A Misbegotten Candidacy for the Yale Corporation

A Misbegotten Candidacy for the Yale Corporation

This time, character matters as much as ideology. I’m very sorry to have to open up a controversy on our class website, but some classmates’ obviously well-intentioned support for Jamie Kirchick’s write-in candidacy to become a trustee of Yale deserves a substantive response. Exercising my freedom of speech (Remember the Woodward Report?!), I’ll unload a…

Remember The New Journal?  Here’s Its First Year!

Remember The New Journal? Here’s Its First Year!

The New Journal began in 1967, the brainchild of Yale Daily News expatriates Pete Yeager and Dan Yergin, both ’68.   It was student-run and free — one of the first serious, college publications that didn’t require a subscription.
A few of us ’69ers joined that first year:  Paul Malamud, Howard Newman, Jean-Pierre Jordan.  (Any others? if so, leave a comment.)    The next year more people got involved: According to the Yale Banner a total of 12 of our classmates were involved: John Adams, Milton Anderson, Paul …

Survey: 2.  Sex and Health

Survey: 2. Sex and Health

Editor’s Note: This is the second in a multi-part series reporting on the results of the Class Survey taken last winter.

Any shrink will tell you that the three taboo areas people don’t like to talk about are sex, money and their relationship with God.  Our Class Survey asked about all three.  And we are going to share results in that order: Today’s report is Sex and Health, including reports on how fat we are, pot use, prosthetics, smoking, sexual activity (and aids) and other measures of our health.

Whole Earth’s 50th Anniversary

Whole Earth’s 50th Anniversary

The first Whole Earth Catalog was published 50 years ago, in autumn 1968. As you probably remember, it catalyzed and shaped a range of psychosocial changes, especially among our generation, and it spawned groundbreaking publications like CoEvolution Quarterly, Space Colonies, the Whole Earth Software Review, etc.

From 1977 to 1990 I was the art editor of CoEvolution Quarterly and Whole Earth Review. Now I’m helping Stewart Brand and his wife organize Whole Earth’s 50th-anniversary reunion and celebration at …

The Story Behind “The Class of 1969 Memorial Scholarship Fund”

The Story Behind “The Class of 1969 Memorial Scholarship Fund”

In May, you may recall that our website published Meet The New “Class of 1969 Scholar” – Maddie Hoffman.  Well, the editors were curious: They had not heard of a “Class of 1969 Scholarship Fund,” so they decided to investigate.  What was it?  Who started it?  How is it used?  How much is in it?  There were lots of unusual turns in the story and …

Report From the 1968 Reunion

Report From the 1968 Reunion

Reunion co-chair Bill Newman reports from the 1968 reunion and some of their remarkable events: 1) a “Quaker Meeting” where people talked about their Viet Nam experiences, often in emotional terms (check them out; what are YOUR stories?), 2) several remarkable, and mostly unknown, career paths/accomplishments by 68ers, 3) a historian talking about the Brewster/Coffin/Inky-Clark era (with pictures!), and 4) an intimate conversation with George W. Bush. See what happened in the ’68 reunion and the implications for our reunion!

Upcoming Yale-Harvard Weekend Proves Popular

Upcoming Yale-Harvard Weekend Proves Popular

Over half the 100 tickets that Lang Wheeler secured for us are now sold. And a waiting list is forming for more tickets once the “max 2 per Classmate” restriction is lifted on 9/15/2018. If you are thinking about coming to The Game, I’d urge you to move quickly. November 17 seems like a long way away, but those three months will go fast, and tickets won’t last. There are some interesting patterns to the early ticket-buyers …

Woodward Report at 50: Free Speech At Yale

Woodward Report at 50: Free Speech At Yale

Like many alums, I was mortified by the 2015 screamfest involving Nicholas Christakis, a respected professor at Yale, as memorialized on YouTube.  Professor Christakis was forced to defend the public expression of an opinion by his spouse, herself a respected Yale professor, to the effect that the Yale administration had perhaps been too paternalistic in circulating a pre-Halloween memo warning against culturally-insensitive costumes. That and similar recent events on campus have offended both conservatives (many of whom believe conservative views are largely not welcome at Yale) and liberals (who support freedom of speech broadly). 

1947: Where Now Begins
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1947: Where Now Begins

For most of us 1947 is a very important year.  After all we were born during those 12 months.  (For those of you born a year or two before or after, this is still relevant.)  The approximately 70 years of life we are currently reflecting on started in that year.  So maybe we wonder what else was born in that year, what else started in 1947.  The Swedish historian Elizabeth Asbrink has an answer to that question in her recent book 1947: Where Now Begins. Asbrink doesn’t know us and didn’t write this about us, but she does suggest in this book that major events shaping our world today began in 1947.