After 300 Years, Still Second Best

In 1692, Elihu Yale was removed from his post as the governor of Fort St. George, the East India Company outpost in Madras. The Company alleged that old Eli had engaged in “self-aggrandizement” at the company’s expense. Yale was fined and forced to remain in Madras until he escaped to London with much of his fortune intact.

Unfortunately for generations of long-suffering temporary residents of New Haven, Elihu made it to the New World and—with a donation of about 400 books and a portrait of King George I—managed a second unsuccessful attempt at self-aggrandizement by getting his name affixed to a small provincial school. The donation was originally suggested by Cotton Mather, Class of 1678, son of Harvard President Increase Mather, Class of 1656—thus beginning a grand tradition of Yalies taking orders from Harvard graduates.

Although those Harvard men could not have known it at the time, their suggestions were crucial to the genesis of the mini-metropolis of mediocrity that has grown in southern Connecticut. Like its founder, Yale (the college) has always had delusions of grandeur; unfortunately, old Eli’s thirst for recognition in the face of a questionable pedigree is a vice Yalies have yet to kick.

Yale marked its tercentenary this year, reaching a milestone Harvard celebrated in 1936, when Franklin D. Roosevelt, Class of 1904 and a former Crimson president, was re-elected in a landslide.

We congratulate the hapless residents of New Haven for hanging on for so long. It’s hard to remain in Harvard’s shadow for three centuries, but Yalies have always managed to limp along rather gracefully. Just as a Harvard man was president during our tercentennial, a Yale man is in the White House for theirs (though George W., a Yalie through-and-through, really finished in second place).

The time for celebration in New Haven, however, has passed. The hapless Yalies will meet their fate tomorrow afternoon in the form of an unbeaten Crimson football team, already the owners of the Ivy League Championship. We look forward to watching the hurricane that is the undefeated Harvard football team make short work of the pasty and feeble Bulldogs. And we pray for the safety of tens of thousands of loyal Harvard fans who will descend upon New Haven, braving the crack dealers, prostitutes and other prestigious Yale alumni to cheer on their undefeated team.

It was without exaggeration that at President Lawrence H. Summers’s installation, Yale President Richard C. Levin admitted that, “Harvard is blessed with the broadest and deepest assembly of intellectual talent and academic resources in the world, and it is to Harvard that the whole world looks for leadership.” At last, Levin joined the long tradition of Yale graduates who spoke the truth in their unguarded moments—or at least forgot that the microphone was turned on.