Welcome to the Colette Podcast. My name is Claire Lehman and I am editor and chief of Colette.

Colette is where free thought lives. We are an independent grassroots platform for heterodox ideas and fearless commentary.

Our podcast is a team effort and is jointly hosted by myself and Canadian editor Jonathan Kay.

You can support our podcast by visiting Patreon.com

forward slash Quilett and becoming a monthly patron. By becoming a monthly

patron you'll also receive our weekly newsletter. Welcome to the Qu Colette Podcast. I'm Jonathan Kay.

Today's guest, Trent Colbert, is probably the youngest we've ever had on the Colette

podcast. He's a second-year student at Yale Law School in New Haven, Connecticut, which happens to be my own alma matter, but that's not why I'm having him on the show. It's because he tried to throw a party. You see a few months ago Colbert sent out an email

inviting friends to a Yale Law School party being jointly organized in his modest department

by the Native American Law Students Association and the Federalist Society, a conservative group.

In his light-hearted email, Colbert referred to his student department as a trap house, a slang term for a place where you can buy drugs.

Now, needless to say, Colbert didn't get in trouble for playfully suggesting that party goers could buy drugs.

Instead, he was accused of racist language

by a handful of fellow students who interpreted the reference

to drugs as a slap at black urban culture. For his part Colbert denied that he had any racist

intent and wanted to meet to discuss the issue with anyone who was offended. But that

wasn't good enough for Yale Law School's administrators, who quickly mobilized into racism

response mode.

Colbert was summoned into a slew of meetings with administrators, in which it was ominously suggested that he needed to make a public

apology. It was also suggested by school administrators that if Colbert did not make a

public apology, the school would send out a mass email to students shaming

Colbert, which in fact they did, even if they didn't cite him by name in that message.

...