During his travels, Salovey will stop in Côte d’Ivoire and Hong Kong, he wrote in an email to the News, and will deliver a presentation about the University’s developments and strategic goals at the Yale Club of Hong Kong. He will also meet with government officials in Côte d’Ivoire to discuss economic development initiatives and educational collaborations.

“In 2013, during my inauguration, I committed to making Yale more global and unified. Since then, Yale has enhanced international research, teaching, and learning with partner institutions worldwide,” Salovey wrote to the News. “My successor will be able to build on all that we have achieved together at Yale in the past decade.”

Associate English professor and director of the Whitney Humanities Center Cajetan Iheka commented in an email to the News that Salovey’s trip to “cement existing partnerships and catalyze new ones” is “significant” given that the Yale Africa Initiative is now on its tenth anniversary. 

According to Salovey, the University has strengthened long-term relationships with the continent through the Yale Africa Initiative, which creates programs to expand its commitment to Africa abroad and on campus. The Yale Young African Scholars Program, founded in 2013, has increased the number of students from the continent on campus and their presence through student groups as part of the initiative. The creation of student groups like the Yale African Students Association and initiatives like the Yale Africa Innovation Symposium — which recently held its second annual conference — “exemplifies the student energy our increased engagement with Africa has generated,” Salovey told the News. 

“During the past ten years, Yale’s commitment to Africa has yielded wonderful results,” Salovey wrote. 

Iheka, who also serves as chair of the Council on African Studies and head of the Yale Africa Initiative, also wrote that he is “glad” a Francophone country landed on the president’s itinerary. 

He added that he hopes it will result “in stronger multidirectional exchanges” between the University and Africa. 

“We want to see more of Yale’s positive presence on the continent and to bring more of Africa to Yale,” Cajetan wrote. “President Salovey’s trip is a step in that direction. It allows us to foreground the achievements of the Africa Initiative and to set an ambitious agenda for the future.” 

Janette Yarwood, director of Africa and the Middle East in the Office of International Affairs wrote to the News that Salovey’s trip to Africa is a continuation of the University’s effort to form international collaborations around “issues of global importance,” including higher education access, economic growth and environmental preservation. 

Yarwood added that although the Africa trip’s focus is on educational collaboration and economic development initiatives, Salovey will also meet with students at the International Community School of Abidjan — as well as students from across the city — to encourage them to be “lifelong learners” and discuss “Yale’s educational philosophy.” Additionally, Yarwood wrote, Salovey will meet with local university presidents about “enhancing” Yale’s partnerships and educational exchanges with African institutions.” 

Salovey will also participate in “cultural immersion”  in the southeastern town of Grand Bassam, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2012, where he is expected to take a walking architecture tour. 

“President Salovey’s trip to Africa, his third as president, marks the broadening of outreach to include Francophone African countries,” Yarwood wrote. “Throughout his travels, President Salovey will engage in opportunities for networking to help strengthen the bond between Yale and alumni in Africa.” 

The Yale Club of Hong Kong will host Salovey on Tuesday, March 19, for a presentation about Yale’s “latest developments” and “strategic goals for the decade ahead,” according to the club’s site. 

OIA Director for Asia Jieun Pyun wrote to the News that beyond participating in the club’s event, Salovey will also meet with donors in the region. She added that accompanying the president will be School of Music Dean José García-León and School of Public Health Dean Megan Ranney. Both García-León and Ranney joined Yale within the past year and were awarded M.A. Privatim degrees, honorary masters degrees bestowed upon senior University officers, on March 4. 

According to Salovey, the University has worked to rebuild its “traditional strength in Asia,” amassing over 45 faculty members at Yale covering contemporary South Asia in fields including public health, astronomy, religious studies and economics.

“Overall, in the past decade, we have advanced strong collaborations around the globe,” Salovey wrote of his tenure’s impact abroad.

 Upon stepping down on June 30, Salovey plans to return to the faculty after a sabbatical.

The post Salovey to visit Côte d’Ivoire, Hong Kong over spring break appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Over the next five years, Yale will commit $2 million annually to establish the Alliance for Scholarship, Collaboration, Engagement, Networking and Development, or ASCEND. The initiative will support research partnerships between faculty at Yale and at historically Black colleges and universities — or HBCUs — and seek to expand the presence of HBCU graduates in the University’s existing programs. 

Tuesday’s announcement comes two weeks after University President Peter Salovey and Senior Trustee of the Yale Corporation Joshua Bekenstein ’80 issued a formal apology for Yale’s ties to slavery. The University concurrently released findings from the Yale and Slavery Research Project and announced a plan to expand research fellowships with historically Black colleges and universities, noting that unspecified “significant” new investments would be announced in the following weeks.  

But Tuesday’s announcement also comes after the NAACP Connecticut State Conference volleyed criticism against the University’s Feb. 16 apology.

In a Feb. 29 statement to the News, Connecticut NAACP President Scot X. Esdaile largely took aim at Yale’s copyright ownership over David Blight’s book “Yale and Slavery: A History,” which was published alongside Yale’s apology announcement. Esdaile further criticized Blight’s book for not including information about Yale’s historical ties to eugenics.

“This is a whitewashed version of the story, and I think that Black historians, Black civil rights activists, Black leaders and Black educators need to come together and tell the real story,” Esdaile told the News in an interview on Tuesday. “I’m not trying to disrespect, but I think that the constructive criticism should be there … by putting in $10 million for students to come back to Yale, how does that help our community?”

The newly-announced ASCEND initiative will support faculty collaboration grants and teaching fellowships for Yale and HBCU faculty who create a “collaborative teaching arrangement” or “joint course experiences.” The initiative will also sponsor faculty research fellowships for HBCU faculty members who wish to pursue research opportunities at Yale.

Additionally, the University is looking to expand its Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship program, an eight-week program designed for undergraduate students from HBCUs to learn more about pursuing a Ph.D. According to the announcement, Yale will also increase the number of HBCU graduates participating in the University’s post-baccalaureate programs.

When asked about Yale’s pledge announcement on Tuesday, Esdaile referred to the failed attempt in 1831 by New Haveners to establish what would have been America’s first Black college. 

“We were supposed to have our own HBCU that benefited Black people … making Yale a more powerful institution doesn’t help our community,” Esdaile said. “This is a step in the right direction, but I think that [Yale] has so much more that it needs to do.”

Esdaile further said that by maintaining copyright ownership over Blight’s book, the University is “executing a power dynamic that benefits the institution at the expense of marginalized communities.”

When asked about Esdaile’s concerns about the “motives and intentions” of Yale’s copyright ownership the University spokesperson responded that proceeds from the book will go toward funding future projects at the Yale Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition. The spokesperson added that the book is available online for free and that the University has also donated copies of the book to local libraries. 

Esdaile also raised concerns about the book’s lack of mention of Yale’s historical connections to eugenics. The American Eugenics Society was founded on Yale’s campus at 185 Church St. in 1926 by economics professor Irving Fisher and was run largely by Yale faculty. 

By not including this history, Esdaile wrote in his Feb. 29 statement that the book “undermines any real efforts toward reconciliation and real justice.”

Blight previously told the News that he decided to conclude the book in 1915 at the unveiling of the Civil War Memorial because the monument marks “the end of the concern over slavery directly.” The memorial, located between the Schwarzman Center and Woolsey Hall, honors the lives of soldiers on both sides of the Civil War but makes no mention of slavery. 

Blight added that the Yale and Slavery Working Group had “great plans” to continue the narrative until the 1930s but that “the book got too long.”

Esdaile told the News that Blight, on the day of the book’s release, told him that the reason eugenics was excluded from the book was because his colleague “was sick.” 

In an email to the News on Tuesday, Blight wrote that he told Esdaile the initial plan was to continue the book until the 1930s and “therefore cover the eugenics story fully” but that the leading researcher on that project “had an illness and we ran into fierce deadlines.” Blight added that, if written, a second volume might “indeed” cover eugenics.

The University currently holds partnerships with five HBCUs, including Claflin University, Hampton University, Morgan State University, North Carolina A&T State University and Tuskegee University.

Yolanda Wang contributed reporting

The post Yale pledges $10 million to strengthen partnership with HBCUs, faces NAACP criticism  appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Donatich said that he plans to return to writing after retiring. He assumed his current position on January 13, 2003. In his announcement, Salovey highlighted Donatich’s “many achievements” — among them Donatich’s $40-million fundraising efforts for the Press, the expansion of the Press’ award-winning trade lists and novel publishing and distribution partnerships.

Robert Weil ’77, Yale Press Board of Governors member and W.W. Norton’s executive editor and vice president, said Donatich mirrors Salovey’s “enthusiasm and vitality.” He said that given Donatich’s background running a trade house, Donatich understood what was “key” to a successful publishing house — namely, the backlist, or books that have been in print for at least one year, which “supplies a steady stream of money to underwrite the front list.”

“[Donatich] really had a huge hand in bringing Yale into the modern age as the stellar University Press and also hiring great people,” Weil said. “John has that business background combined with literature, which is very rare to find.”

Yale University Press is financially and operationally independent of the University and publishes over 400 books across multiple genres annually.

As director, Donatich said one of the best aspects of the job was the background he got in dealing with experts from a wide variety of fields, working with them to understand how their book would contribute to that field. He added that he has also learned how to adapt amid a changing world in publishing — namely, with the rise of artificial intelligence. 

 “I’ve [also] learned to try to keep a sense of balance as we juggle mission and survival and balance to keep our footing during all these kinds of radical changes in the publishing environment,” Donatich said. 

In 2023, Donatich oversaw a novel agreement for a new distributor partnership with W.W. Norton, bringing an end to a 22-year relationship with Lakeside Book Company, formerly known as Triliteral LLC. Donatich will lead the transition between distributors this upcoming fall until he retires. 

Donatich told the News that when considering whether to publish a book, he factors in the book’s “intellectual contribution,” its “financial responsibility” and the “luster” achieved by the Press for each book.

He said that these needs are part of finding a “balance” between being a nonprofit scholarly press that also tracks its success through publicity and book sales.

“This balance between serving mission and staying alive … I think it’s a good challenge, and I like that job,” Donatich said.

Yale Press director of editorial design and production Jenya Weinreb wrote to the News that it’s been an “honor” to work with Donatich for the entirety of his tenure at the University.

Weinreb also wrote that “with change comes challenges,” adding that while Yale Press’ next director will have a strong foundation of the Press’ books and staff to build on, they will also face numerous “unpredictable” challenges. 

“A huge amount of work happens behind the scenes in choosing, curating, developing, editing, designing, producing, distributing, marketing, selling, and accounting for all these books, and John has a hand in every part of it,” Weinreb wrote. 

Some of these challenges, Weinreb wrote, “already loom large” at Yale and abroad, including those of  “inclusivity, freedom of speech, and the promises and perils of AI.”

In the same vein, Donatich also said that he anticipates that adjusting to the digital age, particularly with AI,  will be among the topmost challenges for his successor.

Donatich said that in his final year at Yale Press, he intends to continue fundraising efforts and to “step back and mentor” employees. He added that he hopes this 16-month succession plan will leave the Press “suitable” for the next director to implement their own vision.

Per Salovey’s Friday announcement, the University will soon embark on a global search for Donatich’s successor. Donatich said that although he does not anticipate having a say in who his ultimate successor will be, he hopes and is “happy to offer” his opinions on the future needs of the Press.

Yale University Press was founded in 1908.

The post Yale Press director to step down after two decades in role appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The term bill includes tuition costs, which will rise to $67,250, and room and board for students who live on campus, which will rise to $19,900. The 2023-24 tuition was $64,700, and the room and board was $19,180. 

Despite the increase, University administration confirmed its commitment to financial aid and affordable tuition for students.

“People have difficulty understanding the relationship between the sticker price and the actual cost to them of an education at Yale,” University President Peter Salovey said. “We have to do a better job communicating that difference.”

Tuition costs have risen “mostly due to inflation,” Dean of Yale College Pericles Lewis told the News. Twenty years ago, tuition was $29,820, and in 2014, tuition was set at $44,000. Ten years later, tuition now stands nearly $25,000 higher.

But, Lewis said, the costs of higher education rise at higher rates than the national inflation rate. Indeed, tuition has doubled in the last decade even though $100 in 2014 would be worth only about $127 in 2024.

Lewis said that tuition costs cover roughly one-fourth of Yale College’s total costs, with the endowment covering half and research grants and other funding covering the last quarter. 

The total budget to run the University is about $5 billion, Lewis said, citing the 2022 Yale budget report, but “the ratios haven’t changed all that much” as tuition has grown.

Lewis said that the largest expense for Yale College is salary and benefits, from both faculty and staff salary, which make up about half of the budget. 

In April 2022, Salovey’s For Humanity capital campaign — the University’s fourth and most ambitious fundraising effort — announced a $1.2 billion fundraising goal as part of the $7 billion campaign. In October, Eugénie Gentry, associate vice president for development and campaign director, referred to this announcement as the beginning of a larger marketing effort called “Be the Key,” which has yet to publicly launch.

By the April announcement, the figure raised for this effort was greater than $603 million and included gifts that have allowed Yale to offer universally free tuition at the David Geffen School of Drama and need-based, full-tuition scholarships to students at the Divinity School.

“Yes, it’s true that for a family where they don’t qualify for any financial aid from Yale, they are going to pay more to be here and those tend to be families in the top couple of percent of the income distribution,” Salovey said. “For any other family, when tuition goes up, they should feel that that increase will be taken care of by increased financial aid and more.”

Among the challenges of leading an institution like Yale is the public’s distrust of higher education because of the belief that it is not affordable, Salovey told the News in September. 

He added that, at present, Yale is “more affordable than ever” because of its generous financial aid programs. However, Salovey said that this is a “very hard” message to communicate to the general public because “many colleges and universities can’t provide those funds,” which Ivy League universities and other member institutions of the Association of American Universities can provide. 

Politics, Salovey also said, complicates this message even more, making it more challenging to “champion what’s great about universities.”

“All of that exists in a very polarized political climate that makes it difficult for a university in so many ways,” Salovey said in September. “What we really need is a pride in our university college and university system which I think is second to none in the world and, unfortunately, for various political reasons, universities are [often] attacked [which] has made it harder to run a university.” 

Despite an increased sticker price, the University emphasized that Yale College’s need-based financial aid will not be affected. 

“If a family’s financial circumstances stay the same, their net cost will stay the same,” Kari DiFonzo, director of undergraduate financial aid, told Yale News last month.

Yale’s undergraduate financial aid budget has more than tripled since the 2007-08 academic year, according to Jeremiah Quinlan, dean of undergraduate admissions and financial aid. For the 2023-24 academic year, the financial aid budget was $241 million.

According to Quinlan, Yale is one of only eight American colleges that does not consider a student’s financial need when evaluating them for admission and meets every student’s demonstrated financial need without loans.

Yale’s need-blind status was challenged in a recent lawsuit alleging that the University — along with 16 peer institutions — was part of a price-fixing cartel. The University settled earlier this year but denied any allegations of wrongdoing.

The admissions office’s top priority in its outreach work is raising awareness about Yale’s affordability and need-based financial aid, according to Mark Dunn, senior associate director for outreach and recruitment at the Office of Undergraduate Admissions.

Dunn pointed to Yale’s college cost estimation tool, MyinTuition Quick Cost Estimator, which he said has been useful in helping families understand the difference between Yale’s sticker price and the price they will actually pay. More than 50,000 net price estimates were generated using the tool last year, according to Dunn.

Additionally, since 2013, the admissions office has run a postcard campaign for prospective students from low- and middle-class neighborhoods. The campaign advertises the extent of Yale’s need-based financial aid policies. Dunn told the News that he believes the campaign is largely responsible for the increase in applications from lower-income students over the past decade.

“Sharing Yale’s commitment to affordability is the top communications priority for the admissions office in all of our outreach work,” Dunn wrote.

The University’s endowment was $40.7 billion in 2023.

The post Tuition hikes continue to outpace inflation, admin say financial aid rising concurrently appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The ruling stems from a lawsuit filed in March 2022 by alumni Victor Ashe ’67 and Donald Glascoff ’67, alleging that the Corporation’s 2021 decision to end the alumni petition process for a position among the governing group was a violation of Yale’s 1872 charter.

“Don Glascoff and I are disappointed in the decision on the Yale Corporation,” Ashe wrote to the News. “We are reviewing our options but an appeal is likely. This decision, if not reversed, means Yale can deny any meaningful alumni participation in the election of Alumni Trustees.  Alumni views can be ignored.”

Before its abolition in 2021, the petition process allowed alumni who acquired three percent of eligible alumni voters’ signatures to have their names on the ballot for the alumni fellows election. Six of 19 spots on the Yale Corporation are reserved for alumni fellows.

The decision was made to prevent “issue-based candidacies,” and candidates who sought to gain a seat on the Corporation to promote specific platforms, according to a 2021 announcement made by then-Senior Trustee Catharine Bond Hill GRD ’85. 

University spokesperson Karen Peart wrote to the News that Yale is “pleased” with the decision.

Ashe, Glascoff and Eric Henzy, the lawyer representing them, allege that the University’s decision is an overstep of the regulations outlined in an 1872 amendment to the University’s charter – which designates six seats on the Yale Corporation for alumni and allows them to vote on candidates.

Specifically, they claim that the Corporation can only regulate the time, place and manner of the elections. Other restrictions, such as removing the petition process and raising the number of signatures required, are in violation of the amendment’s original language, they argue.

Yale, represented by Connecticut law firm Wiggin and Dana LLP, says that the University is entitled to full regulatory authority of the elections process. 

Judge John Burns Farley concurred with this claim in his decision and granted the University’s motion for summary judgment.

“The charter does not impose on [Yale] an obligation to conduct alumni fellow elections in any particular manner,” he wrote in the decision. 

Opponents of the change argue that it allows the Corporation too much control over Yale’s direction. The only other path onto the ballot is through the Alumni Fellow Nominating Committee, which is made up of several Yale Alumni Association officers, three University officials and one successor trustee from the Corporation. 

Scott Gigante GRD ’23, co-founder of the climate activist organization Yale Forward which supported a petition candidate in the 2021 election, told the News that he does not consider the decision reached in the case as a loss in the fight to reinstate the petition process. Instead, he said he sees the decision only as a confirmation that “the fight” will not be won by legal means.

Gigante added that although he cannot speak to the legality of the decision, he believes it was “morally” incorrect. 

“The fight to reinstate a petition for alumni to be able to get ballot access for the alumni election, independent of a body run and organized by Yale, will continue,” Gigante said. “When you’re playing a game where your opponent controls the rules it’s very hard to win, and you have to be very creative so we’ll have to figure out what that creative solution looks like.”

Per the Alumni Fellow Election website, this year’s election for Alumni Fellows will launch in early spring and close on Monday, May 19. The University Charter states that all alumni and honorary degree holders are eligible to vote, but Yale College students are only eligible if they have held their degrees for five years.

The post Judge rules in favor of Yale Corporation’s right to end alumni petition process, alumni likely to appeal appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The L&B room, located just to the right of the Cross Campus entrance to Sterling, closed when the library shut down in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, when Sterling reopened on Aug. 31 of that same year, the L&B room remained closed because the room failed to meet pandemic air-handling standards required by the University, according to Patricia Carey, the Yale Library director of communications. 

“What we’re able to do with this renovation is restore an important room that has been has been in the hearts and minds of generations of alumni, but also create a space for future Yale students that I think will be equally delightful and modernized,” University Librarian Barbara Rockenbach told the News. “We’ve got a track record of this room being important, and I know it will be to future generations of students as well.”

Among the features added during the renovation, which aimed to restore architect James Gamble Rogers’ initial vision for the space, are modern heating, cooling and electrical systems. Rockenbach said that the renovation was more about upgrading the “mechanicals” of the room while restoring and maintaining its history.

The L&B room’s restoration costs $10 million, according to lead donor and University Library Council member Fred Berg ’66. 

Berg told the News that the $10 million figure was the latest he had heard. Basie Gitlin ’10, the Yale Library director of development, declined to verify the total cost of the project beyond Berg’s estimate but directed the News to the gift guide for the L&B renovation on the For Humanity capital campaign’s site. 

The gift guide specifies that gifts of $100,000 or more for the renovation will be recognized on a group plaque. Gifts of $1,000,000 or more, according to the guide, correspond with the naming of one of the reading room’s six alcoves.

“What I can say is that we’ve gotten a really wonderful groundswell of support from people from across generations, and at a number of different gift levels who are supporting this project,” Gitlin said.

The renovation is part of a larger University project, Sterling 2031, to renovate and reimagine aspects of the library by the library’s centennial. Previous projects included the creation of the Hanke Exhibition Gallery, the relocation of the Yale Film Archive to Sterling’s seventh floor and the creation of the Franke Family Digital Humanities Laboratory.

According to Rockenbach, the University is considering various “opportunity spaces” for renovations. She added that the University is considering renovating the International Room and the Periodical Reading Room on the first floor. 

Rockenbach said that as part of Sterling’s “master plan process,” the library is working closely with an architecture firm to find other opportunities throughout the entire building. She added that the University Library Council is also looking to add more collaborative spaces in Sterling based on feedback from the Student Library Advisory Committee.

“There have been many, many renovations of Sterling in the last decade,” Rockenbach said. “L&B is in a way a kickoff of Sterling 2031, allowing us to show the campus that we will carefully and intentionally renovate these spaces, and ensure that the spaces will fit the needs of future scholarship.”

Yale Library Associates member John Raben ’67 heads the Rossi Family Foundation, which gives seed money to new nonprofits and operational support for existing nonprofits, and made a donation to restore one of the room’s alcoves. 

Raben told the News that other projects that the foundation has supported at Yale include the Rossi Glee Club room and the Rossi Foundation Gallery of Art of the Ancient Americas.

“Like every Yale undergraduate, I think one of the things I remember fondly would be L&B,” Raben said. “It’s been a pleasure for the foundation to support Yale, and I’m delighted to be able to support the University, particularly the library, and hopefully it’ll benefit students for many, many years to come.”

A previous renovation closed off two of the entrances’ three archways with wood paneling to create an anteroom to house the library’s bibliographic press. Rockenbach said that finding the best place for the press is among the priorities for the Sterling 2031 project.

Berg made the “leading gift” for the L&B renovation that was put toward restoring the L&B room entrance, which will be renamed the Berg Family Foyer. 

Berg said that for his 50th class reunion in 2016, he proposed that his class financially support the L&B room renovation. Yale’s Office of Development, however, decided that the project was not a priority at that time, according to Berg. By 2020, Berg said, the project reached the University’s top list of priorities. 

He added that when members of the Library Council floated the idea of the L&B room’s renovation in 2020, he “took the first leap” and made a “significant gift” to restore the foyer in his parents’ memory.

“I wanted to do this in part because I was a first-generation, low-income student and neither of my parents had gone to college,” Berg told the News. “I wanted to do something in their honor because they made some sacrifices, so I could attend Yale, and … stimulated me to become a better student.”

Carey said that the vision for the 17,000-volume collection in the reading room is centered around “leisure reading,” which she said is in line with the original vision for the room as a “private library” or “grand living room.”

According to Gitlin, the foyer will house “several hundred” browsable and circulating books on Yale and New Haven, which are being selected in partnership with the University archivist.

“It’s very deliberate that we’ve chosen both Yale and New Haven because of the importance of the fact that Yale is in New Haven, and we’ve increasingly been focused on our partnerships and the importance of the city we live in,” Rockenbach said.

Sterling Memorial Library opened in 1931.

The post Sterling’s Linonia and Brothers Reading Room to reopen in April after four years of renovation appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The report, which the News obtained in late January, summarized data from over 1,800 student respondents in a survey focused on student concerns for the next president of Yale. 

The SAC was created after widespread student demand for student representation on the Presidential Search Committee and included 15 students from across the University. Forty percent of respondents to the SAC’s survey listed student mental health as the top challenge the University will face, and 38 percent listed mental health policy as an issue where the University performed worse than peer institutions. 

Student mental health care policy has been a point of contention for students in recent years, particularly the policy for students facing mental health challenges who want to take leave. In September, Yale settled a class-action lawsuit which was filed by mental health advocacy group Elis for Rachael and current students against the University in November 2022. In January 2023, in the midst of the suit, the University announced “momentous” changes to leave of absence policies. 

University President Peter Salovey said that the president does have much power over mental health policy. Instead, he said these policies usually fall to Vice President for University Life Kimberly Goff Crews or deans. 

“[Presidents] don’t make policy for services and generally and for issues affecting students,” University President Peter Salovey told the News. “Having said that, I’m a clinical psychologist who still has a license to practice — though I don’t practice — so student mental health is hugely important to me.”

However, Salovey said that Yale’s president can still influence mental health policy through three avenues. Namely, they can “give voice to the challenge” to raise awareness about the issue of mental health, raise funds to “support a more robust mental health strategy” and weigh in on policy decisions that are under consideration.

He added, for example, that the University’s expansion of its mental health resources to residential colleges through the Yale College Community Care, or YC3, program was a change for which he long advocated.

“Long before it was implemented, I was a very strong proponent of decentralizing mental health services and reducing the barriers in order to make it easy for students to access it,” Salovey said. “What became called YC3 is consistent with a point of view about how to deliver psychological care on campus that I’ve long championed.”

YC3 was established in April 2021 to provide short-term mental health care in the residential colleges with wellness specialists and clinicians associated with YMHC. In 2022, some students spoke of positive experiences with the organization, while others told the News that the short-term nature made it difficult to use for mental health care. 

Among the most challenging aspects of being Yale’s president are the changing needs of students, Salovey told the News in September. 

Salovey told the News in November that students today — and their parents — have different “expectations” of the University that involve institutions “being far more intentional about developing students.” This shift in expectations, he said, necessitates that universities respond with a multitude of services.

“When I was in college, the student attitude about many, many things with respect to the institution could be summarized in the following sentence: ‘leave us alone’ …  my generation for whatever reason as young adults was focused on autonomy,” Salovey said. “As a psychologist, I love that the stigma around getting help for psychological issues like anxiety or depression seems to largely be gone and students want that help … but it does change the demand and the nature of how a university responds to that demand.”

Chief of Yale Mental Health and Counseling Paul Hoffman attributed the large student concerns to students going through the COVID-19 pandemic, the political climate and influence of social media, all of which he said have taken a toll on students’ mental health. He said that rates of students in therapy nationally have risen from 13 to 36 percent, and the rate of students taking medications for mental health have increased from 12 to 29 percent.            

Yale, Salovey said, “is moving aggressively” to expand mental healthcare but is not “100 percent there yet.” 

In addition to the leave policy, concerns around mental health policy have also centered around long wait times and the YC3 program’s branding as being “short-term.”

Prior to the lawsuit regarding leave policies, in April 2022, the University relaxed the coursework and interview requirements for reinstatement following leave. The 2023 policy changed the process of taking leave for mental health reasons from a “withdrawal” to “medical leave of absence,” which now allows  students who take time off to have benefits like health care coverage through Yale Undergraduate Affiliate Coverage and the ability to work student jobs. Students are now also able to enroll in two course credits at the start of the term or drop down to two course credits with urgent medical and mental health needs. 

Despite these changes, Ben Swinchoski ’25, co-director of the Yale Student Mental Health Association, told the News that there are still some concerns about access to mental health care. Swinchoski described mental health care as “a lot better post settlement,” but raised concerns about wait times students face at Yale Mental Health and Counseling.  

“I think there are still some issues that persist,” Swinchoski said. “There’s a lot of variability in the wait time and also in the quality and consistency of care that people get.”

Swinchoski described hearing student concerns about wait times for the intake process, or the time until the initial appointment, as well as the time it takes to get matched with a therapist post-intake. Swinchoski said that the main role he sees the University president in helping this issue is raising funds for more clinicians at YMHC. 

Chief of Yale Mental Health and Counseling Paul Hoffman said that YMHC has expanded over the past four years, increasing the number of clinicians from 34 to 73 as well as partnering with Yale College to create the YC3 program. Hoffman added that YMHC has the largest staff of any school of equivalent size and one of the largest staffs of any college mental health center in the country. Additionally, YMHC has partnered with Yale’s graduate and professional schools to create counseling programs in eight schools and opened two additional locations — 205 Whitney Ave. and 60 Temple St. 

“This extensive growth has led to significantly reduced wait times both for initial appointments as well as the time to get matched to a therapist,” Hoffman wrote to the News. 

Yale Mental Health and Counseling is located at 55 Lock Street.

The post Mental health ranks as top student concern in presidential search report appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The announcement came alongside the release of a book titled “Yale and Slavery: A History,” which is the culmination of the findings made by the Yale and Slavery Working Group. The group, composed of faculty, students, researchers and New Haven residents and led by David Blight, a professor of history and African American studies, was formed in 2020 under Salovey’s direction. 

The book was released in its entirety online along with key findings which are explored on the project’s site. 

Yale is not alone in revisiting its past ties to slavery. In April 2022, Harvard committed $100 million to redress its ties to slavery concurrent with the release of the university’s own report on the matter. 

In their announcement, Salovey and Bekenstein not only framed the project as a recognition of the University’s role in and association with the institution of slavery, but it also formally apologized for the ways that Yale’s leaders participated in slavery, adding that the findings from the group have “propelled” the University toward actions to address the continued effects of enslavement today. 

Steven Rome ’20 conducted research for the project as his first post-graduate job, after having Blight as his senior thesis advisor. Rome emphasized that the findings are just the start of a larger inquiry into the historical influence of institutions like Yale.

“This history has always been there and often, right in front of our eyes and to be able to be a small part of the work to bring that to life, I think was long overdue,” Rome said. “This is obviously meant to be just the beginning and we should be continuing to think deeply about the impact of choices that institutions are making and the way we respond with that history very present in our minds.”

Blight’s research 

According to the email announcement, the group’s research uncovered the role that enslaved individuals played in constructing Yale’s buildings or in the lives of “prominent leaders who made gifts to Yale.”

The announcement continues by stating that although no evidence was found that Yale University owned enslaved people, many of Yale’s Puritan founders and early leaders did own slaves — who were mostly Black but also of Indigenous descent.

“We started with the effective liquidation of Native peoples in Connecticut … but also that encounter between the English Puritans and Native peoples,” Blight told the News. “And then in the midst of that, some ministers met down the road and decided to create this little Collegiate school.”

The book also details a failed proposal to construct what would have been America’s first Black college — in New Haven. The effort, which the research found to be a joint effort between prominent Yale community members and New Haven leaders and citizens, was quashed after then-New Haven Mayor and Yale graduate Dennis Kimberly, class of 1812, held a meeting that was “whites-only” at which 700 people voted in opposition of the plan. 

Blight said that although the initial plan for the book was to cover this history into the 1930s, “the book got too long.”

Yet, concluding the book in 1915 with the unveiling of the Civil War memorial — located between the Schwarzman Center and Woolsey Hall — was a “perfect ending,” he said. This is so, he added, because the memorial, which honors the lives of soldiers on both sides of the Civil War without mentioning slavery, showcases the apathetic view Yale took toward slavery in the early twentieth century. 

“This is a case where the archives were not silent; there was so much material, we couldn’t even begin to use it all,” Blight said. “We decided to end the book with 1915 and the unveiling of that war memorial …. because it wasn’t the end of racial issues at Yale by any means, but it was the end of concern over slavery directly, or a lack of concern about it.”

To further showcase the findings of the YSWG, the University opened a free exhibition in the New Haven Museum highlighting key findings included in the book. Yale is also providing copies of the book to New Haven public libraries and high schools and updating campus tours to address key findings. A new app will offer self-guided tours with 19 points of interest to help visitors explore the University’s ties to slavery.

On-campus changes 

Per the announcement, Yale will continue working to ensure that its physical campus reflects “a more complete view of the university’s history,” consistent with the research findings.

“The most important consequences of the revelation of this history is our desire to play a role in lifting our entire community,” Salovey said.

The University’s Committee for Art Representing Enslavement, launched in June, will work with campus and New Haven community members to commission works of art that address Yale’s ties to and the legacy of slavery. 

Among CARE’s tasks will also be to make recommendations for new art in Connecticut Hall — Yale and New Haven’s oldest extant building which will be renovated to become the new home of the Yale Chaplaincy — to better reflect the building’s history with slavery. Among the research findings is that free and enslaved Black men devoted over 27 percent of the hours to the construction of Connecticut Hall, despite constituting only 3 percent of the local population.

Additionally, a physical display was recently installed near the Civil War Memorial located in the Schwarzman Center between Commons and Woolsey Hall to inform visitors of the memorial’s history.

“No one uttered a word of what the Civil War had been fought about, with the exception of a discussion of states’ rights,” Blight wrote on Feb. 16 of the memorial’s 1915 dedication in The Atlantic. “Instead, the ultimate memorial, in its content and form, served as an institutional Yankee apology for Reconstruction … Perhaps the Yale men needed to convince themselves that if they could make history itself calm and unifying on walls, on floors, and in marble, they could do the same with their university and their country.”

In September, the University honored the late Rev. James W.C. Pennington, the first Black student known to study at what is now the Yale Divinity School, and Rev. Alexander Crummell, who also attended the Yale Theological Seminary, with honorary master’s degrees. The posthumous degree conferral followed years of student and alumni advocacy, since at least 2014.

Educational programs, economic growth in New Haven

The announcement lists seven responses aimed at expanding educational access and opportunities for teaching and research and two for promoting inclusive economic growth in New Haven. Not all of the actions are new, such as increased support for New Haven Promise, K-12 outreach through Yale’s Pathways to Science program and the formation of the Pennington Fellowship, both referenced in Salovey’s announcement.

In January 2022, the University increased its financial contribution by one million dollars annually to the New Haven Promise, a college scholarship program that helps New Haven public school students pay for college. In December 2022, Salovey announced the Pennington Fellowship, a four-year, $20,000 scholarship for approximately ten to twelve New Haven public high school seniors attending some of the nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities — including Hampton University, Morehouse College and Spelman College.

“We’ve not been holding back so while the research has been done, we have announced certain responses to what we were learning as we went,” Salovey said. “I had thought it would be wrong to simply delay things that would be good for Yale and for the New Haven community simply because the book wasn’t finished yet.”

Among Yale’s other planned actions are those to address the shortage of teachers in New Haven through a residency fellowship program in collaboration with New Haven Public Schools, New Haven Promise and Southern Connecticut State University that will fully fund a master’s in teaching degree for about 100 aspiring teachers. In exchange, the teachers must commit to working in the New Haven public school system for at least three years. 

Two weeks before the 2023-2024 academic year began for New Haven public schools, the school district found it had 84 classroom teachers positions still open.

“Ultimately, we hope in over the next five years to put 100 new teachers in the New Haven public schools and that number is not an accident,” Salovey told the News. 

Per the announcement, Yale also plans to launch a four-year teacher’s institute in the summer of 2025 that will help K-12 teachers throughout New England to meet state mandates for incorporating Black and Indigenous history into their curricula. 

The announcement also references other educational programs including the Access to Law School program which guides local New Haven students from underrepresented groups in law through the law school application process. 

Moreover, the announcement details a “recently signed ten-year letter of intent” for the Dixwell Plaza space, which is a collaboration between Yale and the Connecticut Community and Community Revitalization Program, a local program that seeks to offer opportunities for New Haven’s underserved residents.

“What Yale is going to do is we have offered to be a major tenant in the Dixwell Plaza,” Salovey said. “And so the letter that’s being referred to will ultimately be a lease, and we will lease space there providing a flow of revenue to ConCORP as they look for other tenants … and an example I hope to others that might inspire them to join us in setting up shop in Dixwell Plaza.”

Who was involved?

Salovey said that he approached Blight for the project because he thought him to be the “perfect historian” for conducting Yale’s own history with slavery. Blight said that he initially intended for these findings to be finalized in a report. However, upon accepting the project, Blight told Salovey that he would release the findings in a narrative history, not a report — something, Blight told the News in September, that students, alumni and the general public would actually read.

“It is essentially the instincts of historians: we like chronology, we like details, we like evidence,” Blight said. “Historical material imposes its own order on you as the writer, and so does the research.”

The book is principally authored by Blight but was also authored by Michael Morand, director of community engagement at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and Hope McGrath, lead researcher of the Yale and Slavery Research Group. 

Blight told the News that student researchers were “crucial” to the research for the book “from the very beginning.” He added that while the student and professional researchers were paid by the President’s Office, the faculty involved were not.

​​“Some of our first student researchers only worked for a couple of months because they do what students do: they graduate, they leave, they get jobs, but some of them stayed on the project for quite a while,” he said.

Charles Warner, a New Havener, is a member of the Yale and Slavery Working Group and serves on the Board of Directors of the Amistad Committee which honors and preserves African and American history in Connecticut. Warner said that he first became involved with Blight’s research after the professors approached the Amistad group and invited them to join his project.

Warner emphasized the need, throughout the project, to understand slavery as a human issue, adding that the project was of particular meaning to him because he had the opportunity to share information the Black community of New Haven has “held dear and treasured” for so long and highlight “unsung heroes.” 

“It’s important when you’re discussing an issue, like the institution of slavery that we always remember that while there’s so much academic work around it, that this is a story of living, breathing people,” Warner said. 

What comes next?

Kimberly Goff-Crews, vice president and secretary for university life, told the News that she will chair a new committee that will host conversations with student leaders and New Haven residents. She said it will inform next steps for engaging with the Yale and Slavery Research Project’s findings.

“There are a lot of ways in which people are going to be able to engage with material,” Goff-Crews said.

Salovey will be stepping down from his role this June. The search for his successor publicly launched when he announced he would be stepping down in August.

However, he said that he anticipates his successor will pick up where he leaves off on this work.

“A big theme in the search for my successor is continuing the course we’re on and that includes the slavery research project,” Salovey told the News. “The idea is a next president who can provide a vision for 10 to 15 years from now that builds on what we’ve been trying to do over the last decade, and I fully expect that will include both our commitment to a diverse campus in all the meanings of that term, as well as in continuing to educate and lead around the legacy of slavery.”

For the University’s 300th anniversary in 2001, a group of graduate students issued an independent report on Yale’s connections to slavery, which Salovey acknowledged in his address at an event announcing the book on Yale and slavery. 

The post Yale apologizes for ties to slavery in new report, pledges list of actions appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Among other measures, the group calls for “a thorough reassessment of administrative encroachment” and the promotion of diverse viewpoints. The group also calls for a more thorough description of free expression guidelines in the Faculty Handbook; Yale’s current guidelines are based on its 1974 Woodward Report. The group also wants Yale to implement a set of guidelines regarding donor influence, which were first put forth by the Gift Policy Review Committee in 2022.

On its site, Faculty for Yale outlines issues that it claims stem from Yale’s “retreat from the university’s basic mission.”

“Faculty for Yale is a spontaneously coalescing group of (so far) over 100 faculty from throughout the university who wish to support our university in re-dedicating itself to its historic and magnificent mission to preserve, produce, and transmit knowledge,” professor of social and natural science Nicholas Christakis wrote to the News. “We believe that any loss of focus on this deep, fundamental, and important mission may contribute to a range of challenges being faced in universities like ours nowadays.”

Faculty for Yale also urges the University to adopt the University of Chicago’s Kalven Committee report that urges institutional neutrality.

However, in an interview with the News in November, Salovey said that although more college presidents might be considering the principle of institutional neutrality “because they realize how fraught it has become to speak out” on the issues of the day, he does not yet hold that view. He added, though, that “it’s a worthy view to consider.”

“I still think that we are going to want to speak out as leaders in higher education on issues of the day, but the decision about when to and when not to is not an easy one,” Salovey said. “I tend to use a criteria of how directly our campus is affected by whatever the incident in the world is but that’s still not a perfect criteria … there are atrocities all over the world, and I’ve probably not spoken out on more of them than I have spoken on.”

Christakis, speaking on behalf of the group, told the News that “we hope to meet” with Salovey. 

Howard Forman, a professor at the School of Management, said that he signed the letter in part to emphasize Yale’s “promises for advancing and disseminating knowledge” amid the presidential search process. Forman also called himself a “big fan” of Salovey.

“He has served us extremely well, facing numerous internal and external upheavals and facing up to Yale’s own troubling history,” Forman said. “This letter does not sit in judgment of him or his predecessors. It speaks to our future and how we all can be better.”

Although the group was formed in December, a column published last month in the Wall Street Journal discussed emails from Christakis and law professor Kate Stith — sent to their faculty colleagues — in which they expressed views now available on Faculty for Yale’s site. 

Other signatories include the Trumbull and Grace Hopper heads of college — biomedical engineering professor Fahmeed Hyder and sociology professor Julia Adams, respectively. Hyder did not respond to the News’ request for comment.

Adams wrote to the News that academic freedom, which she described as “the bedrock of the advancement of knowledge through teaching and learning,” needs support at Yale and other colleges and universities.

“The concerns articulated in the FfY formation statement pertain to universities — and not their members! — as activists,” Adams wrote. “I consider myself something of an activist on behalf of academic freedom, scholarship, and the mission of the university. But there will also come times, as the Kalven Report notes, in which colleges and universities confront threats to their very mission, and must seek to defend their fundamental values. That is happening worldwide.”

Similar efforts at other universities have emerged in recent months, including Harvard’s Council on Academic Freedom, Princeton’s Princeton Principles for a Campus Culture of Free Inquiry and the University of Pennsylvania’s pennforward.com. 

All such efforts formally began within the last year. 

The post Faculty group calls on Yale to make teaching ‘distinct from activism’ appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Eight of the 16 total trustees are part of the committee spearheading the ongoing search for Yale’s next president, which publicly commenced five months ago when University President Peter Salovey announced that he plans to step down from the role this summer.

The Corporation held virtual meetings earlier this week and likely held meetings on Thursday as well. Chaired by the president of the University and composed of 16 alumni, the Corporation convenes on campus at least five times a year, most recently on Dec. 2. 

In an interview in September, Salovey told the News that Corporation meetings generally occur over a three-day period. He added that Corporation members often also attend meetings for Yale’s standing committees or arrive on campus earlier for “informal meetings.” 

Salovey, his fellow trustees and the University’s vice presidents are hosting a lunch with over 20 “student leaders” on Friday, Feb. 16 — one day before the Corporation meets.

As snowflakes dusted Yale’s campus on Thursday night, Woodbridge Hall, Betts House, the President’s House and Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall — where administrative offices currently reside — stood quiet and largely empty. If the Corporation — or even just members of the Search Committee — did host a meeting Thursday evening, the News was unable to confirm its location.

Although the Search Committee sent several emails to the Yale community throughout the opening weeks of the search, more than three months passed between the Corporation’s two most recent updates. The latest announcement came on Jan. 29, which summarized the committee’s outreach efforts and discussed the feedback it had received from students. 

The Board of Trustees has two other meetings planned for this academic year, on April 20 and June 8. 

The minutes for all meetings remain sealed from the public for 50 years.

The post Yale trustees convene on campus for in-person meetings as presidential search continues appeared first on Yale Daily News.