Nicholas Kemper’s Monday guest column (“For pirates and I-bankers, sinking inevitable,” 10/06) misrepresents the causes of the current financial crisis in an attempt to scapegoat financial professionals for a systemic failure. Beginning with an analogy between investment bankers and pirates and concluding with a castigation of the entire financial sector...
Sarah Palin put in an unexpected performance last night. She offered confident responses and defended her own record. It’s too bad her answers had a very tenuous relationship to the truth. She twists and turns her sentences until it’s unclear where she even started. Sarah Palin is scary. She is scary not because she doesn’t have the intellectual capacity to be...
Yale’s efforts to promote cycling to, from and around the University as a viable alternative means of transportation for both staff and students is both encouraging and praiseworthy. However, the emphasis of the message and the focus of resources are shortsighted and ill-conceived, and the ten-place ‘Bike to Work at Yale’ safety course offered three times a year is...
I’m increasingly concerned with the dominant social perception of Russia’s aggression. After recent presidential debates, it’s clear that both candidates view Russian actions as unjust and deserving of heavy collective punishment from the western world. This escalating antagonism to all Russian pleas for their side of the story is resulting in a nightmare for...
It is remarkable that Samuel Bagg, in his column Monday (“‘Secular bubble’ popped,” 9/22), should refer to his previous column (“On faith, U.S. should follow Yale,” 9/17) as a “call for pluralism” when that column contained not a single use of the word “pluralism.” Instead, the column lauded Yale’s “breaking free of traditional allegiances,”...
I’m glad that Samuel Bagg has, with his most recent article “‘Secular bubble’ popped” (9/22), clarified (if not completely revised) the extreme position of his former article — but I think that he still overlooks a central problem of that original idea. Though he now says that what he meant by “secular” was “pluralist,” he still confounds the...
Yesterday, when I read Ryan Caro’s column in these pages (“Stern should trade luxury for novelty,” 9/15), I discovered much to my surprise that living in Pierson explains away my “self-congratulatory complacency.” I’m not going to pretend I’m not proud to go to Yale, but whatever character faults I may have, I doubt James Gamble Rogers really deserves the...
I have just read President Levin’s impressive report to the alumni on the state of Yale: a new campus for science and collections; renovation in schools of drama, architecture, art; a new management building; new residential colleges and libraries; study abroad; investment in New Haven buildings. Everything but the liberal arts. Where is HGS (literature, philosophy and...
In response to Michael Zink’s “In Palin, proof McCain’s gone soft” (9/11), I must object to both his method and his madness. In the critique of Sen. McCain and his selection of Gov. Palin as his running mate, Zink leads in with the ridiculous assertion that “there’s nothing complicated about gender politics in America.” He then substantiates his belief that...
Hugh Baran had it right when he called the coming election a “fight for our future” (“In ’08, it’s the issues, stupid,” 9/10). After nearly eight years under President Bush, who was so often deaf to public outcry, and at a time when both presidential candidates show themselves to be responsive to shifts in opinion and willing to compromise, voters must now be...
