The Old Yale Two Step - A Tea Dance For True Believers In A Woke Age

LaShonda Williams closed her book - 'Parsing Communication Theory - The Linguistic Dimensions Of Race' - and headed to the Old Campus for the demonstration, this time an anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian affair intending to force the university to divest all holdings in Israeli companies and, as many of the more radical protesters insisted, divest investment in all Jewish-owned companies.  It wasn't exactly a Down With Jews, brown shirt torchlight parades, but close to it.  The hatred for Israel (aka The Jew) had become white hot, and it was time that Yale students saw some response from the administration. 

For weeks no senior official of the university had shown up at the parades, midnight vigils, and all-day political tailgate parties at Yale Bowl, until Berkeley B. Hastings, Associate Dean of Yale College decided to speak.  Surrounded by Black Panther clones, do-ragged and keffiyeh-scarved, scowling black men, Hastings took the podium.  Only thanks to a rock concert high amp sound system was his voice heard. 

'Ladies and Gentlemen', Hastings began; but then he stammered when the crowd starting howling and shaking their fists at his faux pas - such honorifics were signs of a white, privileged, gender-accusatory past and would not be tolerated.  Hastings, however, had not been sufficiently prepared for his walk-on, nor for the red flags that would be waved.

'Friends', he corrected himself, and went on to acknowledge the students concerns, how war is a terrible thing, the loss of any baby, brown, black, or white was a tragedy, and that compassionate people everywhere hoped and prayed that the conflict in Gaza would end quickly. 

'Pig, slattern, cunt', shouted one student. 'Jew-lover', yelled a woman in the front row, 'White motherfucker', shouted a third. The crowd picked up the chant, 'Mo-ther Fuck-er, Mo-ther Fuck-er' until the Old Campus turned into a roaring, echoing, feral place. 

The Old Campus, one should remember, was in the university's early days the center of the university, and Connecticut Hall, an early colonial era building still stood, an unchallenged remembrance of Elihu Yale and John Davenport, founders of the university, devout Christians, and visionary leaders who envisaged a place of higher learning based on faith, intellect, reason, and sound political philosophy.

 

Davenport was a founding member of the Massachusetts Bay Colony but who, disappointed and discouraged by its slide into a non-committal, lax Protestantism, headed south where he and his company set foot in New Haven and established it as solidly, inalterably Puritan place.  Along the way in his spiritual journey, he founded Yale. 

For three hundred years the university thrived as a center of moral rectitude and academic excellence, and generation after generation of young men, many of whom were the descendants of the early Anglo-American founders, came to this redoubt of classical learning. 

So, many alumni old enough to remember their grandfathers' stories about Yale, The Game, the worldly sophistication, the summers on Nantucket, and the balls and dances at the Waldorf, were unable to process what they saw on the news - the raucous, ragtag, howling banshee crowd in the Old Campus. What had become of their Yale?

Indeed, but the true believers, the reformers, the social justice advocates for race, gender, and ethnic equality wanted no part of that old, retrograde, profoundly ignorant, and persistently dangerous Old Guard.  The more of them that died and left their fortunes to Yale the better.  

Of course they had not counted on the influence of these Old Blues, patriotic to the core, Yale men first and foremost, men who embodied the famous line of the university anthem, 'For God, For Country, And For Yale'.  One by one these old men pulled their alumni support and left the university stunned.  Administrators had never expected that the support of these loyal alumni would ever be abandoned; and yet there it was, a bald fact. 

  

Dean Hastings never recovered from his stumbles and the unexpected garbage pail of insults thrown at him by his students.  He stood nonplussed, agape, and mute as the insults and slanderous shouts continued.  Best to regroup, and to cheers he left the stage. 

LaShonda kissed her lover, hugged her, and said, 'We will overcome'.  

Overcome what? was the question for many alumni hearing this old civil rights refrain on the lips of the likes of LaShonda who had absolutely no idea where the idea came from as she banged on, arm-in-arm with her sisters, marching under the Palestinian flag, smiling, waving, and having a grand old time. 

'What on earth have we done', said Billington Potter, descendant of Hiram Potter, member of the Davenport mission.  'It was all the fault of that prick, Inslee Clark, that cocksucker'. 

Clark was the dean who presided over - in fact encouraged - the first wave of 'diversity' at Yale, stating that it would never again be an old boys' club for the rich and privileged of St. Grottlesex and Martha's Vineyard.  No, he would open the door to all the Jews from Brooklyn who had been denied entry, and all the public school standouts across the country.  

Academic standards would only increase, said Clark in a reference to the Gentleman's C and the no-fail policies of former administrations.  'Jews are very smart people', Clark said, 'and we welcome them'. 

All well and good until the real 'diversity' kicked in, and Yale felt obliged to attend to the underserved - the brown and black students who might not have the old Yale wherewithal, but who would add by their very presence to the inclusive environment of the institution.  So what if a few corners had to be cut or a few sketchy term papers overlooked.  That wasn't the point. 

LaShonda had been recruited from Anacostia, Washington DC's most pestilential slum, a child of single mother and absent father, raised by her grandmother, and near victim of God knew how many drive-by shootings; but she was exactly the student that Yale was looking for - a woman of color with a severely disadvantaged upbringing who would bring racial reality to the university.  

The Administration had already instituted a number of easy-pass courses for affirmative action students like LaShonda, and with any luck, she might progress to something more challenging.  Whether she did or not was irrelevant.  Her race, gender, and penurious upbringing were what counted. 

So was the case for the many gay, lesbian, and transgender students accepted by Yale.  They, by the very nature of their sexual struggle and courageous outing, would provide a living example of what diversity was and why it mattered. 

It was therefore a ragtag bunch that gathered in the Old Campus that day. Despite its raison d'etre, the death of Palestinian children, it still was a happy jamboree, a big party of belonging, good feelings, and camaraderie.  The angry shouts were actually intermittent among hugs and kisses.  'We Are The World', that old bit of treacle from the Eighties rang through those few heads with any sense of history or irony. 

Nothing ever came of the demonstrations.  Israel kept on undaunted in its violent reprisals against Palestinian terrorists and Iran-sponsored militias in Lebanon, and Yale protected its portfolio as it always had done - profits first and foremost - with only a notional withdrawal from investment in Soda Stream, the Israeli spritzer water company. 

The Supreme Court rejection of affirmative action, the pushback against wokism, and the likely re-election of Donald Trump have chastened the university, and it slowly but surely is regaining some of the academic stature it lost over the last few decades.  Bravo, said the Old Guard, about time and what took them so long, but this devilish wokeness was still abroad, and no one's guard should be let down.