" . . . Among the crown jewels are three fully operational technology centers and five scientific research institutes in various phases of start-up. As this special edition of ELIne shows, West Campus—with 136-acres including 1.6 million square feet of office, research and warehouse space—is well on its way to becoming what Michael Donoghue, vice-president of West Campus Planning and Program Development, calls a transformational asset for the university in both the sciences and arts. "
The Yale Eline
West Campus Edition
July 2010
Even I (who am philosophically wary of surrendering the Academy hook, line, and sinker, to scientific imperatives) am impressed by the potential for scholarly, scientific discovery implicit in Yale's new West Campus. (See quote from the Eline, July 2010, West Campus Edition, above.)
May I presumptuously propose then that, in the midst of this dramatic new scientific campus, Yale plop down a Poet in Residence?
S/he would have as her/his mission not only to reflect on the ethical and social implications of what is brewing in this Ivy League-scientific-tsunami, but also to act as a kind of humanizing watchdog over what could become a nightmare of professional jargon, an appalling apotheosis of acronymity.
Let's build poetic insight and humor into the place in the beginning, before we discover we have created a wasteland of scientific babble punctuated by quantums, quarks, and quotients.
Where is T.S. Eliot when we need him:
Scuttling across the Gulf of Mexico floor?
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