Centuries of Dysfunctional Organizational Culture: The Mob at Yale

 “Into blind darkness they enter,
people who worship ignorance;
And into still blinder darkness, people who delight in learning.”[1]

“There are in the souls of wicked men those hellish principles reigning, that would presently kindle and flame out into hell-fire, if it were not for God’s restraints. . . . The corruption of the heart of man is a thing that is immoderate and boundless in its fury.”[2]

“The foolish children of men do miserably delude themselves in their own schemes, and in their confidence in their own strength and wisdom, they trust to nothing but a shadow.”[3]

Jonathan Edwards fell out of favor with Yale’s president Clapp, who opposed George Whitefield’s Christian revivals as being too “enthusiastic.” So, Clapp had two pamphlets published to criticize Edwards, who had studied and then taught at Yale. In fact, one of Yale College’s residential colleges has been named after Edwards at least since the late twentieth century. I would imagine that few if any current or former JE students have been informed that Edwards ceased attending Yale Commencement exercises and even visiting campus once he had known of Clapp’s vitriolic pamphlets. It is ironic that in Edwards’s time, Yale’s faculty minimized the impact of original sin in what became known as the New Haven theology. It seems that compassion for people who hold a different theological (or political) view, as in “Love thy enemy,” was nonetheless above the grasp of Yale’s administration. Fast-forward from the first half of the eighteenth century to roughly three hundred years later and incredibly the same hostile, highly dysfunctional organizational culture was still well ensconced at Yale.

As a student at Yale taking some courses in theology divinity school in the 1990s, I encountered Christian theological intolerance from some of the minister-professors even though they were teaching at a secular university. In a seminar on the Gospel of Mark, the professor did not appreciate my intellectual questions that went according to reason beyond the confines of the Creed. The evangelical Christian who taught Christian environmental ethics put the matter thusly to me: “It takes having a certain character to get a Yale diploma.” The irony is that I was an advocate of the messages on tolerance and compassion towards detractors that Jesus preaches and exemplifies in the Gospels when I on the central part of campus taking classes in Yale College and the Graduate School. Roughly thirty years later, when I was back on campus for a semester to translate a theological work and audit a seminar on Jonathan Edwards in the Beinecke Rare-Book Library, a divinity-school student called me a heretic because he did not understand that scholars do not necessarily personal believe in every theologian cited for academic purposes. I retorted, “You’re not at the div school here—this is the central campus—liberal arts and sciences—there are no heretics here.” Because I had earned a M.Div. degree at Yale, the student could hardly accuse me of being a secularist and relativist based at the central campus.

Why the hostility? After I had graduated in the late 1990s, I spent a semester in Yale’s Law School only for a liberal Black female student to falsely accuse me of having tripped her on hallway stairs. In the law school, she, like Hillary Clinton, according to a librarian there, was known as a “shark.” I had committed the unpardonable offence in a constitutional law course of having defended the conservative position on American federalism being held by Justices Thomas, Scalia, and O’Conner; I was critical of federal preemption and other ways in which consolidation of power at the federal level had caused the federal system to become unbalanced, hence impairing the feature of mutual checks-and-balances between the U.S. Government and those of the several states. Making such an outlandish statement put a target on my back. That did not surprise me; what surprised me was the abject lie of the student and that the so-called attorneys teaching and administrating in Yale Law School so easily and quickly passed judgment against me in spite of there being no evidence. In fact, the director of the visiting scholars program chastised me for not having come to her on the lie even though I had just learned of the accusation against me. Dean Kronman would not even meet with me. The attack against me was launched and perpetuated by the Black female student and the Black assistant dean (i.e., facilities manager). That I was already a scholar with a doctorate counted for naught, but, then again, the LLB or JD degree is not a doctorate, but even as lawyers, the law school administrators should have been familiar with the need for evidence, and this was lacking because I did not even encounter the student on the stairs.

In 2024, when I returned to campus—whereas Edwards surely would not have, were he in my shoes—in part to audit the Jonathan Edwards seminar as a heretic, apparently, I studies a lot in Sterling Library which is located across from the law school in the central part of campus. Unlike in the 1990s, the main reading room was not quiet; in fact, students likely from local universities were even talking in the aisles. One day I suggested to the receptionist of the library’s director that as long as security guards hired by the library were walking through the reading room every twenty minutes or so, perhaps they could enforce the library’s policy against loud talking in the reading room. Unknown to me, my suggestion triggered another shark.

A non-academic manager in the library’s security department sent me an email so harsh that a Yale policeman, in seeing the contents, wanted to have a word with the woman. She falsely accused me of 1) taking pictures of security guards as I entered and exited Sterling Library, 2) trespassing in “restricted office space” because I had stepped into the open doorway of the library's business office to get the location of the library administration office (a finance employee even walked me down to the office), 3) saying discriminatory things to service-desk staff (even though the service-desk supervisor had not heard of any such complaints), and 4) "trying" to use my Yale Library ID card to open other Yale buildings that house Yale libraries. Probably unknown to that manager at Sterling library, a medical librarian actually made that building’s access possible for alumni and visiting researchers, so I could swipe my Yale ID to unlock that building’s doors so I could get to the medical library.

Nevertheless, the director of Sterling library protected the security manager. Alternatively, that director could have actually met with me; she would have discovered that some of the security guards, who no doubt were locals, were actually hostile to Yalies entering and exiting the library. I would have added that I was officially auditing a course, so I was entering buildings other than Sterling library, but that that was no business of a security manager at Sterling library. Instead, even after the Yale police had spoken to that manager and I had actually decamped from Yale, the manager sent me yet another email accusing me of things that would have been impossible because I was by then back at Harvard. Such hostility!  

To claim that Yale has a dysfunctional organizational culture doesn't begin to describe the anger that too many non-academic employees have toward alumni who are back on campus. That two alumni-relations employees bluntly asserted to me in 2023 that "alumni are not members of the Yale community" struck me as very unusual way of attracting donations to the school. That disrespect and even hostility towards alumni who are on campus for a semester extends even to Elm City Partners, the commercial retail-property management company that handles Yale’s commercial properties that are rented by retail businesses on the edge of the central campus. After having been followed in Maison Café on a Sunday morning by a local Black man who was shouting at me because he thought that I had stopped on the sidewalk because of him rather than to look at my phone, I complained to the restaurant’s manager the next week because the employees had refused to tell the shouting man to leave the restaurant or call the police. That manager was nonplussed, so I walked to Elm City Management, whose receptionist told me that the problem would be solved if I simply patronized another restaurant. I even notified Yale’s office that related to that Management company, but to no avail even though I indicated that the personnel in that company did not care much whether retail tenants on Yale-owned land were letting local residents be verbally aggressive toward Yalies. There had been a vicious “town-gown” thing in New Haven for decades, and there was no question that residents in New Haven’s vast ghettos near campus resented Yalies. Had the local Black population known that Yale’s theology school had accepted an ex-slave in the 1830s to audit courses so he could preach only to forbid him from checking out books and speaking in class, the resentment toward Yale would be greater. That Yale’s “seminary” did the same thing to another Black man in the 1840s would not help heal town-gown relations.  

In the perpetuation of a hostile, dysfunctional organizational culture over centuries, in treating some insiders at Yale as outsiders who deserve to be attacked, Yale was not merely imbibing a hostile immediate environment. During the two non-consecutive semesters back at Yale as an alumnus, I encountered too many Yale professors rudely disregard the university’s promotion of auditing courses on campus as a perk of being an alum—one professor in the philosophy even told that my seven years of study in that field were not enough for his undergraduate course on normative ethics because I had not had the prerequisite course and I had already read half of his book on the topic. The vitriol of a security manager in the main library was so over the top that I wondered whether someone such as the dean of the divinity school or Yale College, or else the Yale’s security dept itself was actually behind the attempt to get me out.

Below is one of the threatening emails based of fabricated accusations that was sent to me, Dr. Worden as Mr. Worden, by Ms. Lynn Leronimo. She may have been the security manager whom I had seen spying on students in the stacks in Sterling Library. Once when I witnessed this, a security manager pretended to be curious about which department I was with at Yale. "Just curious; what are you doing research on?" Answer: Alumni are not with any department.

“Dear Mr. Worden, 

I am writing to address concerns regarding your interactions with Yale Library staff that are misaligned with Yale Library policy and community values. As a library, we are committed to cultivating an inclusive work environment supportive of research, scholarship and study. We hold ourselves and each other accountable for embodying the values of access, inclusivity, and creativity in our shared work. Yale Library patrons and visitors are expected to adhere to these values in community with us. Specifically, I have received reports of the following behaviors significantly impacting both library staff and library users: 

·       Photographing and recording library security staff members upon entry and exit. 

·       Reports of attempts to use your library issued Access Pass to justify access to restricted campus spaces. 

·       Filing frivolous complaints about Library Security staff, as they perform the responsibilities of their assigned positions. 

·       Using harmful or discriminatory language when in conversation with library staff. 

·       Entering open office spaces within Sterling Memorial Library for the purpose of complaining about library security staff members.  

·       Engaging service desk staff in lengthy and repeated conversations impacting the user experience of other library patrons. 

 

I expect you to stop the above behaviors immediately. Failure to do so may result in the revocation of your Yale Library Access Pass and its corresponding privileges. Currently, your Yale Library Access Pass is valid through March 6, 2025. Probationary renewal is contingent upon alignment with the above expectations. In the future, I ask that you direct questions related to safety and security to Lynn Leronimo, Director, Library Security. Issues regarding access to collections or library services should be directed to Kim Copenhaver, Director, Access & Public Services. I appreciate your cooperation in maintaining an inclusive environment for both library staff and library users . . .”

I believe she sent that email after Yale police had talked with her about the inappropriate hostility in her first email. If so, such bravado and intractable spite! I now turn to answering these false accusations that Ms. Leronimo made concerning Dr. Worden. Firstly, a finance employee invited me into the library’s business office and actually walked me to the office of the library’s director, so I was not trespassing on restricted library space. Secondly in entering and exiting the library, almost every student, faculty member, and academic researcher held up a phone; it doesn’t mean that we were photographing security guards, and I certainly did not, except for one occasion in which a guard was hostile to me because I had not said hello to him after he, whom I had never met, said hello to me. I did show that photo to a circulation-desk manager and subsequently followed her direction not to record even such atrocious behavior again, and I did not. My complaint against the angry employee was hardly frivolous. Especially in leaving the library, it was not uncommon for us to be looking at our Yale phone app to see whether a shuttle bus was coming, especially during the winters. I maintain to this day that no duty exists at Yale to engage in small talk with petty, angry security guards at the library doors. To expect such an obligation evinces the presumptuousness of false entitlement. 

As for inappropriate or lengthy conversations with employees at the circulation service desk, I had legitimate business with them, and they seemed to like chatting with patrons, including myself. Not once did I use a racial, misogynistic, or anti-gay word. I did, however, complain about the plight of New Haven as the urban blight had not improved since the 1990s. The head of the circulation desk told me that none of his employees to his knowledge had complained about me, and I had had several chats with him, which he enjoyed because of his interest in theology. Therefore, all of Ms. Leronimo’s accusations were false, which suggests to me that someone else wanted me gone. The dean of Yale College and the Divinity dean would be my prime suspects, as both went out of their way to avoid me on sight. It could also be that the library security manager was trying to frame me because more than a year earlier, when I had been on campus to translate a text, I reported a security guard who was stalking me in the Humanities building. 

Even after I notified the administrator of religious studies of the stalking, the guard did it again. The administrator was stunned—as I had again taken photos of that guard following me and looking angry, but that was in the Humanities building rather than the library. After the second infraction by the culprit, on one night when I was leaving the Humanities building after having watched a film, a young man waiting for me a bit farther on along the sidewalk suddenly stood up when he saw me, accosted me and even pushed me, daring me to fight him so he could legally “defend himself.” I pretended to call the police (while I walked to the middle of York St) and shortly a get-away car came to pick the young man up, which means he probably was a local man rather than living on campus as a student. I bet someone working in Yale’s security department hired the man to rough me up—a nice way to treat alumni. At the very least, Yale had some very nasty employees working security with impunity.

I think I know exactly how Jonathan Edwards felt after Clapp published the pamphlets against Edwards, how the twice-escaped slave felt when Yale employees told him that he could not check out books or talk in class, and even perhaps why the U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas avoided visiting Yale because the law school was so anti-conservative. That any organizational culture could be passed down for centuries, protected in this case by the great academic reputation of the school, such that the same pattern can be detected in key instances century after century, is the most astounding bit to be gleamed from this report. On a much more temporally-limited scale, the sordid organizational culture at Wells Fargo, an American bank, was said to go on for decades after the unethical, secret fee-charging practice was uncovered and the bank faced fines. In fact, the bank was fined again! A former employee told me at my bank that she knew that the unethical, greedy organizational culture had not changed in spite of Wells Fargo’s lies to the contrary. As Watergate taught Americans, cover-ups can be worse than the original crimes. Changing a dysfunctional organizational culture, whether of the White House, a business, or a university, is, I submit, very, very difficult precisely defense-mechanisms can be so utterly ruthless even in expunging certain insiders qua outsiders. In short, Yale, I must admit, is run like the mob, using its “community values” like a Nietzschean club to exclude rather than be inclusive. Best, therefore, that all concerned alumni stay away, including with our wallets and purses.

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1. Brhadaranyaka Upanishad 4.4.10 in Upanishads, Trans. Patrick Olivelle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 66.
2. Jonathan Edwards, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” The Works of President Edwards, Vol. 4 (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1864), pp. 313-321, p. 315.
3. Ibid., pp. 313-321, p. 316.