-Caveat Lector-
http://www.yalesuccession.blogspot.com/
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The Yale Succession
The Yale Succession
THE YALE SUCCESSION IS BUSH '48/CLINTON '67JD/BUSH '68: THE THREE
YALE-TRAINED PRESIDENTS WHO HAVE LED THE U.S. SINCE 1988.
Happy New Year!
This blog is for anyone interested in the issues of the
day and in Yale University's surprising influence on them. In the weeks to
come, it will become a place of dialogue on these issues and the roles of
Yale and the Yale presidents in dealing with them. Its outcome will be a book
that I'm writing with Bob Back (MA '60 International Relations) entitled Yale
and the Modern World: the Yale Succession, the 2004 Presidential Election and
the Future of Politics.
I'm Steve Sewall, a writer and educator originally from
New Haven and now living in Glenview, IL after 20 years in Chicago, working
mostly in the fields of education and media. Although my undergraduate degree
was from Harvard ('64) and my Ph.D. from U. C. Berkeley, I have a degree in
high school teaching from Yale (M.A.T. '66). My two brothers, Rick ('65) and
Dave ('69) both attended Yale.
In coming weeks, this blog will link to a second blog
where you can download the thirteen chapters of an as yet unpublished book
about teaching at Yale written by my father, Richard B. Sewall, a Yale
English professor from the mid 30's to the mid 70's. He's now 94 and living
with my brother Rick in the Boston area. Comments and recollections of past
students will be welcome.
Concerning the Yale succession, the opinion piece below
gives an overview of concerns to be discussed at this blog. The piece has
been submitted to the Yale Daily News, Yale's campus paper. Comments can
emailed to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Enjoy!
posted by Steve @ 5:23 PM
1.7.2003
Reflecting on the Yale Succession
by Steve Sewall
Text 851 words
In 1949, Yale Daily News Editor William F. Buckley ('50)
and my father, Yale English professor Richard B. Sewall, had a memorable
exchange at Woolsey Hall. They were there to advise freshmen members of the
class of '53 on how to make the most of their years at Yale. But they
disagreed passionately as to whether the best use of these years was active
(Buckley) or contemplative (Sewall).
Buckley, the big man on campus, urged the freshmen to
join, heel, compete and succeed. Yale, he said, is your chance to build the
networks that will sustain you throughout life. Sewall, the teacher and
scholar, urged the freshmen to read, write, discuss and understand. Yale, he
said, is your chance to reflect on life itself. Years later, '53 alumnus Jim
Thompson summed up the presentation: "We all knew Sewall was right," he said,
"but we wanted to be like Buckley."
Since 1988, three Yale-educated presidents have led
America and, increasingly, the world (Bush '48, Clinton '67JD, Bush '68).
This Yale succession is historic. Never before have three successive U.S.
presidents studied at the same university. During its tercentenary year,
mother Yale effectively codified it as a lineage by bringing all three
presidents back to Yale. (At graduation, President George W. Bush likened
himself to the Prodigal Son.)
The Yale succession is a mixed blessing. Although Yale
uses it to attract students, raise money and extend the university's global
presence, no one studies it. This oversight is alarming, for a community of
scholars loses its perspective on history when it falls silent on something
historic happening in its own back yard. The same is true of the stunning
silence of America's political press on something as significant as Yale's
four-term lock on the White House.
So what's being neglected? For starters, there's the sheer
size of Yale's team of presidential hopefuls, which includes Senators Hillary
Clinton ('67JD), Joe Lieberman ('64), John Kerry ('66) and Vermont Governor
Howard Dean ('71), plus seven other Yale trained U.S. Senators who can look
into a mirror and see a future president.
Under scrutiny, the Yale succession is a key to recent
history and a gateway to leadership issues that concern Yale as a "laboratory
for future leaders", in President Richard Levin's phrase.
All three Yale presidents owe their White House tenures to
the Big Money that has alienated citizens and tightened its stranglehold on
government at all levels since the advent of televised attack ads in the
1960's. The Yale presidents have jointly led America's post-Cold War drive
for economic and military empire. And it was on their watch that systemic
corruptions spread throughout corporate and political America until the
bubble burst in 2000, plunging America and the world into a recession that
economists say could last for years to come.
No economy, however strong, can stand forever on a corrupt
political base. Healthy societies, like healthy families, require trust. The
convergence, or rather collision, of ethics and economics that sank Japanese
markets in 1991 and American markets in 2000 is now a global phenomenon and
the primary obstruction to the growth of a viable global economy.
The restoration of trust at home and abroad is the task of
a generation. It calls for a sea change in our ways doing business and
politics and for a new generation of leaders.
Does America have the will to produce such leaders? The
need for them will become apparent as market rally after market rally fizzles
for reasons baffling to those who cannot see the economic consequences of the
loss of faith in institutions that marks the modern world - or the ruthless
venality that pervades most institutions, including university schools of
business and law. It will fall on America, as the world's superpower, to
reconcile ethics and economics in ways that restore integrity to markets
worldwide.
Will Yale, as a torchbearing laboratory for leaders and a
global university, lead the way in preparing America for this task? The
unwillingness of Japan's elite universities to train a generation of
tough-minded reform leaders helps explain why that once seemingly insuperable
economic superpower is now in its fourteenth year of depression.
Interestingly, the Ivy League aura that has shielded the
Yale succession from scrutiny is fading fast. In Secrets of the Tomb, a
recently published history of Skull and Bones, Yale graduate Alexandra
Robbins ('98) shows how four generations of Bonesmen built the Bush dynasty
that comprises two thirds of Yale's triple whammy. Looking ahead to 2004,
Robbins observes that a Bush/Kerry contest would be "the first Bones versus
Bones presidential race". In this pairing, Yale comes off more as a club for
oligarchs than a laboratory for leaders.
In 1949, Yale, in its wisdom, sent Bonesman Buckley and
"barbarian" Sewall to Woolsey Hall to encourage the class of '53 to pursue
success and understanding. Today, Yale's unreflective handling of the Yale
succession suggests that Yale, to its peril, is pursuing success alone. The
cure for non-reflection is thoughtful dialogue: among faculty, students,
administrators, and alumni, including the Yale presidents and the Yale
Corporation. Much is at stake. Let the dialogue begin.
Steve Sewall (M.A.T.'66) is a Chicago based educator. With
Robert Back (MA '60 International Relations) he is writing a book, Yale and
the Modern World: the Yale Succession, the 2004 Presidential Election and the
Future of Leadership.
posted by Steve @ 3:58 PM
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Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
All My Relations.
Omnia Bona Bonis,
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
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