Presidents and politics
Thank you for the interview with President Maurie McInnis ’96PhD (“Yale’s Next Steps,” May/June). Along with her President’s letter in the same issue, this gives insight into how President McInnis thinks and will lead. For those of us alumni who are pretty distant from Yale now in time and engagement, this is so encouraging—in a time when national politics and governance are so discouraging.
Toby Rosenblatt ’60
San Francisco, CA
The current president of the United States has set in motion a series of baseless attacks and repugnant demands against Harvard that threaten the educational and ethical foundations of all US institutions of higher learning. So far Yale has escaped the headlines, but this is very much our fight. I urge the Yale administration to join the growing group of colleges which are resisting this hostile takeover!
Douglas R. Jenner ’63
Evergreen, CO
As a Yale alumna, I am proud to see the university’s faculty joining together to write a letter urging the administration to stand up for academic freedom. As of this writing, the number of signatories had reached an impressive 983 faculty members.
Let us all add our voices in our own ways and hope the administration will respond and actively resist. While President Trump’s responses to opposition seem designed to inspire fear, bowing to fear is no way to live. Compromise here undermines our freedom and the principles our country was built upon.
Lia (Hutton) Nigro ’88
Columbia, MD
They came after Columbia, Cornell, Princeton, Brown, Northwestern, Penn, and Harvard. Only Harvard has stood up to resist. Yale must immediately join Harvard in fighting the executive branch, not because Yale might be next on the list, but because it is the only right action to take.
An attack on one university is an attack on all institutions of learning. It is a war against freedom of thought, independent research, freedom of expression.
By openly siding with Harvard, Yale would show that it is committed to the highest principles guiding our democracy. This would be an act of leadership, creating an incentive for all other colleges to join the movement to resist the hitherto unimaginable attack on freedom and independence launched by Trump. Yale’s role is crucial precisely because it has not yet been threatened by any financial retribution.
Yale and Harvard can, should, must lead all American universities against this dangerous administration. Once such a group is formed, it will inspire responsible corporations and law firms to join the movement to restore the fundamental principles and operations of our cherished democracy. Only such a massive, nationwide alliance of leading institutions, backed by a majority of fair, rational citizens, can hope to end this unprecedented assault on our society, our way of life.
Let the opening salvo be, “We oppose Harvard only on the playing field!”
Steven Kovacs ’68
San Francisco, CA
Faculty politics
At 92, with a little earned wisdom, I spend my time working with individual people and organizations related to veterans and politics. I support those who uphold the precious principles of our founding fathers. Yes, I am a conservative. As such I am deeply concerned about Yale’s political, moral, and academic situation.
The last issue of the alumni magazine had numerous letters decrying apartheid and the student mental health crisis. The former is a very small part of our universal problems with minimal impact on Yale. The latter is presented as an important, deeply rooted problem. I agree. It stresses the need for introspection and probing analysis: good fodder for the academic world and those seeking complex answers to simple problems. To start with, a faculty must be balanced in its political and moral composition. The New Haven–based Buckley Institute published a professional survey of the political affiliation of faculty in 27 Yale academic departments and the Law School. Just under 3 percent were registered Republicans. This is a petri dish for biased teaching. Is this reflected in student mental stress? This must change.
It is clear that Yale’s leadership role in the universal academic world is gone. It is despicable that change may only come when federal funds are withdrawn and alumni refuse to support a sinking ship. My relative Reverend Samuel Russell, in whose library Yale was founded, planned for a college that truly lived by its motto: Lux et Veritas. Only we can make that happen.
Horton Spitzer ’55
Wilson, WY
The Buckley Institute asks readers to sign its petition calling on Yale to address what it calls “the lack of intellectual diversity on the faculty.” It also asks for an assessment of the “politicization of the Yale classroom.”
The advertisement claims a 4:1 ratio of Democrats to independents on Yale’s faculty, and a 28:1 ratio of Democrats to Republicans. Does that indicate some kind of bias, some type of litmus test of political beliefs as reportedly exists in the White House today?
I think not.
A more likely explanation is that those with conservative beliefs or Republican Party membership don’t enter programs leading to the PhD, and if they do, don’t do quality research that would lead to being hired by Yale or other first-rank colleges or universities. Except perhaps in theology or philosophy, research must be based on fact. This is certainly true in the sciences, but also in history and in literature.
Unfortunately for conservatives and Republicans, the facts don’t support their dearly held beliefs. Tax cuts for the rich don’t benefit the poor. Abstinence education doesn’t prevent teen pregnancy. Regulations don’t kill jobs; they protect the American public. The Second Amendment does not give Americans an unfettered right to bear arms. Vaccines are safe and effective, in most cases confer long-lasting protection from infectious diseases, and don’t cause autism. Increasing tariffs on imported goods actually will increase costs of goods for American consumers and won’t help restore manufacturing any time soon.
I hope Yale doesn’t start recruiting faculty because of a conservative institute’s desire for what it calls intellectual diversity. I hope Yale continues to be great by recruiting the best researchers and thinkers, regardless of their personal beliefs or party affiliations.
Daniel Fink ’70
Beverly Hills, CA
I was struck by the advertisement on page 27 of your May/June issue, signed by the Buckley Institute, regarding the allegedly pernicious preponderance of Democrats among the student body and faculty at Yale. Is this preponderance of Democrats peculiar to Yale, to the Ivy League schools, or to colleges in general? As I understand it, the selection processes for the admission of students and faculty to Yale do not inquire into or make any requirements with regard to political party allegiance.
Are the people who purchased the ad urging the rectification or improvement of what they see as a dangerous defect through something like affirmative action? They call for a more politically diverse landscape at Yale. That would resemble a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) project, which have been much attacked by the current Republican administration.
Furthermore, what sort of Republicans are they talking about? What we see now is no longer Burkean conservatism or the GOP of Taft, Eisenhower, and Rockefeller. The MAGA crowd have taken over the Republican party, making it unrecognizable to many of us older folks. They are the real RINOs.
The current MAGA crowd in power has launched a blizzard of bizarre and illegal attacks on universities, scientific research, academic freedom. Surely the people behind the ad don’t wish that on Yale?
Harald Hille ’66, ’70MPhil
Riverside, CT
The cost of Yale
The term bill of $90,000 for the 45 percent of admitted freshmen not receiving aid (Campus Clips, May/June) would have been $3,000 in 1953 at 5 percent average inflation. Yale then was considered a rich man’s college. Undergraduates supported other university functions; a few had bursary jobs. Most classes were taught by grad students with maybe a once-a-week lecture by a full professor. By 1949, maid service had been eliminated, hence “Dirty Durfee” as a freshman dorm. Most students came from affluent families.
The admission on merit of today’s applicants (only 4 percent of applicants accepted vs. 50 percent in 1949) would indicate most of the 45 percent not receiving aid as well as those with “some” aid will emerge with burdensome debt, as will some parents.
My Jesuit boarding school in Montréal at the end of the war housed 150 of us in a single open dorm with double-decked bunks. We lived out of our lockers, military fashion. Mess hall, proctored study hall: might students prefer such spartan surroundings to indebting their families or themselves for years? In loco parentis: should the university not provide the opportunity?
Yale is also denying admission to 19 of 20 applicants. Why is enrollment only twice that of my day? Allow more this priceless opportunity.
Alphonse I. Johnson ’53E
Lisbon, IL
The university reports that 85 percent of recent Yale College graduates left Yale with no student loan debt.—Eds.
Time warp
The Findings section features a photograph of the results of a galactic collision that the accompanying report asserts to have occurred about 50 million years ago (“Shot Through the Intergalactic Heart,” May/June). Given that the location of the subject LEDA 1313424 galaxy is further asserted to be some 567 million light years away from Earth, are we to understand that the photo depicts a scene some 517 million years in our future, or that the collision actually occurred about 617 million years ago?
Armistead P. (Tony) Rood ’73JD
Washington, DC
Imad Pasha ’25PhD, lead author of the paper about the discovery, explains: “When we quote the 50-million-year number, we mean that from the state we see the galaxy in now, the collision was 50 million years ago. This implies that if you were on earth 50 million years ago and had a telescope, you might spy the galaxies colliding. It would in some sense be more accurate to say we see these galaxies as they were 517 million years ago, and that the collision was 567 million years ago. But the distinction is mostly just a shift of reference.”—Eds.
Not the funnest
In a review of “Says Who?” by Anne Curzan ’91 (Reviews, November/December), Ben Yagoda relates that Curzan makes the following argument: If you accept “fun” as an adjective (as in, “That was a fun party”), then you have no objection to “funner” and “funnest.” I hope Curzan has a better argument than that. “Wrong,” “moist,” and “just,” for example, are all adjectives. But we don’t say wronger, moister, or juster. The question is not whether the word is an adjective, but whether the comparative uses “-er” or “more” and the superlative uses “-est” or “most.” Sally’s party can be more fun that Susie’s. But neither is “funner” than the other.
Walter Weber ’84JD
Alexandria, VA
That sinking feeling
This letter concerns an interesting interaction with Yale’s legendary swimming coach, Delaney Kiphuth. So, travel back with me to September 1955, when the entering class is undergoing the rituals of the fitness and posture tests. Included in fitness was swimming a few laps in the pool. I am a lousy swimmer, one reason being that I do not float. So, I was thrashing back and forth in the pool trying to pass that part of the fitness test, and I was not doing very well.
I heard a man standing at the edge of the pool ask me, “Boy, why are you having so much trouble swimming?” I responded that part of the problem was that I do not float. Mr. Kiphuth told me this could not be. Of course I could float! Just do what he said and I would see that I float. Since I knew then as now that I do not float, I made a five-dollar bet with him on that.
So, as instructed, I paddled into the middle of the pool and bent over into the “dead man float” position. My legs quickly headed for the bottom of the pool and the rest of me followed until I was sitting on the bottom of the pool. I stayed there about as long as I could, to prove my point, until I felt a long bamboo pole poking me. I surfaced and looked around, seeing that Mr. Kiphuth was leaving the pool area. I did not get my five bucks, nor do I care. I had made my point. Not everyone floats.
Stuyvesant K. Bearns ’59
Lakeville, CT
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Corrections
In the caption for our May/June “Scene on Campus” photo, we misspelled the name of one of the two fencers in the photo. She is Olivia Ren, not Oliva.
In the May/June School Notes for the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the superconducting temperature of cuprates was reported as 225 degrees Fahrenheit. Because of an editing error, a negative sign was omitted; the temperature is in fact negative 225 degrees Fahrenheit.
In a review of the book Fierce Desires in March/April, we included the wrong year for the author’s Yale PhD. Rebecca Davis got her PhD in 2006, not 2014.
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