Yale may have been an “intellectual space” under the old constitution. Under the new one, how could it be? Once Yale changed its rules to recruit minority students through affirmative action, as the law required it to, upholding purely meritocratic standards (as Kimball urged) would have been a contradiction in terms. Following rules of decorum (in which the Christakises placed so much faith) was only a roundabout route to the same disappointment. An institution could claim to be upholding its old standards—Yale did—but it could not actually uphold them. It had taken on political
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