Bundy Defends Yale, Calls Buckley 'Twisted and Ignorant Young Man'

Yale graduate McGeorge Bundy, associate professor of Government, has come out in defense of his alma mater against William F. Buckley, Jr.'s blistering criticisms in "God and Man at Yale."

In an Atlantic Monthly article criticizing Buckley's charges of widespread "atheism" and "collectivism" at Yale, Bundy termed the book "dishonest in its use of facts, false in its theory, and a discredit to its author."

"What he has done is to take the flimsiest of evidence or no evidence at all," Bundy said, "and ignore whatever goes against his thesis." He added that, contrary to Buckley's charges, it is generally agreed that "Yale is more religious than the rest of Protestant American and more religious than it was a generation ago."

Buckley's claims of "collectivist" influence in the Yale economics department, are, in Bundy's opinion, the views of "a twisted and ignorant young man whose personal views of economics would have seemed reactionary to Mark Hanna."