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Alumni of the world, unite! Much of Buckley's 1951 book God and Man at Yale was dedicated to exposing what Buckley saw as Yale's drift toward socialism and away from religion. But a chapter called "Yale and Her Alumni" called for alumni to rise up against these trends. Austin Bramwell '00 argues in the book's 50th anniversary edition that "Buckley's call for Yale alumni to withhold financial support until Yale ceased to undermine her students' faith in Christianity and the free market went almost entirely unheeded; today Yale is more secular and left-wing than ever." Still, Buckley's blueprint for alumni resistance has since popped up repeatedly in academia: in the recent fights over trustee elections at Dartmouth, in the furor over the 1995 return of a $20 million gift for a program in western civilization at Yale, and in the ongoing efforts of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. From the chapter "Yale and Her Alumni": "If the alumni wish secular and collectivist influences to prevail at Yale, that is their privilege. What is more, if that is what they want, they need bestir themselves very little. The task has been done for them. There remains only a mopping-up operation to eliminate the few outspoken and influential figures who stand in the way of real unity in Yale's intellectual drive toward agnosticism and collectivism. . . . "[U]nless something is done now, or soon, by collective or individual alumni action, nothing in all probability will be done in the future about Yale's predominant biases, because these will be in full accord with the wishes of the next generation of alumni. "The question arises, of course, whether or not the alumni have the power or the right to interfere if they are in disagreement with Yale's educational policy. My contention on both points is yes, they have the power and they have the right to 'interfere.' But I go one step farther than some people; for I maintain they also have the duty to 'interfere.' . . . "[T]he administration is the first to concede and italicize her responsibility to her alumni (and hence, conversely, the responsibility of the alumni to support Yale). There don't seem to be two points of view about this. . . . And administrative Yale is not making it easy for them to fulfill their obligations for the simple reason that, sound and fury notwithstanding, she is glad to settle for their money and to eschew their counsel. She shapes her alumni policy accordingly." |
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