Yale: A Private Police-State on Steroids

Academia is its own sort of community, with its own distinctive culture. A university campus is not akin to a small town. To treat a campus as such, and thus to allow universities to have their own police departments rather than security guards, evinces a category mistake and presents issues of political legitimacy. The U.S. Constitution gives police power to the state governments, rather than to private companies and non-profit private organizations. Secuity guards, not police employees, belong to the categories of companies and non-profit organizations, both of which being qualitatively different than governments or states. Hence the matter of legitimacy should be raised when one organization, such as Yale, presumes not only to have its own private police force, but also to use it (and its security guards) to enforce local laws and university regulations off campus. When a university, again referring here to Yale, saturates its campus with police cars with emergency-alert blue-and-red lights blazing on top and headlights constantly and pensively on, and adds security guards on virtually every corner as if according to a military-style command coverage of the entire campus and beyond, the passive aggression and tacit message of deep distrust subtly undercut academic pursuits and the related psychological stamina of students, faculty, and even alumni who are auditing courses or conducting research as scholars "in residence." The saturated presence of pensive guns and distrustful staring eviscerates an anademic atmosphere of peace and tranquilly, and thus subtly eclipses academic learning and teaching. An academic atmosphere is vital to a college and even a large university so students and faculty can feel free to take ideas to their limits without fear of intimidation and being distrusted so. A pathological weaponizing of distrust is harmful even though the victims don't realize that they are being victimized. I contend that the unbiquitous, constant surveillance is unethical, and furthermore that university administrations that unfairly inflict such an aggressive culture of distrust should be held accountable externally by governments and internally through boards of directors and pressure from alumni. Paranoia is at the root of this type of dysfunctional organizational culture, such as existed at Yale as of 2023. The extreme distrust backed up by hostile staring, flashing lights, and even guns ought to be flagged as toxic and unethical. 

Returning to Yale as an alumnus scholar-in-residence in 2023 after 25 years, I was almost immediately taken back by the sheer saturation of the campus by the university’s private police force and security employees; notwithstanding all this, New Haven police cars could be seen patrolling the campus and its periphery. The students were aware of the “over-kill”—“They’re everywhere,” more than one student confided to me in an accurate tone of fatalism. When I was a student, the “Unibomber” struck, and even that did not turn the campus into a fortification. Perhaps the most glaring indication of the pathological lapse in judgment on excessiveness was the constancy of bright red and blue lights on top of the police cars and the searing bright yellow spread of lights on top of the security cars. The lapse involves not grasping that to routinize markers of emergency impairs to a significant degree the academic atmosphere on the campus. Ethically, the harm from subjecting students, faculty and alumni to the continuous lights and surveillance was conveniently ignored by the Yale Corporation. Studying in a (private) police state on steroids is contrary to common sense and academic freedom; the weight of the omnipresent passive aggression was real yet remained far from fully realized by the victims. 

Not even a week into the fall 2023 term, I was immediately struck by the sheer bravado of a security guard who followed me through one of the academic buildings on a day when classes were in session. His lack of respect for, and even antipathy towards Yalies was obvious in his facial expressions as he followed me and even evesdropped in the hallway outside of a small office where I had gone to speak with an administrator, who, by the way, reported the predator to a dean. After I left the office, the guard followed me out of the building. I returned to the office to report this behavior to the administrator, but was surprised to find the guard in that office lying that he had just been trying to keep everyone safe!  Seeing me at the doorway, he shut the door on me. After he left the office, the administrator kindly walked me out of the building; she assured me that she would report the man. By the time we reached the entrance, the guard was on his phone outside. Seeing me leaving, he turned around and watched me, even when I was at a distance.

In September, 2023, that security guard followed me inside the building. Profiling alumni is not the fundraising strategy that I would recommend. 

Turning around after looking at the directory for the room number of a department, I was stunned to find an utterly obsessed predator giving me the evil eye. 

After following me down one hallway and then another, he listened in on my conversation with an administrator in an office. This picture shows him later, as I was walking down a hall to go outside. Seeing me coming, he popped out of a room and stood in the doorway. 

He eyed me as I was leaving, as can be seen here. Then he went to the office where I had been (so he had followed me!) to get info on me. 

He can be seen wearing a white shirt and black pants and holding up a phone as he watches me walk away even at such a distance. 

About a month later, I was again taken back when another security in the same building demanded in an angry tone where I was going. I, like everyone else, was headed to a stairway that obvious led to the screening rooms, where a movie was to be shown. I reported him to the same administrator, who in turn reported that bully to the same dean. Even that was insufficient to restrain the attack dogs, for two months later, I was again subject to yet another security guard menacingly singling me out after I had left the screening for a film. I returned to the same administrator, who again promised to report that resentful, predatory man to the same dean. 

I was not looking at this security employee, who was at a distance yet so preoccupied with me while I was speaking with someone else. I had not even looked at him. His stern facial expression speaks volumes as to the attitude toward alumni. 

Clearly, Yale’s security employees were not members of the Yale community; in fact, they were hostile to it (or they feel entitled not to hide their feelings); rather than being oriented to protecting us, they must have viewed themselves as police and we were all potential suspects. I do suspect that word had gotten around that I had complained about having been hounded and the employees in Yale’s security department felt they could get away with harassing me. They may have been right because at least one dean had failed to bring accountability to Yale’s security department regarding how its employees treat Yalies (or at least alumni scholars in residence). Having not said a word to any of the predators I encountered, I naturally felt apprehensive on account of their irrational psychology. 

Yalies are under constant surveillance. Being watched goes beyond being protected. Were we really so untrustworthy as the administrators assume? Or was the untruthworthiness being projected? 

An occupied Yale police car in the upper right of the picture (left) did not stop the New Haven police employee in the car in the foreground from slamming to a stop as soon as he saw me waiting for a ride. Why the aggressive driving without there being an emergency. With so many lights on the two Yale police cars pictured (right), students would naturally think there is an emergency. 

These police cars are parked, and the emergency lights are perpetually on, which essentially routinizes a sense of emergency. 

This manned Yale police car was stationed on a walkway. Notice the emergency lights are on. Of course students would be concerned, even anxious, which evicerates an academic atmosphere. 

Routine: three armed police employees with a dog that employees even allowed to sniff students.

A Yale security employee inspecting students entering a classroom building. 

"They are on every corner, even during the day," more than one student has said.

I took this video of the Yale police car passing by, as so many do there. Then I looked to my right and saw a local police car. Then I looked back and saw a Yale security guard where the car had just passed. Triple coverage is a common sight for Yalies; hence the sense of that security is over-done. 

Seeing THREE Yale-Police cars stationary in one location (and then a fourth drving by) with red and blue emergency lights on even though the cops of two of the three parked cars were at resaurants, While I documented the visuals with my camera, one of the Yale police employees decided to intimidate me by stopping in his tracks and quickly turning around to watch me, which he continued to do even at a distance even though I was doing nothing illegal (or suspicious). Rather, by perpetuating its police-state even off-campus, Yale was allowing its police employees to erect an excessive police presence and presume that it is the default, such that recording it is conveniently deemed suspicious even off-campus and thus warrents the passive-aggression of intimidation.

A local police car patrolling on campus. This means that two police departments, plus Yale's security guards, are on the campus. "They're everywhere," one student told me with a tone of defeatism.

In this very academic area of campus, do the car's alert lights really need to be on?  The visual here attests to how a police-state on campus evicerates the academic atmosphere, and yet the employees don't mind. Hence they are not members of the Yale community. 

In this last photo, THREE Yale police cars, all with their overhead lights on, were parked in a row even though there was not an incident. "Tone-deaf" comes to mind. Clearly, Yale's police employees didn't mind leaving Yalies with the misimpression that an emergency situation was in progress. This is one reason why Yale's police (and security) employees are at odds with, rather than member of, Yale's academic community. 

The first two pictures above show Yale police with their patrol lights on when the university was closed for Christmas. The bottom two pictures show a local police car was also "flashing" on the campus. A lot of alert-lights for an empty campus. This is yet another indication of "over-kill" (i.e., paranoia). 

At the beginning of the fall, 2023 semester, members of the university's police union handed out fliers to freshmen as they were moving in so to intimidate and frighten them. Yale police employees, whose union was in a dispute with the university, handed out fliers that were clearly intended to intimidate and scare 18 year-olds as a passive-aggressive way to get back at the university for the latest contract proposal. The leader of the police union lied, or was pathological, that the flier merely "informed" students for their own safety. 

The flier uses hyperbole in claiming to be a SURVIVAL guide. Hardly objective (not to mention professional), the first sentence reads, "The incidence of crime and violence in New Haven is shockingly high, and its getting worse." That was not true of New Haven near the campus. The flier then cites some statistics that are overly pessimistic. "Nevertheless, some Yalies do manage to survive New Haven and even retain their personal property." Some Yalies manage to survive? At this point in reading the flier, I became concerned that its authors were being allowed to carry guns, given the emotional state and immaturity that leaps off the page. I would not be surprised in the least if the security guard who obsessionally watched and followed me without any rational rationale had the sort of pathology that was responsible for such an immature and erroneous flier of passive-aggression. 

The Yale police employees who drew up and passed out the flier were upset at Yale's latest offer to the employees' union, so maybe the employees were taking out their anger on innocent young students or sending a Yale a message, like a horse's head in a bed in The Godfather. Similarly, the predator who stalked me may have been acting on his union's ploy to send the Yale corporation a message by harassing alumni. Of course, the stalker could simply have had emotional problems and was abusing the authority vested in him. Or maybe he was a police flunky working security at a university. That such a human being and Yale's police employees who devised and passed out the bizarre flier were working for a private corporation ought to raise red flags among people who know that under the U.S. Constitution, the police power resides with the state governments, rather than private companies and organizations, and that the latter can easily exploit an institutional conflict of interest in the pleasure that comes with having police power.  

Therefore, Yale having its own police power is itself problematic, as is its hiring process; that the university presumes the right to use its passive-aggressive police department locally, well off the university's campus, raises an especially red flag. In December, 2023, Yale announced in a news release that its police could enforce university regulations off campus. In the midst of Israel's military attacks in Gaza, a Palestine flag was draped on a menorah off Yale’s campus, literally on a public square, Yale’s administration felt the need to become involved, even notifying the New Haven police as if the mayor’s office could not handle that task. Yale also indicated that its own police department might investigate the incident. The university even stated that its “regulations reach conduct occurring on or off campus that imperils the integrity and values of the Yale community.”[1] This is an open door, for values is a vague term that can mean practically anything, for a university to assume the power of a city government. That Yale contacted the New Haven police department is ironic because Yale’s private police cars regularly patrolled beyond the university’s property, even regularly arresting local residents for offensives unrelated to the university. One local resident who worked at a local hospital told me that Yale’s private police force regularly arrests local residents coming out of bars. That they might be drunk and hit Yale students is not a sufficient (contingent, indirect) connection to justify giving the Yale Corporation police power in a city. 

A series of photos showing Yale's private police department patrolling off campus, even being duplicated by Yale security guards (off-campus). The last two photos follow a Yale police car going around a city block that is not contiguous with the campus. As the photo of a Yale police car driving next to a New Haven police car,  Yale's patrols off its property duplicate the jurisdiction of the New Haven police, hence subjecting residents to two police forces.

In addition, Yale's security guards also patrol, even with yellow lights on, off campus. The security guards, which should be oriented to protecting a company's property, aren't even police! 

These photos and video were taken on Christmas Eve day of two Yale police employees who thrice circled a city block, which is at least 5 blocks from Yale's campus. The university was closed. 

I submit that the overreach both regarding Yale's presumed reach of its regulations and its hyperextended coverage of its police are in need of a court challenge on constitutional grounds, as the U.S. Constitution gives police powers to the state governments rather than to private companies and private non-profit organizations. Astonishingly, even Yale’s security guards felt entitled to patrol local streets not bordering campus as if an organization’s security guards were police. 

Besides capitulating to over-protective parents of the young students in Yale College, the extent of the ubiquitous police and security (two departments!) on campus points back to a psychological paranoia, which warps judgment. Attending a university event that was open to the public during the fall, 2023 semester, I was not the only attendee who was stunned by the police presence. 

Yale's president at the event apologizing for Yale's meanness in the 1800s after I had informed him on the way to the event of the hostile security employee and rude dispatcher of the Yale shuttles. He told me he had no idea that things had gotten so bad, and yet his police-state was fully visible around the event itself and the reception. 

Both in entering the event then immediately afterward at the reception, the presence of security employees and Yale police dominated, even within the reception hall in spite of the formidable presence just outside the hall. There were even undercover Yale police wearing suites. Uniformed police were even helping themselves to food! The university's administration was present, and yet they were utterly purblind as to how oppressive the presence of weapons and uniforms were to the guests. The administrators' warped perception and judgment stem, I submit, from a psychological paranoia. 

Police State 101: A Yale Primer

Even after almost everyone had left the reception and no dignitaries had even been there, 

security had the building encased on both sides. 

This undercover police employee was hostile when I, not knowing his real identity, spoke with him. Was it really necessary, given the lack of celebrities at the reception, for undercover police to be in the reception hall, considering that the hall was "surrounded"? 

1. “Yale Statement on Desecration of a Menorah,” YaleNews, December 10, 2023.

Some Academic Degrees Are Not So High: Is Your Degree Overvalued?

American higher education contains its own erroneous nomenclature. Most notably, people having earned one degree in law or medicine are told even by their schools that the degree is doctorates.  Common sense alone can point out that merely three or four years of courses in an academic discipline do not a doctorate make, especially considering that the first year or two consist of survey courses (i.e., courses that survey the different areas in a subject rather than go into depth). That having a prior bachelor’s degree is a required does not mean that the first degree in law, medicine, or divinity is advanced, for the prior degree is not in those schools (of knowledge). For instance, a person can go to a law school in America with a BA in English. Even if a person in one's first degree in medicine, the MD, has earned a prior degree in biochemistry, that subject is not medicine and thus is not relied on. I was surprised when a medical student told me that very little of even his bio-chemistry major was taught to the first-degree medical students. Hence medical students can major in different subjects without being at a disadvantage in the survey courses in the first degree in medical schools. 

Why, then, does admittance into a divinity, law, or medical school require a prior degree in another subject? The answer is not academic; rather, it lies in American political philosophy (which would not be a bad major prior to going to law school). The American founders, realizing that the American electorate, the popular sovereign, would be playing a decisive role in the new representative democracy, wanted citizens to be broadly educated. Judgments in casting votes would benefit from having knowledge beyond one school of knowledge, or specialization because political judgments are not technocratic. 

So first-degree law students (i.e., in a LLB aka JD program) have made a lateral rather than upward move after receiving a first degree in another school (e.g., Liberal Arts and Sciences).  Therefore, studying for a second university degree does not necessarily mean that it is graduate. To be so, the degree must not be the first in a given school, like medicine or law.

As an aside, I went to Yale to study theology, history, and philosophy (and film) by enrolling in the masters of divinity degree program. The M.Div., being the first degree in the school of divinity, is actually the undergraduate degree of divinity schools. The degree was labeled the B.D. until 1968 at Yale, when even thought the knowledge-content and courses did not change, all of a sudden graduates of that first degree in a divinity school had M.Div.s: masters of divinity. Mine actually labels the degree as a masters of theology, so the M.Div. may be a misnomer in two respects. But my degree from Yale is not a masters in substance, and I, apparently unlike some students before me, am just fine with two bachelors degrees. That the M.Div degree is the prerequisite for the STM degree (Masters in Sacred Theology) at Yale should be enough of an indication that the M.Div degree is not really a masters. The hierarchy of degrees within a school (or academic discipline) consists in ascending order of the bachelors, masters, and doctoral degree. Before 1968, a Yale divinity student graduating with a BD would have had no problem understanding that the next step would be the STM degree, followed by the DD (Harvard's divinity school offers the Th.D. too; the DD being more practitioner and less research oriented). 

Regarding the academic coursework requirements of the first degrees in divinity/theology, law, and medicine, the inclusion of the survey courses typically in the first half of the program should be enough to indicate that the students are at the beginning stage of obtaining knowledge in the given subject, and a year or two of seminars on top correlate with a junior and senior year of a person's first college degree[1]. Yet this point is conveniently missed or arrogantly dismissed by so many ministers/priests, physicians and lawyers whose professional degrees have been granted by universities in America. The ignorance of something so visible and arrogant presumption based on false-entitlement, like arrogance on stilts during a flood, are without foundation and yet they last, reinforced not only in the respective professions, but even by all but a few of those professional schools at American universities.

A doctorate must be a terminal degree (i.e., the highest degree possible in a given school of knowledge, such as divinity, law, medicine, and liberal arts and sciences). A doctoral program must include a comprehensive exam prior to graduation, and thus given by professors rather than an industry board after graduation. Thirdly, a dissertation of substantial original research must be turned in and approved by a committee of the faculty. For many disciplines (excluding math and natural science), a dissertation is book-length. So the thesis of a first-degree medical, law, or liberal arts and sciences student would not suffice. 

Furthermore, residency in a hospital, clerking for a judge, or being a postulate for the priesthood in a Christian denomination do not turn a first degree in medicine, law, and divinity, respectively, into a doctorate. I informed two physicians at a church of this, and their anger flared as they held stubbornly to their ignorance, perhaps due to the cultural esteem put on their profession or an erroneous statement made by a supervising physician or even a medical school administrator. Again, common sense would tell the two physicians that what is done after graduation AND not even at the university is exogenous to the degree itself that has already been granted. I was stunned, and more than just a little worried, that people charged with saving lives could be so stupid and lack common sense. 

Some physicians and lawyers have told me that the MD and JD, respectively, are considered doctorates because the particular university does not offer the doctorate. A doctoral degree is a doctorate whether a particular university grants one or not; the bachelors degree (i.e., MD and JD) does not become a doctorate simply because a university doesn't offer the doctorate. Schools that don't offer the doctorate in law (i.e., the JSD) do not add coursework, a comprehensive exam (which is distinct from the bar exam, which is extrinsic to a law school and after graduation), and a dissertation onto the three years of coursework (survey courses and seminars) of a JD degree. Again, looking at the academic program is vital to grasping whether a degree is a bachelors, masters, or doctorate. 

The answer to why most American medical and law schools do not offer their respective doctoral degrees hinges on the vaunted hyper-extended status of the two (wealthy) professions in American culture. Whereas in the E.U., a doctorate in law is required in order to become a tenured professor of law, law professors in the U.S. need only have the first degree (i.e., undergraduate) in law. Sometimes truth can be straight in front of a person and yet be for all intents and purposes invisible. Put another way, sometimes people have incredible difficult in "connecting the dots" when the line is clear as day. It likely would come as a shock to virtually every American that law and medical professors in the U.S. rarely have more than a year or two of survey classes and another year or two of seminars--without there even being a concentration, or major! A law journal with articles by professors holding two undergraduate degrees can demonstrate the writing (and editing) level that could be expected of a college graduate, rather than someone holding a doctorate (with a dissertation!). Reading articles on federalism in law journals, I found that pieces of ninety pages could easily and more concisely be thirty, and I won't get into the grammar and sentence structure. 

How did the Americans get themselves in such a mess? In short, students complained about going seven or eight years in college with only two bachelors-level degrees. Changing the names of degrees without changing their academics is itself dubious or suspicious of an ulterior motive when the "B" gets changed to a "M" or even a "D." 

The case of law schools is illustrative. In law schools, the JD (Juris Doctor, which is distinct from Doctorate) name of the first degree in that professional school began to replace LLB (Bachelors in the Letters of Law) name (only) at the founding of a law school at the University of Chicago in 1893. The college's administration (aka marketers) decided to change the name to attract students. The comparative advantage stemmed from the fact that prospective law students generally did not like the fact that seven years of college resulted in two bachelors degrees (e.g., BA and LLB). Changing the name of the degree did not make it a doctorate, so the "D" for doctor in "JD" was misleading, and thus unethical. The doctorate of law is the JSD (Doctorate in Juridical Science). The masters (LLM), stands between the undergraduate (i.e., first degree in the school) JD (or LLB) degree and the doctorate. Again, we can refer to common sense, which raises eyebrows at the fact that a Juris Doctor degree is a prerequisite for admission into a Masters in the Letters of Law (LLM) program. 

Similarly, the doctorate in Medicine is the DSciM. (Doctorate in the Science of Medicine). The MD degree is a prerequisite, hence it cannot be a terminal degree in medicine—the DSciM. is higher). The "D" in the MD stands for doctor whereas the "D" in the DSciM stands for doctorate. Physicians are typically called doctors, but are never called doctorates. Even though subtle, this distinction is vital to understanding the qualitative difference between the two degrees; only one is a graduate degree in medical schools, even if a particular university does not offer the degree, whereas the other degree is the undergraduate degree in medicine. "Undergraduate" does not refer only to a person's first college degree, but, is relative to the school of knowledge being studied. In the U.S., this point is virtually unknown, which is staggering because common sense alone should make clear that a year or two of survey courses and one or two more of narrower subjects (within those surveyed) are not advanced in terms of the knowledge in a given academic field or school (of knowledge). 

Even in the face of all this, the self-vaunting lawyer or physician is apt to presume that he or she has in fact earned a doctorate, and ministers or priests holding the M.Div degree typically belies any claim to humility by claiming a graduate degree in theology for just three years of study!  

More abstractly, error itself may even be presumed to have a certain right to an over-reaching hegemony over knowledge in a society in which higher education is not valued in itself. Too often the case, American universities have come to be confined to fitting the criteria of vocation rather than education. Just because lawyers and physicians in private practice make enough money to be in the upper-middle economic stratum does not mean that their practitioner-degrees have the status of advanced scholarly degrees. 

Furthermore, American law and medical schools need not dilute themselves by continuing to grant tenure to people holding two undergraduate degrees. Shifting laterally from one school of knowledge to another does not make a student a scholar of either one. Yet the credibility of tenured professors of law and medicine is well ensconced in even the most elite of American universities. Even they have undercut academia  in the service of other values in American society. Even those universities can be characterized as having voluntarily weakened themselves. Those that know what the degrees mean are particularly blameworthy, for they know what they are doing and they do it anyway! 

Yale's law school's academic administrators, for instance, know that the JD degree is an undergraduate degree, and yet the vast majority of tenured law professors there only have the one degree in law. A few might have the Ph.D. degree, but that degree would be in another academic discipline (not in law). and going sideways doesn't count the same as having the doctorate in law (i.e., the JSD) among the school's faculty. 

It is hardly a feat of human nature that the human brain can so utterly fail to see what lies visible just ahead. Such is the warping effect that group-think (or culture more generally) can have. Even in seeking the truth, it may remain elusive to even the most innocent. Add pride and vested interest to the mix and the visible can conveniently remain as though invisible. 

Epilogue

"I've wondered why it took us so long to catch on. We saw it and yet we didn't see it. Or rather we were trained not to see it. Conned, perhaps . . . The truth knocks on the door and you say, 'Go away, I'm looking for the truth,' and so it goes away. Puzzling. But once we caught on, . . . "[2]

1. A person's first college degree may be in a college of liberal arts and sciences or one of the professional schools (e.g., business, engineering, pharmacy, education, nursing) except for law, medicine, and divinity. Hence a first college degree can be distinguished from the first degree of a professional school even though the latter is also a bachelors degree. According to the registrar at Yale's law school, and the book she "had me read" (in typical Yale fashion), the first degree in a school/college is the undergraduate in that school/college. Hence, the graduate programs at Yale's law school consist of those for the LLM and JSD degrees, but not the JD degree. "That's our undergraduate degree," the registrar said of the JD (or LLB) degree. I had been puzzled why the JD (or LLB) was not in the Graduate Programs Office. 

2. Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (New York: Mariner Books, 1974), p. 13. 

"Old School" Scholars and the Contemporary American University: Oil and Water

In the 2000s, I had the honor of studying under Patrick Riley, a scholar of historical moral, religious, and political thought. Even though I had had "old-school" professors in the course of my degreed studies at Indiana University and Yale, Riley's approach can be said to be medieval. After four years of auditing his courses and those of many of other professors at Riley's request at a large Midwestern university, I received not a degree nor even many academic credits, but. rather, a hand-written letter in which he let his colleagues know that I could teach graduate-school level political theory. It is no accident that he periodically visited the University of Bologna, which, aside from hosting the huge project of publishing Leibniz's correspondence, was as the first university in Europe, founded in 1066. Back then, I bet letters of recommendation were the principal way in which scholars got hired; a scholar became recognized as one when the scholar he studied under realized that the budding scholar knew enough of the field, which is more than merely doing well in some classes. How technocratic and artificial contemporary universities would seem to ancient and medieval scholars. I think they would be startled at how many pedestrian scholars there are, who relish making narrow distinctions based on technicalities. In contrast, Patrick Riley a product of Harvard, where he continued to work and live even during the many years in which he took weekly flights during the semesters out to a Midwestern university, viewed European intellectual history in the great book tradition and was thus able to see intellectual inheritances well beyond Augustine's in Plato and Aquinas' in Aristotle. Riley traced how the theory of justice as love and benevolence came together from strands of thought in Plato and Augustine in the thought of Leibniz, and how the social contract school of political thought changed in going from Hobbes to Kant. Moreover, I admired Riley's relating of historical theological and moral thought to the political thought. How technocratic or pedestrian so many other twentieth-century scholars were, but not Patrick Riley. 

The full essay is at "Old-School Scholars"

Rockford University: Paranoid on the Periphery

A young library supervisor of student workers at Rockford University insisted that Christmas is only a private holiday because it is exclusively religious after I had said that I wanted to finish the book by Christmas. When I pointed out that in this country (the USA) Christmas is recognized as a national holiday, the library employee said that it is only a holiday for the federal government (not the rest of us) and demanded that I define "country." Then, presumably out of ideological spite, while I was taking an hour walk break outside, he intentionally took the book from its proper place on a bookshelf and demanded that each time I want to use the book, I had to ask him for it. It was neither a reference nor a rare book. Surely he had not spied on every patron, or taken books from the shelves so any patron wanting to use a book again would have to ask him at the front desk; and yet, his boss, the provost of the small college whose office was off to the side of the library's entry hallway, rebutted my complaint about his subordinate and instead angrily threatened me that I had to respect library policies, or of course I could go to another library. No wonder that college was in financial trouble and could not keep its CEO. 

The full essay is at "Rockford University"

Airing Ideas at Universities: Beyond the Book-Burning Hype

In May 1933, some Germans in Nazi Germany burnt books authored by Jews so as to sever Jewish influence. So when some students at Georgia Southern University gathered around a grill to burn copies of a novel by a Cuban, the obvious comparison was made by some. I submit that the comparison being made is not so obvious or straightforward. Moreover, the comparison sullies the ideal of universities being impartial to the ideas aired even as opinions.

The university spokeswoman, Jennifer Wise, cited the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution as protecting the students, so no action was taken against them. In contrast, the Nazis’ book-burning took place absent any freedom of expression. Nevertheless, book-burning symbolizes the destruction of ideas. Appropriately, Wise wisely added that “book burning does not align with Georgia Southern’s values nor does it encourage the civil discourse and debate of ideas.”[1] In other words, burning objectionable books is part of free speech even though the university frowns on that particular expression.[2]

The balanced university-statement is not flawless, however. The assumption that the students were trying to destroy the author’s ideas by burning just a few copies of a novel does not hold up as no attempt was made to seek out every copy even on the campus. Rather, I submit that the students were angry because the author had insulted them. In other words, the burning was part of something larger in which the blame cannot rightly be put entirely on the students.

According to the student newspaper, a student accused the author of generalizing about “the majority of white people being privileged.”[3] This is a fair accusation. Asked in the question and answer time following the author’s talk why she had come, she replied to a student, “I came here because I was invited and I talked about white privilege because it’s a real thing that you are actually benefitting from right now in even asking this question.”[4] The author assumed rather than suggested that white privilege exists, and furthermore claimed that that student was benefitting from it even in being able to ask the question. What if the merits of the student had gotten him or her to the point of being able to ask the question? Of course, he or she felt insulted. If it is difficult to comprehend why the author’s comment was insulting, consider how the claim, “You are only here because of affirmative action” might feel to a minority student.

The author described the ensuing interaction in the Q & A session as “hostile, surreal and strange,” but she failed to acknowledge her own contribution to it.[5] Russell Willerton, chairman of the school’s Department of Writing and Linguistics, pointed to it in saying, “Last night’s discussion with the author devolved into accusations of her demonstrating racism against white people.”[6] Whether racism is or is not implicit in charges of white privilege being made to Caucasian students, the charges themselves are at the very least insulting rather than geared to the sort of open discussion that the author ostensibly thought was necessary. It’s like the kid who throws a stick then hides behind a tree and chastises the kids on the other side for not being open to civil discourse.

Therefore, I submit the comparison with Nazi book-burning does not hold. The problem can be re-stated as the following: What should a university’s position be toward a speaker who is intent on insulting students? Of course, an upcoming speaker can hid this intent, but someone in the administration, such as a department chairperson, could be present on the stage during the talks and intervene accordingly. Students would not feel the need to find their own means of venting their anger. To be sure, stopping hurtful insults at the moment they are being leveled is not easy. Some ideas couched in rational thought may be objectionable to some people. Perhaps a distinguishing feature is the amount of ratiocination leading up to such an idea; typically the intent to insult is delivered without much thought behind it, as the intent is not the rational pursuit of ideas. Pre-talk discussions with likely speakers yet to be formally invited can be helpful in this regard.

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[1] Amir Vera and Natalie Johnson, “Georgia College Students Burned the Books of a Latina Author,” CNN.com, October 12, 2019. Readers bothered by my use of wisely after Wise can feel free to burn this essay even though that might entail burning their computers. Seriously, the advent of computers means that printing out and burning paper copies of writings does not destroy the ideas, which still live on the internet and in computers.

[2] Fortunately, the university achieved such a balanced approach; at some other universities in the United States, a university police-force might have swooped in, with guns drawn, to surround the heinous grill. Such police-state universities are inherently inimical to the free expression of ideas because the motif of force is so salient.

[3] Vera and Johnson, “Georgia College Students Burned the Books of a Latina Author.”

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

Sexual Harassment at Yale: A Wider Picture of Intolerance in Political Correctness

In his commentary on “Sex and the College Dean” in The Wall Street Journal, William McGurn bemoans what he calls the “surrender [of] what little moral authority [deans and college presidents] have left to their in-house counsel and off-campus government authorities.”[1] McGurn points in particular to the rising influence of lawyers in college administrations. “Today deans have given way to lawyers. The consequence has been endless gestures to raise ‘awareness,’ constant upgrading of procedures and the proliferation of committees—all designed primarily to limit the institution's civil liability. Thus Rutgers says it is working on making the school ‘more inclusive’” after a gay student killed himself after his roommate had posted video secretly shot of the gay student having sex in the dorm room. Not to completely dispute McGurn’s “lawyer thesis,” I do, however, want to broaden the explanation based on material provided by McGurn himself. Specifically, the “more inclusive” language McGurn cites is the signature of the political-correctness movement that had swept college campuses in the United States since the late 1980's. McGurn claims that deans of students have gone from being adults to legalists in seeking to minimize their school’s liability; I want to add that those deans went from being adults to ideologues as well.
Years after I was at Yale, fraternity students chanted, "No means yes. Yes means anal" outside women's housing. Yale College had only admitted women since 1968. The chant was of course highly inappropriate. With some trepidation, I must admit to also thinking that college students in the 18 to 22 age-bracket are not always going to be appropriate. For example, at my first university in the Midwest, fraternity students stole human cadavers from the biology building and laid out the bodies on beach towels near the campus pond. At the time, as an 18-year-old, I thought this was pretty funny. Decades later, I wonder whether the contemporary "solution" would be to create a campus safety zone where placing dead bodies would be tantamount to assault, legally. 
Back to Yale, far indeed from my first university on the plains, I submit that to expect teenage boys who had been in high school just a year or two earlier to be politically correct, or ideological, in referring to women asexually only would ignore the reality of surging hormones. The creation of campus safe zones wherein statements such as, "You're looking good today!" would be tantamount to legal assault would, I submit, go too far. Of course, if an ideological agenda is the true motivator, as in to teach the boys an ideological lesson by harming them, then such a safety zone's excessiveness could be accounted for. 
Perhaps the tension between the ideology and human nature lies at the root of the problem with adopting an ideological solution. The ideology holds that if the boys are harmed (e.g., by being arrested on overblown charges), the very nature of the boys would change. I submit that the ideology is deeply flawed in this resort. Furthermore, the ethics of broadening criminal assault to speech that does not reach hate speech can be challenged. I submit that criminalizing disagreement with any given ideology is unethical because the harm to the offender is not justified. At root is the ideologue's anger, even more than any urge for justice. As Nietzsche claimed, the weak who seek to dominate all to readily resort to cruelty, for it is power without the requisite strength that they want. 
At Yale, the response was not the creation of a safety zone, for that time had not yet arrived. Instead, McGurn reports that based in part on the fraternity brothers' chants, “16 female students and alumni are claiming under Title IX of the Civil Rights Act that the campus is now a ‘hostile sexual environment’ that denies women the same opportunities as their male counterparts.” The claim distends the plain meaning of the word, hostile, and extends a brief incident into an enduring part of the environment on campus. In other words, the women over-reacted, and I suspect that ideology played a large role in that reaction. In fact, I suspect that an ideologically-driven dean of students may have had a hand in that, for an opportunity to make an ideological statement would have been rather obvious. So whereas the boys' chant may be viewed as one of power, I submit that the reaction was even more so.  

1. William McGurn, “Sex and the College Dean,” The Wall Street Journal, April 26, 2011, p. A15.