By Celestine Bohlen

New York Times

NEW HAVEN, Conn. >> On the scale of the global crises she deals with on a daily basis, the issue that Samantha Power, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, weighed in on during a commencement speech at Yale last week might have seemed a minor, even insular concern.

The subject in question was the university’s decision not to change the name of Calhoun College, named after a Confederate leader and vocal advocate of slavery. Power, a Yale graduate herself, made clear that she regarded the issue as a serious one.

Power, who won a Pulitzer Prize for “‘A Problem From Hell’: America and the Age of Genocide,” ranked the dispute on the Yale campus alongside “the horrific situation faced by refugees,” another cause that she said had eluded resolution.

“Some of you who have poured a lot of yourselves into these and other struggles over the last four years might look at all that remains unchanged and feel discouraged,” she said in delivering her remarks on May 22. She urged graduating seniors to continue their fight for causes “inside Yale” and “outside Yale,” no matter how painful the setbacks.

This has been an intense year on campus, and the issues that have aroused the most emotion and anger have been mostly “inside Yale”: an alert about provocative Halloween costumes, allegations of sexual assault, complaints about the low number of minority faculty members, and the residential building (or “college”) named after John C. Calhoun, an 1804 graduate, who called slavery a “public good.”

Meanwhile, the world “outside Yale” has received less attention, and certainly inspired less passion. Syrian refugees were the focus of some concern this year, and the Black Lives Matter movement received vocal support in 2014. For the most part, however, students have kept their focus on the “Yale experience” — often, themselves.

That these “in-house” issues should inflame students is easy to understand, said Isaac Stanley-Becker, a 2016 graduate and former editor of the student newspaper, The Yale Daily News.

“It is interesting that at a time when we are more connected than ever before with events around the world, that the issues that are most powerfully felt are those close to home,” he said. “But it is not surprising. This is where we live. This is home.”

Some students trace their criticism of the Yale administration to their disappointment at discovering that entrenched biases persist and that the institution was not the bastion of morality and tolerance they had expected.

“You may have felt it living in a college named for a man who once argued that enslaving your ancestors was a ‘positive good,’” Power said.

These kinds of reactions are hardly unique to Yale. Students at other universities around the world have campaigned to remove from buildings and institutions the names of historically compromised personalities seen as offensive, including Woodrow Wilson at Princeton University.

At some schools, students have gone further, demanding “safe zones” and “trigger warnings” to protect themselves against speakers, references and material they consider offensive.

The question is whether this kind of self-referential examination — a rhetorical “selfie” held up to the student experience — is the correct antidote to vestiges of racism, sexism and general narrow-mindedness.

“Why do so many students see themselves as vulnerable to the slings and arrows of outrageous texts, arguments and comments?” asked Todd Gitlin, a journalism professor at Columbia University, in an op-ed. “Why so fearful?”

During the Yale graduation ceremony, several speakers suggested that students should break out of their echo chambers, where solace is found in shared opinions.

Back in 1962, John F. Kennedy, speaking at another Yale graduation, warned against enjoying “the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”

Since then, the problem has become worse, Power said, as social media and its algorithms “are increasingly engineered to reflect back to us the world as we already see it.”

Power urged the graduating students to stay involved despite their frustration at the slow pace of change, but also to keep their minds open.

“It’s in your interest to engage the people you disagree with, rather than shutting them out or shutting them up,” she said.