The old saw about yichus is that noble lineage is like a series of zeros: standing alone they add up to precisely nothing; only once a digit is placed in front of them do the zeros then add value to what is now a large number. This came to mind with the announcement by Yale University that Peter Salovey the current provost of the school has been named its 23^rd president.

Salovey it seems is a descendant of Rav Chaim Volozhiner. His great-great-great-grandfather was a brother of the Beis Halevi and the two were great-grandsons of Rav Chaim. “Soloveitchik” became “Salovey” when his part of the family decided to jump headlong into the American melting pot.

A New York Times piece on the appointment paints an endearing portrait of Salovey as a great teacher and administrator who is warm self-effacing and accessible. That’s wonderful to hear and I wish him well. But something was missing in the last paragraph of an article in the Yale Daily News campus newspaper about his appointment. It reports that Salovey was asked during search committee interviews to describe his vision for the university. “I answered with four phrases ” he said “a more unified Yale a more innovative Yale a more accessible Yale and a more excellent Yale.”

It’s too bad Dr. Salovey couldn’t summon his spiritual heritage to add one more to that list: “a more moral Yale.” I suppose this could be subsumed under his goal of “excellence” but somehow I don’t think that’s what he had in mind. Yale does everything to the hilt and unfortunately that includes its descent with full university imprimatur into a fetid moral swamp as documented in a recent book by Yale alumnus Nathan Harden. 

One of the things that characterized Rav Chaim and his spiritually elevated progeny was a fearless resolve to do what was right whatever the rest of the world might say. But Yale’s administration certainly hasn’t distinguished itself in that regard and not only in the way it has abetted an exceedingly promiscuous campus environment. Until the mid-1960s it had a strict quota on the number of Jews it would admit annually. But much more recently it has imposed quotas and gags of a different kind.

First in 2009 author Jytte Klausen sought to publish a book The Cartoons That Shook the World about the controversy surrounding the publication of cartoons of Muhammad in a Danish newspaper in 2005 under the Yale University Press imprint. The book reasonably enough was to have featured images of the cartoons and other images of Muhammad that were its subject. But this was too much for Yale to bear; the Press intervened and insisted the book be published without the offending images.

Then in June 2010 the university abruptly disbanded the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA) after provost Salovey accepted a faculty committee’s report recommending its closing. I’ll let author and alumnus Ron Rosenbaum explain:

Yale cited several reasons for killing YIISA a program devoted to the cross-cultural examination of anti-Semitism…. But many observers suspect the turning point was a YIISA conference … [that] dared acknowledge the existence of anti-Semitism in some Islamic cultures. There has been talk — though no proof — of fear of offending potentially lucrative donors from theMiddle East. Charles Small the director of YIISA pointed out that “it was the largest conference on anti-Semitism ever and it would have been absurd for the conference to ignore Muslim anti-Semitism.…”

The charge [was] that the program exhibited too much “advocacy” against anti-Semitism as opposed to academic analysis of anti-Semitism.… In one blow Yale had in effect given censorship powers over the limits of the study of anti-Semitism to anti-Semites and the like the people who cried “advocacy.” Not just at Yale but all acrossAmerica.… In addition Yale was essentially inventing a new kind of Jewish quota: putting a quota on the anger that Jews could express against those who wish for their extermination. After all such anger would be “advocacy.” Apparently YIISA exceeded its quota.

Professor Alan Dershowitz wrote that having been “around American academic institutions for more than half a century” he’d never before “seen such a lack of process and fairness in the termination of a program.” Not for nothing was Yale on the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education’s list of the worst colleges in regard to free speech.

But lest one think this means Yale doesn’t favor exposing students to a diverse range of views and experiences consider an episode that actually preceded these by over a decade. In 1997 five Orthodox Jewish Yalies sued the university over its insistence that they reside in on-campus mixed-gender dormitories rather than off-campus (I had the pleasure of teaching one of these courageous young people in high school; last I heard he’s still learning in a Yerushalayim kollel).

The school’s claim was that sharing living quarters with other students was an essential part of the Yale experience (although apparently not so essential that it couldn’t be dispensed with if a student was willing to pay the $7000 housing fee despite living off-campus). As then-Yale president Richard Levin put it: “Why come to a university like this one if you won’t open your mind to new ideas and new perspectives?” Jewish history professor Ivan Marcus argued that “Yale is … also about mixing meeting arguing learning to defend being different and dealing with different people.”

In case dear reader you’re getting a bit confused by the seeming contradictions in all this here is a thumbnail guide to Yale’s apparent policy vision: Free speech and diversity of views are among the highest values unless they upset Muslims (although a Yale-like campus wouldn’t survive a day in the Muslim world without blood being shed); other than that diversity of views  and freedom not to conform are at the very core of the Yale creed so much so that if  you’re an Orthodox Jew you will be compelled to conform to that creed. Got all that? 

To be fair I’m not aware of where President-elect Salovey stood on the Yale Five matter which occurred before he joined Yale’s administration. He has often spoken passionately about the importance of free expression and nonconformity extolling the 1975 Woodward Report on free speech at Yale for underscoring “the importance of free speech in fulfilling the purpose of a great university ” which as the Report puts it means “the right to think the unthinkable discuss the unmentionable and challenge the unchallengeable.” And in a 2008 welcome speech to incoming freshmen entitled “A Contrarian Education ” he opined that “A contrarian is someone who does not necessarily conform but rather is inclined to do precisely the opposite of what everyone else is doing.… My argument is that you may be able to make the most of yourYaleCollege experience if you choose not to follow the herd….”

Of course he was arguing there for students to be nonconformists in their choice of what fields to specialize in but I’d like to assume he would agree that they should be all the more free not to “follow the herd” when it comes to their spiritual lives and most deeply held values. And I’d like to believe that if a group of nonconformists like the Yale Five ever arose again Salovey — reaching deep into his spiritual DNA — would support them.

As I finished writing I realized this column is appearing in our Chanukah issue and perhaps it would have been more appropriate to write something on that theme. Then again I just did.     

NOT A TYPO What’s news this week? Well here’s a headline out of Eretz Yisrael: “Yeshivah for profits opens in Tel Aviv.” Boy what’ll the anti-chareidi press think of next? Who goes into chinuch for the money? And anyway if a fellow actually can turn a modest profit on a yeshivah what’s wrong with that?

Mark my word the media won’t stop here. They’ll dig and dig until they think they’ve found some hint of corruption some dirty-money angle to this. Ah here it is right out in the open: The interviewer asked the yeshivah’s founder “What about identifying false profits?” These journalists are just shameless never met a sensational story they didn’t like.

Wait a second did I read that right? “Yeshivah for prophets opens in Tel Aviv?” And believe it or not here is a sample of the syllabus: “Wisdom of the face;” “Wisdom of dreams;” and “Introduction to ruach hakodesh and prophecy.” The founder says he’s convinced the time of redemption is here and therefore prophecy has returned. Well I for one will defer. After all Chazal tell us who prophecy was given to after the Churban.