The Problem at Yale, based on the length of this essay, seems to be Too Much Speech. This is an extended complaint about annoying people one might have brunched

The Problem at Yale, based on the length of this essay, seems to be Too Much Speech. This is an extended complaint about annoying people one might have brunched with at a few elite institutions, dressed up as cultural analysis. I am minded of McAdoo on President Harding: “His speeches left the impression of an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea; sometimes these meandering words would actually capture a straggling thought and bear it triumphantly as a prisoner in their midst, until it died of servitude and overwork.” In a shock development, university students dress down, pretend to be poorer than they are, and get into conflicts with administrators over things (often pointless things); clearly something that has Never Ever Happened Before. There are nuggets of good sense here, but the overall message is a scrambled mess. Apparently what's going wrong in the world can be largely attributed to liberal elites patting themselves on the back while trying to do good, or something. I'm sure this plays well in certain circles. In a world where we have gazillionaire plutocrats actively working 24/7 to fuck other people over (the Koch brothers and the Sacklers spring to mind) I'm not losing too much sleep over this micro-diagnosis about how some kinda-liberal rich people in a tiny slice of American academia pissed off the author and should be spending their lives differently.