Tea & Dinner with Reihan Salam

On Monday, Davenport welcomed Reihan Salam, executive editor of the National Review and a columnist for Slate, to discuss “Color, Class, and the Conservative Future.” Some of the topics he covered included immigration, social security, climate change, and multi-generational politics.

“I thought he was articulate and thoughtful. He definitely knew how to strike a conciliatory tone on these contentious issues. My only small criticism is that he was too vague. For example, he never mentioned Trump once which is remarkable.” — Grant Richardson ’19

“It was a pleasure to sit down in conversation with someone so well-versed in political philosophy, contemporary issues, and political history. In a time of extreme political polarization, it was interesting to hear Mr. Salam’s well-defended positions about how conservatives can continue to prosper in America, as well as his opinions on identity politics and the intrinsically emotional nature of politics.” — Chloe Heller ’21

Fellows Dinner & Talk with Amy Chua

On Wednesday night, fellows, graduate students, and seniors in the college attended the last Fellows Dinner of the year. The dinner was followed by a talk by Professor Amy Chua, the original Tiger Mother and the John M. Duff, Jr. Professor of Law at Yale Law School. Amy presented on her much-discussed new book, POLITICAL TRIBES: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations.  She began her talk by describing three different case studies (Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq) that provided examples of US foreign policy mistakes. She discussed that at the root of these mistakes lay US blindness to group identities.

The second half of her talk focused on the ways in which group identities are now shaping American politics. She believes there are two reasons for this: (1) a demographic shift that has resulted in every group feeling threatened and (2) the emergence of a market dominant minority: coastal elites. She says that class has split the white majority. She describes the solution to dealing with group identities as a super group, an overarching collective identity that doesn’t suppress subgroup identities. For the full Yale Daily news article, click here.