In recent months, Yale President Mauire McInnis has reportedly reached out to the Trump regime asking for some kind of “deal.” As a Yale grad who believes in democracy and hates racism and bigotry, that makes me sick to my stomach. If you have a connection to Yale and you’re similarly disgusted, I encourage you to sign the petition from the alumni group Stand Up for Yale and contact McInnis’s office directly to tell her how you feel. A very nice person answered the phone and took my comments when I called 203-432-2550. Please treat that person with respect when you call, but please don’t be shy to tell her what you think about McInnis’s actions.
You can also send Yale a comment here to tell them how you think they should respond to the Trump regime’s August 3 letter demanding more concessions of universities.
If you’re looking for inspiration, please read on for the letter I sent.
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Dear President McInnis.
I am horrified by your attempts to cut a deal with Trump and exhort you to change your course to avoid the collapse of Yale University, massive damage to untold numbers of vulnerable people in this country, and the permanent destruction of your own personal reputation.
- Please cease all efforts to cut any kind of deal with Trump – including refusing to respond to his current demands in McMahon’s August 3 letter. Every reasonable person knows that Trump is a liar who simply does not keep his word. This is not hyperbole. This is a factual statement based on observation of who he demonstrates himself to be almost literally every single day. He will violate any deal you make with him – approaching him for a deal as you already have or accommodating McMahon’s current bad faith demands just marks you as a chump whom he’ll continue to extort. The only way to deal with him is to fight. If you are unwilling to fight him with everything you have to protect the university, you should resign.
- As an Asian American, I take your willingness to cut a deal with Trump as evidence that you are willing to bargain away my rights and personhood and fully embrace Yale’s status as a white supremacist institution. Trump wants to destroy birthright citizenship. He repeatedly used the racist phrase “China virus” and stoked up the anti-Asian hate that affected my own family on the streets. He is currently engaged in an ethnonationalist, illegal, anti-immigrant, evil concentration camp and deportation regime. His attempts to bring universities under his heel are not incidental to these white supremacist campaigns; they are part of the exact same endeavor. Please note that I’m speaking as an Asian American, but he’s attacking all people of color, immigrants (except for white South Africans), and LGBQT people – especially trans people – with the same miserable brutality. You betray us all and tell us Yale is not our home when you appease him.
- Trump will be gone by January 2029, if not sooner. So you’re throwing away centuries of independence and academic freedom out of an unwillingness to fight for two and a half years. That’s a shameful betrayal of not only Yale but the entire idea of the university. Please understand that when people like me look at your actions from the outside, we have to consider the possibility you are acting as you are because you fundamentally agree with Trump’s white supremacist, authoritarian world view. This will be part of your legacy for the rest of your life. It’s up to you to change that narrative through action, right now, if that concerns you.
- The inaccessability and unaccountability of the Yale Corporation is a huge problem in general and especially at this very specific moment. You want alumni support and donations. You will receive neither from me as long as I have zero ability to actually influence those who apparently control you and the university. Every member of the Yale Corporation should have a public-facing email. Yale Corporation members – and you yourself – should be required to sit in public meetings where members of the current and extended Yale community can address and question them directly. Or, ideally, the Corporation should be abolished and replaced with a governing body of professors and students. The university should not be a business. The university should be an educational institution. At the moment, those dual identities appear to be in fatal conflict. Does this seem like an extreme diagnosis? We live in extreme times. We need to change to protect the values we claim to believe in. To directly, seriously consider problems and aggressive solutions like this is my responsibility and yours.
- If fighting Trump costs Yale billions of dollars, so be it. Yale actually has billions of dollars that it could devote to this fight. This is an existential moment. If Yale does not fight, it will become a mediocre institution for cowards, right wingers, and white supremacists, not a site for serious scholarship and work. It will simply no longer exist for me and for thousands of other alumni – we will support other institutions that actually value democracy, liberty, and education instead.
Please change your ways. God help us all – and may you join us as we help ourselves and each other against this terrible threat.
Thank you for your time and consideration,
Greg Pak
PC 90
