The Yale School of Medicine on Monday denounced a lecturer’s “extreme hostility” and “imagery of violence” after she spoke about her fantasies of killing White people during an April event that made headlines in recent days.
On April 6, Dr. Aruna Khilanani gave a lecture at the school‘s Child Study Center titled, “The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind,” in which she said White people are “out of their minds” and “sound demented” when addressing issues like race, journalist Katie Herzog first reported on Bari Weiss’ Substack blog.
“There are no good apples out there. White people make my blood boil,” Dr. Khilanani said, according to an audio recording of the talk obtained by Ms. Herzog. “I had fantasies of unloading a revolver into the head of any White person that got in my way, burying their body, and wiping my bloody hands as I walked away relatively guiltless with a bounce in my step. Like I did the world a [expletive] favor.”
Dr. Aruna Khilanani later told The New York Times that her comments were taken out of context to “control the narrative,” and that speaking “metaphorically” about her own anger “was a method for people to reflect on negative feelings.”
Much to Dr. Khilanani’s dismay, as evidenced in her TikTok videos, Yale released the video only internally instead of publicly and issued a disclaimer for its “profanity and imagery of violence.”
The Yale School of Medicine defended its decision not to release the video to the public after it said “several faculty members” expressed concern about the content of the talk.
“Based on these concerns, School of Medicine leaders, including Dean Brown and Deputy Dean Latimore, in consultation with the Chair of the Child Study Center, reviewed a recording of the talk and found the tone and content antithetical to the values of the school,” the school‘s statement read, in part. “In deciding whether to post the video, we weighed our grave concern about the extreme hostility, imagery of violence, and profanity expressed by the speaker against our commitment to freedom of expression.”
“We ultimately decided to post the video with access limited to those who could have attended the talk— the members of the Yale community,” it continued. “To emphasize that the ideas expressed by the speaker conflict with the core values of Yale School of Medicine, we added the disclaimer: ‘This video contains profanity and imagery of violence.’ Yale School of Medicine expects the members of our community to speak respectfully to one another and to avoid the use of profanity as a matter of professionalism and acknowledgment of our common humanity. Yale School of Medicine does not condone imagery of violence or racism against any group.”
