{O} n December 5, while university presidents walked into Congress, I walked into a room of approximately 100 Yale students. Three chairs facing the students were reserved for three faculty: Dean Pericles Lewis, the moderator; Emma Sky, lecturer at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs; and Ross Douthat, senior fellow at the Yale Jackson School. The discussion was part of an ongoing series of “Dean’s Dialogues” created by Dean Lewis. It was designed to model productive conversation and then give students a space to talk openly about the Israel–Hamas war. Dean Lewis turned to the students after about 30 minutes: time for Q&A.

One student’s hand shot up immediately. He asked — or perhaps accused — the speakers, “How can we trust what you say about Israel and Gaza when you supported invading Iraq and Afghanistan?” Before Douthat or Sky could respond, one-third of the students applauded, stood up in unison, wrapped keffiyehs (scarves symbolizing Palestinian nationalism and popularized by Yasser Arafat) around their necks, and marched out of the room.

If the students had done their homework, they would have known that Ross Douthat was just 21 years old on 9/11 and had started off his career as a researcher for the Atlantic in 2002. While Douthat was still fresh out of college, Emma Sky was busy trying to build good governance in Iraq, not destroy it militarily. If Douthat’s support for Iraq as a college-aged pundit is reprehensible, one can only imagine how the 21-year-olds cheerleading Hamas will be viewed by the next generation. If Sky’s efforts to rebuild Iraq are somehow seen as complicit in America’s intervention, then every person who supports aid for Palestinians must be complicit in the war against Hamas.

But the walk-out was not the end of the story. After sitting through another half hour for student questions, comments, and panel responses, I exited the room. Lined up on both sides of the hallway, donning their keffiyehs, Palestinian flags, and face masks, the same students who had interrupted the event earlier stared down those of us who had the audacity to listen to the rest of the conversation.

One of them handed me a pamphlet on the way out titled, “Ross and Emma Said They’re Really Sorry About Iraq. How Long Until They’re Sorry About Gaza, Too?” The students claim, with dubious research, that Douthat is currently supporting the “killing of another hundred thousand civilians.” Not even the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry reports numbers that high. The students also labeled themselves “left-wing shouters.” At least they are self-aware. They do not care about free speech — they scream and shout until their demands are met.

The Yale Daily News never covered the event, or the protest. Lisa Prevost, an award-winning journalist and writer for Yale University’s Office of Public Affairs and Communications (which runs Yale News), discussed the event in a Yale News article two days later, but failed to mention any of the disruptions.

Meanwhile, in the past couple weeks, students affiliated with Yalies4Palestine, a group which (inaccurately, in my view) describes itself as “a student group organizing Yale’s campus community to support the human rights and freedom of the Palestinian people,” have continued to rally, protest, and chant “from the river to the sea” and “intifada.” One of their demonstrations inspired an individual to hoist a Palestinian flag atop a large menorah on the New Haven Green — though they claim the individual was not associated with any of the organizing groups. Does Palestinian solidarity mean desecrating a Jewish symbol?

In the final week before winter break, students decided to take their activism to the library. As other students tried to study for finals, the undergraduate and law school pro-Palestinian activists wore keffiyehs and displayed “End the Occupation” and “Free Palestine” on the back of their laptops as part of their “global strike for Palestine.” They followed the lead of peers at Harvard, who hosted a study-in at Widener Library to ensure “no business as usual.” Some students finished the semester studying in their room so that they did not have to walk by the large Palestinian flag in the center of campus or torn-down hostage posters, only to be greeted by rabble-rousers in the main library.

Universities such as Yale tout their principles of free expression, but the pro-Hamas activists on campus lack any respect for the First Amendment. They admit to being shouters, and they inspire the targeting of religious symbols. As Frederick Hess from the American Enterprise Institute points out, “The historic purpose of campus free speech is not to provide banner-waving protesters with a bucolic backdrop, but to facilitate the unfettered pursuit of truth and understanding in teaching, learning, and research.” Not much learning occurs when your peers occupy your libraries and reject engaging in honest discussion.

Upon his arrival in 2022 as the new dean of Yale College, Pericles Lewis made it clear that part of his mission was to restore civil conversation, or dialogue. An ambitious, yet admirable goal. In free-speech rankings, Yale was placed 234 out of 248 colleges by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. Dean Lewis knew when he arrived that he was fighting an uphill battle. He wrote that public dialogue sometimes “devolves into partisanship or even violence” and “universities are not immune to dogma.” It appears that Yale University, like so many others, is more immune to dialogue than to dogma.