In City Stop, Carson Lauds The Brain’s Potential

When Ben Carson — Yale graduate, renowned neurosurgeon and soon-to-be secretary of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) — came to town Thursday evening, the man soon to play a lead role in shaping Connecticut and New Haven’s future said nothing about housing. He did get a letter from New Haveners hoping to hear more in the future.

Carson played to the crowd in an hour-long talk hosted by Yale’s William F. Buckley, Jr. Program, delivering humor-laden arguments calling for compassion in politics and eschewing political labels while tracing the trajectory of his life story. But players like city officials and advocacy groups alike hoped to hear something concrete about Carson’s HUD plans, policy choices which could severely impact a city in which an estimated 30 percent of the population lives in subsidized housing. And on that subject, he stayed mum.

Hosted by a conservative student group that aims to promote intellectual diversity on campus, Carson’s talk on ​“The Value of Common Sense” packed the university’s Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona auditorium to capacity, nearing a crowd of 400.

President-Elect Donald Trump’s HUD pick said he wanted to create ​“ladders of opportunity,” or mechanisms that wouldn’t keep people dependent on social services; these would focus especially on providing education opportunities.

On Anything But HUD

Early on, Carson lauded the human brain, the organ he’d built his career upon.

“And you might say that I’m a little biased about the brain, certainly but I’ve got to tell you, the human brain is by far the most fabulous organ system in the universe,” he said. ​“I mean, billions and billions of neurons, hundreds of billions of interconnections, can process more than two million bits of information in one second. Remembers everything you’ve ever seen, everything you’ve ever heard.”

Carson set the example on what it takes for the human brain to complete a simple task. He asked the crowd to raise their hands if they recalled what they’d had for breakfast that morning.

Then he broke down what the brain was doing in that split-second recall — neurons firing, a string of complex steps. Breathlessly, Carson rapid-fire articulated the minute steps that added all the way up to raising your hand in response to his breakfast question. The crowd laughed and applauded.

But just imagine, he said, if the brain can do that, what it can do when applied to problem-solving. Carson dismissed the notion ​“of allowing ourselves to be manipulated into opposite corners where we spend all of our time fighting each other” (perhaps alluding to the particularly hyperpartisan nature of this recent election) for the more laudable goal of combining resources to solve problems.

Drawing an arc from the child who always knew he loved medicine (“I would gladly sacrifice a shot just so I could smell an alcohol swab,” he said of going to the doctor) to the neurosurgeon who would successfully separate conjoined twins, Carson honed in on the need to provide education opportunities for young black men, citing a high incarceration rate.

And he cleared up a rumor that he’d spent his childhood in public housing. In fact, he said, his mother had worked multiple jobs to maintain independence for herself and her children to shield them from public housing. ​“We didn’t live in public housing because there was a lot of danger there and she wanted to shield us from that danger,” he said.

Moderators plucked audience questions written on cards for the question-and-answer session. On a question about how he lived as a Christian in an increasingly secular society, Carson stressed mutual respect for freedom of religion — before adding that immigrants needed to follow the Constitution or else ​“go to a place compatible with their beliefs.” After deftly deflecting a question on what he admired from the liberal ideology, Carson answered a question on the conservative anti-poverty agenda more straightforwardly: his support of vouchers for school choice.

What About New Haven?

As Carson was whisked away for a post-talk reception with Buckley fellows at the Quinnipiack Club, other talk-goers were left to make sense of it all.

New Haven’s economic development administrator, Matthew Nemerson, said he saw Carson speak because after all, HUD is probably the federal agency the city relies upon the most. Cities, Nemerson said, can’t afford to play partisan politics with residents’ lives — it’s their job to work with federal and state governments.

And city officials are hopeful — to an extent — that Carson’s Yale and New Haven ties will spur the compassion Carson himself argued for Thursday night; Carson served on the Yale Corporation board from 1997 – 2003. (Mayor Toni Harp is already working on a pitch to the future HUD secretary: one that may become urgent as HUD has recently turned down the city’s application for a $30 million grant to help rebuild Church Street South, the federally subsidized apartment complex that will soon be razed.)

Two groups that advocate for some of the city’s most vulnerable populations showed up in hopes of starting a conversation with Carson himself. Amy Marx from New Haven Legal Assistance Association delivered a letter to talk organizers, congratulating Carson on his recent appointment and inviting him to a future meeting ​“regarding the need for affordable housing in diverse, inclusive communities free from the scourge of historical discrimination” between Carson and low-income residents of New Haven.

“The importance of federally-subsidized housing as a safety net for low-income families cannot be overstated,” the letter stated.

Signees of the letter — from NHLAA, Christian Community Action and Mothers for Justice — voiced concern about an editorial by Carson in which he described President Barack Obama’s fair housing policies as an ​“experiment” and a ​“mandated social-engineering scheme.” Click here to read the rest of the letter.

Marx found Carson’s talk ​“charismatic, thoughtful, funny and brilliant,” she said. She said she hopes he returns to New Haven — this time, to talk about housing.