yalealumnimagazine.com  
  1891  
spacer spacer spacer
 
rule
 
yalealumnimagazine.com
About Us
Change of Address
Advertising
The Yale Classifieds
Subscriptions
Letter to the Editor

spacer
 
current issue

current issue
issue archives

 

advertise demographics
request a media kit
view The Yale Classifieds
place a classified ad

 
 
 
 

Comment on this article

A Serious Number

Anniversaries are the occasions by which we measure our age, but also our progress. Depending on the setting, we celebrate 13 as the threshold of adulthood, 18 as the voting age, and 21 for permission to legally consume alcohol. But the more conventional grouping is in fives and tens; silvers and golds. There are few institutions in this country that have come close to 300. Yale is now there.

 

At the core of the issue is an essay by Lewis Lapham.

Of course age alone is no absolute testimony to anything but durability. In Yale’s case, the number resonates with substance. Joining the rest of the University in this Tercentennial year, the Yale Alumni Magazine offers a survey of Yale’s achievements defined largely through the work of people who have passed through the university as students. They include some of the most influential individuals in American history, going back beyond the existence of the United States itself.

We have drawn on their accomplishments in virtually every significant field of endeavor, but even so can only suggest the scope of Yale’s contributions. At the core of the issue is an essay by Lewis Lapham ’56 on what the sum of the parts means to one—admittedly partisan—observer.  the end

 
     
  spacer   spacer
 
 
 
rule
spacer
 

©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