It’s hard not to be impressed by a professor who sends an email like “I won’t be at my next office hours, Monday Oct 4, because I am giving a talk at the United Nations.” He’s obviously smart and respected. The question is: How do you get close to him?

At Yale, an entirely different brand of celebrity exists. We are nerds and true to form, we like the popular crowd to be brilliant. Being beautiful is not a qualification for our reverence, like it is for real-world celebrities, but writing the greatest modern book on the history of the Peloponnesian War is. As a result, certain professors have become the Lindsays and the Britneys of our alternate reality.

Typically, teenyboppers scream upon meeting the objects of their affection and force them to take unflattering photos. Unlike our plebeian counterparts, we believe in a more civilized form of harassment. Exhibit A: the suckle-at-the-power-teet email at 4 a.m. A truncated example reads:

Dear Professor X,

My name is John B. Smith and I am a sophomore in Dead White Guy College. I am one of your biggest fans – I read your book on the role of bayonets during the American Revolution when I was a freshman in high school. What can I say, I’ve been hooked on learning about the other weapons used during our nation’s fight for independence ever since! I think that my prior knowledge of the subject and thirst for your affection will add a lot to this seminar.

Let me know if there are any available spots! If not, you’ll be hearing from me again —tomorrow.

Best,

John

When a number of students named the professors whom they considered to be the most recognizable names on campus, the answers were of no surprise. Almost all but a handful teach or have taught popular lecture courses: Donald Kagan (Introduction to Ancient Greek History), Shelly Kagan (Introduction to Ethics and Death), Marvin Chun and Paul Bloom (Introduction to Psychology), Amy Hungerford (The American Novel Since 1945), John Gaddis (The Cold War), Paul Kennedy (International Ideas and Institutions: Contemporary Challenges), Steven Smith (Introduction to Political Philosophy), Robert Shiller (Financial Markets).

According to Professor Hungerford, the Director of Undergraduate Studies for the English department, the 400 person survey course is vital to the establishment of a professor’s power base. She said, “There’s something about lectures that produce stardom in a way at Yale that is different from seminars.”

While she admitted that “no one ever wants to talk about why lectures are successful or not,” she maintained, “you cannot have a celebrity lecture without authority from the front of the room.” When I mentioned Professor Hungerford’s hypothesis to Sterling Professor of Classics and History, Donald Kagan, he agreed. “A lecture is a performance, so you have to enjoy the performer.”

But while entertainment value is certainly important, it isn’t everything. We are at Yale, after all; if we simply wanted to see a comedy routine, we would spend our Saturday nights watching improv; there is plenty of opportunity for those shenanigans. Kagan explained: “Yalies are very discerning about what is going on in their classes. Students seem to care that they feel the teacher is really on top of the game,” he added, “that he really knows what he is talking about, that he is an expert.” Word to the wise: we demand it all.

You’ll find a few notable exceptions to this distinction working in Linsly Chittenden Hall on Old Campus. They don’t teach large lecture classes. They may be famous independent of teaching (sometimes, people even know them in the real world!). These superstars are writing instructors in the English department. Perhaps not as Yale-famous as Charles Hill and Gaddis, Anne Fadiman and Louise Gluck still draw serious name recognition.

Known for her book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Fadiman’s reputation has only grown since taking on teaching at Yale in 2005. But like Fadiman, the other writing instructors are typically successful novelists, poets and playwrights. Cooper Lewis, SY ’11, who has taken classes with Fadiman and Harold Bloom, said, “one of the things that qualifies one to teach a creative writing class is being a real-life creative writer. If you’re into creative writing, then there’s a good chance your professor is going to be like Anne or John Crowley or Deb Margolin or Donald Margulies or Cynthia Zarin, and that’s just how it is.”

Fadiman told me that when she began teaching her “Writing about Oneself” seminar, she received 100 applications for just 18 spots. Last spring, 130 students applied —an anomaly that may or may not have been the result of online applications. Fadiman, however, was loath to admit that her status is a large part of the reason for the course’s popularity. “Writing classes are popular everywhere,” she said. “Most creative writing classes at Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford, for example, are also oversubscribed.”

While they might end up enjoying the courses for other reasons, some students do choose to take them because of name recognition. Elisa Gonzalez, PC ’11, admitted, “There is this sort of fever in the English department to get into classes with the more famous or well-known professors, like Anne. And that infected me.”

Certain professors help to institute and perpetuate their mythical personas. Some of the professors that manage to remain popular are without a signature lecture class or Pulitzer Prize as credential. And then there are Charles Hill and Paul Kennedy. Although undeniably well-known before the establishment of the “Studies of Grand Strategy” class (Hill for his work as a foreign services officer and Kennedy for his magnum opus The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000), both professors owe some of their mystique to the program.

Also known as “How to Rule the World: A Few Quick Tips,” Grand Strategy is a two semester long course, taught by Gaddis, Hill and Kennedy. Perhaps because they are interested in succeeding Dr. Evil, motivated graduate students and some of the most ambitious (read: crazy) undergraduates take the class.

One participant explained that the Grand Strategy legend is based in fact: The professors who lead the program are famous because they are impressive and are connected to the world of authority. Gaddis, for example, “has gained celebrity status because he really is one of the foremost scholars of his field,” one student said. Still, the he confessed, the Grand Strategy professors certainly don’t shy away from being celebrities. “They are legendary because they aren’t publicity mongers but also don’t make an effort to stop people from talking about the class.” Sneaky.

But don’t worry, professors, involvement in Grand Strategy isn’t the only road to fame. Akhil Amar, the Yale Law school professor, is beloved by undergraduates. A third year law student told me, “You always see undergrads having lunch with him…It’s easier for undergraduates to buy into the mystique he creates for himself.” Many law students, he said, believe that Amar thinks more highly of himself than others think of him. He is “perceived as being very arrogant, even more so than the typical Yale Law professor.” A popular story around the law school goes something like this: When Amar wrote The Constitution: A Biography, he set a goal for himself to write one of the most important works of constitutional law in the country. As it turns out, he believes he succeeded.

Still, it’s not just that we’re obsessed with certain academics because they’re obsessed with themselves. The professors I interviewed came up with a variety reasons for their popularity. Paul Bloom finds that his subject matter, psychology, lends itself to a close relationship with students. He admitted that it takes more than simply encouraging students to say hello; he wants to help students who are having problems. Steven Smith believes that because he is master of Branford College, he’s in touch with his “clientele.” Gaddis regularly has lunch with students in the dining halls.

And who wouldn’t want to cozy up to their favorite teachers? While some especially dorky Yalies nearly crap their pants seeing David Blight walk down Broadway, they would certainly agree that it is far more exciting to actually speak to him. Eddie Fishman, BK ’11, readily confessed that he is a Donald Kagan acolyte. When he sang the Greek history aficionado’s praises (and there are many), the first he mentioned is that “Kagan is a very wise man; he speaks with distinct honesty and clarity and open-mindedness.” This open-mindedness is bolstered by the fact that “Kagan’s ideal view of himself is as a coach.” This desire to seem accessible results in the devotion of a group of students that go to his office hours after class on a regular basis.

Gonzalez’s experience with Fadiman has been similar to Fishman’s with Kagan. “Fadiman,” she said, “is the most careful editor I have had and it amazes me how much time she devotes to her students—meeting with them, preparing for class, editing, talking. She is the quickest responder to email of any professor I’ve ever had.”

These kind of things are important; the students of this campus require their professors to be user-friendly.

“What distinguishes the celebrity professors is how active and well-known they are outside of academia: Professor Bloom has published several accessible and yet incredibly deep and incisive books,” said Takuya Sawaoka, MC ’12, a psychology major himself. Likewise, the Grand Strategy undergraduate thought that Gaddis’ scholarly work has “a certain readability for the average American.”

This all isn’t to say that the entire student body is satisfied with the culture of celebrity surrounding certain professors. Sawaoka explained, “At least for me, it feels like the really famous professors don’t have time to spend talking with undergrads. This is probably a false impression because the professors generally make themselves very accessible, but it’s still hard not to feel as if they have better things to do, like (as my friend put it) ‘save the world,’ than chat with students.” Chika Ota, TC ’11, an art major, expressed doubts that even in smaller classes, her well-known teachers didn’t know her name.

Even though Gonzalez had an overwhelmingly positive experience with Fadiman, she believes that students aren’t generally honest about the quality of star professors. “The dangerous part of this celebrity culture is that students turn off their critical faculties when they encounter someone they think they should respect. I don’t know if this is true only of Yale or of all schools—I think Yale might be worse than others—but we are so in love with our professors, so ready to believe in them and respect them, that we don’t always question or argue.”

The theory definitely has some truth to it: Many of the professors I spoke with admitted their student evaluations are more than generous. According to Bloom, “there will always be people who say ‘please have my baby’.” The students “could be much more critical” in their assessments, Kagan acknowledged.

For a group of students that whines about class on Earth Day, we don’t make a whole lot of noise about a problem that runs throughout the Yale faculty. Kagan has been at Yale for 51 years and has therefore seen quite a few professors come and go. I posed the following question to the mild-mannered septuagenarian (who, by the way, has served as the Master of Timothy Dwight College, Chairman of the Classics Department and Dean of Yale College): which female professors have been household names during your tenure? Silence. I prodded, “No one?” Blink, blink. Although ultimately apologetic, Professor Kagan made his point perfectly clear: Yale students choose, for some reason, to pooh-pooh female academics in favor of their male colleagues.

Although women are 50% of the undergraduate population and are 21.7% of the total tenured faculty, women teach just three of the 25 courses available on the Open Yale server, where those throughout the world can watch Yale lectures online. Hungerford, one of the women whose classes are broadcast on the website, said, “There is something about the timbre of the male voice that connotes power and authority.” She claimed that women are more soft-spoken and therefore, less assertive. Yet, when a man is not aggressive, it can be endearing because “we all know he is a god.” So why is Hungerford one of the cool kids on the playground? She explained, “someone once told me I sound like a man.”

The irony of the environment we have created for ourselves is that although we may be intelligent enough to recognize greatness when we see it, we are unable to look at the larger problems this greatness institutionalizes—say, for instance, a lack of female presence amongst the stars. It is true that many of the professors we admire are worth admiring. Some, on the other hand, are not. Tunnel vision limits what we can appreciate and forces us to focus on what we’ve always been told to love, not what we necessarily care about.

Cover art and graphics by Jinjin Sun