An institution does not have emotions, just like a corporation does not have morals. It's not capable of being an asshole or your best friend. That's what they meant.
In order to call Yale a dick, you'd first have to personify it, but that's a literary trick and not reality.
The decisions of "Yale" the emotionless institution are made by people. I don't want to get involved in discussing this particular case, but I am very bothered by the common sentiment that groups of people should not be held to the same ethical, moral, emotional standards as the individuals within the group.
I never said Yale shouldn't be held to such standards as individuals are. I merely pointed out that, as much as we'd like to believe, and our laws try to contain, organizations of people are by their nature amoral. You can wish Yale could be held to that standard, but it's the individuals that steer the org that need to held accountable.
To cite another case, United Fruit enjoyed cheap land and labor in Guatemala. In the late 40's and early 50's, populist movements started springing up in the country until one day a land-reform minded president was democratically elected. Someone at UF called up some friends in the U.S. government who knew some folks, who organized an assassination of the president by the CIA.
United Fruit is not evil. A vast majority of the people who made up the corporation were probably blissfully ignorant of what the group they were members of were doing. And it's unreasonable and irrational to expect corporations of a certain size to have "all the facts." Instead, a small cabal of individuals colluded to implement a policy that devastated a small Central American democracy for the rest of the 20th century.
In the same way, Yale is amoral. It is not capable of making moral decisions the way individuals in leadership positions are. And American corporate law should reflect that. Instead we get bullshit like corporate campaign reform that allows individuals with an agenda to wield the power of the hundreds or thousands because there's a chance that the that individual's position will positively impact the corporate body.
Corporations are people, my friend. That's a legal reality.
Corporations can live forever and suffer only mild losses for egregious ethical failures. They demand sacrifice (of time from the proles, and of ethical compromises from the powerful) that in theory benefits "the company" but actually is for the benefit of the highest officers (priests).
That's not a person. That's a (not necessarily benevolent) god.
