『甘肃龙网摘要_威海学为贵：【听力】耶鲁大学校长2018年耶鲁大学本科生毕业典礼（五）』During her time at Yale Law School, Murray received a letter from William S. Beinecke, a member of the Yale College Class of 1936. Now that name will sound familiar to everyone here. The Beinecke Rar...
During her time at Yale Law School, Murray received a letter from William S. Beinecke, a member of the Yale College Class of 1936. Now that name will sound familiar to everyone here. The Beinecke Rare Book & Manu Library is named for William’s father and two uncles, and many other programs and places at Yale have benefited from the family’s remarkable philanthropy.
Bill Beinecke passed away just last month; he was nearly 104 years old in fact, Tuesday’s his birthday. In 1963, when he wrote Murray, he was chairman of the Sperry and Hutchison Company, a venerable American company founded by his grandfather. (Your parents and grandparents may remember S&H Green Stamps Sperry and Hutchison.) Beinecke was a leader in corporate America and a wealthy and powerful man.
He had met Murray at an event at Yale, and not long after that, he wrote her a letter. He enclosed a clipping from Time magazine about race relations in the United States and he asked Murray what she thought.
Murray responded. A few weeks later, he sent her another article and asked her opinion again, this time about school integration. She wrote back. At one point, Murray wrote Beinecke a four-page, single-spaced, typed letter on what she called the “imponderables on the issue of race.” Their correspondence continued for weeks, with interesting and frank letters on both sides.
Beinecke and Murray both exemplars of the Yale tradition were able to sustain a conversation despite differences in gender, differences in family background, differences in race, differences in class, and much more. We don’t know whether or not they entirely agreed with one another, but we can imagine they learned a lot from the exchange. All because two individuals decided to reach beyond their normal circles.
Beinecke’ s decision to write Murray did not take place in a vacuum. In the 1950s, he attended a discussion at Yale Law School on the topic of American race relations. Not long after, he decided to look into Sperry and Hutchinson’ s hiring practices. He learned that the employment agency vetting applications for his company was screening out African Americans, removing them from the pool before their applications ever reached Sperry & Hutchinson. Beinecke ended the practice.
