Yale Pro-Life Group Voted Out of ‘Social Justice’ League : Richard Lizardo
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/376050/yale-pro-life-group-voted-out-social-justice-league-richard-lizardo
An undergraduate pro-life group at Yale University has been rejected for membership in the community service umbrella organization.
Choose Life at Yale (CLAY), spent the past year as a provisional member of Dwight Hall, and organization that calls itself the “Center of Public Service and Social Justice” and enjoys 501(c)(3) nonprofit status.
But the social justice organization voted Wednesday to deny CLAY full membership, which would entail access to Dwight Hall’s funds, meeting rooms, service vehicles, and many other resources. CLAY had one minute to present its case for membership, followed by no deliberations whatsoever. Immediately after the presentation, one representative from each of the 96 member organizations of Dwight Hall voted. The exact tally is unknown to those outside of Dwight Hall, but a majority of which voted against the pro-life group.
On the day before the vote, one of the student leaders of Dwight Hall wrote an op-ed in the Yale Daily News that asked fellow student leaders to reject CLAY’s petition for membership. Andre Manuel argued that the vote was not a matter of free speech but of a difference in opinion over the definition of “social justice.” According to Manuel, a group that denies reproductive rights cannot have a claim to an organization that promotes social justice.
While it is true that CLAY promotes pro-life activism. For instance, there are annual trips to the March for Life in Washington, D.C. CLAY recently hosted its first annual conference, with focuses on constitutional implications of abortion law, interfaith dialogue, and pro-life feminism.
But the group’s work is not limited to such activism. In recent years, with the opening of a nearby crisis pregnancy center, CLAY members have devoted themselves to volunteering and serving mothers in their time of material, emotional, and spiritual need.
All of these aspects of CLAY certainly fit within Dwight Hall’s purported mission “to foster civic-minded student leaders and to promote service and activism in New Haven and around the world.” By rejecting the group, Dwight Hall has made clear that its definition of “social justice” — member organizations range from Amnesty International to Students for Justice in Palestine — does not include active service to the community by conservative groups.
Dwight Hall also ignores a substantial history of activism in which commitment to “social justice” and opposition to abortion were not opposed. Black activists long opposed abortion for its disparate impact on minority communities, noting the modern abortion movement’s early affiliation with eugenics cranks. The Rev. Jesse Jackson spent much of his early career as a pro-lifer, switching only in the heat of the 1984 presidential campaign.
While the result of the vote is not surprising, it indicates an increasingly intolerant, conformist and historically ignorant leftism on college campuses, one that has no room for any person or group that does not adhere to the elite progressivism. This vote is simply more telling than, for example, the recent controversy surrounding Brandeis University, in that it comes not from the administration but from a significant swath of students themselves.
– Rich Lizardo is a junior at Yale University. He is the president of the William F. Buckley, Jr. Program.
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