Yale and the Purpose of Great Universities

The Wall Street Journal 03 May 2019: A.14.

In his response (Letters, April 29) to Heather Mac Donald’s “At Yale, ‘Diversity’ Means More of the Same” (op-ed, April 24), YaleUniversity President Peter Salovey does a better job at confirming everything Ms. Mac Donald asserts about Yale. Why is Mr. Salovey so obsessed with the origins of Yale’s students rather than their intellectual achievements? Apparently, Yale University, any university, must be a sort of universal pacifier: “Yale engages with contemporary challenges, including racism, discrimination and intolerance in this country and world-wide. Such engagement isn’t ‘bureaucratic bloat:’ it is a university fulfilling its mission.”

This is a very odd view of a university. There are many other institutions whose proper, assigned mission is to “engage with contemporary challenges.” Is the university not different in important ways?

The classical view is that learning is concerned with “the best which has been thought and said.” Many have assumed that learning is the aim and object of a university. Where do “contemporary challenges” appear in this? Where “racism” and “intolerance”? Or are these problems perhaps created by the very apparatus that is supposed to solve them?

If all attention is on intellectual matters, racism and intolerance will find no place. It has certainly been my own experience, when running a laboratory with men and women of several races from half a dozen countries, that these issues never arose, because everyone was interested above all in their work. The solution to Yale’s problems isn’t more “diversity” but more attention to intellectual matters, to the core function of a university rather than ineffectual, if not counterproductive, do-gooding.

Let’s hope that Yale, a great university, can survive Mr. Salovey’s monumental misdirection.

Em. Prof. John Staddon, Duke University, Durham N.C.

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Without explaining how “diversity strengthens Yale,” Yale President Peter Salovey writes that: “Our campus boasts racial, ethnic and socioeconomic diversity.” Note that he doesn’t write that Yale boasts the only type of diversity that is important: diversity of ideas and opinions.

Prof. Randolph Braccialarghe, College of Law, Nova Southeastern University, Davie, Fla.

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