Yale University

Last October, in the chandeliered Tap Room of New York’s Yale Club, some members of the college’s Class of 1987 were lunching together when Timothy P. Harkness, class secretary, and one of the litigators that represented Arthur Andersen in the Enron trials, had a capital idea.

Why not re-create the 30-year-old New Haven tradition of “Feb Club,” a month-long chain of nightly campus parties thrown by Yale seniors, to alumni around the globes?  read more »

Star Childs, who graduated from Yale with a forestry degree 27 years ago, was hammering a nail into a stump outside Sunday’s Yale-Harvard football game. He wore a tie, vest, and blazer, plus matching knit cap, and had a red cup in his non-hammering left hand.

The dozen students gathered around him cheered. “I’m a forester, I’m a lumberjack! And I’m okay,” Mr. Childs said. His family owns the one-room Yale Outdoors Cabin, with fireplace, in Bethany, CT.  read more »

"It's a Princeton versus Yale thing."

That's Edward Tenner, the author of Why Things Bite Back, summing up the rivalry between Robert Caro and the master builder.

Mr. Caro graduated Princeton in 1957; Moses finished Yale in 1909.

Mr. Tenner told The Real Estate:

There is a certain kind of ultra-industrious Princetonian that does everything in a most thorough way and is totally obsessed with doing it right. Then there is the Yalie who loves to spread his feathers and bask in the limelight and Moses was extremely Yalie in that sort of way. I can just see Caro getting dressed up in his coat and tie to beaver this Yalie down to size.

Other Yalies: William F. Buckley Jr.; Cole Porter; George W. Bush; Jennifer Beals.

Other Princetonians: George Kennan; Woodrow Wilson; Samuel Alito; Brooke Shields.

Mr. Tenner has a whole anatomy of the Ivies which you can find via his website. He, by the way, is Princeton '65.

- Matthew Schuerman

A Bloomberg Bonus for City’s Hidden 20 Percent    read more »

A Bloomberg Bonus for City’s Hidden 20 Percent    read more »

Robert De Niro’s The Good Shepherd, from a screenplay by Eric Roth, has been described as &ldq  read more »

The Forward reported two years ago that Sacha Baron Cohen was playing clubs as Borat, in a singalong urging the audience to throw Jews "down the well" to purify his country. Sounds like he's modeling Stanley Milgram, the Yale psychologist whose famous experiment induced its unwitting subjects to turn up the electric shocks for every bad answer from a supposed test subject, screaming in pain through the walls from another room. Thereby answering the question: Will otherwise decent people follow murderous orders? Cohen seems to be testing an antisemitic principle of human nature.

Time Inc. was in trouble.  read more »

The other day I got a copy of Stephen Walt's 2005 book Taming American Power:The Global Response to U.S. Primacy and was surprised to read the section on the Israel lobby. It was nearly as forceful as the paper on the same subject that he and John Mearsheimer published three months ago in the London Review of Books. It had many of the same ideas (including the red-hot assertion that the Israel lobby helped propel us into the Iraq war). Yet I didn't know Walt's name till the day in March that his LRB piece appeared, when a political friend emailed it to me after he was sent it by a realist friend of the authors. And when Walt spoke last month at the Naval War College, lieutenant commanders weren't bringing up the book; they were bringing up copies of his paper to be autographed. Walt himself said that the paper had been downloaded from the Kennedy School website over 200,000 times in the first month or two after publication. Wow. I wonder how many copies of the book Norton has sold.

New ideas are exchanged on the internet. That's the thoroughfare. Walt and Mearsheimer might be able to sell a big book contract now, because people want to curl up on the couch at night with a good solid story about something they know is important, but the flow of new ideas is all electronic.  read more »

Anderson Cooper's down-home, appealing commencement speech at Yale 10 days ago was marred by a crack he took at Yoko Ono. He brought up a commencement speech she gave 3 years ago, as a non-model.

She said: "I say you can't stand if you've got too much muck in your head. Let it go, and dance through life." So true, so much muck, you know? Muck is a big problem. Of course. it's easier to dance through life if you have a billion dollars, but I digress.

Unfair on two counts. 1, Yoko's advice, to grads of the Maine College of Art, is just fine. People have to try and free themselves. However you do it, do it. When Cooper himself quotes Joseph Campbell, "Follow your bliss," it's not that different from what Yoko's saying.

2, Cooper is descended from megabux. Son of Gloria Vanderbilt, etc. Who's he to make fun of Yoko's money?

For nearly 30 years, theater audiences knew Wendy Wasserstein as the wry mistress of wit who could m  read more »

Last year, Fareed Zakaria, the Newsweek International editor and television pundit, was invited to p  read more »

Wild Turkey!” My friend Nate-Dog shouts, brandishing a bottle of whiskey and flapping imaginar  read more »

In her half-century-plus in Manhattan, Pat Buckley has been known as a socialite, a fashion icon, a  read more »

Wild Turkey!” My friend Nate-Dog shouts, brandishing a bottle of whiskey and flapping imaginary wi  read more »

I am three months away from giving birth for the first time, and already I am a bad, bad mother.  read more »

I am three months away from giving birth for the first time, and already I am a bad, bad mother.  read more »

George Pataki's pride in his oldest son, Teddy, who's set to graduate from Yale and is on the path to become an officer in the Marines, may take a hit once the governor looks up the 22-year-old's online profile:

Like many of his fellow students, Teddy is a member of thefacebook.com, a collegiate Friendster where students post profiles listing their classes, their dorms, their favorite music (Def Leppard, Led Zeppelin, Metallica), movies (Lord of the Rings, Black Hawk Down) and books, and in which they form groups according to their interests.

The young Pataki is one of three officers—his title is "United States Marine and Professional Killer"—of a group entitled "AMERICA! ... FUCK YEAH!!!" (remember that irony-laden song from Team America) which describes itself as: "We are Americans. We can do what we want when we want to and can say whatever the fuck we want about foreigners. ‘Suck my balls world'—America. Those who are proud to say they love America and will fight anyone who threatens her. We'll help anyone who is ashamed to be an American pack if you'll just leave and promise to never come back."

Other notables listed in the facebook include presidential daughter Barbara Bush (whose profile is largely blank) and her reported beau, Jay Blount, who's concentration (conveniently for his potential father-in-law) is Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and who belongs to the groups, "Virginia Is for Hustlers," "Balls and Sacks," and "Varsity Alcoholics."

The latter group's description concludes, "This group is for the many ex-varsity athletes at Yale who have quit their sport, but still maintain that competitive edge, and thus, have dedicated their time and energy to drinking... the most spirited ex-athletes may even be on the verge of alcoholism."

Blount also tallies a long list of Spring Break thoughts, including "Only in Iraq can a man like Saddam Hussein find work," "Bend ovaaaa, Sally," "Go Ballz Deep, NSS (no shaft showing)" and a series of quotes parodying President Bush's hilarious comments making fun of the groom at a friend's 1992 wedding, which was captured on video and leaked to the Smoking Gun a few years ago: "You have very boring dance moves, very boring," "You are very boring when you sleep," "You are very skinny, a fine golfer, but very boring, you are a very boring person."  read more »

Blount seems to enjoy the good life. Last year, during Yale's Sex Week, he was photographed partying at Mory's Temple Bar in New Haven along with sex doctor Susan Block and "Girls Gone Wild" founder Joe Francis.

No more Mr. Nice Guy.  read more »

Naomi Wolf was on the phone on Feb.  read more »

"It'll take a while," Adam Moss, the newly installed editor in chief of New York magazine, told Off  read more »

If the New York City Council has its way and a spate of stringent gun-control bills become law, a so  read more »

Sorry, guys, I'm not going. No Yale Class Reunion picnic at the White House for me.  read more »

Which stars burn brightest in the firmament of a high-school senior's imagination?  read more »

Benjamin Franklin , by Edmund S. Morgan.  read more »

"...the author has, in fact, made appropriate changes in the text in response to your letter of June  read more »

A year and a half ago, some smart-aleck Yale University students got a lot of media attention for st  read more »

Shamelessly Arty, The Tiger's Eye Is Back at Yale by Hilton Kramer There can't be many people today  read more »

One reason I love the Yale alumni magazine is that each new issue provides another compelling reason  read more »

The Brearley seniors knew not to get their hopes up.  read more »

George Santayana, the Spanish Catholic atheist, homosexual,poet and philosopher, once said a profoun  read more »

It's the primal scene of American power, of Bush family values.  read more »

It's the primal scene of American power, of Bush family values.  read more »

The choice of Senator Joseph Lieberman as the Democratic Vice Presidential candidate has loosed a re  read more »

Early and mid-August used to be known as the dog days of summer, but in this election season, August  read more »

Whiffenpoof!  read more »

Where is the all-girl break-in team now that we need them?  read more »

Finally, something to like about John McCain.  read more »

BUFFALO–It was a dreary, cold morning in western New York. Gov.  read more »

Damn it, they still have the power to distort our thinking. Or at least mine.  read more »

Not long ago, a few of us old guys were sitting around after dinner, shooting the breeze.  read more »

It's been years since there were so few Jews in paradise.Jewish enrollment at Princeton University  read more »

"I'm too overwhelmed and flattered and touched and on the verge of tears …," said James Prosek at  read more »

Once upon a time, there was an oyster that brought fame and fortune to its owner, the proprietor of  read more »

The room was dark as a speakeasy, with maroon walls, leather banquettes, a pressed-tin ceiling and b  read more »

It's April in New York, a time of joyous exultation or bitter misery for seniors in New York City's  read more »

I see that in the bibliography of the catalogue accompanying the Chuck Close exhibition, which Rober  read more »

Anna Gaskell was standing in a group of friends at the Mary Boone Gallery on the evening of Jan. 9.  read more »

I've been thinking a lot about Nothing lately.  read more »

(1) A Summons From Cheever . You could think of it as the Skull and Bones of sporting events.  read more »