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The Path to the Great Stage
How a historian sees Yale’s past
October 1999
by Bruce Fellman
A major anniversary is always a time of reflection, and as the University began thinking about appropriate ways to celebrate its 300th birthday, an updated history (the celebrated chronicle of Yale’s past by the late George Pierson only went as far as 1937) was high on the list of priorities. Two years ago, President Levin asked Gaddis Smith, the Larned Professor of History, to take on the job of examining the evolution of the University’s place in the modern world.
Smith was a natural choice: He is a specialist in international relations, and his Yale roots go deep. A member of the Class of 1954 who was chairman of the Yale Daily News and received his doctorate in history from Yale in 1961, Smith has, except for a brief stint at Duke, spent his entire career at the University. “I’ve known or met all but the first two Presidents and Yale College deans who have served this century, and I’ve seen a lot of our history first-hand,” he explains.
The result of Smith’s examination of both his own memory and the University’s vast archives is to be a book, Yale and the External World: The Shaping of the University in the Twentieth Century, that will be published next year by Yale University Press. Parts of the work-in-progress, which the author expects to include 24 chapters and be over 600 pages long, were used in the fall semester of 1998 as the text of Smith’s DeVane Lectures. These explored how Yale evolved from a “very insular and isolated place” at the beginning of the century to an institution that plays a powerful role on an increasingly international stage at the century’s end.
In the book, Smith expands on this basic theme and discusses how it has played out in such areas as curriculum, admissions, the faculty, and identity. “The ideal 'Yale man' used to be a WASP of the right stock,” notes Smith. “But as we recognized that other people have a place here, the University has had to change and grow. Looking back over the last 100 years, it’s become clear to me that Yale’s worst moments have come from intolerance, and it’s been at its best when it developed a relaxed confidence and became open to people of differing views and backgrounds.”
While Smith says that his investigations did not turn up “anything that totally blows my mind,” they did emphasize the role that Yale’s leaders have played in terms of whether change is accepted or rejected. “Presidents really are important,” says the historian, who characterizes Whitney Griswold as “the most charming President,” A. Bartlett Giamatti as the “darkest pessimist” and a “deeply haunted man,” and current President Levin as an “optimist.”
“My hero is Kingman Brewster,” notes Smith. “He presided over challenging times, and he stressed that Yale people could make a difference in the world.”
There’s been something of a retrenchment since the turbulent 1960s, and though students and the University are very active in the local community, “there seems to be little interest in the broad national and international issues,” says Smith. “In fact, students are quieter than at any time since the 1950s, and I’d like to see them taking a stronger stand.”
But what seems like complacency may, says the historian, be nothing more than the failure, so far, of universities to “create an international role for themselves.”
In the last baccalaureate address of the decade, President Levin urged graduates to “take more interest in public issues at the national and global level.” Smith expects that this tack will set Yale’s direction for the next century. “As I look ahead, I’m very optimistic,” he says.  |
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