Shortly after he watched White House Counsel Pat Cipollone tell the Senate on Saturday that “the president did absolutely nothing wrong,” a friend sent me an archived copy of Yale President Kingman Brewster Jr.’s 1969 baccalaureate address. Somewhat surprisingly, Brewster’s response —and Yale’s — to the crisis of that time is as urgently needed now as it was then.
Classmates, Those of you who attended our reunion dinner heard me interrupt Steve Schwarzman’s rambling, self-aggrandizing talk by shouting, “That’s enough Steve: You’ve dispossessed tens of thousands of people out of their homes…” Undoubtedly I should have risen magisterially from my seat and addressed a few more temperate but still-critical words to him and the…
James Sleeper jimsleep@aol.com Spouse(s): Seyla Benhabib, (1998–present), Rachel Gorlin, (1988–1996) Child(ren): stepdaughter Laura (1986) Education: Yale BA, Harvard EdD (1977) National Service: Alternative-to-Military Service, 1971–1973 Career: writer, journalist (Newsday, New York Daily News); college instructor (Harvard, Yale, Queens College, New York University) Avocations: Reading and writing about American civic-republican traditions, including old New England. College:…
This is a quiet, thoughtful conversation about what’s happening to higher education. I was interviewed by Prof. Matthew Frye Jacobson, an historian who was the chair of Yale’s American Studies Department until recently and is the director of Historian’s Eye Project (historianseye.org). This interview was conducted at Yale well before the current bribery scandal at selective colleges, including Yale. It pretty much predicted the whole thing but put it in necessary perspective.
Many Americans want a new national story: How about this one? by Jim Sleeper, salon.com | Feb. 25th, 2019 The 18 Yale students who crowded into a seminar room one September morning in 1999 for a course entitled “New Conceptions of American National Identity” didn’t know what they were in for. Nor did I, their…
Editor’s Note: The author is a member of our Class and a lecturer in political science at Yale College.
In case you are interested, here’s a glimpse at what Yale undergrads are thinking about our political prospects today.
Classmates, do any of you remember or have information about a small anti-draft demonstration on Beinecke Plaza one wintry morning in early 1968, our junior year? Three seniors handed their draft cards to Bill Coffin in an act of civil-disobedience, stating that they would refuse conscription into the Vietnam War. I came across the gathering…
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…
Editor’s Note: This is the first “Memories and Observations” post. The NCAA Lacrosse story was the second one. Hey, all you folks out there with memories and observations … share them here!
Author’s Note: The recent death of Tom Wolfe (Yale ’57 PhD, American Studies) brought up a bunch of memories, some of which are in an article I wrote for LEAR’S magazine in 1990, and republished recently on Salon.
JAMES A. SLEEPER. Resident: Davenport.
