Is Yale Lost?

A Yale admissions officer named Hannah Mendlowitz recently penned a blog (an official Yale blog, mind you) that said Yale Admissions would not penalize applicants who took time off from school to participate in anti-gun rallies. Rather, they might be rewarded for it. "We expect students who come to Yale to be versed in issues of social justice," she said.

In other words, if you are active in issues Yale cares about, you'll have a leg up. But what if you take time off from school to march against say, abortion or, God forbid, in favor of 2nd Amendment rights? Good luck winning a ticket to New Haven. High schoolers today are savvy enough to omit such things from their college applications. What a shame.

I encourage you to read every word of Hannah Mendlowitz's piece.

Some Yale friends and I were emailing back and forth about this, and one had a response that I reprint here, with his permission. It addresses how progressives have colonized Yale and just about every other American institution over the last few decades, and it is worthy of a broader distribution than our little email group. He wishes to remain anonymous, lest business colleagues hold it against him (another shame):

I noted the (Yale) story not with surprise, but with the usual dismay. And in fairness to you, Scott, it is necessary to point out the bare facts when people have made up their minds to deny the obvious.

After more than 20 years of Yale Alumni interviewing, I am not surprised that the Admissions Office is signaling preference for budding social justice warriors. I would say 90% of the would-be Yalies I interviewed talked up their Social Justice and associated environmental interests and activism as prime reasons they were interested in going to Yale and as evidence that they were deserving. They got that idea somehow, and they weren’t wrong.

The question is always - so what are we supposed to do about it? A certain amount of complaining is in order, and it could lead the administration to do the usual PR juggling act to hocus inconvenient stories out of sight, only to restore the provocative policy when no one is looking.

The sad reality is that our college was colonized long ago by movement people. Once you have the faculty, the administration, and a compliant board, what else do you need? It is their university, and they will do with it what they want as long as they don’t need our money, and they don’t. The Admissions Office is aware that it is a gatekeeper for entry into an elite, and they want to make sure that those who pass through the gate are as in-line with the movement’s goals and values as possible. Put a drink in them, and they will confess to it. They want what they want; there is no reason to trust them to do anything else. They could be U Chicago, if they wanted. They don't.

I am open to suggestions. Certainly, there are opportunities for subversive political street theatre, though the young dissidents will need to take their game up a notch. Perhaps supportive alums should take steps to help dissidents land on their feet with respect to their postgraduate careers by extending patronage. The Left has been doing that forever, and it one of their keys to making sure that people stay active and in-line. 

Money talks. Certainly, cutting off money for administration activists so that they lose their jobs would change the playing field. That can’t be done at Yale, but perhaps it can be done over time at public universities. Or perhaps conditioning Federal student loans in some way would get their attention. Cutting off (or even reducing) the flow of  public money to activists will be seen as an existential threat, because it would be. If there were no jobs for SJW’s, there would be a lot fewer of them.

The bad news news is that the movement is now working hard to colonize private companies—that’s what the Damore story at Google was all about. The rent-seeking and will to power are pretty apparent. Big Tech is nearly gone. Fortune 500 size companies are completely exposed. Advertising, Entertainment, and Media? ‘Nuff said. Converting big companies into Social Justice vehicles has been an explicit goal for more than 20 years, and the investment is paying dividends. People better informed than I can speak to conditions in Big Finance. Movement penetration in law, government jobs, and the judiciary is obvious enough to everyone. By no coincidence, this is where Yalies go.