One election that is not dismaying in America today

With so many elections to be dismayed about, fortunately there is one that merits enthusiasm. It will fill one of the six alumni positions on the 19-person Yale Corporation, the university’s governing board. This might seem like a tempest in a Limoges teacup, but Victor Ashe’s candidacy could help rescue a great university fromits self-destructive impulses, and it might prompt insurgencies nationwide among alumni alarmed about the downward spiral of their alma maters.

Candidates for alumni seats are almost always nominated by Yale’s administration and its allies. It has been 18 years since a candidate has accomplishedwhat Ashe is attempting — tomount a petition drive to get onto the ballot. It has been 55 years since the last such candidate was elected. (Hewas the board’s first Jewish member.)

After 15 years in Tennessee’s legislature, Ashewas Knoxville’s longest-serving mayor, was president of the U.S. Conference ofMayors, and served in positions under every president fromRonald Reagan through Barack Obama Now, at 75, hewants Yale to hear fromdissatisfied alumni. Begin with the fact that the teacup serves as a petri dish for culturing the political-correctness bacteria. Afewexamples:

In 2015, Yalewas convulsed by a faculty member’s email aboutHalloween costumes: Her transgressionwas suggesting that Yale’s administration, rather thanwarning against “culturally unaware or insensitive” costumes, should let students deal with their sensitivities. Two students, who vociferously hounded her and her husband, were honored at the 2016 commencement. She stopped teaching and her husband resigned as master — if you will forgive the expression — of one of Yale’s residential colleges. Yale decided the expression is unforgivable — slaves had masters — so it has been expunged. The art history department dropped a popular survey course covering the Renaissance: too many white European males. For the same reason, the English Department has been “decolonized”: Two courses on “Major English Poets” are no longer required of English majors.

Yale, Ashe says, “should not be regarded as the undisputed Ivy League champion of bureaucracy.”

In a 2017Wall Street Journal op-ed, Lauren Noble, founder of theWilliam F. Buckley Jr. Programat Yale, and RichardWest, dean emeritus of New York University’s business school and a former Buckley board member, noted thatwhen their programinvited three alumni candidates for the board for an online forum on free speech and intellectual diversity, none responded, accepting Yale’s gag rule.

The executive director of the Yale Alumni Association did respond, defending the rule because, the Daily News reported, she feared “conflict in the alumni community.” Intellectual conflict at a university? Heaven forfend. A Yale vice president said campaigning for the board is forbidden because itwould focus on “the issues of today” rather than “longterm issues,” and candidates “do not necessarily represent substantially different philosophies.” So, Yale’s behavior today is a forbidden topic. And philosophic differences are implicitly discouraged at a university saturated with one kind of politics. This illustrateswhat Ashe deplores.

The Corporation’s meetings minutes are embargoed for 50 years. Ashewould like to change this, aswell as the number of signatures candidates are required to get to be on the ballot: “Tomy knowledge, there is no jurisdiction in America that has such a threshold.” He needs 4,394 signatures fromthe more than 130,000 alumni by Oct. 1. Then Yale will have four months to encourage a tamer candidate.

If Ashe wins, “I realize I’ll probablywalk into a room where no one voted for me.” Yale adores diversity, but perhaps not this sort.