Tag Archives: Yale

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Bush today announced his appointments to the WMD commission: six moderate to conservative federal judges and government officials and Yale President Richard Levin. While Levin has no background in intelligence, he was the first guest in the Bush White House – and not to worry, he’s returned the favor for Bush in New Haven as well. Bush and Levin also see eye to eye on the National Labor Relations Board (and, perhaps, the postal service), and share several mutual friends. This appointment only confirms the unseriousness of Bush’s inquiry.

Not to worry – several students, on a few minutes notice, were there to protest outside as Levin addressed the press in Woodbridge Hall. When he came outside and one of us, Thomas Frampton, asked Levin what justified his selection, Levin told him he had “Something you lack: an open mind,” before turning and stepping into a police vehicle to drive away from students asking to speak to him about the yawning conflict of interest. And they say irony is dead…

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Phoebe ponders the Yale Herald‘s cover story on the search for the “Yale intellectual” and the different contextual meanings of the term:

here, “intellectual” as a term, as a marker of identity, is establishment, is upper-class white maleness. of course. but at ihs, intellectual, not those things already, was so entirely disestablishment, so entirely a rebellion against the student-governmentized majority (was it a majority, or did it just seem so, i wonder now?). intellectual was such a blatant marker of excludedness, a term infused with so much not belonging, a term disdainfully refused by the included…intellectual was not about the western canon (nobody gave a damn about a handful of white, european philosophers virtually no one read) but about the personhood of the less-formally-accepted folk. and owning the term was an empowering tool.

On the one hand, as I told the Herald,

I think that too often “intellectualism” is used as a convenient cipher to avoid discussing class – saying you prefer people who share an intellectual perspective is easier for many people than saying that you feel more comfortable around people who share the same amount of privilege. While intellectual may be an adjective that has meaning in describing activities, or spheres of individuals’ lives, I think it’s difficult to use intellectual as a noun to identify people without implicitly creating a boundary between those who count as intellectuals and those who do not.

And on the other hand – the part of the interview they didn’t print – I think “Anti-intellectualism” is also too convenient a mask for privilege, as it gives cover for the super-rich – like our current President – to feign a faux populism when shooting down progressive ideas by associating them with a mythical “cultural elite.”

Intellectualism at Yale has another meaning as well though – a pursuit of ideas divorced from their impact on the surrounding world – an unfortunate excuse for avoiding the education that comes from challenging your ideals in you interactions in the world. To me the letters I received from administrators during strikes here, telling me that my responsibility was to cross working peoples’ picket lines to get to class and learn how to be a leader, represent the worst contortion of intellectualism. And if being an intellectual college student means – as administrators here have suggested by their instructions in times of crisis – being sat on for four years in order to then hatch and go on to face the outside world, then I want none of it.

And yet, I know what Phoebe means when she writes,

i can’t but feel sad that the word has been taken away from me

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Another unfortunate YDN staff editorial:

As great an activist as he may be, we are beginning to tire of Jackson’s seemingly endless campaign against the so-called evils of Yale…Yale should be mindful of the power its successful investment office wields, and how its practices can and do affect the world around it. But for Jesse Jackson to dictate how Yale manages its own assets is entirely inappropriate.

In other words, it’s OK for Yale to do the right thing, just as long as it doesn’t have to appearance to being a response to demands from New Haveners, students, or any other uppity interlopers. Which is pretty much the message of the Yale Office of Public Affairs as well.

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Jacob Remes points out a History News Network account of the tension at the annual Business meeting of the American Historical Association, which he attended, over the successfully passed resolution calling on Yale to respect the right of its graduate students to organize. Yale History Chairman and candidate for Yale College Dean Jon Butler made the unfortunate argument that it was “presumptuous” for historians to concern themselves in a dispute over free speech and the right to organize and the specious argument that calling for a fair process to determine whether GESO represents the majority of graduate students is unfair to any other potential graduate student organizations, and finally tried and failed to stall the resolution on procedural grounds.

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The Yale Corporation met this weekend and agreed, in response to a sustained mobilization by community members, and a broad coalition of students, to extend its Homebuyer Program to all of Fair Haven, prompting an official announcement yesterday of the policy shift VP Bruce Alexander promised last month. This is a real victory for light and truth at Yale.

The Corporation also appointed its Senior Fellow, John Pepper of Proctor and Gamble, to replace the Vice President for Finance and Administration seat Bob Culver left over the summer. Let’s hope he makes a better effort to respond constructively to the demands of working people than his predecessor. Replacing Culver as Senior Fellow will be long-time GWB friend Roland Betts.

Meanwhile, tonight at 6:30 PM members of Local 34 and GESO will march out of their membership meetings and converge on Cross Campus for a powerful Human Rights Day action demanding change in the University’s policy towards its female workers. Be there. Barbara Ehrenreich will be.

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Linda Mason, who sits on the Yale Corporation and its sub-committee specifically responsible for the perpetuation of labor policies threatening the economic security and family life of working mothers’ families, received some deserved criticism last year when she wrote a book calling “A Working Mother’s Guide to Life” with chapters on topics like “Making Your Nanny Your Friend.” Her hypocrisy was dramatized last year when working class working mothers from Yale’s Local 34 and GESO showed up uninvited at her book reception with the rest of the Corporation. Yesterday, moms and kids showed up to a public talk Mason was giving and challenged her, as head of a lucrative child care business, to pursue workable child care opportunities for Yale employees. Let’s hope this time she takes the message to heart.

Meanwhile, GESO has released a new report on the state of diversity among Yale’s graduate students and faculty, and the YDN considers the progress yet to be made on Yale’s commitment in the strike settlement to expanding job access to Latinos.

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After several months of community mobilization, Yale – New Haven Hospital has now agreed to remove most of liens it placed on the homes of those in New Haven unfortunate to be both poor and sick. This is a great step forward in the struggle for a Hospital that deals justly with its employees and its patients. Check out CCNE’s new report for more on the issue.

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The Times reports on a new national clergy lobby designed to speak from a place of religious faith in calling for economic justice, civil liberties, and ethical foreign policy, and to disrupt the conservative monopoly on religion in political discourse:

“Clergy have to be careful not to rush in with solutions to big problems, but when they see gross injustice they have an obligation not to be silent,” [Sloane] Coffin said. “The arrogance and self-righteousness of the present administration are very dangerous. And silence by members of the clergy, in the face of such arrogance, is tantamount to betrayal of the Gospel or the Torah or the Koran.”

Several of the political group’s founders are from Midwestern and Southern states, including Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia, which Mr. Pennybacker called “battleground areas” in which moderate and progressive Christians have been losing their “political voice” to Christian conservatives.

Jenny Backus, a Democratic consultant working with the new group, said: “There’s been a concerted effort by Christian conservatives to question the faith of people who disagree with their positions in the same way that they question their patriotism. The Clergy Leadership Network will now be the amen corner for people of faith who express disagreement with the administration and the Christian Right.”

…”In many people’s minds the words `conservative’ and `liberal’ are firmly linked with positions on lifestyle issues,” Mr. Green said. “Within such a diverse coalition, these clergy undoubtedly have congregations with different views on gay rights and abortion. But they may be able to find common ground on issues like war and peace, social welfare and the need for jobs.”

Last night, incidentally, was the first meeting of Yale’s newly revived Jews for Justice group, also in part an effort to create a space for Jews on the left to articulate a social justice agenda supported by our Jewish tradition and our Jewish values, while providing a counterbalancing voice to those on this campus and nationally arguing that only hawkish views are authentically Jewish, or that only foreign policy should be a Jewish issue.

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Faced with a compelling narrative Tuesday – students come together in a broad and diverse coalition to demand that Yale cease redlining Fair Haven, and the head of ONHSA shows up to announce a dramatic change in University policy after years of organizing in the community for change, the YDN and the Reigister found a peculiar way of covering it: The YDN wrote a story about the student demand which downplayed the concession by the administration, and the Register wrote a story about the change in University policy which downplays the students’ demand for it…This is one of those cases where you would need at a minimum to read both stories to begin to get a sense of what’s going on here.

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The polls open for the New Haven Aldermanic elections in another ten hours. As I’ve noted here before, Ward One, where I and the majority of Yale undergraduates live, is made up almost entirely of students and represented by one, which provides a unique opportunity to engage with local politics. The race tomorrow pits an incumbent who’s worked to use that seat to build strong coalitions of common interest and shared vision with people and movements throughout the city against a challenger who believes that seat should be the Yale Corporation’s bulwark against the frustration of the rest of the city. Ben Healey’s built a strong record of progressive struggle and real change over the past years, advancing clean elections, living wages, environmental justice, domestic partnership, and the right to organize. That’s why Mayor John DeStefano and a diverse group of student leaders came out to stand with an enthusiastic crowd in support of Ben. And that’s why students – LWB readers included – should and will turn out tomorrow to re-elect him.

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This front-page story in the YDN focuses on the committee formed in Local 35 which will consider fines – along with other approaches, like new organizing approaches – as a response to the 1 to 2 percent of the membership that continued working during the strike. It’s quite similar to a story the YDN ran a couple weeks back on the same topic, also as a top story. What’s missing is a conversation with any of the hundreds of members who’ve pushed for a response; their absence contributes to the sense that setting up a committee is some kind of autocratic punitive stratagem by Bob Proto. That sense, and the erasure of workers from the narrative, are furthered by the absence of any mention of Bob Proto’s uncontested re-election as President of Local 35 yesterday, or of the race for Chief Steward.

Also misleading is this front-page analysis which continues the YDN’s narrative of GESO of late: GESO sinned by organizing and was punished by losing the referendum last spring, and has since redeemed itself by pushing issues instead. While this account has meant some less openly nasty coverage of GESO by the YDN of late, it demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the way the labor movement works, one shared by too many students. Unions don’t choose between pushing issues to make members happy or organizing to make their leaders happy. Unions organize by bringing workers together through common experience and interest and shared issues, and unions bring change on issues through the power of their organizing. GESO has, as the YDN acknowledges, been responsible for substantive change in the benefits and resources Yale makes available to its graduate students. But only through the power of its organizing, and the threat of unionization. So while it’s true, and admirable, and GESO has conducted an exciting series of surveys, produced damning and enlightening reports, and generated its first unified platform over the past months, pushing for change on the issues which affect graduate students is not a new development – and organizing and fighting for recognition are not only old news.

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The most telling part of this piece in today’s Times is the end:

And even some who oppose the union drive acknowledge that both sides bear responsibility for the current climate.

James Terry, president of At What Cost?, a campus group opposed to the union, said that the university had grown increasingly inflexible on labor issues and that he was among many on campus who have been alienated by the stubbornness and language of union organizers.

“They have some intrusive recruitment tactics,” Mr. Terry said, adding that a graduate student he knows was approached by organizers about membership nine times after she initially refused. “I don’t think that Yale is treating us so bad that we need to compare ourselves to Birmingham in 1963,” he said, “and that’s what GESO will do, and I find that personally offensive.”

Still, even union opponents like Mr. Terry see some cause for alarm in the suggestion that some students, rightly or wrongly, feel threatened if they speak out. “There is reason to be concerned,” he said. “The academy runs on different precepts. Differences of opinion have to be respected. If even one of these cases should be true, that’s something people at all universities should be concerned about.”

Terry’s first comment sets forth the tired dichotomies that GESO opponents of all backgrounds have relied on: between a historical epoch in which real injustice existed and a modern period of mere political differences; between poor sympathetic workers who have the right to organize and wealthy sheltered ones who don’t. But his more interesting contribution, following At What Cost’s line before the Academic Labor Board, is his politically smart refusal to defend the intimidation tactics of Yale’s administration. AWC has also declined to endorse Yale’s stonewalling through refusal to meet with GESO and refusal to agree to acknowledge even the results of an NLRB election. As long as AWC wants to frame itself as a grassroots operation interested solely in democratic deliberation (a difficult mantle to take on, even if all the charges nationally of faculty members making illegal contributions to such groups are true, simply because AWC is benefiting in fighting GESO from the pressure power of the entire University apparatus), it saves face better this way. But it leaves the Yale administration, in its most aggregious violations of its own principles – intimidation of students and refusal of the right to a vote – without any semblance of student support.