Connoisseurs of academic fatuousness will remember the debacle of
Lee Bass’s twenty-million-dollar grant to Yale University. In 1991, Mr. Bass, a
1979 Yale alumnus, made this extraordinary gift to his alma mater in
order to strengthen Yale’s offerings in Western civilization and to
provide an alternative to the radical multiculturalism that has had
such a disfiguring influence on the humanities in American colleges
and universities. The inspiration for Mr. Bass’s gift came partly
from the eminent Yale classics professor Donald Kagan, a former dean
of Yale College and an avid supporter of what is best in
the traditional liberal arts curriculum.

Naturally, this educational initiative, emphasizing the importance
of Western culture and its intellectual, moral, and political
achievements met with fierce resistance from entrenched radical elements
at Yale. Years went by, and nothing was done to implement the
integrated course of studies or make the faculty appointments that
Mr. Bass’s grant had stipulated. Mr. Bass made inquiries and was met
by equivocations. Finally, in 1995, he asked to be given a voice in
making faculty appointments to the program he was paying for. Yale
refused, and returned his grant.

Radical faculty members at Yale barked about Mr. Bass’s efforts to
interfere with their academic freedom, and The New York
Times—“Old Reliable”—weighed in with an editorial supporting Yale
and, by implication, attacking Lee Bass for being meddlesome.
“Universities,” the Times said, “must
… resist the temptation
to solicit and accept gifts from donors with a strong political
agenda.” (What they meant, of course, was a conservative agenda:
strong liberal agendas are OK. Readers interested in the details
of this saga should see our Notes & Comments
for April 1995.)

But it turns out that the story wasn’t over when Yale returned Mr.
Bass’s check. The affair was widely publicized in the press, and
concerned alumni and members of the Yale Corporation naturally
pressed the administration for an explanation of what had happened. The
official answer, mouthed by Yale president Richard Levin, was that
the program to be funded by the Bass grant hadn’t worked out for the
“practical, logistical, and nonpolitical reason that it made
inefficient use of our faculty resources.”
Dubious, the Yale Corporation
authorized an investigation of the whole affair by Federal Judge
José A. Cabranes and Henry B. Schacht, CEO of the Lucent
Corporation—and then kept the results secret, even from the
Basses.

There was obviously something fishy happening. And, as The Wall
Street Journal reported in an editorial on November 10, alumni from
the class of 1937 have conducted their own investigation and
have circulated a report that challenges Yale’s assurances about
its commitment to teaching Western civilization:
“The university continues to reject endowments and Bass-like
programs that would support such teaching—while
at the same time it has expanded its multiculturalist
offerings. The report further notes that with the suppression of the
Cabranes-Schacht study, university officials ‘continue to obscure
the truth about a breach of a basic fiduciary responsibility.’”
Indeed. It is said that Perry Bass, the family patriarch, has been
contemplating a gift to Yale in the neighborhood of $500
million. Perhaps the administration’s lack of candor about the spread
of trendy multiculturalism at Yale will make him change his plans.
Who could blame him?