and never for a disinvitation. For Zenner, the incident did not come as a shock. She remarked that at Yale, the issue of rising antisemitism in the US and around the world was more often than not ignored. 

“While I firmly disagree with many of [Bouteldja’s] publicized comments, as I view them as dripping with antisemitism, homophobia, racism and the promotion of violence, I’m also a huge proponent of free speech,” Zenner wrote. “Open and honest debate is something I value in the highest regard.” 

In an email to the News, Montalvo said that the administration had engaged with student concerns, adding that she had listened to the worries of several Yale community members leading up to the event. She also denied receiving communications from alumni about concerns with the event, though she said she could not speak to the communications received by other University offices. 

She highlighted the timing of the talk as a main concern shared by various community members, but explained that the event could not be moved due to “scheduling constraints.”  

Montalvo emphasized that the University’s policy regarding free expression aimed to maximize protections for academic freedom and the free exchange of ideas. Her role as assistant vice president for University life, she said, was to provide support for the academic freedom of faculty members as well as concerned students. 

“[University policy] states in part that invited speakers are generally free to express their views even if unpopular or controversial,” Montalvo wrote in an email to The News. “Dissenting members of the community may peacefully protest and express disagreement, but they may not interfere with a speaker’s ability to speak or attendees’ ability to attend, listen and hear.” 

The lecture

El-Tayeb provided introductory remarks about the series on Thursday afternoon, explaining that it seeks to answer how Europe — “the home of the colonizers rather than the colonized” — could fit into a decolonial model that aims to recover the lost traditions of groups oppressed by colonization. 

“These topics are not just theoretical to us but deeply personal. As a young community, we are in the fortunate position to be able to deeply and thoughtfully explore these topics beyond sound bites and cliches,” El-Tayeb said. “We should honor this by engaging respectfully with each other.” 

The podium was then handed off to Bouteldja, who gave her lecture in French, pausing periodically for a translation from an interpreter. Her talk, titled “France and Whiteness: breaking with the collaboration of race,” centered on an original theory of the “integral racial state,” inspired by the writings of Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci. She began with the disclaimer that she was there to speak not as an academic, but as an activist. 

Bouteldja’s “integral racial state” describes a collaboration between the bourgeoisie ruling bloc and white people in France — which the activist terms the “racial pact.” This relationship, Bouteldja said, compromises the class struggle by making it impossible to establish a unified working class bloc across ethnic lines. 

“If I stress this heavily it is because we cannot hope for an end to the collaboration of race between bourgeoisie and white people as long as the racial pact rewards whites socially, economically and symbolically,” Bouteldja explained. 

The “racial pact” term shows up in Bouteldja’s first book “Whites, Jews, and Us” in a chapter titled “You, the Jews.” In the chapter, she labels French Jews the “dhimmis of the republic,” a term dating back to the Abbasid period when it was used to describe non-Muslims living under the protection of the caliphate. The legal status of the dhimmi is crystalized in sharia law, distinguishing Jews and Christians as an intermediate class situated between Muslims and worshippers of polytheistic faiths. 

In her book, Bouteldja proceeds to draw a parallel between France’s contemporary Jewish population and the dhimmis of medieval Islamic states. She contends that both groups received privileged imperial protection, but that protection in both cases involved a transactional exchange. Like the dhimmis, Bouteldja says, French Jews could only ever be integrated into French society upon the condition that they acknowledge their inferiority to the dominant “white” group. 

“[French Jews] have abandoned the ‘universalist’ struggle by accepting the Republic’s racial pact: white people on top, as the legitimate body of the nation, us as pariahs at the bottom, and you, as a buffer,” Bouteldja writes. 

However, during her prepared lecture, Bouteldja made no reference to the role of Jewish people in France and made no effort to carve out their place in the so-called “integral racial state.” She instead ended her remarks by naming her primary political agenda: the “rupture of racial collaboration.” 

While she acknowledged that this agenda might strike many as naive — given that, by her own characterization, it is a highly implausible political outcome — she maintained her commitment to continued advocacy for the cause. This advocacy, Bouteldja argued, should come in the form of non-white individuals resisting the pressure to racially integrate into the dominant group. 

“What I meant was that I refuse the process of whitewashing of which I myself am a victim,” Bouteldja concluded, referencing one of her published letters in which she expressed a desire to escape whiteness. “So, in concrete terms, escaping from whites is, above all, a radical refusal of integration through racism. Or to put it another way, refusing to become a racist.” 

The lecture was followed by a brief Q&A period, in which questions mostly steered clear of Bouteldja’s controversial past remarks. One student attendee, however, asked the activist to address two controversies in a series of yes or no questions: firstly, whether she supported universal equal rights for the LGBTQ+ community — including a right to same-sex marriage — and secondly, whether she unequivocally condemned the attacks of terrorist Mohamed Merah. 

At the conclusion of the second question, El-Tayeb interrupted, characterizing it as a waste of time. She insisted that Bouteldja had written at length about the topic in the past. Despite the interruption, Bouteldja went on to answer the question, saying that while she condemned the attack, she believed that Merah had only resorted to violence because he was integrated into a white supremacist state. 

“What you could simply do is read her work,”  El-Tayeb said to the inquiring student. “The advantage of this context is that we don’t have to produce sound bites. So why ask a question that requires a yes or no answer, instead of actually engaging?” 

In response to the first question about universal rights for the LGBTQ+ community, Bouteldja began by rejecting media narratives that have labeled her homophobic, anti-semitic, anti-white, racist and misogynistic, insisting that she was nothing but “a decolonial.” 

She refused to respond to the question of gay rights in a yes or no format, arguing that one could not bestow universal rights on those identifying as LGTBQ+ if the LGBTQ+ identity itself was not universal. Her contention: while homosexuality is universal, LGBTQ+, which she defines as a political identity, is not. 

“And if political identities are not universal, and if everywhere in the world, people don’t want to politicize their sexuality,” Bouteldja remarked. “This is their own right to refuse to politicize their sexuality. I’m just saying from a decolonial point of view, that we can’t generalize a political identity that was born in advanced capitalist countries.” 

Bouteldja did not directly address the matter of gay marriage.

The MacMillan Center is located at 34 Hillhouse Ave. 

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The complaint was filed on April 3 on behalf of the Connecticut Veterans Legal Center and the Stronghold Freedom Foundation. Plaintiffs allege that veterans who passed through the Karshi-Khanabad — more commonly referred to as K2 — military base in the early stages of the war in Afghanistan were routinely exposed to toxic substances that continue to have ongoing effects on their health nearly decades later. 

“To make the stakes clear: Karshi-Khanabad veterans have expressed that their bodies are falling apart, and the information in the Defendant’s possession is crucial to their medical treatment,” the lawsuit read. “They cannot afford any further delay.” 

For years, the K2 air base in Uzbekistan served as an entry point for American soldiers deployed to Afghanistan in the aftermath of 9/11. The K2 base had previously been used by the Soviet Armed Forces as a disposal site for aviation maintenance solvents and chemicals. 

The first boots on the ground at K2 were tasked with digging berms — level spaces between a defensive wall and an adjacent ditch — to improve the camp’s security. While on this assignment, reports trickled in of soldiers fainting after standing next to trenches “filled with pools of black goo.” 

“The people who serve at K2 two were literally the front of the line when our nation needed our military the most, and they did their job and put themselves in an immense amount of danger,” said Mike Sullivan LAW ’24, one of the students working on the case. “And yet, from many of them, the biggest danger that they faced was not in combat in Afghanistan. It was the ground that they slept on, or the water that they drank or the air that they breathed.”

Sullivan, alongside collaborators Derek Nelson LAW ’25 and Grace Fenwick LAW ’24, explained that their primary concern was getting the Department of Defense to release relevant health records. While they did not speculate as to why the DoD had not met their deadline for a previously-filed Freedom of Information Act Request, they noted that filing the lawsuit might help draw the agency’s attention to the matter.

All three students emphasized that they were prepared to litigate the case but also recognized the amount of resources and time — time that many of their clients did not have — that it would take to go through the courtroom. They explained that ideally, the filing of the claim would prompt the DoD to turn over the files without further legal action. 

“What we’re hoping that the DoD will do the right thing, and release these documents, so that this doesn’t have to evolve,” Nelson said. 

Fenwick went on to explain that the process of building the case had relied heavily on crowdsourcing from veterans who served at K2 at the time. Because the DoD has not cooperated with previous investigations into soldiers’ exposure to toxic chemicals, the plaintiffs had to rely on other soldiers’ accounts to estimate the number of veterans who had passed through K2. 

Based on their crowdsourcing, the plaintiffs claim 15,777 soldiers were potentially exposed to toxic substances during their deployment. 

Nelson and Sullivan are both veterans themselves, which they highlighted as a reason why they were initially drawn to the work of the Veterans Legal Services Clinic. Fenwick, who is not a veteran, professed a personal commitment to securing protections for people who “put it all on the line for our country.” 

Nelson shared that he was a member of the United States Army Special Forces, better known as the “Green Berets,” which was the group that was initially deployed to K2 at the beginning of the war in Afghanistan. 

“In a broad sense, this kind of feels like a full circle moment for me, coming back to the start of Afghanistan having served there near the end,” Nelson said. “And the fact that there are still issues that are unaddressed for those who served at the beginning of this war: that’s part of my community and part of my military legacy.” 

The War in Afghanistan started in 2001.

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The $25,000 award recognizes outstanding achievement by a for-profit or non-profit startup that aims to improve financial justice. The Fines and Fees Freedom Fund, initially conceived of by Alejandra Uría LAW ’23 as part of a final assignment for the YLS Strategic Advocacy Clinic, works to to minimize the number of individuals being incarcerated for failure to pay fines and fees. 

“It’s one of those problems that just shouldn’t exist,” Liam Grace-Flood SOM ’22, one of the student developers of the startup, told the News. “The stories are truly wild – people going to jail because they didn’t signal a lane change; people going to court for something they’re wrongly accused of, being exonerated but charged with court fees, and when they can’t afford those, being sent to jail.”

The issue of fine-based incarceration has been recognized by the American Bar Association as part of an ongoing effort to decriminalize poverty.

According to a study by Cornell, approximately 50 percent of adults have seen an immediate family member incarcerated for at least one night. Furthermore, people earning less than $25,000 per year are 61 percent more likely to have a family member incarcerated than individuals earning $100,000 per year or more. 

“The more I’ve learned about the criminal legal system in the U.S., the more I’ve seen how policies and procedures reinforce economic and racial disparities,” wrote Caela Murphy SOM ‘23, one of the five student members of Fines and Fees. “Fines and fees are just one example of how the legal system disproportionately penalizes low-income people. Criminal debt can in turn reinforce economic marginalization, including through license revocation, job loss, pressure to take on additional debt, and more.” 

Uría began developing the idea for the Fines and Fees Freedom Fund during her fall 2021 semester with the clinic. During this time, she became aware of the high rates of incarceration for fine-only offenses and theorized that applying a bail fund model would expand what could be done with legal aid to address the issue. Bail funds are charitable organizations that collect money in a pool to help community members meet posted bail amounts. 

Grace-Flood, who joined the clinic as a student in the spring of 2022, explained that he was immediately motivated to make the theory a reality after hearing Uría’s idea. They were joined in the Fall of 2022 by Murphy, Elena Sokoloski LAW ’25 and Chloé Medina LAW ’25. 

“Across four different legal internships and three distinct clinics representing the interests of the imprisoned and policed, I encountered individuals suffering from the many consequences of insurmountable fines and fees,” Uría wrote. “Many organizations and individual activists have fought tirelessly for decades to put an end to unjust fines and fees. I wanted to facilitate immediate relief to those at risk of incarceration for unpaid debt while we await such systemic change.”

The project has involved collaboration not only across different Yale University schools, but also outside of Yale. Sokoloski explained that in a class called “Law, Order, and Algorithms,” the team partnered with students at the Harvard Kennedy School who had developed a prototype tool to determine whether an individual is eligible for a fee waiver based on publicly available court records. 

Sokoloski described the collaboration as “an amazing exercise in patience and problem-solving” as it pushed team members to involve themselves in understanding both the relevant law and the technical landscape. 

“This work has really shown that no matter what technical or legal skills you bring to a team, everyone needs to be ready to help think about and solve all kinds of problems, even those outside your expertise,” Sokoloski wrote. 

Carceral fees not only impose a financial burden on individuals saddled with them, but often entail losses for the court as well. According to a report by the Brennan Center, courts in some parts of New Mexico spend $1.17 to collect $1.00 in carceral fees. 

Citing this study, Grace-Flood emphasized that the system, which is justified as a way for governments to augment their budgets, often end up backfiring for all parties involved. 

“[Carceral fines and fees] create a vicious cycle ruining people’s lives and making the public system worse,” Grace-Flood wrote. “It might seem obvious that these fines shouldn’t exist. But there are big systemic barriers against progress.”

All five team members share in the hope that this work will remain ongoing and expand in reach in coming years. Sokoloski said that given the delicate nature of their focus, expansion would need to occur at a scale that would still maintain consistent excellence. 

She noted that expansion would be facilitated by volunteer assistance in the form of either donations to the fund — which is channeled directly into paying off people’s fines and fees — or in volunteer research support. 

“As we serve more people and do more work, we uncover more puzzles to solve and problems to address,” Sokoloski wrote. “As we tackle those, we’re building our own theory of change on what it means to both help people who are being hurt by an unfair system today, and create momentum for changing that system tomorrow.”

Tsai CITY was established in 2017.

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At a seminar hosted in Linsly Chittenden Hall on Friday, March 3, Dobriansky spoke to a group of about 20 students and entertained various audience questions. During her talk she commended the Biden administration’s diplomacy in the wake of the war in Ukraine and encouraged the next generation of Yale students to pursue paths in government. 

“The ambassador provided a wide-ranging analysis of the geopolitical challenges that the United States faces in various theaters across the globe,” wrote AHS executive board member Axel de Vernou ’25. “Geopolitical animosity between the United States and major powers such as Russia and China render discussions about great power competition more urgent than ever before.” 

Dobriansky currently serves as a Senior Fellow in the Future of Diplomacy Project at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs as well as Vice Chair of think tank the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

The seminar’s subject matter was timely as Dobriansky’s visit took place around Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s brief meeting with his Russian counterpart Surgey Lavrov at the G-20 Conference on March 2. 

“Great power competition will only grow over the next few years, especially because of the Russian war in Ukraine,” wrote attendee Ethan Chiu ’26. “As such, given how the world often impacts domestic policies and opportunities, it is important for Yalies to explore great power competition.”

The seminar followed Dobriansky’s virtual with Ukranian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba at the Harvard Kennedy School on Feb. 22. In the hosted visit, Kuleba emphasized the danger presented by China’s potential choice to arm Russia. 

The emphasis on China as a player in Russia’s war in Ukraine was an important theme broached by Dobriansky throughout her seminar, and one that students found particularly compelling. 

“As I continue to explore U.S.-China relations through my academics, as well as learn about the geopolitical environment as a whole, I have been seeking out opportunities to speak with individuals, such as Ambassador Dobriansky, to learn more about the behind-the-scenes of cooperation,” attendee Alex Mirrer ’24 told the News. 

Dobriansky is slated to travel to India this week for a conference where she will speak with leading foreign affairs experts and policymakers. The ambassador is currently co-chairing a commission at the Center for Strategic and International Studies focused on rebuilding and reconstructing Ukraine, which informs her current focus on topics adjacent to the conflict. The commission published a report in January, which focuses on rebuilding the country’s economy through private sector investment. 

“Geopolitics affects all of us at some level or another,” Mirrer wrote. “In an increasingly globalized world, international events have ripple effects throughout our lives. One such area we are particularly sensitive to is the economy.”

The Harvard Kennedy School was founded in 1936.

Correction, March 10: A previous version of this article misstated Blinken’s first name.

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SHARE is available to all members of the Yale community who are dealing with sexual misconduct of any kind, including sexual assault, sexual harassment, stalking, intimate partner violence and more. Counselors are available any time, day or night, at the 24/7 hotline: (203) 432-2000. 

In her first semester at Yale, A. tried out for the University’s Mock Trial Association, looking for an opportunity to build stronger relationships with peers following a difficult transition from high school. 

As part of her try-out process, she attended a virtual rush meal with current YMTA members. It was there that she first made contact with a male student who was then a sophomore in the organization — someone who A. alleges would go on to repeatedly sexually assault her over the following months. The male student did not respond to requests for comment. 

“Those experiences have forever changed who I am,” A., a female student who has been granted anonymity to protect her privacy, told the News. “My entire Yale experience has been tainted by what happened.” 

In the two years that followed her alleged assaults, A. pursued various routes offered by the University to help her cope with the effects of these incidents. She spoke to Yale’s Sexual Harassment and Assault Response & Education Center, or SHARE, about the psychological toll of the alleged events, met with Yale’s Title IX office to discuss a potential formal complaint and said she eventually secured a no-contact agreement which barred her alleged assailant from contacting her directly — either in person or online. 

Amid these efforts, she also told the News that she held a series of conversations with the YMTA presidents, which culminated in her decision to try to have her alleged assailant expelled from the organization during her second year at Yale. The then-presidents of YMTA declined to comment on this story.

However, after the club presidents conferred with Yale’s Title IX Office, A. said that they told her there was nothing they could do without her filing an official complaint with the University-Wide Committee — a process that could take months and subject her to lengthy cross-examination. According to A., the presidents explained that this policy was a matter of the Title IX office’s stance on ensuring that everyone involved in a Title IX case, including both the alleged perpetrator and victim, receive “equal access to opportunity.” 

The summer after A. said that YMTA’s presidents told her there was nothing they could do to preclude her alleged assailant from rejoining the team unless he was found guilty by the University-Wide Committee for Sexual Assault, she announced her resignation from mock trial. 

“The fact that my experience with sexual assault is part of the reason I quit this thing that gave me so much joy — there’s nothing equal about that,” A. said. 

As A. would learn, YMTA’s inability to remove her alleged assailant was not a unique dilemma. Rather, it is an often-unspoken reality of the University’s enforcement of retaliation prevention, which it exercises in its major discrimination, harassment and sexual misconduct policies.

Unless a student is convicted through an official investigation by the University-Wide Committee for Sexual Assault, any direct attempt by clubs, professors, teaching assistants, students or any other institutionally registered body that receives University funding to remove or “discourage” the accused from an activity comes with high risk of disciplinary action. Such a clause applies even when there are allegations of ongoing sexual assault.

Accused individuals are protected from retaliation under their status as “participants,” which Yale formally defines as “any adverse action taken against a person who has reported a concern, filed a complaint or participated in an investigation pursuant to this policy.”

The University considers retaliation akin to discrimination and harassment, calling it an “undermin[ing] of Yale’s mission and commitment to diversity, equity and belonging.” But amid linguistically malleable policies and confusing avenues for accessing support, student organizations find themselves caught in a gray area between prioritizing member safety and avoiding potential disciplinary action.

Yale Mock Trial Association

A. said that during her initial YMTA rush meal, she mentioned to the group that she had been having difficulty making friends at Yale. She said her alleged assailant offered that Yale’s social culture largely revolved around getting meals with potential friends; taking this advice to heart, A. soon invited him to have a meal with her. 

Soon after their meeting, and after he had been instated in a leadership position above her, the alleged assailant invited A. to his off-campus apartment where he offered her multiple drinks. A. remembers being “super drunk” and “very, very out of it” when her alleged assailant initiated a non-consensual sexual experience. This pattern would repeat itself multiple times that semester, A. said. A friend of A’s in her residential college — who has been granted anonymity to protect A’s privacy — confirmed that A told them about the alleged assaults at the time.  

A’s alleged assailant’s position of power on the team, as well as his social capital among their peers, discouraged A. from telling any of their teammates about the incident after it happened. Despite the one year difference in grade level, A. said that her alleged assailant was two years older than her.

“I knew he was in a position of authority and that he could make decisions that would affect my future experience within mock trial,” A. said. “I really felt like if I upset him that it would jeopardize any chances of being on A-team or running for board.” 

The alleged assaults took a noticeable psychological toll, which compelled her to take action. A., who said she has since been diagnosed with PTSD, explained that simply receiving a text message from her alleged assailant or seeing him walking on the street would instantly make her cry. 

Her next steps were fraught with difficulties. A. told The News that she seriously considered taking formal action, either through the New Haven legal system or Yale’s Title IX Office. Ultimately, she decided against either option, wary of the power imbalance between her and her alleged assailant. 

“I was very worried about being retraumatized by the entire process,” A. said of the University’s formal complaint system. “I was already dealing with flashbacks, migraines, shaking hands from the PTSD medication, difficulty focusing and concentrating and hyper-vigilance.”

A. ultimately decided to request a no-contact agreement through Title IX — a process that is less drawn-out than a formal complaint because it is voluntarily entered into by both parties. The agreement mutually restricted both parties from interacting with one another, including by barring both A. and her alleged assailant from entering each other’s respective residential colleges. 

A. also said she initiated conversations about how to avoid her alleged assailant with the then-heads of YMTA. At that point, the mock trial competition season was over, so exposure to her alleged assailant was limited to elections for the following year’s board. Club leadership arranged for A.’s alleged assailant to exit the elections Zoom call during A’s election, and to keep his camera off for the rest of the proceedings. 

That summer, A. said she was told by YMTA leadership that her assailant had been sanctioned by the National Mock Trial Association for violating one of their rules of competition. The sanction meant he would not participate in any of YMTA’s competitive activities for the following year, and A said he almost entirely refrained from attending social activities as well. 

But the year after, A. said a teammate called her to let her know that her assailant would potentially be coming back to YMTA the following fall at the expiration of his sanctioned year-off. Given the news, and at the advice of teammates, A. decided to drop the team before the start of the academic year due to the extreme stress brought on by the potential of interacting with her alleged assailant.

A. explained that the decision is one she has rethought many times since. As someone who hopes to enter the legal profession, choosing to remove herself from the expansive alumni network of legal professionals that YMTA offers came with major regrets. Nonetheless, in the absence of adequate protection, she felt she had no other option. 

“I think it’s revolting the way Yale tries to slide things under the rug and protect its own reputation, instead of trying to make sure that survivors are adequately supported,” A. said. “To the claim of ensuring equal access to opportunity: what about survivors’ access to opportunity?”

Although the current presidents of YMTA, McKenna Picton ’24 and Zeke McDavid ’24, declined to comment on A’s experience, they told the News that they believed the Title IX office to be “suffocated by red tape.”

“Title IX should be an office that inspires security in those that choose to go to it,” Picton and McDavid wrote. “As it stands, that is not the case.” 

Yale College Democrats and administrative input 

Club leaders have limited autonomy in handling allegations of sexual assault that University administration does not deem resolved. YMTA is not the only campus organization at the University that has encountered red tape in removing a member on the basis of sexual assault allegations.

In 2022, Michael Garman ’25 — a former staff photographer for the News — pursued and lost an official University-Wide Committee investigation against his alleged rapist. Both Garman’s friend, Yaz Liow ’25, and his alleged assailant held positions in the Yale College Democrats, though Garman himself was not in the club. Garman’s alleged assailant did not respond to requests for comment.

Liow, who Garman told about the alleged assault at the time, alerted Yale Dems leadership to the situation in January 2022, before Garman had formally reported the alleged incident. Yale Dems leadership then asked the alleged assailant to leave the organization, according to texts between Liow and a member of Yale Dems leadership that have been obtained by the News, citing a reported violation of the section of the internal club contract that prohibits sexual harassment. 

Several days after the assailant was asked to step down, however, leadership received communication from the Yale College Title IX office saying that clubs may not remove members on the basis of sexual misconduct allegations, according to later texts between Liow and Yale Dems leadership. The Title IX office informed Yale Dems that if they attempted to expel the alleged assailant, the club would risk losing recognition as an official group by the Dean’s Office or registration under the Undergraduate Organizations Funding Committee, the branch of the Yale College Council that funds student extracurricular groups.

The situation may have been different if the student had been found in violation of Title IX through the outcome of an official investigation or hearing, professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Craig Canfield told the News. A conviction could subject someone to penalties and consequences from the school that would not be considered retaliation. 

According to texts between Liow and Yale Dems, leaders reached out again to the assailant, demoting him from his fellowship position on the basis that he had not been performing his duties well as a fellow. He remained active in the organization until the spring of 2022. 

“The Yale College Democrats is not unilaterally empowered to remove a member from the organization in light of an allegation, though it reserves the right to request that a member reconsider their relationship with the organization,” The Yale Democrats said in a statement to the News.

 “The Yale College Democrats would not independently investigate allegations, as the Title IX Office is trained and equipped to advise and assist impacted community members,” reads an updated version of the Yale College Democrat  code of conduct, which the organization provided to the News. “After Title IX or the appropriate Yale body has been informed of the incident, we encourage the complainant to notify a Yale College Democrats Board Member of the initiated investigation via email or text.”

According to the Code of Conduct, the Yale College Democrats would also initiate its own internal review process to investigate any allegations of sexual misconduct made against its members, conducted in tandem with any formal investigation from the Title IX office. 

Greek life at the University is generally not associated with the UOFC — and it is this difference that enabled the Yale fraternity LEO to oust its vice president following the December 2022 rape allegation made against him. For similar reasons, the Alpha Phi, Kappa Alpha Theta and Pi Beta Phi branch sororities at the University, which suspended social events with LEO upon hearing the news, are not subject to administrative sanctions.  

Despite being successful in pursuing a no-contact order, Garman called the arrangement’s accommodations futile unless in the face of direct encounters with his alleged assailant — and claimed that little provision was made to prevent those types of encounters in the first place. 

It was not until Garman found himself subject to the enforcement of retaliation in the classroom that he said his struggles reached a breaking point. In late August 2022 — days after the UWC had closed his case, ruling against Garman on a lack of sufficient evidence — Garman saw on a Canvas page that he and his assailant had been placed in the same seminar. 

Garman said the Title IX office told him removing another individual from a class on the basis of a no-contact order would not be possible. They instead advised him to drop the class if he wanted out of the situation, with the one compromise being that the professor would make conscious pairing decisions for any group work, which the course did not include. 

Garman, who was uncomfortable with the idea of staying in class with someone who he alleged had “physically and mentally harmed [him] so much,” was able to stay in the section after the alleged assailant willingly dropped the course on his own. But the feeling that he was a liability to the Title IX office stayed with Garman, who said that administrators did not seem to reciprocate his concern for his safety. 

The current Title IX coordinator of Yale University, Elizabeth Conklin, maintained that while she does believe in student organizations creating a safe, inclusive community for their members, she “strongly encourage[s]” such organizations, whether registered with the University or not, to defer sexual misconduct matters and any judiciary investigations to the Title IX office. 

“Student organizations do not have the requisite professional training and experience to investigate and adjudicate allegations of sex-based discrimination or sexual misconduct,” she told  the News. “There are resources available through the University to assist registered student organizations with their efforts to create safe environments.”

Conklin gave two examples of such resources: a counseling avenue known as Yale SHARE and the no contact-agreement, the latter of which she referred to as a “supportive,” interventional measure. No-contact agreements can include provisions to academic, extracurricular and other campus activities, according to Conklin, though the boundaries and regulations vary on a case-by-case basis. 

The Title IX Office’s “first priority” is to ensure the wellbeing and safety of all complainants by directing them to appropriate campus safety outlets, she continued. After any immediate needs are addressed, coordinators will work with complainants to explore next steps, which can involve a formal investigative procedure through external law enforcement or the UWC. 

“The prohibition on retaliation is reflected both in federal regulations and in University policy,” Conklin added.

She mentioned that students who come to the Title IX office wishing to pursue a complaint of retaliation would be referred to the appropriate disciplinary bodies, including but not limited to the UWC and the Yale College Executive Committee. While not directly involved in issuing such discipline, the office has worked to detect cases of possible retaliation. 

Alaric Krapf ’19 told the News that he was proactively reached out to by Yale’s Title IX office after acting as a witness for the defense in an official complaint hearing in which both the complainant and the respondent were members of the University’s Conservative Party debate society.  

Krapf — who was also a member of the Conservative Party at the time — alleged that his involvement in the case resulted in hostilities from his classmates. Krapf himself never brought forward a retaliation claim to the office, but he said he was reached out to directly by someone in Title IX who had heard that Krapf was experiencing retaliation from an on-campus group. Krapf told the News that he was asked whether or not he wanted to pursue action, but ultimately refrained from exercising this option. 

Beyond Yale

Several higher education institutions have adopted a different philosophy from Yale’s, encouraging a joint effort between administration and student clubs to combat sexual assault and protect survivors. 

In a March 1, 2018 email sent to the George Washington University student body, Anne Graham, then-assistant director of student involvement and Greek life, urged campus organizations to work in tandem with advisers to remove members for discriminatory behavior, sexual misconduct and violence. The language of the email was reportedly intended to be flexible and broad, pushing every club to adapt their response as necessary.

Though administrators were careful to avoid making student leaders “the judge, jury and everything else,” the announcement, which came partially as a response to a town hall on sexual assault hosted the previous year, required every club registered with the Center for Student Engagement to compose rules to expel members for discrimination and sexual misconduct. 

For student leaders, explicit administrative support sparked efforts to break down opaque policies surrounding the extent of a club’s autonomy in responding to sexual assault. In an interview with the GW Hatchet, Robert Dickson, the vice president of communications for the College Democrats at George Washington, defended the club’s “zero tolerance policy” for discrimination. He said that the executive board maintains a right to vote on the ousting of any member who has violated this rule.

Yale organizations that enact these policies risk defunding or sanctions from the University. The current system may result in minimal, slow or zero consequences for assailants, which may contribute to the fact that over 67 percent of all sexual assault cases go unreported. 

Of the Title IX allegations formally made in a university or college context, however, Black men make up an overwhelming majority of cases, suspensions and scholarship revocations. At Colgate University, where 4.2 percent of the students enrolled from 2013 to 2014 were Black, half of the sexual assault reports that year were made against Black male students, and they also comprised 40 percent of all formal adjunctions. 

Retaliation policies, and the accused’s rights to due process and cross-examination under the most updated “2020 final rule” of Title IX, therefore exist in part to guarantee protections in a system where racial biases persist. 

In its early days, Title IX played a critical role in bolstering funding for female athletics and in guaranteeing protections for women in a male-dominated college scene, before it became associated with sexual misconduct more recently, according to Yale scholar Rachel Rosenberg GRD ’23, who specializes in 20th century U.S. women’s and gender history, political history and education history

“In many ways, the educational world in which Title IX came into in 1972 looked very different from a gender perspective than it does today,” said Rosenberg. “And I think that one of the things that perhaps you’re seeing is a struggle to really update and ensure that the protections that Title IX intended, are really working for the reality of the time and [the] schooling realities that we’re living in today.”

Title IX of the Civil Rights Act was signed into law by President Richard Nixon on June 23, 1972. 

Correction, Feb. 24: A previous version of this article stated that Garman’s alleged assailant was still an active member of Yale College Democrats. As of last spring, he is no longer an active member of the organization. The article has been updated to reflect this. The article has also been updated with addition context about the Yale College Democrats’ Code of Conduct. 

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Crenshaw visited New Haven on Feb. 3, where she was greeted with an award ceremony and a teach-in hosted by School of Public Health faculty on the concepts pivotal to her scholarship and career in academia. The teach-in specifically highlighted the significance of Crenshaw’s scholarship as the debate around critical race theory and its role in the American classroom has become fraught with controversy. 

“In our department, our focus is health equity and justice, and Professor Crenshaw’s work has had profound indirect and direct impact on the work we do in our department and public health itself,” wrote Trace Kershaw, chair of the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at  the SPH. “From core conceptualizations of critical race theory to intersectionality, her scholarship has impacted how public health equity and justice scholars look at how unfair structures and systems drive inequities.” 

The C.E.A Winslow Medal, named after School of Public Health founder Charles-Edward Amory Winslow, is recognized as the school’s highest honor. It was created in 1999, and its past recipients include Dr. Anthony Fauci and former Yale University Provost Judith Rodin. 

While most former Winslow Medal recipients have contributed directly to research in the field of medicine and public health, the award was specifically created to honor those who emulate the values of its namesake, namely “his concern for the social factors affecting health.” 

“Public health as a field is inherently interdisciplinary — I think we often think of it largely as a field of epidemiology, but the field is impacted by theory and methods from a variety of disciplines including sociology, anthropology, psychology, and law,” Kershaw wrote. 

Crenshaw was initially selected as the YSPH Winslow Medal awardee in 2020, but her award ceremony was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Dr. Melinda Irwin, associate dean of research at the School of Public Health and chairperson of the Winslow Medal Award Committee, explained that Crenshaw’s work on critical race theory and intersectionality was much less ubiquitously understood in the lay committee prior to the pandemic. 

“Interestingly her seminal contributions on these topics date back to the 1990s, yet are more important now than ever before,” Irwin wrote. “At YSPH we believe structural and social determinants of health are primary factors impacting improved health for all. Awarding Dr. Crenshaw with our school’s highest honor was a pivotal moment in YSPH’s 100+ year history”   

Crenshaw, who currently holds teaching posts at both Columbia University and the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, initially rose to prominence after publishing a seminal paper introducing the theory of intersectionality into contemporary feminist discourse. Though the idea existed in scholastic circles prior to Crenshaw’s writing, she was the first to formally recognize the concept. 

Crenshaw’s experiences assisting Anita Hill’s legal team during her sexual harassment claims against then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas heavily influenced her early interest in intersectionality. In her writings, Crenshaw reflects on the motivations of the two conflicting spheres driving public opinion: white feminists backing Hill and African Americans backing Thomas. 

Intersectionality theory holds that social justice frameworks must focus on the intersection of marginalized identities, rather than sticking to single-issue frameworks that assume people will naturally attend to those intersections on their own. 

“Without [frameworks] that allow us to see how social problems impact all the members of a targeted group, many will fall through the cracks of our movements, left to suffer in virtual isolation,” Crenshaw explained in a 2016 TED Talk entitled “The Urgency of Intersectionality.” 

Crenshaw’s scholarship has recently been mired in controversy amid an acute onset of right-wing attention to critical race theory and its integration in American classrooms.  

In January of this year, Florida’s Department of Education — under the leadership of Republican Governor Ron DeSantis — announced their decision to ban College Board’s pilot AP African American Studies course. First introduced in the 2022-2023 academic year, AP African American Studies is the first College Board pilot course since 1952 and the only ethnic studies course ever developed by College Board.

DeSantis’ decision, announced as many speculate on the governor’s ambitions to run for president in 2024, may have played a role in College Board’s decision to revise the curriculum before expanding to a larger slate of schools. The altered curriculum, announced on the first day of Black History Month, has been widely criticized by those on the other side of the aisle for scrubbing out all mentions of intersectionality, Black feminism or the Black queer experience. 

This ongoing national debate about the importance of the theories she developed in teaching African American history underscored Crenshaw’s Yale visit. Daniel HoSang, professor of Ethnicity, Race and Migration and American Studies, moderated the teach-in with Crenshaw that was hosted after her awards ceremony.

“We talked about the kind of role that scholars and students within these disciplines can play in transforming these bodies of knowledge,” HoSang said. “I think it was just a really powerful reminder of the way we can use theory to understand and unpack everyday events in our lives.” 

The teach-in was open to Yale students, community organizers, public school teachers and parents in the New Haven community. HoSang described the environment as “electric” as this combination of groups gathered to engage with Crenshaw’s pioneering work in social justice and education reform. 

The event was cosponsored by many departments and units across Yale, including the African American Studies and Education Studies departments, as well as community organizations local to New Haven. Developments in College Board’s AP African American history curriculum — as well as the discourse resulting from Ron DeSantis’ ban on its integration — featured prominently in the teach-in. 

Crenshaw received her J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1984. 

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