Sex and God at Yale
Porn, Political Correctness, and a Good Education Gone Bad
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
To glimpse America's future, one needs to look no further than its college campuses. Of those institutions, none holds more clout than Yale University, the hallowed "cradle of presidents." In Sex and God at Yale, recent graduate Nathan Harden undresses perversity among the Ivy and ideology gone wild as the upper echelon of academia is mired in nothing less than a full-fledged moral crisis.
Three generations ago, William F. Buckley's classic God and Man at Yale, a critique of enforced liberalism at his alma mater, became a rallying cry of the conservative movement. Today Harden reveals how a loss of purpose, borne of extreme agendas and single-minded political correctness shielded under labels of "academic freedom," subverts the goals of higher education.
Harden's provocative narrative highlights the implications of the controversial Sex Week on campus and the social elitism of the Yale "naked party" phenomenon. Going beyond mere sexual expose, Sex and God at Yale pulls the sheets off of institutional licentiousness and examines how his alma mater got to a point where:
• During "Sex Week" at Yale, porn producers were allowed onto campus property to give demonstrations on sexual technique—and give out samples of their products.
• An art student received departmental approval—before the ensuing media attention alerted the public and Yale alumni—for an art project in which she claimed to have used the blood and tissue from repeated self-induced miscarriages.
• The university became the subject of a federal investigation for allegedly creating a hostile environment for women.
Much more than this, Harden examines the inherent contradictions in the partisan politicizing of higher education. What does it say when Yale seeks to distance itself from its Divinity School roots while at the same time it hires a Muslim imam with no academic credentials to instruct students? When the same school that would not allow ROTC on its campus for decades invites a former Taliban spokesperson to study at the university? Or employs a professor who praised Hamas terrorists?
As Harden asks: What sort of moral leadership can we expect from Yale's presidents and CEOs of tomorrow? Will the so-called "abortion artist" be leading the National Endowment for the Arts in twenty years? Will a future president be practicing moves he or she learned during Sex Week in the closet of the Oval Office? If tyrants tell little girls they aren't allowed to go to school, will an Ivy-educated Taliban emissary be the one to deliver the message?
Sex and God at Yale is required reading for the parent of any college-bound student—and for anyone concerned about the direction of higher education in America and the implications it has for young students today and the leaders of tomorrow.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sex features more prominently than God in this critique of Ivy League culture from 2009 Yale graduate and conservative commentator Harden, author of National Review Online's "Phi Beta Cons" column. Taking his inspiration from William F. Buckley's seminal 1954 polemic, Man and God at Yale, Harden looks back to his college years to conclude that the campus's permissive sexual culture, abetted by its liberal politics, has sapped the university of a once-firm dedication to "public-spiritedness." Chief among his complaints is Yale's raucous, semiannual Sex Week, particularly its involvement with sex toy and porn producers. Drawing on the work of antiporn activist Gail Dines, Harden argues that an inherently misogynistic industry deserves no place on a campus committed to feminist values. Other issues raised range from a student's lurid plans for a performance art exhibit supposedly made from her own aborted fetuses to screenings of sexually explicit movies in language and film classes. While readers can admire Harden's account of gaining admission to Yale after a rocky educational path and without the privileges enjoyed by many of his classmates, even those sympathetic to his case will find him lacking wit and persuasiveness. A foreword by his primary influence's son, novelist Christopher Buckley, contains all of the rhetorical and verbal gusto missing from the book itself.