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DNA evidence under Jovin's fingernails in 2000 was found not to match Van de Velde's. But physical evidence aside, there was no credible motive offered for James Van de Velde to murder Jovin. There was some talk that the two had had an affair, but that was never substantiated and appears to be nothing but speculation. Even if that were the case, a student's consensual relationship with a professor is only an embarrassment, not the sort of thing that justifies a rational man taking the extreme measures Van de Velde (then single; family concerns were not at issue) was accused of. After all, feminist author Naomi Wolf recently accused Yale Professor Harold Bloom of groping her during an undergraduate tutoring session, and the result was...nothing.

Furthermore, the sloppiness of the murder itself tends to exonerate Van de Velde. Jovin was stabbed several times, and found screaming by an eyewitness who saw a van at the scene (not Van de Velde's Jeep). But VdV is, as I said, a man of a precise and military mind. He was also in good shape and knew martial arts -- one of those anecdotes I alluded to above involves a quite impressive nunchuk demonstration. If he seriously wanted someone dead, she would not have been found alive.

Van de Velde once offered a bit of advice in one class that stuck with me: "Never put anything in writing you wouldn't want to see someday on the front page of the New York Times." This was a careful man. If he had planned and carried out a murder, I doubt suspicion would ever have fallen on him. But of course, there is absolutely no reason to think he would commit a murder in the first place.

CONTRAST THAT WITH THE CONDITION of New Haven, Connecticut, in the 1990s -- it was a crime-ridden, dangerous city. Christian Prince, a Yale student, was robbed and shot in 1991, left bleeding to death on the steps of St. Mary's Catholic Church. Assaults and thefts were commonplace; one night a couple of drunken bikers chased a friend of mine into his dorm, where they broke a window with his face just for the hell of it. There were places you didn't go after dark, and East Rock Park -- near where Suzanne Jovin died -- was one of them. Occam's Razor suggests that the simplest and best explanation for Jovin's fate was that she was killed by someone she didn't know as she walked alone through a bad area at night. But Occam's Razor couldn't save James Van de Velde's academic career.

Until recently, I thought that Van de Velde's dismissal made for an extremely depressing story. Here's someone who followed the rules, and watched the margins, and did his job well, and life just came up and kicked him right in the undercarriage in spite of it all. But one of the unexpected pleasures of my campaign to send Yale's Taliban student packing has been to hear from him again. He's married and restarted his career elsewhere, and his considerable talents are being used in the pursuit of America's enemies. His discipline and hard work have allowed him to recover even from this nightmare.

America's gain is Yale's loss. I wonder whether anyone like him is there now, offering such an example of self-discipline and resilience to America's future leaders.

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Business, Military