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Yale’s Singapore Venture
The Alumni Discuss
November/December 2010
What exciting news about the new Yale-NUS campus in Singapore! Kingman Brewster would no doubt be speechless.
It’s reassuring to learn that President Levin found the trial of Alan Shadrake “troubling". Certainly, Patrick Henry would have benefited from knowing that had he published his opinion in an academic journal rather than railing polemically in the House of Burgesses, King George, no doubt as enlightened as our dear leader, would have found nothing offensive in his words.
At some point in the future, when the well-dressed, bespectacled man from the Singapore secret police asks ever so softly that going forward all academic research of a politically sensitive nature be published in Latin, his request will be seen as reasonable given the continued assurance of academic freedom at Yale-NUS.
Likewise, Yale-NUS will not waste a lot of time issuing a mea culpa when some unfortunate faculty member has to suffer the consequence of seeing his paper in Latin translated by a third party into English and published in a foreign journal for all to read. Clearly the university is responsible for ensuring that academic research is available only for academics to read.
What we must keep in mind is the huge benefits of associating Yale with the up and coming political elite of the autocratic East. Yale will be seasoned by importing some of the courses that will be developed there. Imagine, “The Illusions of Liberty,” “The Economic Benefits of One-Party Rule,” and “Devil Worship in Western Religions” may all one day be required courses for Yale freshman.
But all the costs and benefits pale compared with the opportunity to plant the Yale brand throughout the East. Onward, ever onward, I say! Next stop Burma!
Still thinking after all these years,
David Ezzio ’70
Cumberland, Maine 04021
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