Erika Christakis, the Yale faculty member who sent an email defending students’ rights to wear potentially offensive Halloween costumes, such as turbans or blackface, as an expression of free speech, has decided to leave her teaching position.

“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,’’ she told The Washington Post.

Christakis taught courses on child development and psychology as part of the Yale Child Study Center. She and her husband, Nicholas, are masters of the residential Silliman College, which is one of Yale’s dorms. Business Insider, who first reported the story, did not say whether she will remain in that role.


Hundreds of members of the Yale community called for her resignation after her email, in which 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.’’

Recently, more than 60 Yale faculty members issued an open letter defending Christakis, saying that of all the university’s values, “none is more central than the value of free expression of ideas.’’ The university’s President Peter Salovey also defended her, and said last month that he and Yale College Dean Jonathan Holloway “fully support’’ both Christakises commitment to serving the college.

Nicholas will take a sabbatical in spring 2016 so that he can focus on his laboratory research and on the needs of students in his residential college, according to The Washington Post.