From the Tulsa World Gene Carson Buzzard, aged 73, passed away on July 21, 2020, surrounded by his loving family at their home in Tulsa. He will be remembered by his family and many friends for his intellect, humor, curiosity, generosity, loyalty, general gusto, and for living his life with joy. His enthusiastic dance style placed him in high demand as a wedding guest, and his unconventional approach to mechanical matters often yielded surprising results….
On October 28th at 1:30 pm Eastern, Yale Law Professor Akhil Amar will present trenchant observations about the Executive Branch and his recent research into the Vice Presidency and the Constitution. With a possible electoral crisis in November, having his views and live Q&A may be especially salient.
Join us on the 28th and see why Professor Amar won the DeVane Medal for teaching as well as the Sterling chair for scholarship. Register in advance now.
Where is the first place you’ll travel once air travel is totally unrestricted? Why?
Go down to the “Comments” area at the bottom of this post and list the destination and why you chose it. And check out where your friends are heading post-pandemic!
Editor’s Note: This is a summary and video of Professor Markovits’ presentation and Q&A .
The first Colloquium featuring a speaker from the Yale faculty didn’t shy away from challenging some basic assumptions about our “elite education.”
Yale Law professor Daniel Markovits brought his new book, his grasp of econometrics, and his A-game to our September 30th Class Colloquium.
from GolfWorld How Yale, the country’s best college golf course, is back from the dead By Joel Beall September 30, 2020 He walked off the course as if witnessing a resurrection. There was a glance back at the green and down the fairway, as to confirm what happened had happened. “It’s miraculous, really,” Robert Massimilian says. “I came out to see if it was still alive. After everything that’s been said, I didn’t know what…
Editor’s Note: from dissentmagazine.org
Stopping Trump’s Coup By Jim Sleeper ▪
Tuesday night’s presidential debate can best be characterized by two of Donald Trump’s favorite words: it was a “disgrace” and a “disaster.” Our challenge now is to think not just morally or theoretically but also politically, in the way that Trump himself […]
from the atlantic.com How Life Became an Endless, Terrible Competition By Daniel Markovits Aug. 19th, 2019 . Meritocracy prizes achievement above all else, making everyone—even the rich—miserable. Maybe there’s a way out. Updated at 4:38 p.m. ET on September 4, 2019. In the summer of 1987, I graduated from a public high school in Austin, Texas, and headed northeast to attend Yale. I then spent nearly 15 years studying at various universities—the London School of Economics, the…
In September ’65, two freshmen arrived at Bingham Hall, assigned to the same entryway. Both had come from highly segregated high schools. One was black, and he confessed such shock at the sea of white faces that “I couldn’t tell you all apart! So, I just said ‘hi, there’ and hoped I didn’t need your name.” The other was white, from a privileged suburb of racially divided St. Louis. He liked his new classmate, but…
Editor’s Note: This is an op-ed John co-authored with other Members of Congress.
In the years following the Watergate scandal, Congress enacted a series of landmark reforms to protect our democracy and restore Americans’ faith in government. […] Though some presidents have bridled at those laws or stretched them, they have fundamentally abided by their limits for 50 years. Until Donald Trump.
Jerome M. Schnitt, MD (“Jerry”), 73, of Guilford, CT passed away peacefully on Tuesday morning, June 9, 2020 after a decade-long battle with cancer. He was surrounded by his family until his last moments.
Born in Huntington, West Virginia on Groundhog’s Day,[…]
“The main thing I learned at Yale,” I heard more than one classmate say at the reunion, “is how to learn.” Other key features mentioned were the breadth of delicious subjects we had no clue about and a commitment to lifelong learning. “Commencement is not the end,” Kingman said at our graduation. “It’s the beginning, the beginning of a lifelong process of extending your knowledge and awareness well beyond what you know today … and…
From the Lincoln County News, June 11, 2019 Morrison McKelvy Bonpasse: November 22, 1947 – June 7, 2019 Morrison McKelvy Bonpasse died in the Special Care Unit at Maine Medical Center on Friday, June 7, 2019. He was born the third child and first son of Frances and Morrison Bump on Nov. 22, 1947, the day of the Harvard-Yale football game. Morrison had an idyllic childhood growing up in Duxbury, Mass., with his many Kelley…
From the North Andover, MA Eagle-Tribune: Haverhill – Gregory P. Karampalas, 73, of Haverhill, passed away Tuesday, May 26, at Carney Hospital in Dorchester. He was born in Haverhill on March 20, 1947, the son of the late Peter and Chrystine (Costarides) Karampalas. Gregory attended the Haverhill Public School System and was a graduate of Haverhill High School with the class of 1965. He went on to Yale University, where was given a special award…
Professor Markovits’ provocative bestseller, The Meritocracy Trap, compellingly argues that the Meritocracy system, which began with our generation and governs the period of our own Yale Admissions, has become a system with unintended negative societal consequences.
This Class Colloquium will be our first with a speaker from the Yale Faculty. He will challenge bedrock meritocratic assumptions, and he promises to include some “two-way dialogue.”
Register in advance for the event; details will be emailed to you.
Turmoil on campuses, Yale included, is not just a student phenomenon. Yale Alumni are challenging the nomination process for the “Alumni Fellow” seat on the governing board of trustees (aka “the Yale Corporation”).
There are two ways to get on the ballot; Nominating Committee or Petition. The next three weeks are critical – will these two Petition drives work? What’s at stake is nothing less than the transparency of the nominating process itself. Learn more; maybe sign a petition?
Mike Medved does a three hour talk-radio show EVERY DAY, and recently he’s been broadcasting from his home in Washington State. After he was done for the day and took a half hour break, he joined over 100 interested classmates for the fourth in our series of Class Colloquia, this one being “A View from the Right, a conservative looks at the current state of politics.”
Here is a recording of Michael’s presentation and some Q&A.
