To the Editor:

One’s initial reaction to news that President Richard Levin’s salary has in recent years risen at more than double the rate of those of Yale’s tenured faculty can only be generalized dismay. That dismay gains focus when one reads the comparison drawn, by Prof Gaddis Smith ‘54, between university presidents and “corporate CEOs.”

For the comparison strips away the pretense that Yale is administered by a member of the faculty. Yale is a community of scholars, a society and not a business. And no society governed by hirelings no longer regarded as active members thereof can long thrive.

Michael J. Montesano

Nov. 13

Murray is a 1983 graduate of Yale College. He lives in Singapore.