Democratic House chairs: Here’s how we can protect democracy from a lawless president

Democratic House chairs: Here’s how we can protect democracy from a lawless president

Editor’s Note: This is an op-ed John co-authored with other Members of Congress.

In the years following the Watergate scandal, Congress enacted a series of landmark reforms to protect our democracy and restore Americans’ faith in government. […] Though some presidents have bridled at those laws or stretched them, they have fundamentally abided by their limits for 50 years. Until Donald Trump.

The Tragedy of the Yale Commons

The Tragedy of the Yale Commons

Editor’s Note: In the Comment below the article, classmate Jim Sleeper announces his retirement from the Yale faculty, highlighting the times he’s criticized the University’s corporatism (and, in this Op-Ed from the New Republic, reminding us why he protested Steve Schwarzman’s speech at the Reunion).
When 18-year-old Stephen A. Schwarzman, the son of a Philadelphia dry-goods store owner, entered Yale in 1965, he took his meals, like all freshmen, in the Commons, a vast, baronial dining hall in a cluster of beaux-arts [,,,]

Have We Been Missing Some Troublesome Long-term Trends at Yale?
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Have We Been Missing Some Troublesome Long-term Trends at Yale?

I fear I have been blinded for a period of years by my institutional affection and great memories from noticing what appear to be some disturbing long-term trends at Yale. The much-publicized recent campus culture issue involving hate speech vs. freedom of speech and similar matters of a quasi-political nature are only marginally related, if…

The Internet and the Reform of American Politics in 2021

The Internet and the Reform of American Politics in 2021

Editor’s Note: This is adapted from a memo Reed sent to the Biden Campaign.
A President Biden will face problems larger in scale and scope than any previously presented to the United States. The conjoined COVID-19 crises (aka the “pandemiconomy”) now seem monumentally daunting. Yet they may succumb to easier solutions than the long list of secular challenges that threaten the Republic:
* economic inequality,
* immigration,
* infrastructure,
* national security, […]

How to Keep Consumers’ Lights On: Send the Electric Bill to the Feds

How to Keep Consumers’ Lights On: Send the Electric Bill to the Feds

Editor’s Note: This reprint from Barron’s is another op-ed from a classmate, circulated for your consideration. Please send any recent op-eds by any classmate to support@Yale1969.org.

One economic reality is inescapable: The rents and bill payments of one American family are the income of another, and this circular flow has been broken. Circular flow needs to be re-established quickly and efficiently, or the loss will be magnified as liquidity issues are transmitted throughout the economy.

Make sure all Americans have access to telehealth

Make sure all Americans have access to telehealth

Editor’s Note: This is an Op-Ed published on April 19th in the Washington Post.

As the covid-19 pandemic tears through the country, weaknesses in our communications and health-care systems have been laid bare. Approximately 25 percent of Americans do not have a primary care doctor, in many cases because of geographic, financial, …

Bribery is only the tip of the elite-college iceberg: An interview with Jim Sleeper
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Bribery is only the tip of the elite-college iceberg: An interview with Jim Sleeper

This is a quiet, thoughtful conversation about what’s happening to higher education. I was interviewed by Prof. Matthew Frye Jacobson, an historian who was the chair of Yale’s American Studies Department until recently and is the director of Historian’s Eye Project (historianseye.org). This interview was conducted at Yale well before the current bribery scandal at selective colleges, including Yale. It pretty much predicted the whole thing but put it in necessary perspective.