Rachel Bayefsky
Rachel Bayefsky
Recent Stories
Bayefsky: Weigh merit heavier than background
Weigh merit heavier than backgroundaDespite key differences between Democrats and Republicans, at the national conventions, both sought to convey the same message: “I feel your pain.” To make that message believable, the candidates attempted to cast themselves as the boy or girl next door. Underneath the flags and the jibes, the nervous grins and the insipid smiles, ran a constant theme: “I’m just like you.” I am the common man or woman.
Bayefsky: Play the silent game abroad
‘Harom,” said the woman behind a sandwich-shop counter, her hand already stretched out toward me. The rest of her sentence degenerated — for me — into a string of meaningless Hungarian words.
In all Elis, an inner premed ambition
Numerical benchmarks of achievement and personal growth are not necessarily incompatible. All Yale students face the difficulty of finding a way for these two goals to complement each other, and premeds often face a starker choice.
Expertise, not politics, qualifies Blair for Yale job
For or against the Iraq war, Tony Blair has an important role to play at Yale. Let’s welcome the opportunity to learn from him.
Female genital mutilation: A gruesome torture
Call it what it is, and we will be closer to eliminating this immediate and fundamental destroyer of women’s equality.
Power of words dissolves with overuse, misuse
Words are sensitive and powerful tools. We will sometimes use them incorrectly, make honest mistakes, fail to realize our assumptions and even twist the English language in a creative and productive way.
Finding substance beneath our rallying cry
Of course, we won’t all come out of Yale with the same perspective — and we shouldn’t. But if we are brought together for a shared purpose, we ought to search for the substance at the heart of our cheers. We should be serious about valuing friendship and Yale’s collegiality, and about lending support to our friends who chose to attend school elsewhere.
For candidates, policy must outweigh personality
nstead of asking their analysts “Who’s right?” “Who’s wrong?” “How certain are the promises?” and “What can be expected of the results?” most media outlets have confined their analysis to voter preference and policy differentiation.
The only way to Truth: questioning authority
What does it mean that students who have recently begun to study a subject seriously — or even professors, whose worldviews have been shaped by the writings of their field’s greatest examiners — can identify weaknesses in the subject’s foundational texts?
Language is power, both aesthetic and ideological
Language, available to everyone, can be a tool of anyone. In the process of making it personal, through study or practice, one gains the ability to use language in order to effect positive change.