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The Yale Alumni Magazine is owned and operated by Yale Alumni Publications, Inc., a nonprofit corporation independent of Yale University. The content of the magazine and its website is the responsibility of the editors and does not necessarily reflect the views of Yale or its officers. |
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I am an alumnus of Yale College who has had the privilege of volunteering in the athletics department for the last two years. Because of this, I was able to participate in a small way to help relieve the grief that permeated our campus following the loss of Yale students in an automobile accident (“Light & Verity,” Mar.). This also allowed me to observe firsthand what a truly great family our alma mater is. I have to commend the University’s administration from President Levin down, Yale College’s administration guided by Dean Brodhead, and the athletics department so ably led by athletics director Tom Beckett. The caring of these groups for those involved was evident in every move we made. I am truly proud to say that I am a Yale alumnus and that these people run my alma mater.
More Fictional Yalies Your selection of Sherman McCoy as one of “The Ten Greatest Yalies Who Never Were” in the February Yale Alumni Magazine brings to mind Tom Wolfe’s frequent mention in The Bonfire of the Vanities of McCoy’s “Yale chin.” Never heard of it. How does one get one? Can one of your readers or perhaps Tom Wolfe describe it? My father, an uncle, my brother, and I are all Yale graduates, and we don’t even have “Reynolds chins,” much less chins that would mark us as Yalies. Another fictional Yalie who deserves recognition is Danny, the hero of the novel Joe College, written by Tom Perrotta and published in 2000. The author, a 1983 graduate of Yale, captures the feel of the Yale experience in the early 1980s. For those who haven’t read this wonderful book, check it out.
Schooling for the Bomb? Reading with interest (and some nostalgia) your article, “When Yale Schooled for War” (“Old Yale,” Dec.), I realized that I may have found a way to obtain the answer to a question concerning my first summer at Yale. When I entered Yale in July 1942, with the Class of 1945W, I ended up in a physics course that seemed to me to have no direction and that used a mimeographed text. I went on to graduate from Yale in February 1948. I did not pursue physics. It was only after reading Heisenberg’s War, the story of the German nuclear physicist, that I began to realize that the physics course of the summer of 1942 may have had some connection with the Manhattan Project. The subjects covered seemed to bear no logical relationship to one another, but they fell in place in the story of the development of thought on the structure of the atom. Later, I read another book that covered much of the same ground, and I became convinced that my suspicions were correct. Can anyone fill in the blanks? I do believe that at least one person in the summer physics course went on to the Manhattan Project. If I am correct, Yale was more deeply involved in the war than just ROTC (of which I was a member) and the active units on the Old Campus. Walking to class with the Glenn Miller band playing “The Saints” in the distance was something I would never forget.
Divestment Concerns This refers to your article in the February issue concerning proposals for Yale’s divestment of stock holdings in companies doing business in Israel (“Light & Verity”). It is against U.S. law to support a boycott of Israel. In my law practice, we encounter demands made by certain foreign trademark offices that trademark applicants sign declarations supporting the Arab boycott of Israel. Federal law requires that such demands may not be honored. I am writing concerning your coverage of “Campus Debates Israel Divestment.” In 1971, my husband Neiel Baronberg '62 and I spent several months in Karachi, Pakistan. During that time, I heard and read in the state-sponsored newspaper the most virulent anti-Jewish statements I had ever come across. I was also told by influential Pakistanis that it would be dangerous to let anyone know that we were Jewish. Twenty-five years later, after a visit in Israel, my daughter Sabrina Baronberg '01 was not allowed into any Middle Eastern country (with the exception of Egypt and Jordan) because she had an Israeli stamp on her passport. Today, little has changed, except that we are now better informed about the rampant racism taught in Arab countries, the official Saudi policies against religious liberty, the Palestinian textbooks with racism throughout, and the limited rights for women. Indeed, we have frequent examples of killings in Sudan and Indonesia just because people are Christian, or in Kenya because they are Israeli. Why, I ask, does Sam Bernstein '05 not organize divestment movements for those countries? I would also like to suggest to those working so hard for divestment that they put their time and energy into something positive. Both the Israeli and Palestinian economies and peoples have been hurt physically, financially, and emotionally by terrorism. Can’t you help in some positive way instead of trying to make even more people even more miserable?
Corrections In the December “Light & Verity” article about the new Henry Koerner Center for Emeritus Faculty, and in a subsequent correction in the February issue, we identified one of the donors, Joseph Koerner, as a member of the Class of 1971. He is, in fact, a member of the Class of 1980.
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©1992–2012, Yale Alumni Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. Yale Alumni Magazine, P.O. Box 1905, New Haven, CT 06509-1905, USA. yam@yale.edu |
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