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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. |
Comment on this article Yale’s Singapore Venture Yale is betting its brand on a new liberal arts college in Singapore. Under a proposal now being debated on campus, Yale would partner with the National University of Singapore (NUS) to run the college, shape its curriculum, and hire its faculty. What do the alumni think? We invite all Yale alumni to join the discussion by sharing their questions and opinions. Below are links to alumni discussion so far.
Alumni with knowledge of Singapore: Otto Chu ’76, who has spent some three years in Singapore, gives an overview of its economy, culture, and internationalism in an essay for the Yale Alumni Magazine on Yale’s “great educational experiment.” “Let’s see what Yale can do. And what we can learn,” writes Burton Raffel ’58JD, a frequent visitor in past years. A Singaporean alum who asked to remain anonymous believes “Yale stands to lose more than it stands to gain.”
All alumni: Education professor Peter Conn ’69PhD questions how Yale will manage the inevitable bumps in the ethical and academic road if the Yale -NUS partnership proceeds. “How will the Yale administration react at critical moments of stress?” he asks. Eric Weinberger ’89, blogging at The New Republic, draws on Orwell and Theroux in questioning Yale’s belief that an island of academic freedom can exist within a society that lacks freedom of speech. The project will aid Yale’s efforts to “quietly guid[e] China towards responsible global citizenship,” writes Charles Schmitz ’60, ’63JD, who supports it “almost whole-heartedly.” David Ezzio ’70 sardonically predicts a future in which which Yale imports from Yale-NUS such courses as “The Illusions of Liberty.” From Seoul, Ted Kim ’84 cheers the proposal as a way for Yale to “break out of its cocoon in New Haven.” G. Kimball Hart ’70, ’80MPPM, recalling the street protests of the late 1960s, “can’t imagine” Yale agreeing to the rules against protest in Singapore. David Machlowitz ’77JD fears the new college would be “an academic Potemkin Village,” giving “a pretense of free expression.” Mark Oppenheimer ’96, ’03PhD, director of Yale’s Journalism Initiative, has blogged about the plan, asking whether Yale really wants to get “in bed with [an] authoritarian regime.” |
Related Singapore Spinoff Alumni comments on Yale’s proposal for a new college in Singapore |
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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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