After his foreign policy address, Howard Dean was asked about his inexperience in dealing with international issues. His answer: He’s well prepared because he studied “under what I consider to be the best history department in the United States, at Yale University.”
While, as a Yale history major myself, I applaud his Eli loyalty, that may just be the weakest response imaginable. (Particularly since George W. Bush was his Yale classmate at the time and a history major himself.)
While we’re discussing Yale and people affilated with the word “dean,” I was sad to learn that Yale College Dean Richard Brodhead is leaving New Haven to become president of Duke. Brodhead is a truly great guy; I interviewed him a few times for the college paper and got to know him a bit when I was on his student advisory committee.
Unfortunately, now that he’s a Dookie, I will have to root vociferously against his athletic teams, since I’ve been a Carolina fan for almost 20 years. Of course, that’s primarily because of yet another “dean”-affiliated person, Dean Smith.