Erika Christakis

Education and early career

Christakis graduated from Harvard College with a degree in social anthropology in 1986. She was one of the first undergraduate interns at Harvard’s Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations, and studied in Kenya in 1985. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Christakis worked on public health projects in Bangladesh and Ghana and served as a case manager for indigent adults with mental illness and addiction in Boston.

In 1990, Christakis obtained a Master of Public Health degree from Johns Hopkins University, with a concentration in international health. In 1993, she obtained a second master's degree from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, with a focus on the role of education campaigns to prevent HIV infection and to improve maternal and child health. Christakis obtained her third master's degree in 2008, in early childhood education, from Lesley University and was then licensed in Massachusetts as an early childhood teacher and preschool director.

Career

Since the 1990s, Christakis has worked as a preschool teacher, college administrator and instructor, and writer and journalist. She has also served on several school boards and as an educational consultant.

From 2009-2013, Christakis was appointed Co-Master, together with her husband, the scientist Nicholas Christakis, of Pforzheimer House at Harvard. While at Harvard, she helped shape university polices on topics as diverse as alcohol and substance use and the reception of students from diverse backgrounds.

In 2013, Christakis moved to Yale University, where she was appointed Lecturer in Early Childhood Education at the Zigler Center in Child Development and Social Policy at the Yale Child Study Center. At Yale, she has taught undergraduate courses in child policy, early childhood education, and child development. She was appointed Associate Master of Silliman College, one of Yale’s 12 residential colleges, in the spring of 2015. In that capacity, in October, 2015, she wrote an e-mail to Yale undergraduates at Silliman College on the role of free expression in universities. The email was in response to a directive from the Intercultural Affairs Committee at Yale that provided guidelines regarding Halloween costumes. In her email, she argued that, from a developmental perspective, students might wish to consider whether administrators should provide guidance to college students regarding Halloween attire or whether students should be allowed to ‘dress themselves.’ According to The Atlantic, "Her message was a model of relevant, thoughtful, civil engagement." But the message contributed to protests at Yale (centered on various issues) that received national attention. This incident prompted a number of social critics to comment on possible generational changes. A month after the incident, Christakis resigned from teaching at Yale. At the anniversary of the events, in October 2016, she described the difficult circumstances that she had faced. While in a similar post at Harvard in 2012, Christakis was also involved in the defense of free expression; she came to the defense of minority students who were using satire to criticize the final clubs at that institution, arguing that policing free expression on campus "denies students the opportunity to learn to think for themselves."

Writings

Christakis has written on the developmental needs of children, young adults, and families, and on popular culture, for many venues, including The Atlantic, CNN.com, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, the Financial Times, and The Boston Globe. She wrote a TIME.com Ideas column for two years. Most of her work reflects center-left politics with an occasional libertarian streak, such as reflected in her defense of the rights of minors and in her critique of the increasing bureaucratization of American schooling. Her article in The Atlantic in early 2016, on “The New Preschool Is Crushing Kids” was described in Slate as having an “explosive” effect on the education world. She has spoken twice at the Aspen Institute Ideas Festival.

Her book, The Importance of Being Little: What Preschoolers Really Need From Grownups was published by Viking Penguin in February 2016, and debuted on the New York Times Hardcover Nonfiction Bestseller List of February 28, 2016 at number 19. Science magazine described the book as "superbly written" and "supported by a rich scientific literature."