Centuries of Excluding Insiders 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.

Educating Scholarly Priests: The Cult at Yale

Speaking at a Bhakti-Yoga conference in March, 2025 at Harvard, Krishma Kshetra Swami said that scholars who are devoted to the academic study of religion are also undoubtedly also motivated by their religious faith, even if it is of a religion other than what the scholar is studying. The Swami himself was at the time both a scholar of Hinduism and a Krishna devotee. He was essentially saying that his academic study of Hinduism was motivated not just by the pursuit of knowledge, but also by (his) faith. He also stated that he, like the rest of us in daily life, typically separated his various identities, including that of a professor and a devotee of the Hindu god, Krishna. Although his two roles not contradictory in themselves, a scholar’s own religious beliefs, if fervently held, can act as a magnet of sorts by subtly swaying the very assumptions that a scholar holds about the phenomenon of religion (i.e., the knowledge in the academic discipline). To be sure, personally-held ideology acts with a certain gravity on any scholar’s study in whatever academic field. Religious studies, as well as political science, by the way, are especially susceptible to the warping of reasoning by ideology because beliefs can be so strongly held in religion (and politics), and the impact of such gravity can easily be missed not only by other people, but also by the scholars themselves.  

To be sure, a scholar’s study of a religion, especially one’s own but also another religion, can enrich the person’s own religious faith and religiosity. The process can be referred to as faith seeking understanding. As a student at Yale Divinity School, I quickly became well-versed in faith seeking understanding because the school was self-consciously producing what could be called scholarly priests. This is not to say that reasoning or cognition lies at the core of a religious faith. Especially in a religion in which God is held to be a kind of theological love, emotion, as in Augustine’s Confessions, can be said to be more relevant than anything in religion within the limits of reason alone can reach, even though religious faith, and thus love, is theological rather than psychological in genre.

I didn’t grasp a more serious downside to Yale’s focus on (Christian) faith seeking understanding until decades later when I was a visiting research scholar at Harvard. More than one divinity student there asked me if it was true that Yale’s divinity school was a kind of a cult. At first, the question shocked me, but as I reflected on the observation and my own experience of Yale’s divinity school, I was astonished that students at Harvard, the other school, could be so insightful about Yale from a distance. I remembered the Christian professor’s uneasy emotional reaction in a seminar on the Gospel of Mark when I had asked a question that implied that the orthodox interpretation of a passage could be wrong. In thinking up to the question, I had been following the way of reasoning rather than allowing any external contours to circumscribe where logical reasoning was taking me. Along the lines of Clifford Geertz, I was bracketing, or epoché, my own religious beliefs in academic context, but clearly the professor was not.

During another semester, I was glad when the evangelical-Christian professor of Christian environmental ethics enthusiastically embraced by offer to set up a dialogue between him and the Archdruid of North America in the Common Room at the divinity school, but I was dismayed when most of the Episcopalian students quickly bolted from the room at the outset and then a few weeks later when that very professor told me, “It takes having a certain character to get a Yale diploma.” Invited a Druid leader had, unknown to me, crossed a line. Decades later, when I was back at Yale to audit a seminar as an alumnus on Jonathan Edwards, I was impressed that the divinity school had established a Hebrew Bible masters degree and yet not at all surprised when more than one Jewish student confided to me that even then Jewish students didn’t feel comfortable in the school that could still be characterized as a Christian cult having Calvinist “elect” overtones regarding insiders and outsiders. Even though I was hardly a neopagan, my use of reason beyond the confines of the Nicene Creed in what I took to be a school in an academic institution had flagged me early on at Yale as an outsider at Yale’s divinity school, and thus was still the case decades later when I returned to study Christian theology again. That the insiders are actually outsiders from a true Christian perspective of humility and inclusion was lost on the faculty and especially the dean of Yale’s institutionally-encased cult as late as 2025.

The staying power of a cult’s organizational culture, including such vehemently-held and wielded passive-aggression against insiders who are deemed as outsiders, astounded me as I left Yale for the last time on May Day, 2025.  That culture, I submit, resonates with that of Yale itself, for after Jonathan Edwards, an alumnus, taught there, found himself the butt of not one but two pamphets by Yale’s president Clap, who was critical of what he mistook as Edward’s lauding of George Whitefield’s revivalist movement in the First Great Awakening.

As described in detail later by Timothy Dwight’s grandson, “Mr. Clap, in reply to this, in a letter to Mr. Edwards, dated April 1, 1745, enters seriously upon the task of showing that Mr. Edwards’ assertion—‘that Mr. Whitehead told him, that he intended to bring over a number of young men, to be ordained by Messrs. Tennents, in New-Jersey,’—connected with the assertion –that Mr. Edwards himself supposed, that Mr. Whitefield was formerly of the opinion, that unconverted ministers ought not to be continued in the ministry, and that Mr. Edwards himself supposed that Mr. Whitefield endeavoured to propagate this opinion, and a practice agreeable to it:--was equivalent to Mr. Edwards’ saying, that Mr. Whitefield told him, ‘that he had the design of turning out of their places the greater part of the clergy of New-England, and of supplying their places with ministers from England, Scotland and Ireland.’ Mr. Edwards, in a letter to Mr. Clap, of May 20, 1745, after exposing in a few words, the desperate absurdity of this attempt, enters on the discussion of the question—Whether he ever made such a statement to Mr. Clap?—with as much calmness as he afterwards exhibited, in examining the question of a self-determining power; and with such logical precision of argument, that probably no one of his readers ever had a doubt left upon his mind, with regard to it:--no, not even his antagonist himself; for he never thought proper to attempt a reply.”[1] That even such a Yalie as Jonathan Edwards—indeed, one of Yale College’s residential colleges is named after Edwards—would have as an antagonist a president of Yale testifies to Yale’s culture, which I found centuries later to be just as vindictive.

In 2025, after I had suggested to the secretary of the head librarian of Sterling Library that the security guards who walked though the main reading room every 20 minutes or so could keep the undergraduates from talking especially in the aisles, I received an angry email from a manager in that library’s security department, threatening me that if I didn’t cease from making “frivolous complaints” about the library’s security department, she would have me blocked from using the library even though I was officially auditing a course as an alumni. Indicative of systemic corruption and a negative view of alumni among Yale’s non-academic employees, the head librarian wrote to me in support of her subordinate. I had showed the security manager’s angry email to a Yale police employee, who was concerned enough to want to have a word with the woman. So, it is significant that the head librarian supported that manager. It is also very significant that the security manager, whom I had never met, did not heed the involvement of Yale’s police on my behalf, for she sent me another such email after I had left Yale and thus could not have been making any further complaints. I suspect that higher Yale officials, perhaps including even the dean of the divinity school, were behind that manager’s attempt to expunge me from campus. At the very least, throwing alumni, who return for a semester to learn more, under the bus does not bode well for alumni donations, but Yale’s Development Office’s director and the director of the Yale Alumni Association could care less when I brought this problem to their attention in 2025. Perhaps Yale had grown too wealthy and thus could afford its non-academic employees’ hostile disrespect towards alumni who return to campus. You had your chance seems to be the attitude.

Between the respective times of Edwards and myself, Yale’s then-seminary was so off-putting in the 1830s to a twice-escaped slave that not only racism but also a culture of vindictiveness towards certain guests being deemed outsiders can be attributed to Yale. Although a local law forbid the enrollment of Black students from other states to any college or university in New Haven, Yale’s “Christian” seminary—later the divinity school—allowed the ex-slave to audit courses so he could go on to be a minister with some knowledge of theology, but with the unnecessary stipulations that he could not check out library books and could not even talk in the classes. The dean of Yale’s “seminary” at the time could not claim that he was just following the law. Instead, he perpetuated the organizational culture of treating some insiders as outsiders, and doing so with spite. So, a pattern is clear from looking across the centuries with regard to the incredible staying-power of an anti-Christian organizational culture at Yale. Jonathan Edwards had had enough that he never returned after Clap’s public criticism; I’ve had enough that I will never return to Yale, and I wonder if the escaped slave who audited two-years of Yale seminary courses ever returned to thank the school for having muzzled him in the classes and not trusted him with library books. By mid-2025, enough of Yale’s faculty, faculty-administrators, and non-academic employees had mastered passive-aggression so well that courses should perhaps be offered on it there even in the “Christian” divinity school.  That most of those who are first are last, and the last, first, seems to have been utterly lost on those institutional perpetuators of Yale’s cult.

“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.”[2]

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1.  S. E. Dwight, The Life of President Edwards (New York: G. & C. & H. Carvill: 1830), 210.
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. 316.

On Kindness to Detractors: Compassion Beyond Universal Benevolence

In late April, 2025, Richard Slavin, whose Hindu name and title are Radhanath Swami, spoke on the essence of bhukti at the conclusion of the Bhukti Yoga Conference at Harvard University. Ultimately, the concept bhukti, which translates as devotionalism directed to a deity, such as Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita, refers to the nature of the human soul. The immediate context is selfless love, which is directed to a deity, and this context immediately involves extending universal benevolence to other people (and other species), and even to nature (i.e., the environment). After Radhanath’s talk, he walked directly to me. I thanked him for his talk and went on to suggest refinement to compassion being extended universally, as in universal benevolence even to other species. To my great surprise, he touched my head with his, which I learned afterward was his way of blessing people, while he whispered, “I think I want to follow you” or “You make me want to follow you.” A Hindu from Bangladesh later translated the swami’s statement for me. “He was telling you that he considers you to be his equal,” the taxi driver said. I replied that being regarded as that swami’s equal felt a lot better than had he regarded me as his superior, for in my view, we are all spiritually-compromised finite, time-limited beings learning from each other.

Throughout his talk, Radhanath emphasized the innate nature of the soul to love God, whether that be Krishna, Jesus, or Allah. Such love directed to a divine person, rather than an impersonal ultimate (e.g., brahman), should not be for something. Just as God’s love for us is unconditional, so too should a person’s love be so towards God. This is the first of the Ten Commandments, and, the swami, whose parents were Jewish immigrants from Europe to Illinois, charitably said, “Jesus adds a second, like unto it,” that of neighbor-love. Simply put, love your neighbor as you love yourself. Like the giant red-wood trees that survive earthquakes and fires in California by interlocking their roots, we too can reach out and embrace each other, rather than fight over insignificant transient earthly gain. The swami stressed that we simply don’t devote enough love to God and thus act in service to God by being compassionate to one another.

Rather than taking issue with any of that, I suggested to the swami that his teachings could go further, and in a way that would transform the world. “Rather than just universal benevolence spread out like butter on a piece of toast,” I said, “kindness and compassion directed specifically to people that a person doesn’t like or who don’t like the person should be emphasized; if it were to take hold, the world would be transformed. Peace might even break out.” I pointed out that it would be easy for me to be kind to him, but much more difficult, and spiritually richer, for me to feel compassion and act in kindness to the Christian student at Yale’s divinity school who had recently called me a heretic while I was visiting my alma mater to audit a seminar on Jonathan Edwards—an academic seminar and thus not the same as a litany of personal beliefs.

For that seminar on Jonathan Edwards, which was brilliantly taught by the director of Yale’s Jonathan Edwards Center (which is distinct from Jonathan Edwards College at Yale), I had read Samuel Hopkins’ book on Christian holiness. Hopkins was a protégé of Jonathan Edwards in the eighteenth century in New England. Whereas Edwards preached love thy neighbor (i.e., universal benevolence) with an addendum that it is good to return evil with good, Hopkins contends in his book on holiness that the essence of the Kingdom of God is a person’s compassion or kindness to other people whom the person doesn’t like or don’t like the person. Because detractors are emphasized, the flatness of universal benevolence is subordinated. I briefly preached this to Radhanath, who, rather than viewing me as a heretic, told me in his way that he regarded me as his equal in religious terms precisely because I was urging him to go beyond universal benevolence in a way that would be more difficult and more likely to transform the world. For “love thy neighbor” can be glossed over, whereas helping out someone you don’t like or who doesn’t like you is relatively specific and concrete; after all, a person doesn’t need much urging to talk on and on about one’s detractors and other dislikeable folks so we know them and thus do not have to spend much effort determining to whom kindness should be directed.

Being able to dispense religious insight does not require having achieved any sort of sainthood, and indeed grace fuels the urge to preach. Nevertheless, a compliment is a compliment, but much more important than compliments is the difficult, and thus spiritually rich, way in which compassionate service not just overall blandly to everyone, or to the proverbially needy, or so easily to people whom a person likes or like the person, but especially to people whom the person dislikes or dislike the person. Universal benevolence pales in comparison, both in terms of spiritual worth and the possible impact both interpersonally and in terms of peace on earth. I told the swami that it was easy for me to give this helpful message to him because he had been so nice to everyone at Harvard. “So I am giving something to you,” I told him as we waved in parting.  Lest I be a complete hypocrite, I made it a point the next time I saw the young theology student at Yale who had called me a heretic to respond in a kind, generous way should that student speak to me. Rather than ignoring him when he did in fact subsequently approach me on that campus, I responded in kindness and was authentic in sharing knowledge with him. I even admired the value he put on his studies as a graduate student and sought to feed his thirst for knowledge. We did the same during the final day of the seminar, at Jonathan Edwards College at Yale. Crucially, my kindness and generosity did not depend on him apologizing for having decided that I am a religious heretic, and I would not have applied Hopkins’ notion of the Kingdom of God, which of course comes from Jesus in the New Testament, were the student to have continued to insult me. Too often people demand forgiveness and open themselves up to verbal or even physical abuse in turning the other cheek. Returning good for insult inflicted is unconditional and yet it should not put someone at risk of being attacked psychologically or physically. Lest contrition be held to be requisite to kindness and helpfulness to a detractor, Jesus’s famous statement, “They know not what they do” ought not be forgotten.

Both Paul and Augustine wrote that the Christian notion of the divine is love. Such love, as agape, is unlike other kinds of loves that do not instantiate holiness. I contend that a sense of holiness is more salient in returning good for evil done than in universal benevolence because the former turns the ways of the word more upside down more than the latter does. Being compassionate to everyone one meets is laudatory, but a different, one might even say holy, dynamic is in responding to the humanity of a detractor. For one thing, self-love and its interests are out of the picture in love that is inconvenient. I told the Swami that if enough people got a taste for that sort of holy compassion, the world could really change.

Imagine hungry Palestinians voluntarily serving Israeli settlers in compassion for the latter’s humanity as unconditional as God loves us, and homeless Ukrainians volunteering to repair buildings in Russia that have been damaged by Ukrainian drones. Imagine Republican members of Congress volunteering at homeless shelters once a week. Imagine Democratic members of Congress volunteering to bring water to people in line on a hot day to a “town hall” or Republican rally. It does not mean that the residents of Gaza need to become Zionists politically, that Ukrainians would have to support giving up territory to Russia, and that Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. must give up their respective political ideologies; rather, compassion is geared to relieving suffering on a human level, responding to our common humanity, which goes beyond religious, economic, and political differences. In a plane crash, for example, people who can walk do not check for party ID cards in deciding who among the injured to help. Getting into the habit of actually helping people who have been assholes is the point, for the spiritual dynamic that is unleased between the two people turns the world’s ways on their head, and thus is utterly transformative spiritually. To say that the world could benefit were enough people to work to transform themselves by making such instantiations of human kindness a habit would be an understatement.

The University of California at Berkeley

In visiting a university even for a short period of time, a surprisingly deep grasp of its dominant organizational culture's mentality is possible, especially if it is foreign to the outsider's perspective and yet draws on  instinctual urges whose imprints one has previously seen. It is perhaps human, all too human to relish sending harsh messages to outsiders, albeit indirectly because cowardness and self-illusion are included with the appetite for blood. This can be so at a university even if scholarly visitors are among the targets. The primitive instinctual urge to aggressively harm people by reminding them unnecessarily that they are not in the tribe can have sufficient power to overcome other contending urges to characterize the very culture of an organization. I will argue that the University of California at Berkeley can be characterized as such. For I witnessed this triumphant urge in rather  obvious behavior of some faculty and administrators. I came rather quickly during my visit to grasp the nature and roots of the favorite blood-sport of enough rude faculty members to get a picture of those primped  up, intellectually stunted "scholars" at that heavily passive aggressive university. The message of exclusion for taxpayers visiting the campus and scholars invited to give a lecture there, I being neither, was made clear to me by a student employee at the main library,  which tellingly is closed on Saturdays even during the semesters: Even if a visitor on the large campus does not have an umbrella and rain is pouring down, the university's shuttle buses are only for students, faculty, and staff. The student enjoyed his power to say no to me; I could not detect even the slightest tone of shame in representing such an inhospitable institutional host. Bad air! Instead, the he relished the firmness in the power to say no, which is to say, to exclude. In contrast, the campus shuttles at Yale, ironically a private university, transport anyone around campus! So much for California being easy-going. So much for UC Berkeley sporting intellectually curious and passionate scholars in search of new ideas from visitors. Rather, Nietzsche’s new birds of prey, whose spite naturally issues out from deep ressentement, populate the faculty and their bosses. So much for even common courtesy and gratitude to California taxpayers and distinguished professors from other universities invited to deliver a lecture; if you are walking around campus or walk out of a library and get wet, tough luck! Public is apparently below even common. 

While visiting California, I spent some time on UC’s main campus. I was "testing the waters" on signing on to be a visiting scholar there. I was dissuaded from any such elongated affiliation within days, however, because the director of that university's visiting scholar's program (such scholars merely use the libraries) refused even to meet with me. Because the program at the time charged $750 for the first year and $1,500 for the second year for what is essentially access to the libraries with a university ID (and use of the campus shuttles), it was entirely reasonable for me to discuss the program with its director, but, alas, she was too important for that, and thus lost some revenue as a result. Her reply to my email went beyond rude dismissiveness. 

I met enough faculty, nonacademic administrators, and doctoral students, moreover, to be able to quickly grasp the university's organizational culture, which, incidentally, I found locals knew of surprisingly accurately. One retired scholar who had studied at the University of San Francisco told me that the faculty and faculty-administrators at Berkeley (Cal) only value certain scholars as colleagues, and meanwhile make it intentionally clear to others that they are not wanted. This is the antithesis of scholarly collegial courtesy. This is the bottom line that scholars visiting Berkeley should know. 

I witnessed and in fact was subject to the passive-aggressive rude behavior of the director of the university’s Institute of European Studies as he apparently quickly sized me up and reneged on his offer to meet with me concerning my scholarship on the E.U. and U.S. (perhaps this comparison put him off), and then rather blatantly excluded me (and another Yale alum) from his introductions of faculty to each other as we waited to hear a lecture on Churchill. The director, having blown off meeting with me by writing that maybe he would see me at a talk or two, literally stood over the two seated Yalies—myself and a retired Yale College graduate—in the small seating area while introducing his colleagues (actually coworkers) to each other. This explains the lack of scholarly collegiality being extended to scholars from other universities; academic courtesy does not extend to everyone who holds the Ph.D. degree; rather, academic colleague only pertains to the faculty at his university, Cal. During the reception after the talk, he looked over and laughed at me at one point, which explains why he blew off my email so blatantly, and it was clear to me that he had dissuaded the speaker and a similar fellow from speaking with me. I was not alone in noticing this; a local retired restauranteer observed it too. One student working at the wine table told me that it was typical behavior at that university, and the other student working there told me that the faculty in the philosophy department are known for being particularly nasty. 

For example, a senior professor of ethics said to me as soon as I told him that I had gone to Yale, "Cal is every bit as good academically as Yale." We could throw Harvard in too. Well, the rankings simply don't support that view. Neither does even a quick contrast between the main reading room of Sterling Library at Yale, where you can hear a pin drop even when the all of the chairs are occupied with even plenty of undergraduate students, and the reading room in Doe Library at Berkeley, where ongoing conversations are not only ongoing, but also stubbornly so. The immaturity and inconsiderateness alone bely any claim to intellectual maturity. So too does the starkly different occupancy levels in the two reading rooms on school nights. One of my favorite phrases is, the proof is in the pudding. Sterling library is open every day during the semesters (except holidays); in contrast, Doe Library, and thus its periodical and reference rooms, is closed on Saturdays even during semesters. There is no film library (the film archive's "library" label is a bloated misnomer), whereas one is housed on the seventh floor of Sterling Library at Yale. Perhaps the biggest difference lies in the capabilities of the managers and the student employees of the respective libraries, especially in fixing problems versus pretending that they simply do not exist. Inflexibly adhering to a broken status quo is a basic sin of management. 

 

Although the weather is better in Berkeley than in New Haven, and the interpersonal climate is admittedly harsh at both universities, the faculty (and faculty administrators) at Berkeley stuck me as particularly hostile with regard to visitors (whereas too many Yale employees, including faculty and fundraisers, relish intentionally inflicting anger by excluding some insider groups but not others). The ethics professor at Berkeley, whom I had emailed in vain before my arrival and met at a talk, even felt inclined to insult Yale in talking with me. "I bet its cosy and accommodating there," he said with a smart-ass. demeaning tone. He clearly didn’t realize that a cosy and accommodating organizational culture is a good thing. I could gleam from his assumption that the cultural mentality dominant at his university was not at all cosy and accommodating, and definitely not to visiters! Not welcoming for sure. Nevertheless, I was polite; I held myself back from replying that being cosy and accomodating is better than being frosty and hostile towards visitors.

Regarding visiting scholars who affiliate with the university  library to do their own research for a year or two, I found out that that UC charges them $750 for the first year, and $1,500 for the second. This implies not only a certain institutional greediness, but also an implicit refusal to extend collegial courtesy to scholars, which is to say holders of true doctoral degrees (e.g., Ph.D., Ed.D., J.S.D., D.Sci.M., D.B.A., and Th.D.). I don't understand why a scholar would stay there even a few months, given how dismissively faculty regard outsiders not on the faculty. You’re not one of us is a very primitive, tribal instinctual urge that Nietzsche would likely say is out of control in the weak who seek nonetheless to dominate even the strong. I saw a lot of passive aggressive weakly constituted inhabitants on what is outwardly a very beautiful campus during my visit to the Bay Area.

 

I've hardly been uncritical of Yale in my writings, but this has ultimately been geared to improving the university by raising awareness among my fellow alums of the wordening atmosphere on campus. In contrast, I don't think the conceited mentality of bloated intellect and primitive ill-will towards people deemed "outsiders" at Cal deserve the fruits that come from improvement. A professor in Cal’s law school had gone to Yale; I met him in person at Cal on the second day of my visit. He claimed to have left teaching at Yale because of the toxicity at Yale’s law school, that toxicity being definitely true, but in not replying to my subsequent emails, he too seemed rather toxic to me; perhaps one toxic organizational culture had spit him out and he subsequently added to the toxicity of another university. I attended a talk at that law school during my visit. Tellingly, the event coordinator took over the Q&A when the speaker from Harvard would have called on me. I left immediately,  disgusted even as I passed the awaiting reception food. A bad odor nixes even good food.

 

Even doctoral students at Cal talked down to me as if they were spoiled, immature children dismissive of an adult. I told them that I am a scholar visiting from somewhere else and had studied at Yale, but I was to be put in my place anyway. The philosophy students whom I met, both undergraduates and doctoral students, seemed eerily to resemble so closely the immaturity and the abrupt anti-social characteristic of the philosophy professors I had met that I couldn’t help but remember that an apple doesn’t fall far from its tree. Paul wrote that you can know a tree from its fruit. Who would stay long in a room of pretentious,  rotting fruit?

 

To illustrate: I sat in on two lectures in a class on Nietzsche; the professor, it seems, was incapable of replying to emails that she herself admitted she had received, and her graduate student behaved quite boorish to me. “I’ll take those!” he harshly as I was returning extra copies of a handout to the professor. That student had heard me introduce myself as a scholar from elsewhere at another talk (where I had met the "ethics" guy)  I complied with the teaching assistant politely; had I been equally demanding and disrespectful, I would have put the copies on the professor’s desk, and told her disciple, you need to go through your professor rather than talk to me directly. After all, he was not even a colleague. 

Besides applying reason to master that temptation into fueling my decision not to return even though I was keenly interested in Nietzsche’s startlingly paradigmatic philosophy. Days later, an undergraduate student majoring in philosophy admitted to me at a reception that that department is even more toxic than the university moreover. It is nice to have one's hunches confirmed. When I had been a student at Yale, it was common to avoid the philosophy department there, as it was not yet in recovery from the toxic implosion from contending personalities that had nearly rid that department of its faculty. That such deep thinking as philosophy encourages could be associated with such petty, even mean people would seem to defy some natural law.  

 

Perhaps a dysfunctional organizational culture is simply a tree whose fruit is sour. Such culture is notoriously difficult to change. Besides the sheer number of people who conveniently conform to viciousness to feel a sense of belonging—of being on the inside—and to feel plearure by excluding outsiders, group-think is very hard and thick against internal and external second-guessing. The sheer distance between an organization’s leader and the herd animals who reside within an organization enables the status quo to continue even as the organization’s own message to itself and society is quite different. I think a dysfunctional organization must decline quite a bit before its inhabitants have to recognize that being more welcoming is in their own self-interest.

More than one local resident in Berkeley told me that in part due to budget cuts from the government of California, Cal-Berkeley had been in a slow decline for twenty years. “They feel threatened and are defensive,” I was told by more than one scholar who lived in San Francisco at the time of my visit. One such scholar, who had received her doctorate at the University of San Francisco, said, “The faculty at Cal want specific people; they treat them like shit. If they have sized you up even as a visitor, it won't get better.” That is to say, the faculty administrators, like the director of European Studies, and the faculty quickly size outsiders up and are not shy about slamming the door shut in a way that is intended to say, you aren’t worth anything to us, but other people are. That mentality is quite toxic and yet it can thrive because of the pleasure that is gained by self-love from exercising the underlying sordid instinctual urge. According to Nietzsche, the strong are able to master even their most intractable urge, whereas the weak cannot. Hence they are slaves to it.  This is perhaps partly why the weak resent the strong and try to bring them down, such as by insisting that a university saturated with immaturity and hostile pettiness  is nonetheless equivalent academically to a Yale or Harvard. Such a claim, made by such people, belies its own validity and actually makes transparent the probable thesis that petty, immature professors don’t come up with mind-blowing new theories that are paradigmatic. Instead, such "scholars" are pedestrian academics.  

Yale Divinity School

On February 21-23, 2024, Rowan Williams, a former archbishop of Canterbury, delivered a series of lectures on the topic of solidarity in moral theology. In my own research, I relate that field to ethics and historical economic thought. Williams’ theory of solidarity goes beyond what he calls “the vague feeling of empathy” that is emphasized in the moral writings of David Hume and Adam Smith. Williams has solidarity, unlike mere "fellow-feeling," reach a person’s identity and even one’s soul through a shared experience of existential fragility. Solidary pertains to interpersonal relations and is thus relevant to neighbor-love, which includes being willing to attend to the human needs even of one’s detractors and enemies, as well as just plain rude people. I contend that the upper echelon at Yale Divinity School is at two-degrees of separation from this sort of solidarity, especially as it is wholistic rather than partisan in nature. It is no accident, by the way, that the self-love that characterizes the school's culture has manifested in some courses being almost entirely oriented to advocating very narrow ideological partisan positions, politically, economically, and on social issues at the expense of sheer fairness to students, wholeness, theology, and academic standards. At the time, the school was accepting 50% of studen applicants. I leave these ideological and academic matters to the side here so I can focus on the astonishing distance between the school's dean and the sort of solidarity that he heard of in the lectures and that could lead to Christian leadership for Yale's Christian divinity school, which includes two seminaries. 

Decades after having studied at Yale in its divinity school and Yale College, I returned to do research because I could finally intellectually integrate two very different areas of my formal studies at Yale and elsewhere. I was stunned upon my return to find so much meanness by employees, who insisted that alumni in residence are not “members of the Yale community,” by a security guard who profiled me with intimidation, by faculty who rudely dismissed Yale’s policy that alumni can audit courses, and by faculty administrators whose skill in passive aggression surpasses all understanding. In such an organizational culture, a Christian divinity school may seem like an oxymoron. A Christian school within a university that is known “inside the beltway” for having a nasty organizational culture is likely to display hypocrisy.

Christian hypocrisy (and downright meanness) applies to even the highest level of Yale’s divinity school. For example, I walked up to the former archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, at the reception just after his final lecture at Yale's divinity school. The dean didn't want me talking with him. In fact, the dean had refused to speak to me since I had returned on the preceding Labor Day. I had introduced myself, but he just walked away. At the reception, the dean of a "Christian" divinity school was perpetually stationed near the archbishop, watching him like a hawk. As soon as the dean, Greg Sterling, saw me beginning to talk to Rowan Williams, I knew it was only a matter of time—that I would not be talking long to the archbishop, who, by the way, was very interested in my biological relation to a previous archbishop of Canterbury. Unfortunately, the paranoid, controlling dean who does not tolerate criticism of Yale quickly turned the archbishop around as I was midway through my second sentence in order to prevent me from talking further with the archbishop.  Nice, huh? Very Christian.

Ironically, Williams had just given the last of three lectures on solidarity with one's neighbors. In even deeper irony, the dean had publicly praised the lecture and the topic during the Q&A session, which the dean, rather than the archbishop controlled (although the latter tried twice). Just a FYI to the "Christian" upper echelon at Yale's de facto seminary: Holding a grudge is antipodal to empathy, solidarity, and helping even one's detractors. To be sure, as I had been marginalized at that divinity school even while I was a student (for raising theological questions), and again during the 2023-2024 academic year, when I was back to do research, even by the school’s director of Alumni Engagement, I had written short essays critical of the sheer meanness at Yale (https://lnkd.in/gpRptb6A and https://lnkd.in/enej8PEa). Even so, to intentionally prevent me from talking with another scholar of moral theology and philosophy at a reception really says something about vengeance and abject hypocrisy.

In The Godfather III, a cardinal in the Vatican tells Michael Corleone that even though Christianity had been in Europe for centuries, little of the religion has seeped in. The cardinal takes and cracks open a small rock from a fountain in a beautiful courtyard, and likens the dry inside as akin to Europe immersed in Christianity, yet little has penetrated. Caring for one’s detractors, and even enemies, is not something in the Godfather’s playbook. Neither, I submit, is it in that of Greg Sterling, dean of Yale’s “Christian” divinity school and even a pastor in the United Church of Christ denomination, or sect, of Christianity. Perhaps, as he appeared during my stay to be desiccated inside in spite of the baptismal waters of Christianity, he might benefit from my booklet on Christianized leadership. Although the booklet is geared to business leaders, presumably Christian leadership can also be applied at Yale’s divinity school.

Williams’ three lectures over three evenings were on solidarity, which in turn can lead to communion. Although this includes with the non-human world, the archbishop’s focus was on going beyond a “vague feeling” of empathy to share in one another’s fragile and dependent nature as living creatures. To recognize another person’s dignity and depravity, and thus one’s need to be recognized in discourse and caring is the essence of William’s theory of solidarity. Communion goes on to a greater unity and in explicit relation of all as finite creatures to God. Solidarity takes work; as it extends to a person’s detractors and enemies, that work is not always easy, but it is mandatory. I would add that religious experience, whether in prayer or meditation, or inner, concentrated yearning for communion with that which transcends the limits of human cognition, perception, and emotion (sorry, Augustine), can heighten a person’s sensitivity to other people once one is back in the world. By analogy, it is like walking outside of a theatre during the day after watching a movie for several hours in the dark. Existential sensitivity is on a physiological, emotional, and spiritual level, and is inherently oriented to William’s conception of solidarity. Put another way, regular religious or spiritual experience can heighten a person’s instinctual urge to connect with the dignity and radical dependence of other people as well as oneself. Being more aware of another’s inner pain or existential hardship is another way of putting this. The sharing of this condition, which naturally occasions fear that can be detected outwardly, is the foundation of solidarity, and from this foundation the actual work in caring even for one’s enemies can begin. It is in valuing such work that a person is religious; it transcends creed and even cognition or belief, as if religion were mostly cognitive rather than of the human heart.

It is from that perspective that I want to shed translucent light on the shadows and proffer my advice even to a detractor on Christian leadership, for it is self-less rather than vengeful, caring rather than mean, and thus of a power distinct from that of the world. In talking truth to power in the upper echelons of the Danish Church, Kierkegaard emphasized subjectivity over empty shells in Christianity. Unlike Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre in the decadent twentieth century, I think it is foolish and unnecessary to base everything on subjectivity. Although Nietzsche’s dictum that God is dead was meant to address a logical contradiction in a conception of the deity by humans, and the philosopher proffered good insight on the will of the priests (and pastors) to power as controlling others, he missed the power that lies in helping even one’s detractors, or at least not acting on a vengeful instinctual urge. Such an urge Nietzsche claims runs wild in the weak, even and especially in a Christian priest (and dean) from whom hypocrisy condenses and drips from a dry core. False humility as a means to invisibly extract vengeance is the hallmark of self-love and is antipodal to neighbor-love seu benevolentia universalis rather than just as amicitia.

Judging from how self-identifying Christians typically treat their respective detractors, and even people who are simply downright rude, I submit that the kingdom of which Jesus speaks in the New Testament is still woefully not of this world even though it could be. All it takes is some hard work in being caring rather than retaliatory where it is least convenient. I know I have work to do, but I’ve also made the difficult choices to help my detractors and the spiritual dynamic between the two people when that takes place can indeed by said to turn the world on its head in a spirit of wonder—even expanding human nature. It is very difficult, but possible, and it has been done.

For example, at the reception for Rowan Williams, I put a retired chaplain of Battel Chapel, which is on Yale’s main campus, in touch with Jerry Street, who had been Yale’s main chaplain and was still working in some capacity at the divinity school at the time of the reception. When I had been a student, I interviewed him for my radio show on WYBC at Yale; he had been furious after the interview, declaring, “I will not be edited!” The station’s chief explained to him that it was dreadfully unfair to demand no editing. In spite of Street’s anger and unfairness to me, I greeted him warmly at the fall convocation in 2023, and I gave him and the retired chaplain of Battel a gift, as she put it later, in reuniting the two of them at the reception. I wish I was not so distracted that I could have felt the joy of giving to a former detractor; I really wanted to speak on research with Williams. Had the dean fallen or dropped something at the reception, I would have helped him up or picked something up for him. It gets easier if you have put in work in establishing a habit even if it falters from time to time when the emotions are too strong. The spiritual dynamic of peace that is felt between former detractors as one helps the other on a human level is that which Jesus describes in the New Testament as the peace in God’s kingdom. Such peace is possible in this world. Maybe the dean will become a Christian leader as a result of reading my booklet. 

Yale Vipers

Even though it is sometimes difficult to "read between the lines" to assess whether or not people in an organization are welcoming or tacitly "showing you the door," the message is undoubtable and even palpable when "all the arrows are pointing in the same direction." In the case of Yale, where I have been an alumni scholar temporarily in residence during the 2023-2024 year, the university's administration could do its alumni a big favor by explicitly saying that we are not welcome back on campus, except to visit and of course donate money. Instead, passive aggression, unaccountability, and even unwarranted retaliation rule the roust there, in what is a toxic organizational culture. 

Since I have been back in residence doing research this year, I have unfortunately had to put up with non-academic employees telling me that Yale alumni, including more specifically those who are themselves scholars back on campus for a term or two to work on research as academics, are not "members of the Yale community." This is particularly rich when the person is not a student or faculty, but is instead a non-academic employee. Even the divinity school's Alumni Engagement director, Barbara Sabia, told me in person that I am not really a member of the Yale community, even though my connection to Yale is academic and her own is not; she was fixated on Yale's ID that students, faculty, and staff have (alumni doing research have different Yale ID, which Sabia decided is not a real Yale ID). Zero donations from me to Yale's "Christian" seminary. 

I've also been profiled by Yale security employees (whom, I must say, need to take it "down a notch"; they aren't prison guards). 

He was not even supposed to be in that lobby

He was circling me because I had looked at the building directory.

Last but hardly least, although Yale advertises to alumni that we can return to campus to audit courses, almost all of the faculty whom I asked rudely gave truly pathetic excuses as to why they don't allow auditors; some don't even distinguish between students and alumni in the making of the requests. Seminars are off limits, even for visiting scholars wanting to attend some of the lectures strictly for research purposes, and even then no participation is allowed (hence falling short audit in this way too). This sets up a "bait and switch" situation for alumni who return in part to audit courses. I returned in part to do so, but the faculty have been so rude that I have demurred. Even in trying to get to guest lectures on campus, I have been distressed that my Yale ID does not permit me access to classroom buildings. I did attend some lectures of a large lecture class in the fall, but the professor ignored my presence and later refused to give me the information on when her make-up lecture would be; her graduate-student teaching assistant reneged with impunity. All of the arrows were pointing in the same way; I didn't even retain the notes I had taken of some of the lectures, and I do not plan to cite the professor, as academic discourtesy goes both ways. I had contacted another professor, Teresa Morgan, before I arrived at Yale to request to audit her course. She demurred, saying that she was near her enrollment cap (even though alumni don't count against that cap and there was ample room), so I replied that I would wait until she gives the go-ahead after the first class. When I contacted her, as she did not follow up with me, she said, "I'm going to have to reconsider your audit because you missed the first class and there was a lot of important material in it." I wrote that I had taken the decision not to audit her class, to which she wrote, "That's fine!" No, that was very fine. 

For less than a month during the spring semester, I had been attending lectures by Kevin Elliot that he gives to his EP&E (ethics, politics, and economics) undergraduate class. I had made clear that I was not auditing the entire course, as I would be attending only several lectures directly relevant to my current research project. In other words, I approached him as a scholar rather than as an alumnus. My mistake with Yale, given the wholesale disrespect for scholars not on the faculty, was to do scholarship as an alum. The previous semester, even before I had arrived in New Haven, I had requested Shelly Kagan's permission to audit his EP&E course; I had read most of his ethics book and wanted to solidfy my grasp of normative ethics. But he kept referring to me as "another student" and said that even with my seven years of philosophy, "It would not be fair to the other students for me to audit the undergraduate course without having taken the prerequisite course. Only months later did I learn that Yale does not even track prerequisites, so Kagan is not able to do so. So what I got was a dish of arrogance, rudeness, and the refusal to extend academic courtesy to an academic colleague even though I am an alum. 

Although Elliot's lectures in late January and early February were very relevant to my current research, this would not be true of his lectures after the spring break. Because I had encountered so many faculty who had quite rudely refused to allow me to audit their courses last semester, I had decided not to audit any classes anyway. I contend that a scholar listening to another scholar's lecture is not the same thing as auditing an entire course. 

On February 7, 2024, as the house at 31 Hillhouse that houses Elliot's office and classroom was locked even on school days (and half of his class during the fall term had not been able to enter the building!), I asked the department secretary to open the front door for me. She refused, even though it was quite cold outside and there was no reason to doubt me (and she could have consulted with Elliot). Eventually, she told a student that the student could size me up and decide whether to let me in. The secretary's distrust was palpable, and thus very insulting. When I had been a student at Yale, the university go along just fine without locking classroom buildings and having security guards and its private police employees on every corner even during school days. I submit that the secretary was paranoid and passive aggressive even to alumni; I would have shown her my Yale ID, but she refused even to come to the front door. Petty.

I spoke by phone to Jocelyn Kane of Yale's Alumni Fund because I thought she would have a financial incentive to see that employees do not treat alumni so rudely and as if we are lethal threats. However, Ms. Kane almost immediately laid into me for auditing without going through "the proper procedures," and of course for not paying a heafy fee, which I would not do anyway as I would not be allowed to speak in class. I explained to her that Kevin Elliot had acted on the basis of collegial courtesy to another scholar in inviting me to attend his lectures that would be useful to my specific research, and that that basis is distinct from course auditing. For one thing, a visiting scholar does not participate in class, and does not typically intend to attend all of the lectures. The point is to extract specific material that is highly relevant to one's current research rather than to attend a class. 

But Ms. Kane dismissed my academic credentials and decided she knew better even though she is a non-academic employee. Somehow, from her doubtlessly, either directly or indirectly,  Kevin Elliot got the word that I would have to audit the course in order even just to listen to four or five lectures. It did not escape my notice that in so doing, Ms. Kane was not oriented to address the secretary's rude conduct toward me, and presumably not those of the faculty whom I had told her had not open to alumni auditing courses anyway. At the very least, she should have been sympathetic rather than having me in her sights. Clearly, she instantly oriented to reporting me rather than helping me. Zero donations would come from me to Yale's development office. 

Ms Kane's inability or unwillness to master her own instinctual urge to retaliate even against an alum reporting bad, and even hostile, treatment on campus evinced an overwhelming desire to "turn the tables" on people. I suspect that his mean weakness is eched in the school's organizational culture, for back in September, I had written to Yale's transportation department to report that a supervisor, Shelly, at Transdev, the subcontracted company that operates Yale's shuttles, had thrice shouted over me when I had asked if a shuttle could pick me up at the West Haven train station on that shuttle's return trip to Yale's main campus, as some dispatchers and a driver had allowed and suggested, respectively, the practice. The employee at Yale was instantly obsessed on getting my "Yale NetID" to verify me rather than to "have my back" in going after Shelly. I submit that this fits the same pattern as that which Ms. Kane evinced. It may be that this dynamic is distinct and even epitomizes Yale's dysfunctional organizational culture. 

Weeks later, I happened to meet Yale's "Dean of Ministry," a high position in Yale's divinity school. I said that generally speaking, Yale's faculty don't want alumni anywhere near the classroom, which means that Yale's promotional claim that alumni can audit courses is misleading. The ministry dean dismissively said, "We just say it's possible," to which I replied, "Not to Yale's faculty." Rather than apologize once he realized that what I was trying to describe is essentially the "bait and switch" unethical sales tactic in business, the expert on Christian ministry quickly turned his back on me and walked away under the cover of the night. I wonder what kind of ministry he advocates to his students. Evidently not that they should apologize when they or their respective churches have wronged someone. In a dysfunctional organizational culture, apologizing is weakness. I guess it's not Christian either. That's interesting in part because I was on my way to Yale's divinity school to hear a lecture on moral theology from Rowan Williams, a retired Archbishop of Canterbury. I wonder if he realized that he was in a festpool of hypocritical vipers.

All this leaves a very bad taste in my mouth concerning not only the lack of accountability at Yale, but also the taint of vituperation and and the instinctual urge to retaliate, essentially to "turn the tables" on alumni even by a manager whose task it is to ask alumni for donations! As a rationalist (and yet also a Nietzschean), I wonder whether Ms. Kane has any cognitive dissodence in that her squalid attitude and conduct towards at least one alum contradicts her fundraising task. I also wonder whether she realizes how inappropriate and unsightly it is for a non-academic employee to dismiss what a scholar says about academic courtesy and research. 

In general, I don't like the meanness that I've encountered from non-academic employees and faculty at Yale. All of their arrows point in the same direction: alumni are not members of the Yale community. To be so brazen as to explicitly tell alumni who are on campus for a term or two that we are not members of the Yale community goes beyond being a pathetic fundraising strategy; the underlying psychology is in need of a Nietzschean critique. The weak who seek to dominate resent the strong because the weak, "new birds of prey," know that they do not have the inner constitution to be innately strong. Hence, the weak are full of resentment. This sordid mentality saturates Yale's faculty and non-academic faculty. 

I might add that I raised concerns about the comments that alumni are not members of the Yale community and on the hostility of security guards who have profiled me without cause to Yale's president, the dean of Yale College, and even to Weili Cheng, the director of Yale's Alumni Association, but nothing changed through the year. In person, Cheng was dismissive. I had already contacted her organization about the hostile security guards, and when I mentioned this to her, she said, quite dismissively and even in a hostile tone, "Oh, you," and then immediately turned her back to me and walked away. Nice. 

From my experience, both Yale's development office and alumni association are hostile rather than helpful to alumni who are back on campus for academic purposes, and the faculty are absolutely not on board with the university's policy (and promotions) on alumni being able to audit courses. Even the faculty's understanding of what it means to audit a course is conveniently deficient. I would like to leave you with this observation: I am truly perflexed as to the extent that arrogance and even meanness can trump rationality. Of course, Nietzsche wrote that the content of reason (and ideas) is instinctual urges, and reasoning itself is the tussle of contending urges seeking dominance over other, competing urges. At least it can be said that reasoning is impacted, or even warped, by a person's instinctual urges. So when a faculty employee at Yale's divinity school teaches that a country should not have borders, that the family unit should be abolished, and that monogamy (and even marriage) oppresses "other lifestyles," I am under no illusion that reason is in the driver's seat.