Letters

Yale’s child in Singapore Michael Fischer’s description (“Yale-NUS is not Yale,” March 23) of the relationship between Yale and Yale-NUS College is largely accurate. I believe the name “Yale-NUS College” appropriately signals that relationship. Yale-NUS College is a child with two parents. As such, it is quite different from any branch campus. It is still »

Suspicious of Singapore In their defense of President Richard Levin’s great Singapore folly, professors Charles Bailyn, Deborah Davis and Pericles Lewis (“Rethinking Liberal Arts Education,” Feb. 29), none of whom has ever drawn a paycheck in Southeast Asia, let alone actually run anything in this part of the world, peep, “We recognize that Singapore has »

The right to read freely It is troubling that a Sterling professor of French, R. Howard Bloch (“Why I like Yale-NUS,” March 19) would endorse Yale’s expansion into a country where students could not read, among other authors, the Marquis de Sade, whose works are banned in Singapore. Yes, a liberal arts education may help »

Opposing Yale-NUS Our colleague Howard Bloch (“Why I like Yale-NUS,” March 19) invites us to ask what the government of Singapore “was thinking when it invited Yale to establish within its borders a liberal arts college.” We have to ask ourselves in turn: How did we get here, to a place where we are required »

The health of Yale science I am sorry to read that Lily Twining (“Unhealthy Competition,” March 1) has witnessed personal differences among her faculty advisers in the natural sciences at Yale. She insinuates that this amount of personal discord extends to most Yale natural science faculty and that the tenure system is largely to blame »

Debate, don’t demonize, the NYPD Reading about the New York Police Department’s monitoring of Muslim students’ associations, I find it highly unfortunate that the NYPD found itself in a position where it felt the need to monitor the activities of student groups. However, the reaction here at Yale represents a disturbing misunderstanding of the situation. »

Putting the pressure on Iran During her visit Monday, Christiane Amanpour spent a good deal of time discussing Iran and advocating a stronger, more committed policy of engagement toward Iran, specifically something greater than the Obama administration has tried. This issue was lightly touched upon in the News (“Journalist asks for U.S. foreign policy change,” »

Don’t let up on politicians No disrespect to either Jack Schlossberg (“Rally Behind the President,” Feb. 6) or President Reagan, but Schlossberg’s suggestion that Democrats adopt Reagan’s golden rule — the idea that one should not criticize a politician simply because of the letter beside their name — is absurd. If there is a legitimate »

A better use for federal funds In his article (“Needle Exchanges Work,” Jan. 26), Scott Stern argues that federal funding for needle exchange programs should be reinstated. The proof that clean needle exchange programs reduce the transmission of diseases such as HIV and Hepatitis C among intravenous drug users is clear, but I question the »

Sorry we’re not the gentry I’d like to offer deep gratitude to Alex Fisher for his “Defense of Gentrification” (Jan. 27), the snobbery and callousness of which gives us in the anticapitalist movement useful fuel for our fires in these cold winter months. The camp at Occupy New Haven has felt somewhat dejected lately and »

In defense of Bahrain’s government Faisal Husain (“Terror in the dark,” January 19) presented a grossly distorted account of what has been happening in Bahrain. Nowhere does he mention that King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa and the government of Bahrain responded to the tragic events of last year by calling for a national dialogue »

Personability matters in educators Antonia Woodford’s article (“Grad School divided over interviews“; Jan. 11) reveals a disturbing aspect of graduate work in the humanities. Faculty opposition to the policy of interviewing applicants illuminates how we have neglected the role of teaching in scholarship. Faculty insistence that “personabilty” is irrelevant to work in the humanities (as »