Letters to the Editor

Letters: November/December 2025

Readers write back about Gregory Crewdson, faculty diversity, and more.

We welcome readers’ letters, which should be emailed to yam@yale.edu or mailed to Letters Editor, PO Box 1905, New Haven, CT 06509-1905. Due to the volume of correspondence, we are unable to respond to or publish all mail received. Letters accepted for publication are subject to editing. Priority is given to letters of fewer than 300 words.

Chris Buck

Chris Buck

View full image

On photographs and photographers

Congrats to Gregory Crewdson ’88MFA, writer James Hannaham ’90, and photographer Chris Buck on the strangest-ever cover story in YAM (“Crewdson Country,” September/October). On the outside, a disturbing subject tucked among floral excess like Crewdson’s Lynchian early work. On the inside, unruffled text on the Hollywood-style scenographer and tenured dean—the genial professional I remember from Soho in the 1990s. 

Between these parallel tracks, the third rail is the character Crewdson plays in the portraits, wary and passive as any of his models. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, begins in my mind with none other than the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson late in life. It’s a risky way to ask if you’re a genius.
Lisa Hein ’76
Brooklyn, NY

I enjoyed the article on Gregory Crewdson and his captivating photography. But I found the photo of Professor Crewdson and Juliane Hiam (above) most arresting.

Rarely does one view a photograph with more moment and kinesis. Bravo!
Jonathan Hoffman ’69
Wilmington, DE

Cookies from Claire’s

What a pleasure to read about Claire’s Corner Copia (“Cakes and Kindness,” September/October). Back in 1979, when I was newly married, awaiting a baby, and striving hard through the drama school’s technical design and production program, Claire’s was a mainstay for my husband and me. We made regular visits to Claire’s to get our falafel fix and indulge in the best chocolate chip cookies on the planet! Those cookies! By the time they made it home (if they made it home), the wonderful fats had oozed through the bag. They just don’t make them like that anymore. Or maybe she does? I’d like to think so. It was like getting a warm embrace from home and Mom. Thank you for featuring Claire LaPia Criscuolo and bringing back some dear memories.
Melissa Rick Cochran ’81MFA
Florence, OR

Engineering camp

The story “A Summer Place” (September/October) brought me back to my 1961 summer as a rising junior studying civil engineering. What is now the Yale Outdoor Education Center was then the site of a month-long camp to teach Yale students land surveying: determining the precise location on earth of existing or proposed infrastructure facilities (buildings, roads, etc). This was an unpaid vacation in the woods around Powers Lake, during which we carried transits, levels, and 100-foot-long steel measuring tapes across the landscape. We also learned celestial navigation—finding our location on the earth. All these functions are now handled by GPS. 

We were taught by Professor Robert P. Vreeland, a great teacher, a skilled professional, and a role model who led me to an academic career in engineering.

On days when we were working far from the camp dining facility, Bob Vreeland rowed across the lake to bring us lunch in a picnic basket. It was a grand summer spent with friends and mosquitoes, disconnected from affairs of the day. I am happy to know that Yale kept this facility for broader use. I hope it now has flush toilets. 
Joseph L. Schofer ’63E
Wilmette, IL

Exploring the Baltics

Thanks for including the list of Yale international initiatives (“Yale and the World,” July/August). I would like to suggest an addition to your excellent list: the Yale Baltic Studies Program. This program, housed in the MacMillan Center and led by Bradley Woodworth, is one of the finest Baltic studies programs in the world. The program is an interdisciplinary forum for the study of the Baltic Sea region, with an emphasis on the lands that comprise contemporary Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

Thank you for pointing out the incredible importance of Yale’s engagement with the world at this time.
Steve Woit ’80
Lexington, MA

Giving crew its due

The bold print on page 53 of your July/August issue—“the women’s rowing team won its first national varsity eights title”—and a similar claim in the magazine’s table of contents, sacrifices truth for sensationalism. The article rightly credits Coach Will Porter with four NCAA victories, a good trick if Yale had never won before.  An accurate headline including the words “since 2010” would have acknowledged that the superbly talented 2025 crew was in part the product of a long culture of hard work and successful racing, including earlier NCAA victories in 2007, 2008, and 2010.  

And “first national varsity eights title” ignores the world before the NCAA absorbed women’s rowing. In 1979, the varsity eight, coached by Nat Case, won the collegiate event at the National Women’s Rowing Association Championships. The early history of Yale women’s crew is being lost with the declining memories of those who rowed in the 1970s, but it hurts to see YAM erase it prematurely.   
Eugenia C. (Jennie) Kiesling ’78       
Fort Collins, CO   

Ms. Kiesling is correct. Although the article itself correctly identified the win as the first since 2010, the subhead and table of contents were wrong. We regret the error.—Eds.

More on faculty diversity 

William F. Buckley has been gone more than a dozen or so years, but his heirs, intellectual and otherwise, are still carrying on the permanent grievance with his alma mater, as demonstrated by the full page ad in the May/June 2025 Yale Alumni Magazine decrying the lack of diversity on Yale’s campus—defined as diversity of political party affiliation—or more specifically, the lack of Republicans on campus. 

How does viewpoint diversity work at Yale?  I came to campus, from a family of staunch Midwestern Eisenhower Republicans, practically predetermined to take indefensible stands on any given social issue of the day, from apartheid to queerness and everything in between. I was, in short, a square peg discovering round holes for the first time. My exposure to the genuine diversity of viewpoint and experience on the Yale campus helped me start my journey to becoming a more thoughtful person. For that I am thankful.

Meanwhile, I’m pretty sure, given the recent track record (See Letters: “Alums in the government,” same issue), that I do not desire Yale graduates to lead a whole country. At the same time, we all seem to be awash in Republican opinions, or at least noise, surely even on the relatively insular Yale campus. God and Man at Yale? The world has moved on.

Given the through-the-looking-glass quality of our era, the very fact that Yale is not populated by members of the same political party currently entrenched in the federal government suggests that Yale is accomplishing its mission exactly as intended—resisting complacent, lazy orthodoxy. Of that I can be sure.
John Cooley ’90
Mansfield, CT

So Daniel Fink (Letters, July/August) thinks the reason Yale’s faculty has so few conservatives and Republicans is because few of them enter PhD programs—or that those who do don’t produce work of high enough quality to get hired by Yale? Mr. Fink needs to step outside the world of academia and visit the “real world.” From my career in industrial research, I can assure you that conservatives are well represented among PhDs in industry, and are often the norm, especially in the sciences. 

A more likely reason you find so few conservatives among university faculties is simply choice. Why would any conservative want to join an organization that is so unwelcoming to their beliefs? As I completed my PhD and looked at career options, the thought of a faculty position at a liberal university with no diversity of thought held no appeal at all.
Stephen Christensen ’78MS 
Inver Grove Heights, MN 

I refer to the letters by Lauren Noble ’11 and Jim Staffaroni ’68 (Letters, July/August) in which the now often heard pleas about diversity are thrown around, this time toward the end of their brand of diversity. I thought that diversity ended with the Supreme Court ruling against affirmative action. 

Conservatism, in the William F. Buckley Jr. tradition, which is not dead at all, boiled down to a fear of spreading democracy beyond the rule of white Tory Americans. It also meant standing still against change and expanding equality. While the label “liberal” is a little squishy these days because of its loud opposition to Trump’s brand of conservatism, the definition of conservatism seems even more vague under the hands of our current president. My experience at Yale in the time of McCarthyism was an expansive exposure to a very wide range of political and philosophical points of view through history. It changed my life. What did Noble and Staffaroni absorb from those different and “diverse” world views?
Konrad Perlman ’60MCP 
Washington, DC

So let me get this straight. The Buckley Institute and others think Yale should recruit faculty based upon their Republican Party affiliation, but it is illegal for Yale to recruit students based upon their race. If ability and scholarship are to be the considerations for selecting students, they should also be the criteria for selecting faculty. 
Alan Dynner ’65LLB
Boston, MA

Rethinking ratings

Your Findings section described a study in Nature that touts the replacement of the five-star rating system with a thumbs up or down (Noted, May/June). The change is proffered as a solution to race disparities in ratings. Assuming the disparities are in fact due to racism, two points merit mention.

First, the ratings difference the YAM piece notes are quite small: a 4.79 average for white workers and a 4.72 average for nonwhite workers. Moreover, the differences are not uniform. The original study details that “Hispanic/Latino workers averaged 4.79”—the same as white workers—while both Asian and Black workers did slightly worse.

Second, by obliterating the five-point scale and replacing it with essentially a pass/fail system, the “solution” removes ratings benefits from top performers. That is, a “thumbs up” does not enable the online reader to distinguish a 3.2 worker from a 4.8 worker. A highly rated nonwhite worker is given the same “thumbs up” score as a middling white worker (and vice versa).

The study notes that the difference between ratings of 4.79 and 4.72, while small, is statistically significant. But the difference between worker ratings of 3.2 and 4.8 is far greater. Is suppressing this more finely grained—and thus more informative—evaluation system in favor of inscrutable pass/fail grades really a step toward racial progress? Or is it simply concealing existing racial bias while penalizing skillful minority workers and their customers?
Walter Weber ’84JD
Alexandria, VA

Query: posture photos

To Yale alumni of the 1940s through the 1960s: I host a documentary podcast series called Campus Files, which explores stories within higher education. I’m currently developing an episode about the history of nude posture photographs on college campuses, with particular focus on Yale.

I’ve spoken with several historians, but I believe the story would be greatly enriched by hearing directly from alumni who experienced the posture photo process as students. If you are open to sharing your recollections, I would be grateful to speak with you. I understand this is a sensitive subject, and I am glad to keep conversations on background if preferred. 

If you are interested, please reach me at margo.gray@audacy.com.
Margo Gray
New York, NY


_________________________________________________________________
Correction
In our item noting the death of poet Wen-Tao Cheng (Milestones, September/October), we reported that he earned an MBA from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. As several readers surmised, that was a typographical error. His degree was an MFA. 


Post a comment