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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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It is vaguely reassuring to know that hate is a legitimate new field of psychological research (“Why We Hate,” September/October). How can 10 million people—one out of every 600 people on the face of this planet!—simultaneously demonstrate their commitment to peace, as we did February 5, 2003, and we still have world leaders equally committed to pre-emptive military aggression? The only minor detail lacking in William Speed Weed’s thought-provoking summary of the groundbreaking work of Professor Robert Sternberg was a good graphic summary of his Hate Triangle. I respectfully suggest this one in hopes that by understanding what prompts our most primitive emotion we might get the better of it before it gets the better of us. I was expecting a useful explanation of the most threatening dynamic in the modern world from “Why We Hate,” but instead got an almost comical dose of political correctness. I am sure there is somebody out there who “hates” the homeless person on the corner, and perhaps U.S. policy toward terrorism reflects blind hatred, instead of a logical response to the murder of civilians. But by focusing almost entirely upon the usual suspects—greedy, domineering Western bourgeois—the author ignores the xenophobic culture of hatred that inspired the killing of 3,000 innocent people in the World Trade Center attacks. This is not a story we Westerners tell ourselves to get hyped up for an invasion; it is a real threat, as real as the graves of the September 11 victims. I very much enjoyed the article “Why We Hate” by William Speed Weed, discussing Robert Sternberg’s work on the psychology of hate, but I was perturbed, on reaching the third to last paragraph, to find the propagation of one of the fabricated hate stories that the psychologist argues against. That “Palestinians must defend themselves from Israelis who want to drive them into the sea” is definitely a fabricated “story of victimhood.” However, that “Israelis must defend themselves from Palestinians who want to drive them into the sea” is documented reality. Israelis, until the present violence erupted, were taking a major risk by giving the peace process a chance. The majority of Israeli citizens believed in it and were working to implement it. Meanwhile, the Arab press, whether in the Palestinian territories or in lands surrounding Israel, contains numerous articles on the evil of Israelis and Jews, and numerous calls for driving them into the sea. When Palestinian leaders talk to each other and to their people, they call for the destruction of the Jews and of Israel. Only to the international audience do they condemn terrorism. There is currently a leadership of the culture that purposefully propagates the tales that inculcate hatred. I also have an argument with Sternberg’s definition of Wisdom. There is such a thing as Absolute Evil. Terrorism, the targeting of innocent civilians, is Evil, no matter what the beliefs that prompt it. It would be self-destructive and maladaptive to grant recognition and value to terrorism and terrorists. It is wrong not to hate Evil. It is wrong not to hate terrorism. Thanks for the article about Professor Sternberg’s work on hate. Hate is also a tool of companies and the theorists of economy. If you believe that the government is out to get you, or that environmentalists are trying to put you out of business, it’s easy to devalue what they have to say. In a broader sense, the culture of individualism and competition is based on something akin to hate, emphasizing the need to fight and to keep what you are doing secret. The consumer economy and culture are based on hatred (devaluation, cognitive commitment to human “supremacy,” and occasionally a kind of rage) against the non-human world. The story, “How to Really Leave No Child Behind,” in the same issue, shows the way: imagining the world from the other fellow’s point of view, and then addressing their needs as well as yours. “Why We Hate” alludes to one of the major causes of hatred: the fear of difference, and in particular, the fear of human difference. As Professor Green notes, much of violent hatred originates in the “romanticization of homogeneity.” Pluralism and diversity can provoke anxiety because they necessitate a degree of humility and a capacity for self-criticism that are difficult to cultivate and that do not come naturally to human beings without a social, educational, and political context that nurtures those values. Hatred is an easier emotion to summon than love. It gratifies more quickly, it is less morally and intellectually demanding, and it satisfies the utopian and monistic tendencies of human beings to find simple answers to difficult questions. Professor Sternberg is right to propose wisdom as an antidote to hatred. His comment that schools need to teach students how to use facts wisely, and not merely to acquire knowledge, is a criticism that schools and universities alike need to ponder and respond to with urgency. As an undergraduate, I felt that while Yale offered extraordinary intellectual opportunities to its students, it did not provide them with adequate opportunities for ethical reflection. My attempts to create such opportunities within the curriculum were met with cordial but tentative responses from the administration. The “wisdom” curriculum that Sternberg has proposed for middle schools is a curriculum and way of thinking that all individuals need to engage with, for life. Yale College needs to create similar opportunities for students to develop and act upon their ethical wisdom, their empathetic capacities, and their civic responsibilities. As Yale begins to implement changes to its curriculum it ought to pay particular attention to the results of Professor Sternberg’s research and apply the lessons learned from it in the fabric of academic and communal life at Yale.
Varney Burst Delivers When I was about 19 years old and in undergraduate nursing school, an obstetrician I knew happened to be the attending one day when I was a student in the delivery room. At the time, they pretty much sedated the moms. Since it was about her tenth baby, which he anticipated would just “slip out,” the OB offered me the chance to do the “catching.” I remember distinctly two immediate reactions. The first was “This is the most slippery baby I’ve ever held!” and the second was “This is the coolest thing I’ve ever done!” Thanks so much for the thrilling article (“Present at the Creation,” September/October) on my colleague Helen Varney Burst, really the mother of nurse-midwifery in this country, and kudos to writer Cathy Shufro. Not only does it tell the story of nurse-midwifery and Helen’s inestimable contribution, but it also tells of strong women, nurses and mothers, and of the process of giving life that is an indescribable joy. Thanks also for highlighting the Yale School of Nursing and one of its best-known graduates, and I encourage you to keep seeking out great subjects among Yale’s superb graduate and professional schools. After all, their graduates account for half of all Yale alumni!
Marshall’s Judgment I read with interest Harry Stern’s letter (September/October) attacking Chief Justice Margaret Marshall of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court as a “judge who usurp[ed] legislative functions” by writing the opinion that extended the right to marry to gay men and lesbians. Mr. Stern must not be familiar with the Massachusetts Constitution, which provides for judicial review of laws enacted by the General Court (i.e., the state legislature). If a provision in a law does not comport with the constitution, the court must provide judicial remedy to the adversely affected litigant. This is exactly the path taken by the majority in the gay marriage case. While one can debate whether the case was rightly decided (and after studying it I believe that it was) it is clear that the court usurped no legislative function. Mr. Stern may disapprove of a system of government that combines broadly worded constitutional provisions on civil rights with judicial review. There is no question that such a system restricts the power of the legislature to create law, which can rightly be described as undemocratic. I wonder, however, if Mr. Stern would feel the same fondness for unrestricted democracy if the law in question had excluded some other electoral minority from the right to marry, such as African Americans or Jews. It has been my experience that people who complain of judges “legislating” don’t actually disapprove of the system. They only complain when it is someone they don’t like who benefits from it.
Life After Iraq On what planet does Richard Brodhead '68 reside (“Life After Yale: The Baccalaureate Address,” July/August)? According to him, the major problem facing the members of the Class of 2004 and their parents is that they might laze about, eating their families out of house and home while they ponder their futures. Poor babies! Has anyone told him of the thousand-plus American families who no longer face this problem, due to the tender ministrations of his classmate and buddy (and father of Barbara Bush '04), George Bush '68? Their children aren’t sleeping late; they’re sleeping forever, dispatched to an early end in a pointless war, which was sold to the American people through a web of lies. Nor does he seem to be aware of the thousands more young people who’ll have trouble eating their cereal without assistance, due to lost limbs, head trauma, and other injuries too gruesome to contemplate. If now-President Brodhead would like to get a clue as to the real-world problems of the less privileged contemporaries of the Yale Class of 2004, he might take a peek at http://icasualties.org/oif. Perhaps he could even pass along the address to his friend, George Bush.
In Defense of “Didja” Language does seem to be that about which everyone has an opinion. Surely the collapse of civilization is imminent when so many say different than, one of the naughty phrases Anne Fadiman is attempting to excise from undergraduates' usage (Milestones, July/August). Even though different than was used by Addison, Coleridge, Thackeray, and many others, I, too, wish her good fortune in her quest—but for a reason different from that expressed in two recent letters (September/October). It is easy to imagine the indignant howls that must have greeted the first helped (for earlier holpen), worked (for earlier wrought), or the neologism automobile, vilified by the New York Times because it combined Greek and Latin roots. Such linguistic change has always evoked ridicule, and language mavens can afford to see their version of English as superior to all others because they represent those in power. Fadiman’s students do indeed need to know when to say whom and who and why with George and I is incorrect, but more because it is to their advantage than because they must help stem the headlong rush into barbarism. By the same token, they also surely know that Didja is often preferable to Did you. One who uses Fowler-esque language in casual situations (such as a dorm room) comes across as a fool; one who uses dorm room-speak in the board room loses credibility—and perhaps even a job. The lesson is that we all need to be multi-dialectal. Wise use of language includes tailoring it to circumstance and environment, realizing where a Latinate vocabulary and maven-sanctioned syntax are to our advantage and where they are not. Call him practical, cynical, or downright mercenary, but Ambrose Bierce defined language best: “The music with which we charm the serpents guarding another’s treasure.”
Look Out, Mandelbrot! I enjoyed your story about Olympic fencer Sada Jacobson Edge of Greatness,” July/August). Should we attribute the fact that Sada received a bronze rather than a gold medal to the Yale Alumni Magazine cover jinx?
Dave Dellinger, Yale Man I can’t claim to have been a friend of Dave Dellinger '36 or even to have known him all that well. I met him several times in the 1980s and corresponded with him a bit. Still, he had a way of making even casual acquaintances like me feel like old friends, and when I learned that he had died (Alumni Notes, September/October), having lived life well into his eighties, the news hit me as if he had been one. Dellinger will probably be best remembered as one of the Chicago Seven, that group of anti-war demonstrators brought to trial after the Democratic National Convention in 1968. Those with a longer historical memory will recall that Dave spent time in jail as a conscientious objector during World War II. Dave was shaped by the traumatic events of the 1930s, which even as a student at Yale he could not ignore. He never forgot that time, filled with both despair and hope, and as a result, Dave led his entire life committed to fighting for social justice and to reminding us that in a world of haves and have nots, it is David, not Goliath, who ought to command our compassion and energy. It is a lesson this nation seem largely to have forgotten these days. We met when I was an undergraduate and he was looking forward to his 50th class reunion. Several of us involved in the nuclear disarmament movement invited him for a weekend conference. We couldn’t offer him much by way of an honorarium but he was happy to make the trip down from his home in Vermont. He met with us, talked about issues and strategies, and reminisced about his days at Yale in the 1930s. Frankly, I can’t quite remember any of the specifics of those conversations. Instead, I am left with the memory of a man who after all those years and all those struggles still sparkled with life and with the enthusiasm that the world could be made a better place. Yale is a place heavy with a sense of its own traditions. They contribute, like the architecture, to making it what it is. And yet, at least for some of us, those traditions can feel oppressive. The United States does not have a hereditary aristocracy, with all that implies of money and privilege, but at Yale it can sometimes seem as if we do. Those traditions belong to that aristocracy, or so it felt to me. As a consequence, I sometimes found it difficult to figure out exactly where I fit in the scheme of things—not in the classroom or the dining hall, but in that larger, more ineffable thing called Yale. I was uneasy about embracing the university fully because I was convinced the university wasn’t quite prepared to embrace me. I also suspect I am not alone. Then I met Dave Dellinger. As much as anything, what I take away from our encounters was the realization that there was another Yale and another set of Yale traditions. From Dave Dellinger I learned that progressive social and civic engagement were as central to what Yale means as the secret societies and the Whiffenpoofs. It is no accident that Dave titled his autobiography From Yale to Jail. He also convinced me that in my own small and inconsequential way, I was part of his tradition, his Yale. Dave Dellinger was a voice of conscience, and he was at the center of some of the most pivotal events of the latter half of the twentieth century. He was also a Yale man in the very best sense of the term.
The Remarkable Class of ’54 I much enjoyed your fine piece on ’54 and Richard Gilder (Where They Are Now, September/October), especially his reply about Yale’s response to such fundraising projects, and about Tom McCance, my classmate. It so happens I worked for Tom at the Alumni Fund during that period. We knew all about Richard’s success on behalf of Yale, and about the potential for others to do the same. Tom was perhaps the fund’s most successful director and knew his job well, which was to raise money for Yale, and that was how I liked to work. I found it painful to watch the triumph of egos and turf over mission and over what was so demonstrably in Yale’s best interests, so, shortly after Tom left the Alumni Fund two decades ago, I did too.
Where Yalies Found Work The brick buildings on the corner of Wall and High streets that “had to go” to make room for the splendid Beinecke Rare Book Library (Last Look, September/October) housed, among other institutions, the Student Appointment Bureau, where such stalwarts as Albert “Baldy” Crawford ’13, Stuart Clement ’17, and Homer Babbidge ’46 found valuable jobs for numerous students, both part-time during the school year and in the summers. And it turned out that the bureau was an informal employment agency for many students following graduation. I hope for the sake of current student solvency that a good home was found for this worthy institution, and that it continues to function. The “worthy institution,” now known as the Student Employment Office, lives on in a university office building at 246 Church Street, though manager Matthew Long says much of the office’s work is done online. For advice on post-graduation employment, students go to Undergraduate Career Services at 55 Whitney Avenue.—Eds. Your article “The Place where Ecology was Born” (July/August) makes me want to share a memory of Evelyn Hutchinson to complement your description of him as a pioneer of ecology. In the early 1950s he would frequently come for tea at the Elizabethan Club. Most of us there were more interested in literature than science. We believed that he was the world’s leading limnologist and vaguely understood that limnology had something to do with ponds, but we knew him as a wonderful Englishman who delighted in talking about literary things and particularly Shakespeare. We enjoyed and appreciated his enthusiasm for our enthusiasms. Older, I have learned something about ponds and about ecology and can now admire him for his science as well as his delightful warmth as a person. I only wish he had shared with us more of what he was doing; but he felt no need to bring in one of his two passions when he was with young people who shared only the other.
The Blueing of the Bowl I served as manager of physical plant for the central area of the Yale campus in the mid-seventies, when my colleagues and I were faced with the condition of the Yale Bowl (Light and Verity, September/October), which even then was precarious. As no funding was available at the time to address the monumental task of completely reversing the deferred maintenance of a stadium only used half a dozen times each year, the decision was made to at least repair and refinish the seating. The selection of the stain was based on samples of the official Yale Blue kept in a safe in Sam Chauncey’s office. The actual application of the stain and wood preservative was done by a group of student painters hired over several summers, as the material had to be applied three times to achieve full penetration. These enthusiastic, albeit amateur, painters finished the summers totally Old Blue, as both their clothes and skin achieved a tint that would have made North African Tuaregs proud. When the word was out that Yale was attempting to restore the seating in the Bowl, we were contacted by a number of vendors of stadium seating. One vendor donated a section of aluminum seating, which was installed where the university’s president normally sits, over the portal on the 50-yard line. The same vendor contacted me in all seriousness to find out how he could donate his body to the Yale School of Medicine. I got him the correct answer, but the irreverent thought later struck me that it was the first time a vendor had offered the institution his very body in an attempt to make a major sale.
Clarification In editing a letter from Sarah Fishman ’87 in the September/October issue about presidential candidates from Yale, we omitted two arguably significant words. Her original letter contained the sentence “Yale is not good because it is better or not than Harvard.” Our removal of the words “or not” may have led readers to believe that she believes Yale is implicitly better than Harvard, an assertion she says she was trying to avoid making. Correction In an article on the men’s heavyweight crew (Sporting Life, September/October), we wrote that former coach David Vogel’s crew won a national championship in 1982. The heavyweight crew did win the title that year, but Vogel was still coaching the men’s lightweight crew at that time. Vogel’s lightweight crews won the Eastern Sprints—then the de facto national championship—in 1979 and 1984, and they won the IRA national championship regatta in 1987.
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