Archive for the 'Yale' Category

Demographics David Brooks Didn’t Make Up

Published
by
Nicola Karras
on June 27, 2008
in Media, Politics and Yale
. 0 Comments

I got a phone call this morning: “Did you see the Times? Read the David Brooks column — Will’s in it!”

On further inspection, this turned out to be Will Wilkinson, not Will Wilson (more famous, less my boyfriend), but the point of the column remains: the unconventional young writers are the future of intellect in American conservatism.[1]

…most of these writers did not rise through the official channels of the conservative or libertarian establishments. By and large, they didn’t do the internships or take part in the young leader programs that were designed to replenish “the movement.” Instead, they found their voices while blogging. The new technology allowed them to create a new sort of career path and test out opinions without much adult supervision.

As a consequence, they are heterodox and hard to label. These writers grew up reading conservative classics — Burke, Hayek, Smith, C.S. Lewis — but have now splayed off in all sorts of quirky ideological directions.

There are dozens of writers I could put in this group, but I’d certainly mention Yuval Levin, Daniel Larison, Will Wilkinson, Julian Sanchez, James Poulos, Megan McArdle, Matt Continetti and, though he’s a tad older, Ramesh Ponnuru.

…now excuse me while I add some blogs to Google Reader.

[1] It would be egotistical for me to suggest that, were he sixty years younger, William F. Buckley would probably have been part of the Yale Mafia. In other news, I love paralipsis.

Tate Postmodern

Published
by
Dara Lind
on June 26, 2008
in Arts, L'affaire Shvarts and Yale
. 9 Comments

You heard it here first (well, unless you subscribe to email updates from the Yale Daily News): Aliza Shvarts’ work will be presented at the Tate Modern.

Not the piece that got her in so much trouble in April, mind you, and not on display; she just created “two seconds” (according to a curator) of a two-hour presentation at the Tate about the media. A Yale faculty member invited her to include her work under the rationale that “she seemed to be more affected by the media than most of us are in our whole lifetimes…I thought she would have some reaction to how the media manipulates stories and truths.”

Well, sure. But will two seconds of an event called “Grammaphones, Films, Typewriters” during a two-day celebration of the work of “German media theorist Friedrich Kittler” (who?) really get to the depth of that? More likely, it seems that one of two rationales were used: either the Tate just wants to gain access to Aliza Shvarts, the controversy, without having to open itself up to criticism of Aliza Shvarts, the artist; or the Tate, unlike almost everyone who passed judgment on the controversy this spring, recognizes that — regardless of whether this is what Shvarts is trying to do with her art — she’s at her most compelling as a performance artist who forces the public sphere to recognize its own tendencies toward the farcical. The hysteria, the gullibility, the breathless search for the New Big Controversy — the Tate seems to have brought Shvarts on less as a documenter or analyst of these things, but as a lightning-rod artifact of them.

Good for the Tate. There is no easy way to collect a performance artist, especially one whose medium is news cycles. Using her only for a few seconds — name-checking her, really — seems like the right way to recognize what she does best.

(While we’re on the topic of gullibility, Yale College Dean Peter Salovey finally admitted to the YDN that “we could never determine unambiguously what she did.” So much for the readily-believed explanation that it was a “fabrication” all along, eh?)

What are friends for?

Published
by
Nicola Karras
on June 9, 2008
in Extemporanea and Yale
. 0 Comments

Self-promotion, when you’re too modest to do it yourself.

Beloved co-blogger and future roommate Dara Lind has an article in Doublethink Online about immigration activists. Also, I’ve just realized that you can find her Jeopardy round online. (It’s .wmv, unfortunately. If I really loved her, I’d convert it to something less awful.)

I feel much better quoting myself when Ben Franklin’s already been mentioned.

Published
by
Dara Lind
on June 1, 2008
in Yale
. 0 Comments

From the Department of Tricky Questions, Easy Answers…

to this:

The central injustice of the Ivy League, according to Samuels, is that it selects a group of 18-year-olds based on what it tells them is their hard work but is in fact their inherited privilege, and it then grants these golden children the freedom “to become someone new. In turn, the university will testify to the social legitimacy of your actions by putting its name on your diploma.” This was the case for Samuels, whose acceptance to Harvard was his ticket out of a strict Orthodox Jewish upbringing he was already itching to escape. But by Samuels’s own logic, such self-invention cannot possibly be widespread in elite institutions whose aim is to perpetuate privilege across generations. Rather, such institutions rely on their students not to change, or else they risk losing the very assets that make them desirable to elite schools in the first place.

I offer this:

Many students — especially those from public high schools and those outside the West Coast and Northeast — deliberately decide to come to Yale because they have the freedom to change in response to the new opportunities presented to them or to throw off repressive social norms that their hometowns forced upon them. I know I did.

Of course, there are plenty of students here whose high schools are overrepresented within the student body…The well-established lifestyle some carry to Yale from private schools in New York and L.A. is appealing, even dazzling, to those from flyover states. I often wonder if the reason that Yale’s mainstream culture seems so upper-class to some isn’t because it reflects most students’ backgrounds, but rather because students who do have these pedigrees offer a pattern that the rest of us — who had no idea of what to expect when we got here — can follow. It’s not that middle-class students are forced to conform; it’s that we’re given the opportunity to become the sophisticates we imagined ourselves to be.

Seriously, folks, admitting that college culture isn’t a monolith makes a lot of things so much easier.

(I snark. The piece is good, and the non-Ivy-centric thesis of the book it’s reviewing — that the “made” in “self-made man” should probably by followed by “from whole cloth” — is downright fascinating.)

No, no, no one is Charlotte Simmons.

Published
by
Dara Lind
on May 12, 2008
in Ladies, Navel Gazing and Yale
. 0 Comments

I have no quibbles with the thesis of Phoebe’s prof-crush piece — that just because an attraction to an authority figure can’t be realized sexually doesn’t diminish its sexual nature — but given that she admits that her assessment of hookup culture (”When there is mutual interest, nothing is holding anyone back”) is derived from the media rather than direct observation, I figured I’d offer a corrective from a school whose men can occasionally be more assertive than its squirrels.

Setting aside the obvious objection — that crushes very rarely proceed so rationally as to jump ship at the first sign of improbability of fulfillment — the fact remains that hookup culture isn’t a monolith that engulfs the entire student body and whips it into near-bacchanal. (I love Tom Wolfe as much as the next person, but I Am Charlotte Simmons was downright irresponsible in perpetrating this stereotype, and it’s time real live college students stood up and said it.) In fact, it seems to have very particular second- and third-order effects among those who don’t get involved, and instead position themselves in reaction to the ready availability of casual sex.

It seems apparent to me that one of the biggest problems with hookup culture is the way it compartmentalizes interpersonal relationships, turning sex into an aerobic activity rather than an expression. One of the effects of this is that the everyday campus atmosphere probably winds up feeling less sexually charged than it would if people had a healthier, more integrative attitude toward sexual relationships. So it’s ironic that the hookup refuseniks (most of whom, I find, tend to be guys) are explicit champions of this same compartmentalization, insisting that sexuality is an unnecessary use of their time and that they ought to be focusing on more lasting and transcendent things. This may just be where I go to school, but I know plenty of guys like this. And no, none of them are considering seminary; they’ve just instrumentalized their college experience to satisfy particular personal goals and cut out anything unnecessary, and welcome the categorization of physical relationships — even romance of any kind — in the latter.

(There’s also a variation on this, which recognizes sex as a separable biological urge and therefore permits hookups under the logic that they’re “filling a need” — but won’t allow the student to hook up with anyone he might develop a lasting interest in, because that would constitute distraction. I know it’s perverse, but it’s also equally reliant on the divisions hookup culture imposes and on disdaining the side of that division it reveres.)

But the Bacchae and the refuseniks intermix freely in other settings — and as Phoebe mentioned, the dance floor isn’t the only way a crush is developed. Is it so unfeasible that even someone active in hookup culture could develop an interest in that adorable neo-Platonist in her seminar, only to find out that they don’t go to the same parties (whether he is a proper refusenik, a romantic or just a conscientious objector)? Not only does she have to figure out how to charm him the hard way, but she has to contend with the (not negligible) possibility that he thinks she’s a slut. Would it be less “pathetic” to get over it? Possibly, if sexual satisfaction is the end goal. But readily available, compartmentalized sex seems like a silly thing to be chasing, especially with women who often feel we have other “needs” to attend to, like being brought flowers and taken out to dinner. If we also want what he wants, or what we think he wants, maintaining a crush on him — hopeless or otherwise — vindicates our own past promiscuity by reveling in the “purity” of unrequited attraction as we first knew it.

There are also plenty of other reasons why sexual desire, even mutually felt, can’t be fulfilled in college. Most relationships spend more time being complicated than uncomplicated these days, which leaves people in a state of attracted-to-other-people-but-loyal-to-just-one for weeks or longer at a time. The assumption (more hookup-culture fallout) that sexual involvement ruins an otherwise healthy friendship can keep mutually attracted friends apart. And, of course (as Phoebe herself should know!), there are TAs — young enough to be single and even likely to frequent the same bars, with that frisson of authority that is so key to the professor crush. (This is the other point Phoebe misses: the allure of the professor-student affair isn’t pedagogy, but the mystery and suggestive power that comes from the unequal power dynamic.)

To be honest, I think these weird convolutions — which usually result in an over-valuing of purity among anyone not going out every Saturday — are worse for campus cultures than hookups themselves. But don’t count the crush among its casualties just yet.

Harvard Mafia Blogging (or, the Ivy Comes Out of the Woodwork)

Published
by
Dara Lind
on May 12, 2008
in Navel Gazing and Yale
. 0 Comments

While my fellow Mafiosi and I have been wrapped up in term papers and final exams, it seems the alumni and affiliates of that other school have launched a stealth attack to take the lead in self-conscious Ivy League blogging. But given how ambivalent they seem to be about the place (Yugoslavia? Really? Really?), I can’t say that I mind.

Of the various “save Harvard” proposals, Reihan’s is easily the most intriguing, namely because it straddles the patently absurd and the amusingly familiar. Compare this:

What if Harvard cloned itself in India, China, and elsewhere, perhaps through deep partnerships with existing, cash-poor universities in those regions? Something like this happens on a very small scale. Harvard can do better, by farming out faculty and by handing out healthy heaps of cash. Perhaps Harvard could also partner with HBCUs in the American South that focus on, for example, on training teachers and healthcare professionals.

with this:

Yale professor and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Tian Xu directs a research center focused on the genetics of human disease at his alma mater, Shanghai’s Fudan University…Yale faculty, postdocs and graduate students visit regularly and attend videoconference seminars with scientists from both campuses. The arrangement benefits both countries; Xu’s Yale lab is more productive, thanks to the lower costs of conducting research in China, and Chinese graduate students, postdocs and faculty get on-the-job training from a world-class scientist and his U.S. team.

The latter is from a Newsweek cover story in 2006 written by…oh, that’s right, Yale President Richard Levin.

All of which is to say: five steps ahead of you, Reihan.

To be honest, though, I have to say I’m not sold on why a “global university” built on this model is necessarily a good idea. The best argument I can think of for expanding an American university beyond its natural base — “campus” as an area shapes the university experience so thoroughly, after all — is that which urges a more holistic kind of globalization than that in which we currently engage, exporting not only our most powerful brands (McDonald’s, Harvard) but also our most powerful ideas (democracy, liberal arts education).

Perhaps it’s just my undergraduate social-science major bias, but I worry enough that the ever-increasing emphasis on research and pre-professionalism will ultimately choke the training of “would-be change agents” rather than stoke it. An explicit commitment to producing leaders should of necessity teach doing good as well as doing well. (My favorite illustration of this is a story a friend of mine tells about a junior studying Ethics, Politics and Economics, Yale’s elite policy program, who couldn’t answer the question “What do you value?”)

Besides, branding is most effective when it’s about more than franchising, but about actively building an integrated community.

At the end of the day, though, this whole “how do we save Harvard?” trope is just so…Harvard. I’ll be the first to admit that the Harvard-Yale rivalry casts Harvard as the champion and Yale as the underdog, but I think that recently that’s worked out in our favor: one of the sociological fruits of underdoggery is finding a reason to be fiercely loyal, while one of those of championship is an irrational terror over losing ground in any way. So the value added is imperfect! So it can’t singlehandedly save global education! Around here, we’d just burrow happily into the Social Science building (or something else that inspired comparable affection – this comes to mind), treat that as the University we knew and cheer just as hard for it as anyone else. It’s only when your dominance leads you to feel you need to make a claim for universality that people are too busy trying to stay on top to remember how to have fun doing it.

Secret Ivy League message: 11.22.2008, Cambridge. Game weekend blogger rumble. Choose your weapons, Cantabs.

Things Which Have Contributed to my Absence

Published
by
Nicola Karras
on May 6, 2008
in Extemporanea, Navel Gazing and Yale
. 6 Comments
  • The untimely death of my hard drive, which I shall mourn until the replacement arrives.
  • My badly bruised (but luckily not broken!) scaphoid, which has made it difficult to type. (I’ve been walking while reading for fifteen years now, and this is the first time I’ve fallen. I think that’s a pretty good record.)
  • A paper on postmodernism and tradition.

The only answer we have yet found to the argument—perhaps the only answer there can ever be—is in the value of the argument itself. Our telos can be found, if nowhere else, in continuing our search for it. The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill the heart of a man. One must imagine the Humanities student happy.

  • A paper on how Socrates killed beauty.

It is our belief in beauty as a thing in itself that prevents us from being beautiful. (In other words, “it is five a.m. and I need sleep. This paper is terrible.”)

  • A paper on the definition of conservatism.

Tonsor claims that “the Right that is born of modernity is a radical, a revolutionary Right,” and though he is referring with scorn to the neoconservatives he is entirely correct. We stand athwart history not because we would like history to stop where it is, but because it is going the wrong way. In modernity, any ideology that lays claim to an intellectual tradition shared by Burke and Buckley can only be radical or revolutionary. As conservatives, we cannot be conservative about our conservatism.

  • An as-yet unfinished paper on the history of astrology in medieval Europe.

From this last, I bring you what is possibly the most hilarious thing I’ve ever read: John Calvin opposed the practice of astrology because he thought it taught people that they had no control over their ultimate fate.

Take a moment to let that sink in…

Epistemological Mess: Is Yale itself engaging in a “creative fiction”?

Published
by
Dara Lind
on April 21, 2008
in L'affaire Shvarts, Media and Yale
. 0 Comments

Apparently it was easier to blame the student for being sensationalistic than the institution for being careless.

The blogosphere seems to have taken the University at its word, dismissing l’affaire Shvarts as a hoax; as the controversy continues to unfold, though, the school’s position has become increasingly convoluted, and I’d like to spend some time pointing out some cracks in its story. After all, since when do bloggers take a press release at its word, or treat an “official Administration statement” as unambiguous truth?

More…

Keep off the grass and out of the news!

Published
by
Dara Lind
on April 19, 2008
in Extemporanea, L'affaire Shvarts, Media and Yale
. 0 Comments

I don’t want to post on Aliza Shvarts qua Aliza Shvarts. But it’s obviously impossible to be on campus and ignore the controversy, especially because our admitted-students recruiting event (called Bulldog Days) is coming up at the beginning of next week — right as the exhibit is slated to open, in fact. In wondering how the heck Yale’s going to avoid total trainwreck, I’ve started thinking about the failures of narrative when appropriated by an institution to obscure or explain multivocality and diversity in the community it represents. (While I use Yale as an example for convenience, the relationship between the University and the students is largely analogous to that between state and nation.)

I used to wonder why Yale always decided to reseed the grass on the quads right before Bulldog Days. Didn’t it create undue hassle to have the quads blocked off and force the already-confused kids to take the long way? This year I’ve finally figured it out: it’s less about taking care of something that had to be done in the spring, and doing it at a particularly inconvenient time, than a way to protect the fragile April lushness of New England grass from hundreds of overenthusiastic high-school feet. It’s more important to Yale that prefrosh have a good image of the campus, aesthetically speaking, than that they have a good experience of being able to use its spaces; they’d rather have a bunch of awed spectators eager to enter the mystery than give them a taste of Yale life that will get them hooked. It’s a preview, quite literally speaking.

That’s certainly one way to do public relations: super-choreograph the experience so that it’s closer to watching a performance of a community than engaging with the community itself. After all, participating in reality on the ground level has a way of giving the lie to any officially-imposed narrative and instead exposing the much more polyphonic truth. (I say this coming from a discipline that has fairly notorious trouble keeping its theory under control — the anthropologists themselves know that everything’s subordinate to the facts on the ground, but the public/laity want easy and broadly applicable answers.) It’s not just a matter of avoiding the risk that a high-schooler left to his own devices will stumble onto something unsavory, but avoiding the risk that a high-schooler will leave campus overwhelmed and confused, unable to assimilate the thousands of experiences to which he’s been subjected into an understandable whole. That’s what narrative is for, anyway.

The problem is that this year, Yale doesn’t have control of its own narrative to begin with, to say the least. (In fact, if you want to get cute about it, it doesn’t even have control of the narrative that’s disrupting its narrative.) So the official, University-endorsed, Bulldog Days-performed image has to go mano a mano with the image glimpsed through the dust surrounding the media fracas — an image of a school without moral mooring, academic oversight, or the epistemological authority to tell its own students what is or is not real. It’s a risky proposition, especially if it turns out that Aliza Shvarts wasn’t lying and Helaine Klasky was. Like any totalizing force, narratives are brittle things, and they should never be opposed to facts — that’s the definition of “bad spin.”

Ironically, at the moment the community of Yale’s student body isn’t as multivocal as usual — Aliza Shvarts is the single topic of conversation to an extent that I’ve never seen (no, not even when we found out about the Taliban dude). But, given that Yalies have the attention span of gnats and Bulldog Days has a more luminous pull than any porchlight, that won’t necessarily be the case in a few days’ time. While the admissions officer has to respond to the “But don’t you kill babies?” question with “Not really…” and hope that his explanation is sufficient, the student has the luxury of conceding that someone does but continuing “But also, people do x, or y.”

I understand that equating Shvarts with the captain of the varsity crew team trivializes the controversy, but it’s obviously true that neither is more representative of Yale. Narrative, with its eye-chart prioritization, has to promote one or the other, and it’s not clear which will prevail. So the general rule holds: it’s better to rely on community, polyphony and ground-level involvement — lived experience — than institutions, official narratives and a performance that prohibits its audience from being any more than spectators.

Performance art stops a beating heart.

Published
by
Nicola Karras
on April 18, 2008
in Extemporanea, L'affaire Shvarts, Politics and Yale
. 0 Comments

The consensus (or, at least, my firm conviction) is that Aliza Shvarts can’t possibly have done what she said she did. If abortifacient herbs were that easy to come by and use, the abortion debate would be pointless. (Also, she is registered on the Yale website as an English major, which makes the story a wee bit implausible.)

Of the two cases (She Did It/She Didn’t Do It But Claims She Did), I think the latter is actually worse. There is a coherent worldview which holds that abortion has no moral content, and so making abortion art is no worse than making wisdom-tooth-removal art or appendectomy art. Helen points out that she’s making a statement about “what happens when you turn your body into an instrument of politics,” and as long as we ignore the moral question that’s true.

However, claiming to have done it in order to excite controversy? Evidence not of art based on moral and political convictions with which I disagree, but of being a deeply bad person.

Jake refers to the incident as “tarnishing Yale’s reputation in front of millions, if not tens of millions, of people.” It is, admittedly, depressing when Yale’s presence on the national stage is dominated by things like this, but the cool stuff does have some presence on the ‘tubes.

Google Wars: Embarrassing vs. Awesome

  • “Aliza Shvarts”: 11,900
  • “Sex Week at Yale”: 20,700
  • “Yale Mafia”: 649
  • “Yale Political Union”: 9,910

“Party of the Right” has more hits than all the above combined. Make of this what you will.