God and Man at Yale: The First College Guide
Stuart Nachbar
February 03, 2009
Back in the late 1970´s, when I was shopping for a college, I read an Insider´s Guide that was published by the Yale Daily News. This year, the thirty fifth edition of the Guide will hit the bookstores. I don´t know if the Yale college guide was the first to organize student-reported profiles of colleges across the country, but I do not believe that it was not the first guide to "rate" the quality of education at Yale. That honor goes to William F. Buckley´s classic work: God and Man at Yale.
Although God and Man at Yale is a fifty-seven year old profile of a venerable institution, Buckley´s comments about an overly liberal and overly secular faculty have been made about numerous colleges since then. What made this book remarkable to me was that Buckley wrote his observations when he was only 22! I can´t imagine that I would have found the gumption to write as much about Rutgers, a much larger and more diverse institution than Yale, when I was that age. Nor could I imagine myself reading God and Man at Yale at eighteen, let alone use it to help guide me in my choice of college.
I had heard of God and Man at Yale for many years, but only recently came into possession of a copy. Anyone who reads this must consider Buckley´s comments in the context of the times. In 1951, Yale was an all-male institution; women would not be admitted for another seventeen years. And unlike Harvard, which had a women´s college, Radcliffe, in its backyard, men had to travel off-campus to find female companionship. There were no student loans; the first programs were yet to be proposed by President Eisenhower. Yale, along with the other Ivies, could also be considered "football schools" in 1951. While Ivy League schools did not compete in bowl games, archrival Princeton ranked sixth in the nation in the season´s final Associated Press poll.
The House Un-American Activities Committee rose in prominence while Buckley was a student at Yale. College presidents, including the president of Yale, said that they would never hire faculty who had been or were currently members of the Communist Party. Buckley said that was all well and good, but that Yale alumni should be concerned that liberal economic policy (as instructed in the texts of the times) and secular religious instruction could lead the country and the government to become closer to socialism than capitalism.
Buckley added that Yale alumni were never asked to weigh in on the education the next generation received, only to contribute generously. Buckley made a personal decision to withdraw from an invitation to speak before Yale´s trustees because he was in a controversial minority. But he believed that his conservative views were closer to the mainstream than the views of the Yale administration. He also believed that fellow alumni, including trustees, were either misinformed or didn´t care.
God and Man at Yale is somewhat dry in the chapters about economics and religious instruction at Yale, especially the excerpts from the textbooks that were used in the introductory courses. But I also saw in Buckley a campus radical, as much as someone could be radical in 1950´s Yale. Change does not always mean a liberal course of action; conservatives were considered radicals until they proved capable of retaining power through the 1984 and 1988 presidential elections.
Buckley was a more mature advocate for change, in this case a return to past teachings, than the generations that followed him on the left and the right. And I think he would have been more successful in the Yale of later generations. The students who attended college during the late 1970´s and early 1980´s were looking to the conservatives for change. In 1980, nearly sixty percent of them voted for Reagan.
But while some conservative observations (left-leaning faculty views in the liberal arts) have not changed very much, college administrations have become more focused on the students and parents as their customers. They do not involve parents and alumni in the academic mission of the institution, but they do involve them in improving the school´s community and quality of life.
And there is a collective concern about affordability and accessibility by liberals and conservatives alike; the conservatives follow Buckley´s lines of reasoning to this day. Only this time the arguments are less about alumni support than government assistance.
Stuart Nachbar blogs on thought and fiction in education and politics at www.EducatedQuest.com
Although God and Man at Yale is a fifty-seven year old profile of a venerable institution, Buckley´s comments about an overly liberal and overly secular faculty have been made about numerous colleges since then. What made this book remarkable to me was that Buckley wrote his observations when he was only 22! I can´t imagine that I would have found the gumption to write as much about Rutgers, a much larger and more diverse institution than Yale, when I was that age. Nor could I imagine myself reading God and Man at Yale at eighteen, let alone use it to help guide me in my choice of college.
I had heard of God and Man at Yale for many years, but only recently came into possession of a copy. Anyone who reads this must consider Buckley´s comments in the context of the times. In 1951, Yale was an all-male institution; women would not be admitted for another seventeen years. And unlike Harvard, which had a women´s college, Radcliffe, in its backyard, men had to travel off-campus to find female companionship. There were no student loans; the first programs were yet to be proposed by President Eisenhower. Yale, along with the other Ivies, could also be considered "football schools" in 1951. While Ivy League schools did not compete in bowl games, archrival Princeton ranked sixth in the nation in the season´s final Associated Press poll.
The House Un-American Activities Committee rose in prominence while Buckley was a student at Yale. College presidents, including the president of Yale, said that they would never hire faculty who had been or were currently members of the Communist Party. Buckley said that was all well and good, but that Yale alumni should be concerned that liberal economic policy (as instructed in the texts of the times) and secular religious instruction could lead the country and the government to become closer to socialism than capitalism.
Buckley added that Yale alumni were never asked to weigh in on the education the next generation received, only to contribute generously. Buckley made a personal decision to withdraw from an invitation to speak before Yale´s trustees because he was in a controversial minority. But he believed that his conservative views were closer to the mainstream than the views of the Yale administration. He also believed that fellow alumni, including trustees, were either misinformed or didn´t care.
God and Man at Yale is somewhat dry in the chapters about economics and religious instruction at Yale, especially the excerpts from the textbooks that were used in the introductory courses. But I also saw in Buckley a campus radical, as much as someone could be radical in 1950´s Yale. Change does not always mean a liberal course of action; conservatives were considered radicals until they proved capable of retaining power through the 1984 and 1988 presidential elections.
Buckley was a more mature advocate for change, in this case a return to past teachings, than the generations that followed him on the left and the right. And I think he would have been more successful in the Yale of later generations. The students who attended college during the late 1970´s and early 1980´s were looking to the conservatives for change. In 1980, nearly sixty percent of them voted for Reagan.
But while some conservative observations (left-leaning faculty views in the liberal arts) have not changed very much, college administrations have become more focused on the students and parents as their customers. They do not involve parents and alumni in the academic mission of the institution, but they do involve them in improving the school´s community and quality of life.
And there is a collective concern about affordability and accessibility by liberals and conservatives alike; the conservatives follow Buckley´s lines of reasoning to this day. Only this time the arguments are less about alumni support than government assistance.
Stuart Nachbar blogs on thought and fiction in education and politics at www.EducatedQuest.com
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