In this episode, Xavier Guaracha ’25 sits down with Evan Gorelick ’25 to discuss a recent faculty report revealing the average Yale College GPA and grade distributions by subject. Join us as we discuss the key takeaways from Gorelick’s article, and what comes next.
Guest: Evan Gorelick ’25
Producers: Xavier Guaracha ’25, Alyssa Michel ’24
Music: Blue Dot Sessions

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The data, which show a sharp hike in grades coinciding with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, come from a document presented at a November faculty meeting. According to economics professor Ray Fair, who authored the report, Yale College Dean Pericles Lewis distributed the document to faculty members who attended the meeting. 

Even before the pandemic, the percentage of A-range grades was climbing — it reached 72.95 percent in the 2018-19 academic year, up from 68.97 percent five years prior. But in 2020-21, that share jumped to 81.97 percent. Fair dubbed the grading upturn “the COVID effect.”

“Some thought [the COVID effect] would be temporary, but it has more or less persisted. [It’s] probably the faculty going easier on students because COVID was a pain,” Fair told the News. “The report simply documents the history of grading at Yale … It gives the ‘current state of grading’ and I think the numbers are straightforward to interpret.”

Fair sent the document to the News after the News reached out to ask his thoughts on grade inflation. Earlier this semester, the University Registrar’s Office denied the News’ request to access Yale College grading data, and the University has not published similar data in over a decade.

Fair later said that he sent the report with Lewis’ permission and would not have done so otherwise. Lewis told the News that he gave permission “in order to promote transparency.”

“As you can see, a large majority of grades in Yale College are in the A range (A or A-),” Lewis wrote in an email to the News. “This results in compression, making it difficult for instructors to use grades for their intended purpose of helping students understand areas of strength and others that need attention.”

Lewis added that, at the November faculty meeting, he encouraged faculty “to make use of the full range of grades where appropriate.”

Fair’s three-page grading report — compiled using data from the Registrar’s Office — has two tables. Table 1 provides data on Yale College grades since 2010, including letter-grade percentages and mean GPAs. The table does not include data from the 2019-20 academic year because spring-semester classes were graded under a “universal pass/fail” policy.

Table 2 breaks down grading data by academic subject. In general, STEM subjects seem to have lower percentages of A-range grades, and humanities subjects seem to have higher percentages.

There is significant variation in the frequency of A-range grades across “large-enrollment subjects,” ranging from 52.39 percent for Economics to 92.37 percent for History of Science, Medicine and Public Health. Lower-enrollment subjects display similar variation, ranging from 57.36 percent for Engineering and Applied Science to 92.06 percent for Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies. 

Table 2 does not include languages, art and music, which, per the report, “may differ from the other subjects regarding grading issues.” The report also notes that Philosophy and Psychology have higher percentages of Credit — “CR” — grades than other subjects, which may distort their percentages in the table.

The Harvard Office of Undergraduate Education presented a similar report on grade inflation to the university’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences in October. The report found that 79 percent of grades given to Harvard College students for 2020-21 were in the A range — virtually identical to Yale’s percentage for 2022-23.

Harvard’s report also registered a discrepancy in A-range grades between STEM and the humanities.

In 2001, when a Boston Globe report found that 91 percent of Harvard seniors graduated with Latin honors that year, the Globe called Harvard honors “the laughingstock of the Ivy League.” Harvard’s faculty, in turn, called grade inflation “a serious problem.” At the time, Yale went on the record saying that it would not release grading data because doing so could cause professors to grade more leniently when they learned how others were grading.

But the University changed its tune in 2013, when then-Yale College Dean Mary Miller created an “Ad Hoc Committee on Grading” to curb grade inflation and ever-climbing GPA cutoffs for Latin honors. The Committee, chaired by Fair, issued a preliminary report that included grading data showing that 62 percent of grades awarded to Yale College students in spring 2012 fell in the A range.

On the basis of the Committee’s final report in 2014, Yale’s faculty voted to have summaries of departments’ grades distributed to other departments every year. The Committee also recommended that the University implement non-mandatory grading guidelines, but the faculty rejected the proposal.

Fair said that the faculty has not attempted to address grade inflation in the years since. Although most Yale faculty members agreed that there was grade inflation in 2017 — when the percentage of A-range grades was approximately six points lower than it is now — fewer said that they viewed it as a problem.

Yale College does not use the A+ letter grade.

Tables from “Grade Report Update: 2022-2023,” November 2023, courtesy of Ray Fair.

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Glück joined Yale’s English faculty in 2004 and was teaching the Iseman Seminar in Poetry at Yale College this semester.

“Although our time working together was short, it was transformative,” Olivia Bell ’25, an English major currently enrolled in Glück’s poetry seminar, told the News. “Louise was a talented and impactful professor and warm, generous person, even inviting our class to her Vermont home. I am deeply grateful to have known her and heartbroken to hear this news.”

Glück, born April 22, 1943, attended George W. Hewlett High School in Hewlett, New York. 

She did not enroll in college as a full-time student and instead enrolled in poetry workshops at Columbia University. She has pointed to Leonie Adams and Stanley Kunitz, two of her professors there, as significant mentors in her development as a poet.

Margaret Spillane, a Yale English professor, credited Glück as an influence on her own work.

“All I can think of is how, as a very young writer, I was enraptured by her presence in literary magazines like ANTAEUS,” Spillane wrote to the News. “Years later, it seemed to me miraculous to find myself a part of the English Department’s Writing Concentration with this woman whom I’d admired for most of my life.”

Glück authored two collections of essays and more than a dozen books of poetry during her lifetime. Her many awards include the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature, the National Humanities Medal, a Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

When Glück received the Nobel Prize in 2020 — making her the first American-born woman to win the award since Toni Morrison in 1993 — the prize committee praised Glück’s “unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal,” the New York Times reported.

Richard Deming, the Director of Creative Writing in Yale’s English Department, wrote that Glück “showed us as a poet and a human being all the aching beauty of which language is capable of revealing.”

“I want to say that there are no words in the face of such a devastating loss,” Deming told the News. “But in fact we do have words, we have her words, the words she gave us in poem after poem, for decades. These poems shaped a sense of how to be in the world, how to be in love with the world and even, when the time came, how to face leaving it.”

A full obituary will appear soon.

Correction, Oct. 13: The article has been updated to reflect that Glück was the first female American-born poet to win the Nobel Prize in literature since Morrison — not the first American since T.S. Eliot.

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The complaint, which could force Harvard and other universities to stop giving admissions preferences to children of alumni and prominent donors, closely follows last week’s landmark Supreme Court decision restricting the use of race-based affirmative action in college admissions. Lawyers for Civil Rights filed the complaint with the U.S. Department of Education on behalf of three Black and Latine advocacy groups, alleging that Harvard’s donor and legacy admissions preferences violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by disproportionately favoring white applicants.

According to recent studies cited in the complaint, nearly 70 percent of Harvard’s donor-related and legacy applicants are white. Rates of admission are nearly seven times higher for donor-related applicants than for non-donor-related applicants and nearly six times higher for legacies than for non-legacies.

“Harvard’s practice of giving a leg-up to the children of wealthy donors and alumni — who have done nothing to deserve it — must end,” said Michael Kippins, a litigation fellow at Lawyers for Civil Rights, in Monday’s announcement. “Particularly in light of last week’s decision from the Supreme Court, it is imperative that the federal government act now to eliminate this unfair barrier that systematically disadvantages students of color.”

At Yale, legacy students make up approximately 12 percent of the class of 2026, 14 percent of the class of 2025 and 8 percent of the class of 2024. Despite widespread student advocacy against legacy preference, including two Yale College Council resolutions in the past two years, opposing the practice, university officials have remained fiercely supportive of legacy admissions. 

Last February, Dean of Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid Jeremiah Quinlan submitted written testimony to the Connecticut General Assembly in support of legacy admissions. He argued that while universities could voluntarily stop employing legacy preference, a state bill making it a requirement would pave the way for “other intrusions on academic freedom.”

“Even without [legacy] preference, students with more resources will still have an advantage in college admissions, just as they have an advantage in securing a good job and in many other aspects of daily life,” Quinlan wrote. “Instead, the state should support schools in their efforts to identify, recruit, and graduate low-income and first-generation students.”

Monday’s complaint explicitly draws on the Supreme Court’s majority opinion from last week’s Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, in which the Court declared race-conscious admissions unconstitutional on the grounds that affirmative action benefits Black and Hispanic applicants at the expense of white and Asian ones.

Part of the Court’s decision in SFFA v. Harvard noted that the use of affirmative action violated a legal principle called the strict scrutiny standard, which dictates that any explicit racial consideration can only be deemed constitutional if all other possible methods of promoting racial diversity have already been implemented. Given that legacy preferences favor a group of applicants that is mostly white, the Court’s concurring opinions noted that both legacy-preferential and race-conscious admissions cannot stand concurrently. 

After the Court’s repeal of affirmative action, the Yale College Council sent an open letter to University President Peter Salovey, Yale College Dean Pericles Lewis and Quinlan urging that they reconsider legacy preference. The YCC said that while the University has come out staunchly against the Court’s decision to bar race-conscious admissions, it must back its words with “decisive action.”

“We are struck by the irony of continued consideration of an arbitrary privilege in the face of new restrictions in ensuring diversity on college campuses,” the Council wrote in its letter. 

University spokesperson Karen Peart referred to a June 29 message from Quinlan and Lewis to the Yale College community, in which the administrators said that they would “closely examine” the University’s admissions process in light of the Supreme Court decision and “consider new programs and initiatives.”

YCC vice president Maya Fonkeu ’25 referred to previous YCC resolutions against legacy preference and to the anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic ideologies that have historically motivated such practices.

“President Salovey said that Yale has an ‘unwavering commitment to creating and sustaining a diverse and inclusive community’ in his response to the SCOTUS decisions,” Fonkeu said, quoting from Salovey’s message to the Yale community after the fall of affirmative action.  “Ending legacy admissions is one way to make good on that promise.”

Fonkeu added that she hopes the University will move to a permanent test-optional admissions model — a change that, over the last three admissions cycles, has been associated with greater racial diversity in the applicant pool. 

In its letter, the YCC also asked the University to implement measures aimed at improving campus diversity and inclusivity beyond the admissions process. This includes committing to meet with campus advocacy groups run by communities of color, increasing funding to existing cultural houses and granting a new cultural center for Middle Eastern and North African students.

“At this critical juncture, it’s even more important that the University engages with the student advocacy groups that have historically championed diversity on campus,” YCC president Julian Suh-Toma ’25 wrote to the News. “Communities of color at Yale have long safeguarded and advocated for equity and diversity, and these tragic unfortunate present circumstances give the University an opportunity to recognize the value of cultural student advocacy spaces by giving them a seat at the table.”

Although SFFA — the group that waged and won a decades-long legal battle against affirmative action — has thus far dedicated all its resources to striking down affirmative action, founder Edward Blum told the News a year and a half ago that SFFA opposes legacy preference in admissions. He said the practice “inhibit[s] and diminish[es] the opportunities of applicants from modest socioeconomic backgrounds.”

Blum declined to provide further comment for this story.

Amherst College, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the California Institute of Technology, Purdue University and Johns Hopkins University have all recently done away with legacy admission preferences.

Correction, July 4: Supreme Court justices argued in concurring opinions that legacy preference and race-conscious admissions cannot concurrently stand. This was not explicitly part of the ruling, as a previous version of this article stated.

Update, July 5: This article has been updated to include a new statement from Yale College Council president Julian Suh-Toma.

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The Yale Foreign Policy Initiative hosted Chen, Yale Law School visiting fellow Jason Hsu and Rear Admiral Hope Yuan in Linsly-Chittenden Hall on Apr. 18 to discuss the future of U.S.-China-Taiwan relations and the economic, military and societal factors at play in ongoing diplomatic efforts.

Chen, a former Vice Minister for Policy of Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense, told the roughly 30 attendees that Taiwan is much more vulnerable to a naval blockade than an amphibious invasion because the western coast of Taiwan does not have suitable beaches for a large-scale naval landing.

“Taiwan is highly vulnerable to a blockade,” Chen said. “We need to cooperate with all the surrounding countries, not only sharing the risk, but also sharing energy support and making sure critical infrastructure is safe.” 

Chen explained that a potential Chinese blockade could cut off much of East Asia from global supply lines that run through the Taiwan Strait. As a result, Chen said, “nobody is a winner” if China blockades the Strait — including China itself.

Chen argued that Taiwan therefore needs to increase its current stockpiles of energy, food, defensive weapons and medical supplies in preparation for this contingency.

“I think it’s important to assess the Taiwan contingency realistically instead of worrying about an amphibious landing… We need to focus 95 percent of our resources on developing Taiwan’s resiliency and energy sustainability, as well as our mentality and will to fight,” Hsu said. 

He added that in the event of a blockade, Taiwan would have to plan for operational support from the United States to support morale and force China to end the blockade. Chen argued that China would “not be able to compete” against the U.S. Navy in a blockade since the Chinese Navy has far fewer experienced naval aviators.   

Chen warned that governments and commercial organizations across the globe would be forced to respond to the potential closing of a strait through which roughly half of the world’s container ships pass. 

According to event organizer Ethan Chiu ’26, the Yale Foreign Policy Initiative invited Chen to share his perspective on China and Taiwan after Hsu arranged for the admiral to work on semiconductor and AI governance projects in New Haven.

Howard Shi ’25, who attended the event, told the News that the talk was an important space to hear informed perspectives on the China-Taiwan relationship. 

“It’s really cool to meet someone like [Chen] in person,” Shi said. “I took the course ‘The Rise of China’ last semester and found a lot of shared perspectives between the class and Admiral Chen’s presentation,” Shi told the News. 

Nearly 24 million people currently live in Taiwan.

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The 12 candidates — the largest cohort running for YCC election in over 20 years — focused on Yale-New Haven relations, the establishment of a Middle Eastern and North African cultural house and advocacy for Yale’s first-generation, low-income community.

Over 100 students filled a lecture hall in Linsly-Chittenden Hall for the event, which was hosted by the YCC in collaboration with the News. Editor-in-chief of the News Lucy Hodgman ’24 and YCC Vice President Iris Li ’24 moderated the event, asking both prepared and audience-solicited questions. Candidates also presented opening and closing statements.

“There hasn’t been this much interest in many years, and I believe that each candidate speaks for and represents ideas that will resonate across different parts of campus,” Li said. “It struck me how the mere candidacy of some people prompted more conversation around and inclusion of policy ideas not highlighted in previous races.”

The candidate tickets are Sanya Abbasey ’25 and Craig Birckhead-Morton ’24, Nyche Andrew ’25 and Madeline Gupta ’25, Austin Montini ’25 and Anouk Schembri ’24, Julian Suh-Toma ’25 and Maya Fonkeu ’25, and Ezana Tedla ’25 and Kyle Hovannesian ’25. Daven Yadav ’25 is running alone for president on a solo ticket. Olivia Lombardo ’25 is running uncontested for Events Director.

The debate often centered on uplifting specific identity-based groups on campus, with the most frequently discussed groups being the FGLI, MENA and Indigenous student communities, as well as student athletes.

Much of this discussion arose from the candidates’ individual identities, experiences and communities, especially when it came to Andrew and Gupta, who are running on Yale’s first all-Indigenous ticket.

“My running mate and I belong to one of the most underrepresented groups in Yale College as Indigenous women,” Andrew said during the debate. “As your President I will ensure that no one in the student body feels inadequately represented.”

Many of the other tickets also made commitments to support the Indigenous community at Yale, although one was met with criticism from Gupta. After Birckhead-Morton voiced his support for the efforts of Indigenous organizers on campus, Gupta asked how he could claim to support decolonization while running against the first Indigenous vice president candidate in Yale’s history.

“I can’t do anything about that,” Birckhead-Morton, who is Black, responded. “My ancestors did not make a choice. I respect your candidacy a lot, and I support these issues.” 

In addition to advocating for Indigenous communities, several candidates highlighted their commitment to FGLI advocacy in the context of a summer storage policy change announced on Mar. 8 by Dean of Student Affairs Melanie Boyd. The change revoked the ability for students to store their belongings in their residential college over the summer. 

Boyd recently announced a stipend for summer storage for students on full financial aid. 

But Hovannesian lamented the University’s lack of support for students that receive significant financial aid but do not have a zero parent share, promising to work with Tedla to remedy this disparity if elected.

“It’s not just the summer storage thing, but stuff tends to be prioritized for people who receive full financial aid,” Hovannesian said. “But I think it’s kind of useless if you have to pay just one dollar to Yale but do not receive some support. I think we need to continue to pressure the administration and also use YCC resources.”

The candidates also discussed ongoing efforts to establish a cultural house for MENA students — a point that MENA students on campus have prioritized in recent years. Abbasey and Birckhead-Morton in particular prioritized ensuring that MENA students get the support they need on campus.

“I don’t doubt the sincerity of all the candidates on the stage but I am a little wary of the popularization of a MENA cultural center,” Abbasey said. “I just want to say that this is something that actually matters to a lot of students on campus and it requires work, and I have put in the work in past years to help them.”

Student identities, however, were not the only topic of conversation at the debate. Yale-New Haven relations also arose frequently during the discussion. Many candidates promised to advocate for Yale to do more to contribute to the city of New Haven and its surrounding communities. 

“Yale rests in an ivory tower and has a real responsibility to do the healing,” Suh-Toma said. “We need to actually invest in our relationship with the community in New Haven.”

While many tickets positioned themselves as experienced and dedicated YCC policymakers, others emphasized their experience as outsiders ready to bring a fresh perspective to a bureaucratic organization. 

Montini and Schembri — a student-athlete and transfer student, respectively — stressed the perspective they brought as “normal students,” not seasoned YCC representatives, as a benefit to their ability to enact meaningful change in the organization. 

“At the end of the day, if you’re happy with the current way the YCC has been conducting, then it should be an easy choice to vote for any of these people,” Montini said. “But if you’re not, I think you should give us a chance at least to show what we can do.”

Their ticket is not the only unconventional one this election season: Yadav decided to enter the race without a running mate. If he is elected as president, his vice president will come from a different ticket.

“I did reach out to many candidates I thought would be killer in this position,” Yadav said.
“All the vice presidents over there are very passionate and very smart, capable people, and I would love to collaborate with any of them. Honestly, if we don’t even agree on certain issues, we can easily find common ground.”

In her statements during the debate, Lombardo touched on many of the same issues as the presidential and vice presidential candidates, although through the lens of events planning on campus. She believes that the Events Coordinator has the ability to truly engage with underrepresented groups across campus as well as the New Haven community.

“Unfortunately, Yale College Council events lack a lot of institutional memory and history,” Lombardo said. “We need to make sure that events are structured around what the students’ needs and wants are rather than events that have been taken over the years. We also have to lean into what works and make things more financially accessible.”

The wide breadth of students running for election this year excites Li, and makes her hopeful for the effectiveness of YCC next year. Li told the News that there “hasn’t been this much interest in many years” and that the candidates represent many views from many different parts of campus.

Results of the election will be released by 9 p.m. on Saturday, Apr. 15.

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Yale College Democrats hosted Carney, who became the longest-serving press secretary of the 21st century, for the speaker event, which was moderated by David Acquaah-Mensah ’25. At the talk, students asked about Carney’s proudest and most challenging moments in the White House, his work as an Amazon executive and his reporting days during a question-and-answer session that followed.

Dems president Josh Guo ’24 said that his organization invited Carney to speak because of how his unique experiences in political journalism have shaped his perspectives on public policy.

“Mr. Carney is someone who had an inner look on President Obama’s presidency and holds an understanding on how important policy, such as the Affordable Care Act, is created and presented to the public,” Guo told the News. “We hope that many more members of the Yale community are inspired to enter similar careers in political journalism and communications.”

As an undergraduate at Yale, Carney majored in Russian and Eastern European studies. This interest in the Soviet Union spurred his choice of major once he reached college. Serendipity struck for Carney when Gorbachev came to power, as it allowed him to focus his senior thesis not only on historical facts of the post-Stalin Soviet Union but also on what was happening in the region in real-time. Suddenly, Carney explained, his studies at Yale became “the most interesting story in the world.” 

Carney worked as an intern with Time Magazine during the summer before his senior year at Yale. After college, Carney landed a job as a reporter with the Miami Herald and later became Time’s Miami Bureau Chief. While he enjoyed covering stories in Miami, Carney said he wanted to report in Moscow. In 1990, Carney got his wish when Time sent him to Moscow as a correspondent. He stayed there for three years covering the Soviet Union’s fall. 

“So I was very focused as I left [Yale], on getting to Moscow somehow as a reporter, it took me a little while but not that long,” he joked. 

Students who attended the event enjoyed hearing about Carney’s journey from Yale to reporting and, eventually, to the White House under the Obama administration.

“Overall, I liked the event,” Prince Osaji ’26 told the News. “I thought it was cool to hear about [Carney’s] journey from being a reporter to working inside the White House, and I thought the shift in his perception of the government during this transition was interesting. He was also very relatable, so that was enjoyable too.”

Other attendees, including RJ Kelly ’25, said they enjoyed hearing from Carney because his perspective on politics and journalism is grounded in actual experience in a presidential administration.  

With his shift from sitting in front of the podium to speaking behind it, Carney said he initially had “a lot to learn” about how White House communications teams operate. For example, Carney said he quickly realized that lining up more interviews is not always best. Instead, Carney said he grew careful about how to use interviews as a resource, understanding that each interaction with the press can be “high-risk, high-reward” for an elected official. 

In other ways, Carney said the transition was easier, as, for example, he became a bit less restricted in his ability to express political opinions. 

“I believe deeply in the President’s agenda and the goodness of Barack Obama and Joe Biden and agree with what they believe in,” Carney said. “And suddenly I could say so and not only say it but fight for it and advocate for it. That was incredibly liberating.”

One of the hardest moments on the job, Carney said, was when he had to field questions from the press about the White House’s botched management of their Obamacare website healthcare.gov, which he described as a “slow-moving trainwreck.” On the last day of enrollment, people attempting to use the website were faced with delays, outages and glitches. 

Looking at the current Biden White House, Carney celebrated the work of former Press Secretary Jen Psaki and current Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. He said he feels Biden’s communications team has done well so far. 

“I think Karine does a great job of keeping her poise, getting the information out and handling the tough questions without making herself the story,” he reflected. “You don’t want to be caricatured on Saturday Night Live. It means something has gone wrong.”

During the event’s question-and-answer portion, one attendee asked about Carney’s work as Amazon’s senior vice president of global corporate affairs. Given the criticism Amazon has received from elected officials over labor, corporate tax and environmental issues, the student asked if Carney’s Amazon role aligned with his values and previous work under Biden and Obama. 

In response, Carney highlighted Amazon’s move to raise their minimum wage to $15 an hour in 2018 among other more recent bumps in pay for some workers. 

“I’m not saying Amazon is perfect by any means, but I did feel comfortable there [morally], because of what we’re doing on wages,” Carney said. 

Carney served as White House Press Secretary from 2011 to 2014.

Sophie Wang contributed reporting. 

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Speaking at Evans Hall on April 3, Yellen told a packed auditorium about being one the few women studying economics in the late 1960s at Yale. She also discussed her trailblazing career as the first woman to serve not only as Secretary of the Treasury but also as the Chair of the Federal Reserve and the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors. 

The Tobin Center invited Yellen to campus for her talk, which was moderated by University President Peter Salovey. During the event, Yellen explained that recent Yale research has informed the government’s decision making related to economic policy. The Tobin Center, which is located at 87 Trumbull street, opened its doors in January, and the center is now celebrating the end of its inaugural period. 

“I’m very happy to be here to celebrate the opening of the Tobin Center and to see the Center have a wonderful new building that really integrates the economics department as well,” Yellen said. “I found myself using the [Center’s] resources, even in recent days, myself. It’s a tremendous asset to the world’s financial stability community.”

Tobin, who served as a member of President John F. Kennedy’s Council of Economic Advisors, won the 1981 Nobel Prize for Economics for his work on financial markets “and their relations to expenditure decisions, employment, production and prices.”

Yellen shared with attendees that she decided to come to Yale for her graduate studies because Tobin visited her undergraduate alma mater, Brown University, to speak on his research on lifecycle savings and balanced growth. 

“I thought that this was the work I wanted to do so I came to Yale,” Yellen said. “The way he presented the data was beautiful … Tobin was a brilliant teacher, but he was also an inspiration because he had an incredibly strong sense of social justice.” 

Yellen told attendees that Tobin’s work centered on ensuring that the field of economics focused on influencing policy and helping people rather than intricate mathematics. 

According to Yellen, Tobin’s economic policy followed in the footsteps of John Maynard Keynes, whose economic theory was used widely by policymakers developing economic solutions to the Great Depression.

“He was worried about society’s well being, but also the well being of future generations and what we owe our children,” Yellen said. “Here, at Yale he was also responsible for developing an endowment policy where the really critical question was how much money can we use today versus stashing the money away to make sure future generations are taken care of. 

While Yellen was a student at Yale, Tobin was her dissertation advisor and she served as his TA. Her dissertation at Yale was titled “Employment, Output and Capital Accumulation in an Open Economy: A Disequilibrium Approach.”

Her notes for his lectures allegedly circulated among generations of Yale graduate students and became known as the “Yellen Notes.” 

“In his class, he wanted students to be able to concentrate on understanding what the lecture was about and responding to questions and not spending all of their time taking notes,” Yellen told attendees. “So I would take notes and Xerox them and hand them out to students and this became kind of an underground classic reader for years after I graduated where people would tell me that they had studied for his class from my notes.”

Yellen said that, when she started as a graduate student at Yale in 1961, she was one of just three female students in the economics program. While economics is more accepting of women today, Yellen said, there is a lot of progress left to be made. Even today, women make up only around one third of economics PhD graduates in the nation.

Near the end of the event, Yellen discussed the Biden administration’s economic philosophy of Modern Supply-Side Economics.

Yellen told attendees that modern supply-side economics aims “to boost economic growth by increasing labor supply, raising productivity, and reducing inequality and environmental damage.” The federal government’s economic agenda, which is rooted in these principles, has won bipartisan support for its role in driving recent legislative victories, like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and CHIPS Act. 

One attendee, Ryan Wang ’26, told the News that he found Yellen’s rationale informative and convincing. 

“I came into the talk not knowing what ‘modern supply-side economics’ meant, but Yellen did a nice job explaining policies and recent legislation in support of the new agenda,” Wang said. “Based on what she talked about — focusing not only on private capital but also on human capital, education, infrastructure, climate — it seems like a very effective policy for achieving growth and also decreasing inequality.” 

A recent Yale College graduate, Charles Simonds ’22 told the News that while he enjoyed the event and would have felt inspired if he “were a first-year thinking about studying economics,” he wished more of the discussion centered around actual economic policy.

 Simonds added that, in any case, “Yale is pretty cool for being able to get her in a room.”

Janet Yellen was confirmed by the United States Senate as Treasury Secretary on January 25, 2021.

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On Apr. 3, President Peter Salovey will host a discussion with Yellen on modern supply side economics at the School of Management at 2 p.m. Salovey and Yellen will discuss the federal government’s work to “increase labor supply, raise productivity, reduce inequality and environmental damage” in the context of the research of the Tobin Center which is sponsoring the event. 

 “By convening leaders such as Secretary Yellen and working collaboratively with faculty members across the university,” Salovey said, “the Tobin Center is helping to set the national agenda and informing domestic public policy through evidence-based research.”

Yellen graduated from Yale with a degree in Economics in 1971. Prior to serving as Treasury Secretary, Yellen served as President Bill Clinton’s Chair of Economic Advisor, and as the Chair of the Federal Reserve under President Barack Obama. 

Modern supply-side economics, in Yellen’s words, aims “to boost economic growth by increasing labor supply, raising productivity, and reducing inequality and environmental damage.” The federal government’s economic agenda, which is rooted in modern supply-side principles, has won bipartisan support for its role in driving recent legislative victories, like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and CHIPS Act. 

Yellen’s work came into the national spotlight earlier this month when regulators closed the Silicon Valley Bank and the Signature Bank in the second and third largest bank failures in U.S. history. 

Yellen promised that those responsible for the collapse would “be held fully accountable.” 

In the immediate aftermath of the bank blowup, Yellen and top economic advisor Lael Brainard worked with regulators to provide a deposit guarantee for households and businesses impacted by the failures. No taxpayer money has been used to finance the initiative.

The event will situate the economic discussion in the context of research and policy work at the Tobin Center, which serves as a platform for data-driven research to inform national, non-partisan policy work.

The Tobin Center was established in 2018 and is the third research center within the Economics Department, alongside the Economic Growth Center and the Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Tobin Center was at the forefront of the economic research that informed state and federal policies aimed at curbing the recession.

According to Rebecca Toseland, senior lecturer in economics and Tobin Director of Research Support, the Tobin Center has also worked to increase diversity in economic research inspired by Yellen. 

“Inspired by people like Secretary Yellen who led the way, a central and founding element of the Tobin Center’s mission is to increase the diversity of researchers and voices in the economics field,” Toseland told the News. “Our Predoc Program is the embodiment of this mission at Tobin. Across four years of recruitment, the program has onboarded over 100 predocs who have supported 60+ faculty members.”

During the event, Yellen will also call on academic economists and students to “deploy their talents” on issues related to modern supply side economics

Tickets for the event will go on sale this weekend, with many students looking forward to picking one up. 

“I’m excited for Secretary Yellen’s visit,” Alex Bavalsky ’25 told the News. “I hope she will address the applications of her supply side policy to the ongoing challenges of the US economy, including high inflation and the rapidly growing national debt.”

Yellen was confirmed by the Senate on Jan. 26, 2022. 

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