It was weird to be back at Yale after two decades. I lived in New Haven for five years but coming back it was like I visited for the first time. The entire campus has been gentrified, spruced up, country-club-ified. OK, it needed it badly, but now the entire feel is different. More than anything the campus transformation tells the story of the last 20 years — how the American upper-class is looking after itself and its progeny. But I realize of course that these are first-impressions. If I actually stayed here longer, I’d learn to go beneath the surface and discover the real and abiding merits of the place. It was always thus.  Yale is mainly hot air, but not exclusively so. After all, I had Jim Scott and Charles Lindblom as my teachers.

And the greatest shock of all: Ashley’s Ice cream Parlor, on York Street, is a mere shadow of its former self. Now their products are way too icy and cheap tasting and they have even started selling frozen yoghurt. That place was such a perennial of my evenings, especially when I lived in the Hall of Graduate Studies next door. An increasingly ironic sign on the pavement outside still says “voted the best ice cream in Connecticut.”

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