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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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The Yale Alumni Magazine has won an award for the article “For Country” (May/June 2004), by Warren Goldstein '73, '83PhD, with commentary by Slate editor Jacob Weisberg '86, a member of the Yale Alumni Magazine’s governing board. The article, which looked at why so many recent presidential candidates have come from Yale, earned a gold medal in the category “Best Articles of the Year” from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education. In addition, the magazine’s July/August issue won a bronze award in the category “Visual Design in Print.”—Eds.
Pepper’s take Kudos to President Richard Levin for appointing John Pepper as vice president for finance and administration at Yale, charged with bringing order to a chaotic situation (“Mr. Clean,” March/April). I just wonder what took so long. Fifty years ago, Professor Thomas Spates taught those of us who took his course that decent human relations always worked in all environments of human endeavor. Professor Spates would have loved to use what John Pepper has accomplished as a perfect case study of his beliefs and teachings: that treating your employees with respect and involving them in the decisions that affect them is not just good business, but the right thing to do. And it works in all cultures, including the Ivy League. In your article by Richard Conniff about John Pepper, there is a quotation regarding the fact that anyone who won a Nobel Prize can do what he or she wants and the bureaucracy at Yale not be bothered. Since I am the only person on the Yale campus with a Nobel Prize, please excuse me if I take that statement to refer directly to me. In fact, I have complained about Mr. Pepper’s new rules for the reporting of expense accounts. At one point I objected to the need to specify what all my guests ate at a dinner for scientists that I hosted. I was told that was a mistake. On another occasion, I complained about the need to specify exactly what I was doing on a trip that had been noted for the purpose of delivering a lecture and exactly what my particular expenses covered—e.g., taxi—which were all itemized. I do not generally question the rules of my behavior at Yale, but I did find that some of the new rules were absolutely ludicrous and were demeaning to the honesty of the faculty. Perhaps the new rules for expense reporting were drafted by someone under Mr. Pepper’s authority, but Mr. Pepper was not aware of them. I certainly applaud some of the other accomplishments Mr. Pepper has achieved. Contrary to the opinions expressed in Mr. Conniff’s article, I do not believe that the members of the faculty are the most important elements of the Yale community: the students are. Our article quoted an unidentified senior manager who said that faculty often “feel they can do what they want because they won the Nobel Prize, or they’re the great cancer researcher.” This employee, who does not work in Altman’s department and was not familiar with his complaint, was using “Nobel Prize” and “great cancer researcher” as shorthand to describe the eminence of Yale faculty members. As for Altman’s view on the reporting of expense accounts, John Pepper says that the expense management policy for the university is being reviewed and updated “to ensure that it is as appropriate, clear, and realistic as possible.”—Eds. I was struck by only one thought reading the article “Mr. Clean”: if it seems too good to be true, it probably is! I’m glad the corporate culture of the twenty-first century is finally getting to Yale, but the article left me wondering: at what cost? And the emphasis of the article was basically costs (and the public appreciation of Yale’s workers' morale). I’m hoping that even half the optimism portrayed in the article is true, and I’m not doubting Mr. Pepper’s sainthood at all.
In the March/April issue (Letters), Wayne Pacelle '87, president and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States, wrote that scientists “often inflict pain, distress, injury, or debilitation on animals in laboratories, yet keep beloved companion animals in their homes.” I am a biomedical scientist at Yale who does research with rats and mice. (The vast majority of biomedical research is done with rodents.) I would like Mr. Pacelle to know that I have respect and affection for both the pets in my home and the animals I work with in the laboratory. Indeed, I have had pet rats at home, along with the usual assortment of cats, dogs, guinea pigs, and rabbits. I call the vet right away if I am worried about an overgrown tooth or a change in appetite, whether that animal is a pet or one in my lab. Please realize that just because scientists are objective and cool-headed about our data does not mean that we are cold-hearted about the animals we work with. I have asked to have my name withheld from this letter because I am afraid to reveal my identity. Animal rights groups continue to target scientists and destroy their labs. I know that the Humane Society does not sponsor such activities, but other groups do promote this destruction. Scientists are too afraid to defend themselves, fearing that if they speak out they will be the next target. I want to assure the readership of the Yale Alumni Magazine that there are numerous federal laws pertaining to the treatment of laboratory animals, and our facilities are frequently inspected to ensure that every procedure is done humanely and properly. Ironically, our society has a very different standard for how we treat rodents outside of the lab—poisons and glue traps are sold in our local grocery and hardware stores, even though these products can cause painful deaths. I use Havahart traps in my home to try to treat wild rodents humanely as well. As much as we would all like to make scientific breakthroughs without the use of animals, it is irresponsible to think that this is possible. Human physiology is extraordinarily complex, and it rarely can be mimicked by computer models or cells in a dish. We work very hard to try to alleviate human suffering. Please recognize that we also truly care about the animals we work with. The Yale Alumni Magazine confirms the identity of all letter writers and withholds names only in rare circumstances.—Eds.
Science and sewing May I add a comment to the debate about women in science and engineering (From the Editor, March/April)? My wife and I have two children in their forties, both women, both engineers. The elder is a deep-water drilling engineer who has designed and supervised wells for oil companies. I have been asked how the daughters of a professor of Spanish literature entered such fields. My answer is that their mother taught them to make their own clothes. It became obvious to me when I remembered how I observed them at an early age learning to create curved objects from flat patterns. About 20 years ago my wife and I went to a large dinner party. In attendance were well-known physicians, lawyers, psychologists, and others. The women and men split after dinner into separate groups, but well within hearing range of each other. I was surprised when most of the men agreed that Madame Curie had been one of the few great female scientists. The wives were visibly upset. I then remarked: “And isn’t it strange that Jackie Robinson was the first great black baseball player.” President Summers of Harvard might have fit in nicely with those men.
Where there’s smoke It was morbidly funny that a couple of pages after the “Presidential Politics” Q&A with Rick Levin in the March/April issue, there was a blurb about “another reason for teens to avoid tobacco,” based on the excellent research of Leslie Jacobsen. Maybe next time, your editor can forgo a few of the usual softballs and ask about Yale’s continuing investment in Big Tobacco. After all, more than half of Yale undergrads are teens, who should by all means avoid tobacco. And why not throw in a question about Yale’s absurdly immoral use of sweatshop labor while she’s at it? That would be the start of a Q&A that might answer some real questions.
The roots of “groupthink” Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld’s article “Why It’s So Hard to Blow the Whistle” (Forum, March/April) points out desirable “elements of governance” for the boardroom, but there are deeper problems than “groupthink” that he does not mention. One starts in childhood when most parents and teachers tell children not to “tattle-tale” because “nobody likes a snitch.” This philosophy makes the adults' lives easier since it eliminates dealing with many problems, but is also provides few clues the child can use to determine what should be reported. Perhaps this is one source of “groupthink.” This reporting, however, is important to democracy. To maintain a civil society in which the police are not parked on every corner, citizens must supplement the eyes and ears of the police and feel able to do so without fear of consequences. But beyond this, democracy requires a tipping point that is contrary to human nature. A democracy’s advantage is the natural competition of ideas, but at some point, the competition must become cooperation or nothing will get done. Democracy requires this unnatural change. Imagine the chaos if one political party continued to foster uprisings and marches on Washington long after the other had won. It is not surprising that much of the world has not learned this ability, for it is almost impossible by definition. How and when should competition be turned into cooperation and “loyalty"? This problem, and an awareness of its difficulty, should remain on the surface of all business transactions, for the very nature of business competition is to cut all the corners it can find. Every business dictum such as “buy low and sell high” implies taking advantage of competitors and customers. Indeed, everybody’s eyes should stay open and searching for mistakes rather than blinded by loyalty and the fear of being a snitch. Back in the 1970s, I had a letter published in this magazine about the closing of the Army and Navy ROTC programs at Yale and the effect this decision was having on Yale’s reputation and among its alumni. I am writing this time about the placing of restrictions on armed forces recruiters in response to some Defense Department policies, notably regarding gays in the military (Light and Verity, March/April). I retired in 1975 after 25 years as a Marine officer, serving in combat in Korea and Vietnam; recuperating in hospitals after some unpleasant wounds; and in a broad variety of stations both in the United States and overseas. During my active service I met many Yale people, especially in the early days in Korea, where I served with brave Yale Marines. While I have my own opinions regarding gays in the military, I prefer not to address that subject now. Instead, I want to focus on the certain result of Yale’s policies. The United States armed forces are not going to change their policies based on Yale campus politics, and rightly so. They will simply look elsewhere to recruit the people needed to keep our forces strong. Yale is currently underrepresented in the military—especially on both the lists of heroes and on the casualty lists for Korea, for the other Cold War conflicts, and for the current war on terrorism. Future generations of Americans may wonder why so few Yale graduates show up on these lists. Perhaps there should be a plaque in Woolsey Hall to explain this anomaly; otherwise, future generations of Yale students may well wonder what happened to the successors of Nathan Hale. When I entered Yale in 1941, our country was faced with a world in conflict. I decided that the patriotic thing to do would be to join the ROTC so that I would be prepared to serve my country. I was in the ROTC for two years before I left Yale to go into the service. I felt then and still feel that our national defense benefits in having well-educated officers, and that Yale should be promoting that education. I know that some time ago Yale decided to drop its ROTC program. At that time I felt it was a wrong move. Now, with the current world situation, I find Yale’s position regarding the ROTC completely untenable. The trend for some other universities to not even allow armed service recruiters on campus is totally ridiculous. It is all very well to be against war in theory, but to compromise our nation’s capability to defend itself borders on treason. If the university continues its present position in these matters, I will be forced to take a long, hard look at where I spend my money for educational donations. James Blacklock of the Yale Law Republicans thinks the Law School should make an exception to its anti-discrimination policy for the military (Light & Verity, March/April). “The military needs the brightest lawyers it can get, now more than ever,” he writes, “and it needs them a lot more than law firms need another document proofreader.” Why does the military need lawyers? To write more memos justifying torture? To draft more arguments against bans on whale-killing sonar? To draw up more $22-billion contracts for Lockheed fighter jets? Now more than ever, we need the brightest to repudiate the horrific, nonstop violence visited upon the world by the U.S. military, and to wrest the purse away from the killing machine. Money for food, jobs, and housing! Bill Cole '65 writes of his concern about Yale’s discouraging military influence on campus (Letters, March/April). This seemingly universal attitude throughout the Yale campus community, when coupled with the ideas and writings expressed in this magazine over the past few years, brings sadness, if not dismay, to this old grad. When I returned to college after sharing the fighting through the entire course of World War II, in the South Pacific, Mediterranean, Atlantic, and United Kingdom, I had plenty of company. Many if not most of my campus contemporaries had served, fought, and bled, and, as I did and still do, felt it a privilege to stand up and fight for Old Glory, that flag we loved so deeply. But that was the Old Yale, which had strong roots in tradition, pride, and respect. Now we see a New Yale that many of us cannot recognize. The depth of current patriotism at Yale apparently is shallow indeed, steeped as it is in both faculty and student indifference to national defense. I perceive a New Yale swimming without direction in a vast and uneasy sea, questioning the old institutions (such as the widely reported diatribe by a recent female alumnus about Skull and Bones), politically heavily unbalanced, with little care for the well-being of the greatest country this planet has ever known, trafficking in homosexuality, etc., etc. Perhaps Yale will couple its unwillingness to share the military burden with withdrawal from football and any other contact sports. That would fit. Respect is a powerful word, for without that element there can be no true love or even honest friendship. What’s left?
Kind words Being a 1958 graduate, I have had the privilege of seeing rather many issues of your magazine. The last few issues have been very fine! The March/April 2005 issue was particularly superb. The features “Are You Charlotte Simmons?” and “Mr. Clean” and the Letters, Light and Verity, Milestones, Scene on Campus, and Out of the Blue departments were well written and extremely interesting. Thank you for helping all those small and insignificant alumni like me regain or retain the feeling that Yale is truly a great university. I want to express my appreciation for the professional hard work that the staff invests in each issue of the Yale Alumni Magazine. It used to be my pattern to skim most of the magazine, slowing down for a few articles and the appropriate years of class notes. An evolution has occurred in the magazine, as you are producing a magazine that is taking a lot more of my time. And it is time well spent. Congratulations on your product and thank you for your efforts.
Mazel tov, Mr. Ehrenkranz N. Joel Ehrenkranz’s anecdote (Out of the Blue, March/April), in which a Yale divinity student was kindly invited to join a New Jersey Passover Seder in 1943, was edifying as well as entertaining. Phrases such as "Dar schicken to Yale” and accounts of the varying degrees of religious observance remind us of the pluralistic culture we live in. I checked the dictionary for the full meaning of “maven,” which Ehrenkranz used three times to describe his sophisticated older brother Gilbert. Maven, meaning “expert, connoisseur, often especially a self-proclaimed one,” comes from Yiddish. Even at the level of language itself, the interaction of a smaller community with the larger one soon makes itself apparent.
A not-so-fictional river In Bruce Fellman’s article “The Map that Changed the West” (March/April), the Multnomah River is called “invented” and “pure fiction.” It is anything but. First, note that the river is labeled “Multnomah or Wal la mut.” There is a Willamette River. It empties into the Columbia right where William Clark has it, and the lower 150 miles or so are fairly accurately depicted. The worst that he appears guilty of is guessing about the headwaters of the Multnomah/Willamette and making it about twice as long as it really is. It is simply out of character to believe that a careful observer like Clark would put total fictions into his map. Yes, the map is distorted and contains inaccuracies, but it is inconceivable that Clark would have put anything on his map that did not have some basis in fact. We were wrong to refer to the river as “pure” fiction. John Logan Allen, the University of Wyoming geography professor and expert on American maps of the period whom we quoted in the article, explains that Clark noted the location of the mouth of the Willamette (or Multnomah)—then made an educated guess as to its length and route that was quite inaccurate.—Eds.
Keep Yale Congregational It is outrageous to consider abandoning Yale’s connection with the United Church of Christ-Congregational Church (Light and Verity, March/April). Yale has lots of spaces suitable for ecumenical worship without severing this important link with its past. And Rick Levin should be nervous—as Judith Ann Schiff reports in the Old Yale column in the same issue, President Timothy Cutler lost his job for attempting to switch Yale’s religious affiliation.
What it takes to look natural I want to express my great admiration for the remarkable January/February issue of the Yale Alumni Magazine. I read it practically from cover to cover, finding each article not only fascinating and well written, but covering a wide range and most informative. One of my reactions was more complex, though. James Prosek’s brief reference (in “Object Lesson”) to John James Audubon’s scientific preparations for his wonderful, so-natural-looking bird paintings shocked me, though I should have known better. Are some illusions perhaps worth preserving? I was reminded of a similar moment of disillusionment, experienced 49 years ago when I was able to watch the filming of a scene in a Hollywood studio. Jimmy Stewart was racing down a set of stairs toward a small platform with a chair and table on which a phone was ringing. He picked up the receiver, said “Hello,” and the scene was over. Though not quite: he went through the same gestures five times, then the crew dispersed. That was it! It took me a long time to forget this insider look at the magic of moviemaking.
Who’s No. 1? You refer to John Trumbull as the preeminent artist of the American Revolution (Last Look, March/April). As a longtime resident of the Rhode Island village where Gilbert Stuart was born a quarter of a millennium ago, I wish to demur. The dollar bill causes me to believe you will find that almost all Americans are familiar with Stuart’s work.
Corrections A Light and Verity article about the University Council Committee on Religious Life (March/April) reported that the Church of Christ in Yale will be dissolved if President Levin acts on one of the committee’s recommendations. In fact, the church will continue to exist under that name, but it will no longer be affiliated with the United Church of Christ and will no longer be a self-governing congregation. A review of When Nothing Else Matters by Michael Leahy '75 (March/April) referred to the work as Leahy’s first book. In fact, he also wrote the 1988 book Hard Lessons: Senior Year at Beverly Hills High School. We regret the errors.
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