Book: God and Man at Yale

Overview
"God and Man at Yale" is a polemical critique of mid-20th-century higher education written by William F. Buckley Jr. and published in 1951. Buckley contends that Yale University had drifted from the religious, moral, and classical liberal principles envisioned by its founders and benefactors, substituting instead a curriculum and campus culture that promoted collectivist, secular, and statist ideas. The book combines close readings of course materials, trustees' responsibilities, and university practices with a broader political argument about the role of higher education in shaping citizens.
Buckley wrote with an urgent, combative tone directed at alumni, trustees, and conservative readers. He frames the issue as one of stewardship: donors and families who entrusted their sons to Yale expected an education that affirmed individual liberty, free enterprise, and religious morality, but the faculty and administration were, he argued, using the university's prestige to inculcate contrary doctrines.

Central Arguments
At the heart of Buckley's critique is the claim that faculty members were not neutral conveyors of knowledge but active promoters of philosophical and political commitments incompatible with the university's founding mission. He singled out what he saw as a pattern of teaching that favored collectivism, materialism, and an equivocal stance toward religion. Buckley argued that such tendencies were taught implicitly through required readings, lecture emphases, and the institutional atmosphere, thereby shaping students' civic and moral judgments.
Buckley also attacked the university's governance practices. He insisted that trustees and donors had a duty to ensure that institutional resources and curricula reflected the intent of those who financed the school and the expectations of its beneficiaries. He rejected the idea that academic freedom should translate into a laissez-faire platform for ideological advocacy, insisting instead that trustees exercise oversight to preserve the institution's character. To support his case he marshaled quotations from faculty publications, course syllabi, and Yale texts, aiming to document a systematic departure from what he considered classical and religious principles.

Reception and Legacy
The book provoked immediate controversy and thrust Buckley into the national spotlight, marking him as a leader of a burgeoning conservative intellectual movement. Conservatives praised the book for articulating grievances about elite institutions and for offering a blueprint for alumni and trustees to counterbalance faculty influence. The work energized networks of conservative students, alumni, and future policymakers who sought to challenge perceived liberal dominance in universities.
Critics from the academic and liberal camps accused Buckley of selective quotation, misinterpretation, and a simplistic view of academic life. They defended faculty autonomy and academic freedom as essential to scholarly inquiry and civic progress. Over time historians have treated the book as a significant cultural artifact: less definitive scholarship than partisan manifesto, but crucial in understanding the postwar conservative mobilization and debates over higher education's role in a democratic society. Its legacy endures in ongoing tensions between questions of curriculum governance, donor intent, and the ideological balance of American universities, and it helped launch Buckley's long career as a public intellectual and institutional conservative organizer.