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The Yale Alumni Magazine is owned and operated by Yale Alumni Publications, Inc., a nonprofit corporation independent of Yale University. The content of the magazine and its website is the responsibility of the editors and does not necessarily reflect the views of Yale or its officers. |
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From this Old Blue’s view, it seems as if dear old Yale is running scared in the face of the candidacy of the Reverend Dr. W. David Lee '93MDiv to join the Yale Corporation. In the March issue of the Yale Alumni Magazine appears a dramatic, full-page anti-Lee ad (paid for and sponsored by a blue-ribbon group of six alums whose classes neatly and representatively span the appropriate decades). Also, in the “Letters” column appears a long and carefully crafted warning opposing Lee’s candidacy from the eminent Henry Chauncey Jr., a former Secretary of the University. In addition, alumni were sent a special edition of the Yale Bulletin and Calendar whose only purpose would seem to be to convince readers that Yale University practices the most active and responsible sort of institutional citizenship in the New Haven community, neatly undercutting Lee’s platform for election. Being a loyal alum, I would normally have voted against a petition candidate, even though I believe Chauncey’s letter ignores the inevitable built-in bias a self-perpetuating body (such as the Corporation) will have, favoring “management” in most issues that have a “labor-management” context. Now, I am suspicious of the excessively heavy artillery being deployed against the good reverend, and I wonder whether perhaps I should reconsider. I am concerned about the candidacy of the Reverend Dr. W. David Lee for the Yale Corporation. It seems to me that a candidate for the Corporation should have a certain level of expertise that is brought to the task. In addition, the candidate should be able to confront University issues with an open mind. Lee may be lacking in both of those areas. His experience is local. He has received a substantial amount of funding for his candidacy from Yale’s unions. He has asserted himself on behalf of the unions and has challenged the University’s position. On more than one occasion, his rhetoric has been inflammatory. For example, the New Haven Register reported that Lee shouted at the mayor of Hamden, “We will tear you limb from limb because you’re trying to mess with our children” (“Protesters Want to Move Charter School,” September 7, 2001). I believe that the candidate does not possess the qualities that I would look for in a member of the Corporation. Why is it that the letter to the editor, the slightly slanted “Light & Verity” article, and the back-page ad in the March the Yale Alumni Magazine (not to mention the recent mailing alumni received from Maureen O. Doran of the AYA) somehow do not count as a campaign for the Yale Corporation, while they all accuse the Reverend Dr. W. David Lee of campaigning? Why is it that the large businesses represented by other Yale Corporation members somehow do not count as special interests, while Lee’s commitment to New Haven is portrayed as a special interest? Why has the AYA broken tradition and nominated only one official candidate this year? Why (if Yale is so committed to improving town-gown relations) is the University afraid of an alumnus volunteering to work to improve relations between Yale and New Haven? And why does Yale seem to think that we Yale alums aren’t bright enough to notice all this doublespeak? I’m disappointed in Yale’s behavior, so I’m voting for Lee. In connection with the “Letters” section of your March issue, I would like to submit some comments pertaining to the cogent contribution by Henry Chauncey Jr. (which appears under the heading “The Trustee’s Role”). At length, he defines his opinion of the qualifications of a candidate for a seat on the Yale Corporation, and he offers his reasons for rejection of a candidate. While the Reverend Dr. W. David Lee is entirely unknown to me, he does appear to be a breath of fresh air on a board of 17 members with a corporate tradition. I see nothing wrong with a new voice from New Haven. Must a general spirit of unanimity forever prevail? Mr. Chauncey’s concern about Yale’s financial well-being in the future seems ludicrous. The University’s endowment, I understand, is among the highest in the country, exceeding $10 billion. Recently, I received in the mail a report proudly announcing a 9.2 percent return on investments for last year. Lee shoul make a welcome addition to the Corporation. This is a new century. I was surprised—and appalled—by the Yale Daily News editorial that was reprinted in an advertisement in the March the Yale Alumni Magazine.The editorial attacked the Reverend Dr. W. David Lee’s candidacy to the Yale Corporation. The authors seem to be annoyed at someone using the petition route to obtain a place on the ballot, as well as espousing in advance a certain point of view—an agenda. Apparently, no one has ever done this before. But worse yet: I was also surprised and appalled at Henry Chauncey’s nearly hysterical letter in the same issue, which seems to espouse two important points: 1) that one must come onto the Yale Corporation with no preconceived agenda at all—a totally open and malleable mind, presumably, and 2) that by doing otherwise, one does not deserve to be a trustee of Yale. This is truly delicious. If Lee does not deserve to be a trustee of Yale, there must be others who do deserve it. I’m sorry, but I believe in the vote count, not in divine right. What are these people afraid of? A single voice on the side of the unions? The fact that a man from other than Wall Street, inside the Beltway, or family ties could join the inner circle? The presence of a trustee probably more representative of the majority of graduates than the privileged over-achievers usually selected for the ballot? I recall past visions of Yale being willing to invest $50 million to boost New Haven’s prospects. But let’s not let Yale have a board member who might from time to time remind it that it is in New Haven. It’s to laugh. The statement of the Reverend Dr. W. David Lee, asking for support for his candidacy for Alumni Fellow, said that he sought the nomination because “Yale and New Haven must become true partners.” The problems he cites—loss of manufacturing, double-digit poverty rate, public schools in crisis, infant mortality, AIDS, drugs, and crime—imply that Yale should do more about those problems. In any debate about what the University’s role should be in addressing those problems, the participants must be clear about their roles and responsibilities. Having a community representative on the Yale Corporation is not the best way to achieve the healthy democratic debate that Lee says he seeks. Such a community representative would find himself in a conflict of interest between his identified community goals and his fiduciary duty to the University and its educational goals. That conflict can be avoided by having an ongoing dialogue between the University and representatives of the various New Haven constituencies. That dialogue has, in fact, been occurring, between Yale and the political leadership, between Yale and community representatives, and between Yale and the entities that are trying to achieve economic growth in the city and the region. If Lee wants to be a part of that dialogue, he can be most effective if he speaks for the community, instead of for both the community and the University. I have watched the relationship between the University and the city improve during the 32 years I have worked in New Haven. Yale now realizes that it cannot succeed in its educational mission unless New Haven succeeds as a place in which people live and work. President Richard Levin and the University’s officers have been receptive to the needs of the city, and have taken specific steps (such as requiring local hiring by the contractors involved in the extensive renovations being made to the University’s plant) to benefit the local community at all levels. The University doesn’t need a new trustee to tell it about New Haven. Should we assume that Maya Lin’s opinion on whether University workers should receive poverty wages is the opposite of the Reverend Dr. W. David Lee's? Lee’s opinion is detailed in the March article on their candidacies for the Yale Corporation (“Light & Verity”). Ms. Lin’s is not. My suspicion is that a woman whose designs show such an eloquent respect for the human spirit might be just as opposed to poverty wages as Lee. For whatever reason, the article is singularly focused on Lee’s view. Being the believer in democracy that I am, I am confident that Yale will continue to navigate a course guided by healthy debate, wherever the chads may fall. In the meantime, I suppose I will have to go rummaging through some other publications to get the rest of the story.
SOM’s Missing Dean As the former dean of several business schools, including NYU and Dartmouth, who has watched developments at SOM with interest over the years, I was sorry to see no mention of the work of Professor Paul W. MacAvoy in Bruce Fellman’s article, “Business with a Twist” (Mar.). MacAvoy served as dean for only a brief period prior to the arrival of Jeffrey E. Garten, but did much to stabilize SOM and to provide a positive environment for its future. It was during his deanship, for example, that SOM’s name was changed, and that the process of its becoming (in Garten’s words) “a hard edged business school” was started.
Understanding Terror I read with dismay Mark Kreitman’s letter of dismay in the February issue of the Yale Alumni Magazine. He is insulted by Paul Kennedy’s challenge to his students to put themselves in the shoes of the Palestinians who rejoiced at the World Trade Center’s bombing. “Moral relativism,” phooey. Kennedy did not ask the students to rejoice, too, but to try to understand why the Palestinians did so. This is the essence of human understanding. Over the course of 31 years of university history teaching, it was my life’s work to get my students inside the skin of historical figures and their followers (no matter how reprehensible they are by today’s standards) to try to understand why they did what they did. Genghis Khan, the Borgias, Ivan the Terrible, Adolf Hitler, and Joseph Stalin were all human beings, and they all had followers—just as Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden do today. Shall we dismiss them as devils and madmen? And their followers (otherwise reasonable folk) as temporarily possessed and insane? Yale did not teach us to be so smug and self-righteous. It behooves us to try to understand all our fellow human beings, for only then will we understand ourselves.
Slavery Today In reference to “The Slavery Legacy” (Feb.), I don’t understand how Professor David Brion Davis can work to see that the Gilder Lehrman Center views slavery “as a complex piece of human history,” or that he, together with Robert Forbes, “have made it their mission to raise awareness about the pervasiveness of slavery in America,” without expressing concern that so many Americans are ignorant of the problems and pervasive scope of slavery in the world today. Our own government estimates that 50,000 people are trafficked into the U.S. annually and trapped into degrading servitude. Outside of the U.S., the number of people living in one form of slavery or another runs into many millions. I’m sure that Professor Davis would agree that one purpose of history is to help us understand and deal with contemporary problems and challenges. There seems to be a reluctance to deal with this challenge of world slavery, a complex phenomenon that is international in scope and evolves from many interlocking economic and social conditions. I hope that someday soon the Gilder Lehrman Center will raise its sights to embrace the modern world.
A Close Save! Just as I was about to cancel my subscription to the Yale Alumni Magazine, in came your March issue, and I found two vitally interesting items. One, alas, was news of the death of an old beau, Arthur Kurth, who taught Romance Languages. (If his descendants want to know more about his life at Yale, I’d love to talk to them.) The other item was your fine feature on the Drama School (“A New Dean Takes the Stage”), which I attended for two years, when my playwright professor was Walter Pritchard Eaton and the head of the School was Allardyce Nicoll. One runs into Yale graduates all the time. I once took a course in conversational Spanish because I was working for the Manila Times in New York. My teacher wasn’t interested in me until I told him I’d gone to Yale, whereupon we settled down to some good old gossip, dissecting one of our instructors (now dead, so I won’t give a name). I learned a lot of Spanish that day! So, I’ll keep my subscription and I might even contribute to the Alumni Fund, but don’t call me after six o'clock because I don’t answer the phone.
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