For a course enrolling only about 20 to 25 students a year, Yale’s Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy has a big reputation. Founded in 2000 to train future leaders in big-picture thinking, the year-long course has attracted media attention and such high-profile guest lecturers as Henry Kissinger, James Comey, Samantha Power ’92, and David Petraeus. So when the program’s director, history professor Beverly Gage ’94, resigned over what she considered interference by a donor, it was front-page news in the New York Times.
As Gage tells it, the…
