Master and Panderer

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Master and Panderer

 

Adam Freedman September 12, 2015 at 9:03 am 76 COMMENTS

 

On Friday, The New York Times reported that Yale University was “grappling” with its “ties to slavery.” Lest anyone think that there is any genuine intellectual grappling going on here, let’s put this in context. One of the issues the article cites is that “some at Yale have suggested an end to calling the heads of the colleges ‘masters’” – because the word “master,” of course, is just too evocative of antebellum slavery.

 

I must confess I was blissfully unaware that I was living under the yoke of a latter-day slave master when I was an undergraduate at Yale. I felt myself quite fortunate to live in one of Yale’s residential colleges, each of which is led by a professor who lives in the college and has the title of “master.”