LETTERS 10.19.12

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Finding resources about Yale-NUS

The establishment of Yale-NUS College in Singapore is and will remain a subject of debate here and around the world. We urge members of the Yale community to inform themselves about this project. The best way to do so is to join the web site named “Yale and Singapore,” on the Classesv2 server. It is available to anyone with a valid Yale net ID. (Go to Membership, Joinable Sites, then search for “Yale and Singapore.”) An extensive archive of news and opinions (from all points of view) is found there. Those without Yale net IDs can write to any of us, the four maintainers of the site, to ask to be added manually. The list of site members is visible only to the maintainers. New postings are often but not always announced by email.

Please also note: if you are already a member, the site will appear in your “Active Sites,” but will not appear among the 1000 or more sites listed in “Joinable Sites” and so cannot be found through a search there.

Victor Bers, Jill Campbell, Christopher L. Miller and Mimi Yiengpruksawan

OCT. 17

The writers are all Yale professors.

Student perspective on Yale-NUS

As one of the four professors contacted for “Students Divided over Yale-NUS,” I’d like to make clear what was wrong with the YCC survey’s putting Yale-NUS parenthetically in a question on international presence.

There are many kinds of international presence. It may be great for universities to set up exchanges, collaborative research, even medical and business schools, law clinics and arts programs abroad. For Yale, contracting to set up a whole new liberal-arts college for undergraduates in collaboration with a tightly controlled corporate city-state is not great for Yale in New Haven, especially because the administration won’t disclose the terms of the contract. I’ve written a lot about this since last spring, most recently in a Dissent magazine essay on “global network universities” that I’ll forward to anyone writing to james.sleeper@yale.edu.

Not all forms of international presence are equal — or equally justified, and students should understand the difference.

Jim Sleeper

Oct. 18

The writer is a lecturer in Political Science at Yale.