Dr. Aruna Khilanani Went on TikTok to Push Yale to Make 'Whiteness' Talk Public

Psychiatrist Dr. Aruna Khilanani took to TikTok last week in an effort to get Yale to publicly share a virtual talk she gave at the invitation of the Ivy League university entitled "The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind."

Video of the 50-minute talk was released internally but it was not made publicly available, which Khilanani took issue with in a series of TikTok videos. Audio of the talk has been made available by former New York Times journalist Bari Weiss on Substack along with an interview with Khilanani conducted by journalist Katie Herzog.

Khilanani delivered the talk to medical students in April after being invited by the Yale School of Medicine's Child Study Center. Her comments focused on the idea of "whiteness."

"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 f**king favor," Khilanani said during the talk.

She went on to discuss white people and talking about race.

"They [white people] feel that we should be thanking them for all that they have done for us. They are confused, and so are we. We keep forgetting that directly talking about race is a waste of our breath," she said.

"We are asking a demented, violent predator who thinks that they are a saint or a superhero, to accept responsibility. It ain't gonna happen. They have five holes in their brain. It's like banging your head against a brick wall. It's just like sort of not a good idea."

At another point in the talk, Khilanani said: "This is the cost of talking to white people at all. The cost of your own life, as they suck you dry. There are no good apples out there. White people make my blood boil."

Following the talk, Yale made a recording available internally to students and faculty but added a warning saying that the talk contained "profanity and imagery for violence."

Khilanani posted several videos on TikTok highlighting the fact that Yale had not released a recording of the talk to the public and accusing the university of engaging in "suppression" of the material.

"Yo, white amnesia is an amazing thing," Khilanani said in one of the interviews.

In her interview with Herzog, Khilanani said Yale didn't raise concerns about her talk for a "long period of time."

"I was kind of surprised because usually people want to know a lot of details. And then I think, and I'm not sure about this, maybe they only put the announcement out the day before," Khilanani said.

"I'm not sure. This is what I think because I only got the concerns as relayed to me from the dean right before. I didn't hear any concerns prior to that," she said.

Newsweek has contacted Aruna Khilanani for comment.

Yale Medical School sent Newsweek a statement on Saturday saying that after Khilanani's talk "several faculty members expressed concern to the Yale School of Medicine's Office of Academic and Professional Development and the Office of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion about the content of the talk."

School of Medicine leaders reviewed a recording of the talk and "found the tone and content antithetical to the values of the school."

"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," the school said.

"We ultimately decided to post the video with access limited to those who could have attended the talk— the members of the Yale community. 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.'"

Update 6/5/21 11.15 a.m. ET: This article was updated to include a statement from Yale Medical School.