NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) — A Yale University faculty member who sparked protests when she said students should be free to push boundaries with Halloween costumes, even to the point of offense, resigned from her teaching position, the school announced Monday. 
 
 Erika Christakis chose not to continue teaching in the spring semester, the university said on its website. 
 
 "Her teaching is highly valued and she is welcome to resume teaching anytime at Yale, where freedom of expression and academic inquiry are the paramount principle and practice," the school said. 
 
 Christakis came under attack in October for her response to a request from the Intercultural Affairs Committee that students avoid wearing racially insensitive costumes, such as Native American headgear, turbans or blackface. She wrote in an email to students living in the residence hall where she's an administrator that they should be able to wear any costume they want. 
 
 "Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious, a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive?" she wrote. "American universities were once a safe space not only for maturation but also for a certain regressive, or even transgressive, experience; increasingly, it seems, they have become places of censure and prohibition." 
 
 The email was one of several incidents on campus that prompted hundreds of students and faculty members to march in protest on Nov. 9 of what they see as racial insensitivity at the Ivy League school. 
 
 The school also has been dealing with criticism over a residential hall named after John Calhoun, a prominent slave-owning politician, questions about how minorities are treated on campus and allegations that a woman was turned away from a fraternity party because she was not white. 
 
 After the march, dozens of faculty members contributed to an open letter showing support for Christakis, who taught courses on child development and psychology. 
 
 "I have great respect and affection for my students, but I worry that the current climate at Yale is not, in my view, conducive to the civil dialogue and open inquiry required to solve our urgent societal problems," Christakis said in an email to The Washington Post. ||||| Incoming first-years received a letter from the College today making clear that the University of Chicago does not condone safe spaces or trigger warnings. 
 
 “Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called ‘trigger warnings,’ we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual ‘safe spaces’ where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own,” reads the letter from Dean of Students Jay Ellison. 
 
 In May, Student Government (SG) passed on an opportunity to reaffirm the University’s commitment to free speech when members voted to indefinitely table a resolution that would have condemned any student who “obstructs or disrupts” free speech. 
 
 The resolution, which was presented to SG by the president of the College Republicans club, second-year Matthew Foldi, came in the wake of three high-profile incidents in which speakers invited to campus were shut down or interrupted by protesters. 
 
 In February, Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez had to leave the Institute of Politics (IOP) after she was confronted by Black Lives Matter protesters in the audience who held up signs started chanting. 
 
 The next day, the University of Chicago Police Department had to end an event with Bassem Eid, a Palestinian human rights activist and critic of the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions movement, after protesters disrupted his speech. 
 
 Then in April members of the Armenian Students Association interrupted an eventwith a scholar who they say denies the Armenian Genocide. 
 
 After the Alvarez event was shut down, David Axelrod – Director of the Institute of Politics and CNN Senior Political Commentator – wrote a letter to the editor in The Maroon: “The great irony is that, through their actions, [the protesters] ensured no one would get the chance to ask Ms. Alvarez challenging questions.” 
 
 Two students responded to Axelrod’s piece with a letter to the editor their own: “Axelrod’s response inadvertently indicates that this institution only recognizes young black people when we adhere to the bourgeois standards of decorum that often leave our questions and concerns unaddressed.” 
 
 As the letter to freshmen began to circulate on discussion forums and social media, students and alumni praised the University’s message on its commitment to free expression. 
 
 Other students criticized the letter, saying that the University disguises hate speech as “discourse.” 
 
 In the letter, however, Dean of Students Jay Ellison wrote, “Freedom of expression does not mean the freedom to harass or threaten others.” 
 
 View the full letter below: 
 
 The full letter from Dean Ellison. Maroon File Photo 
 
 On June 2, 2016, former Provost Eric Isaacs announced the establishment of a faculty committee “to review and make recommendations about procedures for student disciplinary matters involving disruptive conduct, particularly interference with freedom of expression, inquiry and debate.” 
 
 Isaacs tasked the committee to “address the range of disciplinary sanctions that may be imposed, and make recommendations for responses in the midst of any event that is being disrupted.” 
 
 Isaacs is also asking for recommendations for “educational programming” to promote the importance of free expression. 
 
 The committee’s recommendations are due on December 15, but committee members and the Provost’s office were not immediately available for comment on whether the committee has convened. 
 
 The University of Chicago currently holds the highest “green-light” rating from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), an organization that rates universities’ speech policies.
– In what appears to be a first-of-its kind policy, the Graduate Center of the City University of New York has told its staffers not to address students in written correspondence as "Mr.," Mrs.," or "Ms.," reports the Wall Street Journal. The school says the move will help "ensure a respectful, welcoming and gender-inclusive learning environment," and a spokesperson frames it in the context of Title IX rules that prohibit discrimination. But the Journal talks to a Title IX attorney who thinks putting the kibosh on gendered salutations is "ridiculous." The policy has set off a debate about political correctness on college campuses, and it comes just after New York writer Jonathan Chait posted a much-discussed essay arguing that the PC police of the left is back in force and hurting liberalism. At the Daily Beast, Lizzie Crocker finds it ironic that "Ms." has been barred four decades after Gloria Steinem claimed it for the feminist cause. "Depending on your own political views, the banishing of 'Mr.' and 'Ms.' over 40 years later at CUNY is either a bracing new cultural milestone, or a symptom of political correctness gone ever wilder, and a mind-boggling waste of academics’ and students’ time and energy," she writes. Either way, teachers will be skipping the salutations.