Ben Atlas writes on reshimu.com:
On the subject of the upheaval on Hirhurim.
Enough have been said about the Modern Orthodoxy trending right. But specifically about the vitriol, fundamentalism and intolerance evidenced in the conversations.
Big part of the YU faculty are culturally and ideologically the products of isolated ghettos. This trend has only strengthen in the recent decades and this is the pool where the movement draws it’s Rabbinic leadership.
I have never witnessed the intolerance even in Chabad. There is a deep tradition of acceptance rooted in the turbulent Russian history and culture that runs through Chabad. The kanous, the vitriol and the hate are in my opinion been imported to Chabad from the Hungarians. This incidentally is the source of the phenomenon even within Modern Orthodoxy.
Rabbi Gil Student responds: "Every single one of the YU roshei yeshiva is extremely welcoming and cordial on a personal level to Jews and Gentiles of all kinds. The difficulties arise when they are expected to make public policies that will be used in every community throughout the country or world. In those cases, they tend to be strict. But one a one-on-one level, they are not. I’ve witnessed both personally and with others some bizarre circumstances and seen various roshei yeshiva bend extremely backwards. It’s hard to point out any single individual but if I had to I would say that Rav. Hershel Schachter is an incredibly compassionate and warm person. You would not believe what he has given me permission to publish because "A Jew has to make a parnassah" (for the record, I don’t regularly go to him with questions and just because something is permitted doesn’t mean that I’ve done it). Intermarriage, interracial marriages, non-Orthodox rabbis… You name it, I’ve seen real compassion. The problem is when you publicize it and make it official policy. They are (in my opinion, rightly) hesitant to do that."
