Scott W. Herstin – 50th Reunion Essay

Scott W. Herstin

1046 Spanish Moss Trail

Naples, FL 34108

sherstin@comcast.net

(239) 571-0730

Child(ren): Sara Herstin 1981; Hillary Herstin Mone 1984

Grandchild(ren): Quinn Mone 2017

Education: Suffolk University School of Law 1978

Career: Thirty five plus years in wealth management in Boston and Naples.

Avocations: culture, travel, food and wine, tennis. The future of Yale.

College: Davenport

I date the beginning of my disappointment with Yale to 1995 when the University rejected Leo Bass’s 1991 gift to establish a Western Civilization curriculum. In 1987, Yale’s own Harold Blum had published The Closing of the American Mind, warning that institutions of higher education were failing to instruct students in the uniqueness and superiority of the Western canon.

Scroll forward to recent campus events (and I will cite only a few). Calhoun has been renamed at the loss of a teaching moment. The English department has been “decolonized” of its major English poets. I read that undergraduate applicants must please the elitist, Bay Area social justice warriors in the admissions department. Intellectual diversity, anyone? And most distressing of all, l’affaire Christakis. Only a sycophantic administration could believe that a foul-mouthed, shrieking bunch of 20-year-olds had some kernel of knowledge to impart that Yale had hitherto missed in its 306-year existence.

All this is doubly disappointing because my memories of ’65–’69 are so vivid and positive. Will any Davenporter ever forget Eliot Norman’s Beethoven piano recital? The rush of adrenaline from winning the 8-oar intramural championship.

Being inspired by Bart Giamatti, the future prez, teaching sophomore Epic Poetry and Novels. A run across the border to New York (drink at 18!) for a case of delicious Ballantine Ale for $4! Thursday night road trips to try to get a date for the weekend to—well, anywhere women could be found. The dread of Bio 101 (a great course!) because I was competing against all those single-minded, boring premed students. John Yarmouth’s Kentucky Derby/College Weekend parties with the free-flowing mint juleps. Harry Wise’s beautiful dates. David Howorth’s magic tricks. Ties and jackets for the dining hall. Harvard wins, 29–29.

As the song says, “the friendships formed at Yale” I shall value forever. I could not have met a better group of men anywhere else.

I am trying hard not to let the New Yale overwhelm the Old Yale.