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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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While David Swensen has been a brilliant asset to Yale (“Yale’s $8 Billion Man,” July/August), his comments on the so-called Social Security privatization proposal are rather off-target. He is quoted in the article: “You’re asking people to take responsibility for an activity in which they’ve demonstrated failure,” referring to individuals investing their own money. But the question is not whether individuals' investment decisions would be optimal, as good as David Swensen's, or even as good as those of a mediocre fund manager; it is whether they will lead to returns higher than those currently offered by Social Security. On this score, it seems as though individual investors are not as bad as Mr. Swensen assumes. Mr. Swensen’s quote can be applied not just to investment, but all sorts of economic decisions. Yet centrally planned economies, in which individuals' decisions are subject to the whims of central planners, have been demonstrable failures. Simply because individuals might not make the optimal choices does not mean that the government ought to make those choices for them. As Thomas Jefferson once said, “Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?” Maybe Mr. Swensen ought to ponder this idea more closely. Two additional observations should be added to Marc Gunther’s superb article on David Swensen’s extraordinary incremental financial contributions to Yale, which can be summarized as $1 million more every day—except [President] Rick Levin’s birthday, when it’s $100 million more. As chair of David’s investment committee and as a close observer of professional investing for 40 years, I can reveal two delightful secrets behind Yale’s great success. First, the great distinction of David Swensen’s investing is not the wonderfully superior rate of return. Even more important for a university is the robust strength against risks that has been rigorously built into the endowment’s portfolio structure. This strong defense enables Yale to be bold, innovative, and aggressive on the offense. Superior returns follow a secure structure. Second, David Swensen and his colleague Dean Takahashi have—over many years of caring and diligence—recruited, trained, and nurtured a truly great group of investment professionals and empowered them to excel together as a superb team. My SOM classmate and friend Dean Takahashi deserves many more column inches than Marc Gunther’s otherwise great article dished up. One of the great things Swensen has done is to build up a strong, wide, and deep team, which the article didn’t emphasize enough. Takahashi is a trusted lieutenant, but there are many more, including some who have graduated from the Yale endowment office to those of other universities.
Relevance and the liberal arts Rather than bemoan the parents who wander about during the “college preview days” at his university looking for a pre-law program, Warren Goldstein (“What Would Plato Do?” July/August) ought to start a pre-law program, in combination with other liberal arts and science departments, to guide future lawyers toward a good education. It’s called “marketing,” and even history professors need to engage in it from time to time. It’s also called “helping students,” who often haven’t a clue that the law demands exactly the breadth of outlook, combined with analytic skills, that majors in the liberal arts and sciences foster. I am also surprised to see words like “the electorate no longer learns to think for itself, [as] it learns by rote. and relies … heavily on ‘training’ rather than ‘education’” coming from a professor of American history. It’s not his criticism of our system of vocational education for everybody that I find surprising, but rather the words “no longer.” In my grandmother’s day, most people didn’t get past the eighth grade, but these easily fooled louts elected both Roosevelts, Harry Truman, and Dwight D. Eisenhower, and won two world wars. Two generations before, an equally poorly educated rabble had elected Lincoln, won the Civil War, and ended slavery. Maybe they (and we) weren’t such louts after all. Maybe Abe Lincoln was right when he said, “You may fool all of the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.” Chiseled into the stone face of my high school was a phrase that summarizes much of Warren Goldstein’s article. It read: “The fruit of a liberal education is not learning, but the capacity and desire to learn; not knowledge, but power.” Only once that I know of has my majoring in English gotten in my way in the business world. A personnel interviewer at an ad agency where I sought work soon after college asked why I’d majored in English literature instead of advertising. “Yale has no advertising major,” I said. “Then why didn’t you transfer to some other school?” At that point, I knew I wouldn’t get the job—and that I didn’t want it.
Faculty on Fenn An article entitled “Nobelist Loses to Yale in Lawsuit” (Light and Verity, May/June) reported on the recent adjudication to Yale University of a lucrative patent that had been originally filed by Professor Emeritus John B. Fenn. We do not wish to intervene in legal matters that remain in contention in the appeals process. However, as professors at Yale, we do wish to contribute this statement in support of the character of our friend and colleague. Harsh words were used in the judge’s decision that are incompatible with our experience during many years of interaction with John. In support of our longtime friend, we wish to state that, in addition to being a source of inspiration and, for many of us, guidance, he epitomized the highest ethical standards in his interaction with each of us. Furthermore, he is known for his frugality and modesty. Consequently, the present implication that he might have “stolen” intellectual property to enrich himself is totally contrary to the modus operandi of the man we know. In our opinion, the current situation might best be described by an alternative headline: “Everybody loses—Yale University included.”
Uncle Sid’s spirit This week’s mail brought copies of the Yale, Stanford, and Wisconsin alumni magazines. We look forward to them all, since they all shed different lights on various bits of college and worldly life. This was a good issue of the Yale Alumni Magazine, but what I really want to comment on is the fund-raising ad for Dwight Hall featuring former university chaplain Sidney Lovett. I can’t remember a day that Uncle Sid took attendance, as indicated in the ad’s photo caption; few students would miss the fun of his classes. A faulty, blinking lamp would produce a comment about “lightning on Mount Sinai.” An impending football game would elicit a bet for a glass of half and half at Mory’s. And the warmth of the Dwight Hall surroundings was far more comfortable than a common classroom. The current Stanford magazine features a story about Sam Harris, Stanford '89, who has just written a book endorsing atheism as a cure for worldly ills. If Harris had sat in Uncle Sid’s classes about the Bible as literature, he would recognize the positive power that can come from religion. Sid Lovett lived a life of total service inside and outside of Yale, based on his firm belief in the potential goodness of man, as revealed in the Bible but not restricted to any one hard religious belief. I am sure the spirit of Uncle Sid will fill the renovated Dwight Hall, and I most sincerely hope that every effort will be made to continue his kind of warm and wonderful teaching there.
Yale and the UCC The decision of the Yale chaplaincy to sever ties to the United Church of Christ (“Gods and Man at Yale,” May/June) seems to be overlooking fruitful ties to a vibrant, ecumenical, socially concerned denomination whose slogan, “God is still speaking,” points to its strong desire to connect theology with a variety of current issues. The UCC is not just Congregationalist. Its roots include strands of the Reformed, Evangelical, and Christian denominations, which were the first “born-in-America” churches stressing lay ministry, a subject which should be of interest to Yale students. With its Peace and Justice Ministry, the UCC addresses a variety of social issues at home and abroad. Local churches are encouraged to send youth and adult missions to both local and more distant areas for building construction and repair, food service to the impoverished, work with social service agencies, and community clean-ups. These would all seem to be areas where Yale students and Battell Chapel might well wish to be engaged and where the resources of the UCC could be quite helpful. It would appear that the seeming lack of enthusiasm on the part of students is the responsibility, at least in part, of the Yale chaplaincy and not because of ties to the United Church of Christ, which is not, as your recent article seemed to imply, a kind of ossified Congregationalism. Your report about the recommendation to the administration to sever ties between Battell Chapel (the Church of Christ in Yale) and the United Church of Christ denomination left me mystified. What possible benefit can they have in mind? That the current members of the church are not being given a say in the matter shows that even after 248 years, the administration has not learned the basic Congregational (and democratic) tenet of local say in church governance. I attended Battell Chapel regularly in my student days, and I consistently found worship services there intellectually stimulating and spiritually challenging. I knew that Battell Chapel was affiliated with the United Church of Christ and in that way sustained Yale’s historic ties to its Congregational roots. But worship services wore the Congregational way lightly and could hardly have been more ecumenical. I was not aware of any test of doctrine or belief that would have kept people raised in other traditions away. That openness is a characteristic of the United Church of Christ. By severing Battell Chapel’s ties to the United Church of Christ, Yale appears to be responding to some impulse of the moment without making any real gain in ecumenism.
Reviewers rebuked I’m glad I got the book Yale in New Haven: Architecture and Urbanism before seeing Aaron Betsky’s review (Arts and Culture, May/June), although I probably would have bought it anyway based on my admiration for Vincent Scully and Paul Goldberger. My reaction was very different from that of Mr. Betsky. Mention of Old Testament sources does not amount to a “strangely evangelical tone.” Did the reviewer actually read Scully’s marvelous last chapter? It was not a “fairy tale about a place that never really was.” There is surely nothing wrong (indeed something profoundly right!) about envisioning ideals, short of which realities may have fallen. Vincent Scully provides ample coverage of the economic and political realities of university and town: the failures as well as the successes. Mr. Betsky laments that “a thorough analysis of the material history of Yale and New Haven … remains to be written.” He failed to notice the one he had in his hands, which also provides a vivid and compelling spiritual and ideological history as well. I heartily recommend the book to alumni and anyone interested in architecture and the dynamics (and, yes, the dreams) of American cities. I found the review of Natalie Krinsky’s debut novel, Chloe Does Yale (Arts and Culture, July/August), to be unnecessarily negative and demeaning. For an article celebrating beach reads, why pan the selected choices? While I hope that the Yale Alumni Magazine takes a critical eye to certain issues, beach reads are not foremost on the list. At least the hot pink cover will cheer up any beach towel, unlike the reviewer’s wet-blanket approach.
When Eli met Tony It was heartening to read “The 'Tender Little Experiment' That Worked” (Arts and Culture, July/August) regarding Broadway’s latest hit musical, The Light in the Piazza. You delightfully described Victoria Clark’s ['82] Tony Award for best actress as a “Cinderella story.” I believe your readers would be interested to know about another Tony winner for The Light in the Piazza: Michael Yeargan '73MFA, a professor of design at the drama school, who won for best scenic design of a musical. An amazing 12 Tony Awards this year were awarded to Yale alumni, half of which were for The Light in the Piazza.
A Gibbs tale The news that a stamp has been issued commemorating Yale scientist Josiah Willard Gibbs (Light and Verity, May/June) reminded me of an amusing anecdote about him which may not be known outside my family. My mother-in-law, who grew up in New Haven, remembered several incidents involving Gibbs, who was a friend as well as a colleague of Eugene Lamb Richards, her father. Once Richards and Gibbs were deer hunting at Richards’s camp in the Adirondacks. Gibbs was in the bow of the guide boat with a rifle when a deer took off through the low brush at the edge of the lake, but he did not fire. Richards asked him why he let the opportunity pass, and Gibbs said he was considering the equation described by the movements of the deer’s white tail.
Another Yalie who never was I recently watched the movie Harvey and was tickled to hear one of the characters say to Elwood P. Dowd (played by Jimmy Stewart), “We’ve missed you at the Yale Club dances.” It made me think of that article you published a while back (“The Ten Greatest Yalies Who Never Were,” February 2003). Keep up the good work. We all need a bit of whimsy in our lives!
Sumo kudos I don’t know when I’ve been as entertained or as heartened by an article in your magazine as when I read the interview with Kena Heffernan '96 on his exploits as a sumo wrestler (Where They Are Now, May/June). I have been entertained, mystified, and awed by watching sumo on Japanese television, so it was great to read Heffernan’s story and to learn of his personal history in the sport as well as the way in which that history fits into the larger traditions of sumo culture. Heffernan’s combination of great seriousness and self-effacing humor increased my admiration for both this young man and his chosen avocation. May his success continue!
Correction A photograph of the Free Church Psalm Singers that appeared on page 60 of our July/August issue should have been credited to Robert Lisak. We regret the error.
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