Not Everyone at Yale Likes Free Speech

Helen Price’s Twitter page

Yale’s William F. Buckley Jr. Speaker Program announced recently that, in its third year of operation, it would be expanding its speaker program to host 8 speakers in the Fall semester. The most interesting guest speaker scheduled this Fall will probably be Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born victim of genital mutilation famous for her public criticism of certain Muslim practices.

The Oldest College Daily’s article, however, noted that not everyone approved of the speaker program.

Students who are not involved in the program have mixed feelings about its presence on campus — especially its conservative bent.

Helen Price ’18 said that although she appreciates the effort the program makes to promote intellectual diversity, in practice such an effort can be problematic.

“When you invite very conservative speakers here who perhaps have controversial views on Islam or homosexuality, you essentially make Yale a very uncomfortable place for a large percentage of the people here on campus, and everyone should feel at home at college,” Price said.

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The freshman Ms. Price received national attention for her expressed discomfort at the airing of controversial, i.e. politically incorrect, views.

Eric Owens, at the Daily Caller, pounced all over her.

Who is Helen Price? According to her Twitter profile, she’s quite a ritzy, jet-setting princess. She describes herself as a “Yale student, leftie, Berliner, Brit, blogger” with not one and not two but three locations: ”Berlin, New Haven, England.”

She thinks incredibly highly of herself, too, let her just tell you:

Since my last birthday I’ve got into Yale, Oxford etc, been published in the Guardian, captained my national debating team & moved to Berlin

— Helen Price (@HelenPrice1994) November 5, 2013

Her Twitter profile also includes language from a May 17, 2014 tweet she composed:

And I’m wearing a tee that says “My Marxist Feminist Dialectic Brings All The Boys to the Yard”, so that isn’t going down well.

— Helen Price (@HelenPrice1994) May 17, 2014

It’s not clear if Price understands how such casual mentions of Marxism might make someone — from, say, Cambodia, or North Korea, or Ukraine — “very uncomfortable.”

The young Marxist’s 15-minutes-of-fame has clearly occasioned some further discomfort as the young lady’s Twitter feed has since become “Protected,” meaning that access to her current and older tweets is now specifically limited to followers she approves.