Harvard Law students debate whether people protesting racism at Yale are 'fascists'

The debate about whether Yale protesters are impinging on the basic tenents of free speech has been picked up by a familiar Ivy League rival: Harvard students.

Bill Barlow, a third-year law student at Harvard, wrote an op-ed calling certain Yale protesters "fascists."

"This recent movement of university students to use administrative procedures to punish speech with which they disagree should be called by its rightful name: proto-fascism," Barlow wrote in the Harvard Law Record.

Barlow is referencing students' reactions to recent racially charged incidents that have sent Yale University into upheaval.

After Silliman College Associate Master Erika Christakis sent an email supporting students' right to wear offensive Halloween costumes, protesters took to a courtyard to address Christakis and her husband, Silliman Master Nicholas Christakis.

The conversation quickly devolved into screaming, with a protester telling Nichola Christakis to be quiet and telling him he was disgusting.

And after a free-speech conference at Yale last Friday, several attendees were spat on and called racists, people who went to the conference told Yale Daily News. One minority student who attended the conference told the YDN he was called a traitor.

Barlow went on to explain that while Yale protesters had the right to disagree with their opponents, the tactics they were using to silence opposition crossed the line.

And he put together a chart to help students figure out if a protest tactic is fascist or not. It included these examples:

• Calling for people to be fired for expressing their beliefs - Fascist. You are (1) calling for reprisals (2) for people expressing what they believe.
• Organizing a protest against an editorial you disagree with - Not Fascist. You are condemning a belief you disagree with, but not trying to punish the speaker for saying it.

Barlow's op-ed addresses a common argument among some higher education experts that college campuses these days have become less tolerant of viewpoints they don't agree with.

In reaction to tensions at Yale, one Washington Post op-ed came out that stated "college is not for coddling."

But advocates of minority students say the argument that black dissenters are fascists is an old justification used by the establishment to repress people of color.

Annaleigh Curtis, also a third-year Harvard Law student, wrote a response to Barlow piece, noting that student protesters were "calling out serious concerns on their campus."

"[Students] demands are backed by the only kinds of threats that seem to work-threats of united strike and disruption," Curtis wrote.

"[Opponents] want certain speech not to exist because it makes them uncomfortable. It makes them feel like they're losing something to which they are utterly entitled, which is the right to say or do anything that's always been said and done and not have to pay social consequences for having done so."