It was an extraordinary occasion. Recall for a moment that time during your undergraduate years when the distribution requirements had all been met, your major was well in hand and you had the delicious option of choosing several elective courses. A time when you could truly choose the professor rather than the subject. That was the splendid dilemma presented to those of us privileged to attend the Alumni Leadership Convocation, held this April in New Haven as part of the tercentennial celebration. Spence, Scully or Bloom? How do I choose? Walker Evans photographs, Shakespeare, or a conversation with a Nobel scientist? Politics with Dahl, literature with Borroff, economics with Rubin. And these are but a few of the offerings presented throughout the day on Friday and Saturday. The selections were all tantalizing when the choices were made in January. They became agonizing on campus in April when, with assignments in hand, you wondered if you should have selected Trudeau instead of Tom Wolfe, or attended the Yale Opera Company or entered the architectural world of Robert Stern.

Strolling the campus between sessions and over meals, the buzz was palpable. "Scully warmed to the moment and was fabulous. The Law School Auditorium was packed!" "The new direction for the School of Forestry outlined by Dean Speth and others is right on the mark." "The insights on investing presented by David Swenson were striking and brilliant." "Much of Bloom’s world of the sublime passed over me while Robert Penn Warren’s poetry is fixed in my mind." The leaven of these sessions was complemented by two concerts. Thursday evening’s Royal Blue Tercentennial Concert featured works by or connected with Yale musicians. Friday evening’s offering was lighter fare with presentations by the Glee Club, several singing groups, the infamous Yale band and others. The mood was festive and joyous. During those rare free moments, I joined others in visiting the Mellon Bequest at the Center for British Art and the newly installed exhibition Art for Yale: Defining Moments at the Yale Art Gallery. Saturday afternoon, former president George Bush joined Rick Levin and panelists for an engaging, frequently candid conversation spiced with good humor. Saturday evening we filled the magnificent new Lanman Center adjacent to the Payne Whitney gym for a gala banquet and celebration.

Some friends (non-Yalies) commented that I would be spending several days engaged in self-congratulation and braggadocio about Yale’s accomplishments. Did the weekend move beyond that? Indeed it did on several levels and in different ways. First of all, it was fun, stimulating and enjoyable. The attention to detail was obvious at every locale and a warm welcome permeated all, aided by mostly delightful spring weather. Secondly, there was an enormous portion of substance. While one constantly heard the word leadership, it was usually by example; rarely through chest thumping. Attending the seminars and presentations, I was constantly reminded of the extraordinary faculty that has been there for those who came much before us and long after we graduated. In many instances they taught us well and many of us went on to make significant contributions in our chosen fields. A common thread I found throughout the weekend was the emphasis placed on public service by succeeding Yale generations since its founding in Branford in 1701.

For several hours on Friday morning, the Association of Yale Alumni session provided thoughtful and entertaining insights on Yale’s history and alumni roles. Gaddis Smith, Larned Professor Emeritus of History, provided fascinating glimpses from the founding of Yale College to today. Murray Biggs and several theatre students added characters to history with several dramatic readings, including Jonathan Edwards on the decline of student manners and civility in the mid-eighteenth century. Eustace Theodore – a classmate, former colleague and friend – drew upon his career as head of the AYA to offer his predictions about the emerging relationships among alumni, faculty and the university in the digital age.

While Yale is steeped in tradition, most of us possess at best a passing knowledge of its institutional history. Professor Smith, who is writing a history of Yale, presented some fascinating insights on the role of alumni during the University’s first 300 years. With my apologies to Gaddis Smith for an outline summary, here are several points that I found of particular interest.

• Yale was the first college to identify alumni by class, a natural outgrowth of the practice of having all members of a class enrolled in the same courses. For me, that triggers memories of the Freshman Year on the Old Campus.

• During the colonial and federal years, Yale College received significant support and leadership from Connecticut. When in 1831 the state eliminated financial support, Yale sought support from its alumni to build an endowment.

• Several decades later, alumni mounted an organized effort to replace Connecticut state senators who served on the corporation with alumni representatives.

• At the time of WWI, alumni concerns over Yale’s financial straits led to the formation of the Alumni Committee for University Development. Its findings that Yale had lost its moorings and lacked any vision for its place in the rapidly changing world of the early 20^th century resulted in series of demands that President Hadley present a plan for making the university among the finest.

• Hadley’s response failed to assuage his critics and the committee, in an unprecedented display of power, imposed an entirely new structure that established a modern university of centralized finances and the placement of faculty and courses of study in academic departments.

• With Hadley’s departure, President James Angell pressed forward his goal of a research university. We have learned as well that his dictum to "Keep Yale Yale" was in fact a coda for discriminatory admissions and hiring practices in an effort to keep Yale a WASP bastion.

• With the growth of the research university, the power and influence of the faculty increased as well, causing some, best represented by Bill Buckley, to assert that the true owners of the university were alumni, a body that should control the governance and establish policies affecting admissions, faculty hiring and course offerings.

• Responding to these themes and the increasing pressure for federal and corporate influences through grants and financing of research, A. Whitney Griswold put forth a spirited defense of academic freedom.

• The admission of women prompted spirited opposition from many alumni quarters for several decades and little was done until Kingman Brewster convinced the members of the Corporation that ". . . it was time for Yale to take the responsibility of educating women."

• Fortunately, from my perspective, the early quotas on women, instituted to appease those who feared that Yale would cease to produce "1,000 male leaders each year", were overturned only three years after the arrival of the first women undergraduates in 1969.

• Yale underwent a dramatic transformation in the sixties. The campus, of course, was not immune from the many national and international social forces: Vietnam, civil rights, drugs and changing moral standards. But Yale’s leadership also took deliberate, positive steps to change the nature of the place: a new admissions policy, the decision to admit women, the enhancement of the college system, and the prominent position people like Brewster, Bill Coffin, and Arthur Galston chose to assume on the salient issues of the day.

• In reaction, a number of alumni expressed their displeasure and outright disapproval, asserting once again that their voices had been diminished. A most positive outcome of these turbulent years was the creation of the AYA as a vehicle to bring together the alumni and University for exchanges of views, ideas and opinions.

Minnesota played a role in Professor Smith’s recounting of Yale’s history. In a lively, if gentlemanly exchange of letters in April 1914, William D. Washburn, Jr., YC 1888, and Frederick S. Jones, Dean of Students, exchanged views on Yale’s place in higher education and the character of that day’s student body.

Washburn’s family rose to prominence in Minnesota during the last half of the 19^th century. His entrepreneurial father played a significant role in the building of Washburn Mills, one of the predecessors of General Mills, and served in the U.S. Senate. After graduating from Yale, William Jr. worked in newspapers for a time before managing the family’s many land and agricultural properties. He clearly expressed his displeasure with Yale and its students. In his April 7, 1914 response to a letter from Dean Jones, Washburn expressed grave concerns that Yale was fast losing stature to Harvard and Princeton. Princeton offered students individual contact with the faculty through the relatively new tutor system, while Yale complacently catered to the "successful men of New York who are supposed to be Captains of Industry, and that we run to buildings instead of to living salaries for professors."

Drawing a sharp distinction between the progressive trends of the upper Midwest and the eastern establishment and the newly wealthy, Washburn stated

Keenly aware of the fundamental changes sweeping through American society, Washburn observed that "our children are to live under a new order, and if Yale cannot give them a spirit of patriotism and fellowship with ordinary people and some degree of spiritual life, which is now commencing to stir in the United States, we [Yale] are going to lose what little hold we still have left upon the public mind. . . .In my mind we are living at Yale in about 1878 instead of 1914."

Responding to an incident that had occasioned yet more bad publicity, he caustically observed that he was "aweary, however, of people knocking Yale as a place where the rich men’s sons accumulate with automobiles and chorus girls, and where they say the spiritual life is asleep at the switch."

Reflecting some of the alumni attitudes that challenged Yale under President Hadley’s tenure, Washburn wrote, "I suppose that this would shock A. Hadley and people whose vision is confined to New York City and Connecticut. You know as well as I do, however," wrote Washburn, that the future of this country is west of Pittsburgh, and if Yale wants to continue to live in Connecticut, she will soon rival Amherst or Dartmouth or Tufts whose national influence is well known to all educators."

Am I wrong or are there some strains of Washburn’s refrain present today?

Dean Jones responded promptly on April 13^th with an 11 page defense of Yale that chided his friend while asserting the strength of Yale and its current generation of students. Quickly dismissing the Princeton preceptorial system as inferior to the Yale College approach to undergraduate education, Jones moved on to address Washburn’s assertion that Yale was a handmaiden to the eastern plutocracy, one corrupted by new riches, crude manners and low morals. "The wealthiest youngsters from the richest families in the country are the men here at Yale who do the most serious work, who are the most temperate, upright and well-behaved." What followed was an extensive list of students of high reputation and achievement who came from the nation’s wealthiest families. Citing scholarship, involvement in extracurricular activities like the Yale News, community service and that ultimate intellectual accolade, graduate study in England, Jones noted that "my experience is that the sons of the wealthy parents are the best material we get here at Yale." While sharing his friend’s notion that much needed to be done to improve the standards at Yale, Dean Jones commented that there had been great improvement in recent years. "And so I want to reassure you that there is a much more serious view of life among the students at Yale than you may suppose from the heresy [sic] evidence or from newspaper sensationalism."

Turning to Washburn’s criticism of Yale’s propensity to recognize captains of industry while ignoring people of good works, Dean Jones cited several examples including Josiah Royce, Jane Adams and John Muir. Not one honorary degree, Jones argued, was prompted by any mercenary motive." Ironically one Minnesotan was cited by Jones as a degree recipient open to criticism. James J. Hill was recognized for his public service in "opening the great Middle West to settlement, and in the encouragement of our commerce with China and the Orient. That degree was urged by a number of prominent Yale graduates, who believed that it should be conferred for what Mr. Hill had done, rather than for what Mr. Hill possessed."

Returning to the timeless comparisons between Harvard and Yale, Dean Jones staunchly defended the Yale undergraduate education by sharing a conversation he had with President Lowell of Harvard.

"He asked me how we managed to turn out such a splendid type of man in our undergraduate classes at Yale, and bewailed the fact that the leading men in the Harvard Law and Medical Schools were Yale graduates. . . . He admitted that Harvard was altogether unable to produce the sort of student that Yale did."