Yale University
Private university in New Haven, Connecticut / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Yale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in 1701, Yale is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, and one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution.[7]
Latin: Universitas Yalensis | |
Former names | Collegiate School (1701–1718) Yale College (1718–1887) |
---|---|
Motto | Lux et veritas (Latin) אורים ותמים (Hebrew) |
Motto in English | "Light and truth" |
Type | Private research university |
Established | October 9, 1701; 322 years ago (1701-10-09) |
Accreditation | NECHE |
Academic affiliations | |
Endowment | $40.7 billion (2023)[1] |
President | Peter Salovey[2] |
Provost | Scott Strobel[3] |
Academic staff | 5,259 (Fall 2022)[4] |
Students | 14,806 (Fall 2022)[5] |
Undergraduates | 6,590 (Fall 2022)[5] |
Postgraduates | 5,344 (Fall 2022)[5] |
Location | , , United States 41°18′59″N 72°55′20″W |
Campus | Midsize city, 1,015 acres (411 ha) |
Newspaper | Yale Daily News |
Colors | Yale blue[6] |
Nickname | Bulldogs |
Sporting affiliations | |
Mascot | Handsome Dan |
Website | yale |
Yale was established as the Collegiate School in 1701 by Congregationalist clergy of the Connecticut Colony. Originally restricted to instructing ministers in theology and sacred languages, the school's curriculum expanded, incorporating humanities and sciences by the time of the American Revolution. In the 19th century, the college expanded into graduate and professional instruction, awarding the first PhD in the United States in 1861 and organizing as a university in 1887. Yale's faculty and student populations grew rapidly after 1890 due to the expansion of the physical campus and its scientific research programs.
Yale is organized into fourteen constituent schools, including the original undergraduate college, the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and Yale Law School.[8] While the university is governed by the Yale Corporation, each school's faculty oversees its curriculum and degree programs. In addition to a central campus in downtown New Haven, the university owns athletic facilities in western New Haven, a campus in West Haven, and forests and nature preserves throughout New England. As of 2021[update], the university's endowment was valued at $42.3 billion, the third largest of any educational institution.[1] The Yale University Library, serving all constituent schools, holds more than 15 million volumes and is the third-largest academic library in the United States.[9][10] Student athletes compete in intercollegiate sports as the Yale Bulldogs in the NCAA Division I Ivy League conference.
As of October 2020[update], 65 Nobel laureates, five Fields medalists, four Abel Prize laureates, and three Turing Award winners have been affiliated with Yale University. In addition, Yale has graduated many notable alumni, including five U.S. presidents, 10 Founding Fathers, 19 U.S. Supreme Court Justices, 31 living billionaires,[11] 54 college founders and presidents, many heads of state, cabinet members and governors. Hundreds of members of Congress and many U.S. diplomats, 78 MacArthur Fellows, 263 Rhodes Scholars, 123 Marshall Scholars, 81 Gates Cambridge Scholars, 102 Guggenheim Fellows and nine Mitchell Scholars have been affiliated with the university. Yale's current faculty include 67 members of the National Academy of Sciences,[12] 55 members of the National Academy of Medicine,[13] 8 members of the National Academy of Engineering,[14] and 187 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[15]
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Early history of Yale College
Origins
Yale traces its beginnings to "An Act for Liberty to Erect a Collegiate School", a would-be charter passed during a meeting in New Haven by the General Court of the Colony of Connecticut on October 9, 1701. The Act was an effort to create an institution to train ministers and lay leadership for Connecticut. Soon after, a group of ten Congregational ministers, Samuel Andrew, Thomas Buckingham, Israel Chauncy, Samuel Mather (nephew of Increase Mather), Rev. James Noyes II (son of James Noyes), James Pierpont, Abraham Pierson, Noadiah Russell, Joseph Webb, and Timothy Woodbridge, all alumni of Harvard, met in the study of Reverend Samuel Russell, located in Branford, Connecticut, to donate their books to form the school's library.[16] The group, led by James Pierpont, is now known as "The Founders".[17]
Known from its origin as the "Collegiate School", the institution opened in the home of its first rector, Abraham Pierson, who is today considered the first president of Yale. Pierson lived in Killingworth (now Clinton). The school moved to Saybrook in 1703 when the first treasurer of Yale, Nathaniel Lynde, donated land and a building. In 1716, it moved to New Haven, Connecticut.
Meanwhile, there was a rift forming at Harvard between its sixth president, Increase Mather, and the rest of the Harvard clergy, whom Mather viewed as increasingly liberal, ecclesiastically lax, and overly broad in Church polity. The feud caused the Mathers to champion the success of the Collegiate School in the hope that it would maintain the Puritan religious orthodoxy in a way that Harvard had not.[18] Rev. Jason Haven, the minister at the First Church and Parish in Dedham, Massachusetts, had been considered for the presidency on account of his orthodox theology and for "Neatness dignity and purity of Style [which] surpass those of all that have been mentioned", but was passed over due to his "very Valetudinary and infirm State of Health".[19]
Naming and development
In 1718, at the behest of either Rector Samuel Andrew or the colony's Governor Gurdon Saltonstall, Cotton Mather contacted the successful Boston-born businessman Elihu Yale to ask him for financial help in constructing a new building for the college. Through the persuasion of Jeremiah Dummer, Yale, who had made a fortune in Madras while working for the East India Company as the first president of Fort St. George (largely through secret contracts with Madras merchants that were illegal under company policy),[20] donated nine bales of goods, which were sold for more than £560, a substantial sum of money at the time. Cotton Mather suggested that the school change its name to "Yale College".[21] The Welsh name Yale is the Anglicized spelling of the Iâl, which the family estate at Plas yn Iâl, near the village of Llandegla, Wales, was called.
Meanwhile, a Harvard graduate working in England convinced some 180 prominent intellectuals to donate books to Yale. The 1714 shipment of 500 books represented the best of modern English literature, science, philosophy and theology at the time.[22] It had a profound effect on intellectuals at Yale. Undergraduate Jonathan Edwards discovered John Locke's works and developed his original theology known as the "new divinity". In 1722 the rector and six of his friends, who had a study group to discuss the new ideas, announced that they had given up Calvinism, become Arminians, and joined the Church of England. They were ordained in England and returned to the colonies as missionaries for the Anglican faith. Thomas Clapp became president in 1745, and while he attempted to return the college to Calvinist orthodoxy, he did not close the library. Other students found Deist books in the library.[23]
Curriculum
Yale College undergraduates follow a liberal arts curriculum with departmental majors and is organized into a social system of residential colleges.
Yale was swept up by the great intellectual movements of the period—the Great Awakening and the Enlightenment—due to the religious and scientific interests of presidents Thomas Clap and Ezra Stiles. They were both instrumental in developing the scientific curriculum at Yale while dealing with wars, student tumults, graffiti, "irrelevance" of curricula, desperate need for endowment and disagreements with the Connecticut legislature.[24][25][page needed]
Serious American students of theology and divinity, particularly in New England, regarded Hebrew as a classical language, along with Greek and Latin, and essential for the study of the Old Testament in the original words. The Reverend Ezra Stiles, president of the college from 1778 to 1795, brought with him his interest in the Hebrew language as a vehicle for studying ancient Biblical texts in their original language (as was common in other schools), requiring all freshmen to study Hebrew (in contrast to Harvard, where only upperclassmen were required to study the language) and is responsible for the Hebrew phrase אורים ותמים (Urim and Thummim) on the Yale seal. A 1746 graduate of Yale, Stiles came to the college with experience in education, having played an integral role in the founding of Brown University, in addition to having been a minister.[26] Stiles' greatest challenge occurred in July 1779 when British forces occupied New Haven and threatened to raze the college. However, Yale graduate Edmund Fanning, secretary to the British general in command of the occupation, intervened and the college was saved. In 1803, Fanning was granted an honorary degree LL.D. for his efforts.[27]
Students
As the only college in Connecticut from 1701 to 1823, Yale educated the sons of the elite.[28] Punishable offenses for students included cardplaying, tavern-going, destruction of college property, and acts of disobedience to college authorities. During this period, Harvard was distinctive for the stability and maturity of its tutor corps, while Yale had youth and zeal on its side.[29]
The emphasis on classics gave rise to a number of private student societies, open only by invitation, which arose primarily as forums for discussions of modern scholarship, literature and politics. The first such organizations were debating societies: Crotonia in 1738, Linonia in 1753 and Brothers in Unity in 1768. Linonia and Brothers in Unity continue to exist today with commemorations to them can be found with names given to campus structures, like Brothers in Unity Courtyard in Branford College.
19th century
The Yale Report of 1828 was a dogmatic defense of the Latin and Greek curriculum against critics who wanted more courses in modern languages, mathematics, and science. Unlike higher education in Europe, there was no national curriculum for colleges and universities in the United States. In the competition for students and financial support, college leaders strove to keep current with demands for innovation. At the same time, they realized that a significant portion of their students and prospective students demanded a classical background. The Yale report meant the classics would not be abandoned. During this period, all institutions experimented with changes in the curriculum, often resulting in a dual-track curriculum. In the decentralized environment of higher education in the United States, balancing change with tradition was a common challenge because it was difficult for an institution to be completely modern or completely classical.[30][31] A group of professors at Yale and New Haven Congregationalist ministers articulated a conservative response to the changes brought about by the Victorian culture. They concentrated on developing a person possessed of religious values strong enough to sufficiently resist temptations from within, yet flexible enough to adjust to the 'isms' (professionalism, materialism, individualism, and consumerism) tempting him from without.[32][page needed] William Graham Sumner, professor from 1872 to 1909, taught in the emerging disciplines of economics and sociology to overflowing classrooms of students. Sumner bested President Noah Porter, who disliked the social sciences and wanted Yale to lock into its traditions of classical education. Porter objected to Sumner's use of a textbook by Herbert Spencer that espoused agnostic materialism because it might harm students.[33]
Until 1887, the legal name of the university was "The President and Fellows of Yale College, in New Haven." In 1887, under an act passed by the Connecticut General Assembly, Yale was renamed to the present "Yale University".[34]
Sports and debate
The Revolutionary War soldier Nathan Hale (Yale 1773) was the archetype of the Yale ideal in the early 19th century: a manly yet aristocratic scholar, equally well-versed in knowledge and sports, and a patriot who "regretted" that he "had but one life to lose" for his country. Western painter Frederic Remington (Yale 1900) was an artist whose heroes gloried in the combat and tests of strength in the Wild West. The fictional, turn-of-the-20th-century Yale man Frank Merriwell embodied this same heroic ideal without racial prejudice, and his fictional successor Dink Stover in the novel Stover at Yale (1912) questioned the business mentality that had become prevalent at the school. Increasingly the students turned to athletic stars as their heroes, especially since winning the big game became the goal of the student body, the alumni, and the team itself.[35]
Along with Harvard and Princeton, Yale students rejected British concepts about 'amateurism' in sports and constructed athletic programs that were uniquely American, such as football.[36] The Harvard–Yale football rivalry began in 1875. Between 1892, when Harvard and Yale met in one of the first intercollegiate debates,[37] and in 1909 (the year of the first Triangular Debate of Harvard, Yale and Princeton) the rhetoric, symbolism, and metaphors used in athletics were used to frame these early debates. Debates were covered on front pages of college newspapers and emphasized in yearbooks, and team members even received the equivalent of athletic letters for their jackets. There were also rallies to send off the debating teams to matches, but the debates never attained the broad appeal that athletics enjoyed. One reason may be that debates do not have a clear winner, as is the case in sports, and that scoring is subjective. In addition, with late 19th-century concerns about the impact of modern life on the human body, athletics offered hope that neither the individual nor the society was coming apart.[38]
In 1909–10, football faced a crisis resulting from the failure of the previous reforms of 1905–06, which sought to solve the problem of serious injuries. There was a mood of alarm and mistrust, and, while the crisis was developing, the presidents of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton developed a project to reform the sport and forestall possible radical changes forced by government upon the sport. Presidents Arthur Hadley of Yale, A. Lawrence Lowell of Harvard, and Woodrow Wilson of Princeton worked to develop moderate reforms to reduce injuries. Their attempts, however, were reduced by rebellion against the rules committee and the formation of the Intercollegiate Athletic Association. While the big three had attempted to operate independently of the majority, the changes pushed did reduce injuries.[39]
Expansion
Starting with the addition of the Yale School of Medicine in 1810, the college expanded gradually from then on, establishing the Yale Divinity School in 1822, Yale Law School in 1822, the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 1847, the now-defunct Sheffield Scientific School in 1847,[lower-alpha 1] and the Yale School of Fine Arts in 1869. In 1887, under the presidency of Timothy Dwight V, Yale College was renamed to Yale University, and the former name was subsequently applied only to the undergraduate college. The university would continue to expand greatly into the 20th and 21st century, adding the Yale School of Music in 1894, the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies in 1900, the Yale School of Public Health in 1915, the Yale School of Architecture in 1916, the Yale School of Nursing 1923, the Yale School of Drama in 1955, the Yale School of Management in 1976, and the Jackson School of Global Affairs which is planned to open in 2022.[40] The Sheffield Scientific School would also reorganize its relationship with the university to teach only undergraduate courses.
Expansion caused controversy about Yale's new roles. Noah Porter, a moral philosopher, was president from 1871 to 1886. During an age of tremendous expansion in higher education, Porter resisted the rise of the new research university, claiming that an eager embrace of its ideals would corrupt undergraduate education. Many of Porter's contemporaries criticized his administration, and historians since have disparaged his leadership.[citation needed] Historian George Levesque argues Porter was not a simple-minded reactionary, uncritically committed to tradition, but a principled and selective conservative.[41][page needed] Levesque continues, saying he did not endorse everything old or reject everything new; rather, he sought to apply long-established ethical and pedagogical principles to a rapidly changing culture. Levesque concludes, noting he may have misunderstood some of the challenges of his time, but he correctly anticipated the enduring tensions that have accompanied the emergence and growth of the modern university.
20th century
Medicine
Milton Winternitz led the Yale School of Medicine as its dean from 1920 to 1935. Dedicated to the new scientific medicine established in Germany, he was equally fervent about "social medicine" and the study of humans in their culture and environment. He established the "Yale System" of teaching, with few lectures and fewer exams, and strengthened the full-time faculty system; he also created the graduate-level Yale School of Nursing and the psychiatry department and built numerous new buildings. Progress toward his plans for an Institute of Human Relations, envisioned as a refuge where social scientists would collaborate with biological scientists in a holistic study of humankind, lasted for only a few years before the opposition of resentful antisemitic colleagues drove him to resign.[42]
Faculty
Before World War II, most elite university faculties counted among their numbers few, if any, Jews, blacks, women, or other minorities; Yale was no exception. By 1980, this condition had been altered dramatically, as numerous members of those groups held faculty positions.[43] Almost all members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences—and some members of other faculties—teach undergraduate courses, more than 2,000 of which are offered annually.[44]
Women
In 1793, Lucinda Foote passed the entrance exams for Yale College, but was rejected by the president on the basis of her gender.[45] Women studied at Yale University as early as 1892, in graduate-level programs at the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.[46] The first seven women to earn PhDs at Yale received their degrees in 1894: Elizabeth Deering Hanscom, Cornelia H. B. Rogers, Sara Bulkley Rogers, Margaretta Palmer, Mary Augusta Scott, Laura Johnson Wylie, and Charlotte Fitch Roberts. There is a portrait of these seven women in Sterling Memorial Library, painted by Brenda Zlamany.[47]
In 1966, Yale began discussions with its sister school Vassar College about merging to foster coeducation at the undergraduate level. Vassar, then all-female and part of the Seven Sisters—elite higher education schools that historically served as sister institutions to the Ivy League when most Ivy League institutions still only admitted men—tentatively accepted, but then declined the invitation. Both schools introduced coeducation independently in 1969.[48] Amy Solomon was the first woman to register as a Yale undergraduate;[49] she was also the first woman at Yale to join an undergraduate society, St. Anthony Hall. The undergraduate class of 1973 was the first class to have women starting from freshman year;[50] at the time, all undergraduate women were housed in Vanderbilt Hall at the south end of Old Campus.[51]
A decade into co-education, student assault and harassment by faculty became the impetus for the trailblazing lawsuit Alexander v. Yale. In the late 1970s, a group of students and one faculty member sued Yale for its failure to curtail campus sexual harassment, especially by male faculty. The case was partly built from a 1977 report authored by plaintiff Ann Olivarius, now a feminist attorney known for fighting sexual harassment, "A report to the Yale Corporation from the Yale Undergraduate Women's Caucus."[52] This case was the first to use Title IX to argue and establish that the sexual harassment of female students can be considered illegal sex discrimination. The plaintiffs in the case were Olivarius, Ronni Alexander (now a professor at Kobe University, Japan), Margery Reifler (works in the Los Angeles film industry), Pamela Price[53] (district attorney in Alameda County, California), and Lisa E. Stone (works at the Anti-Defamation League). They were joined by Yale classics professor John "Jack" J. Winkler, who died in 1990. The lawsuit, brought partly by Catharine MacKinnon, alleged rape, fondling, and offers of higher grades for sex by several Yale faculty, including Keith Brion, professor of flute and director of bands, political science professor Raymond Duvall[54] (now at the University of Minnesota), English professor Michael Cooke, and the coach of the field hockey team, Richard Kentwell. While unsuccessful in the courts, the legal reasoning behind the case changed the landscape of sex discrimination law and resulted in the establishment of Yale's Grievance Board and the Yale Women's Center.[55] In March 2011 a Title IX complaint was filed against Yale by students and recent graduates, including editors of Yale's feminist magazine Broad Recognition, alleging that the university had a hostile sexual climate.[56] In response, the university formed a Title IX steering committee to address complaints of sexual misconduct.[57] Afterwards, universities and colleges throughout the US also established sexual harassment grievance procedures.
Class
Yale instituted policies in the early 20th century designed to maintain the proportion of white Protestants from notable families in the student body (see numerus clausus) and eliminated such preferences, beginning with the class of 1970.[58]
21st century
In 2006, Yale and Peking University (PKU) established a Joint Undergraduate Program in Beijing, an exchange program allowing Yale students to spend a semester living and studying with PKU honor students.[59] In July 2012, the Yale University-PKU Program ended due to weak participation.[59]
In 2007 outgoing Yale President Rick Levin characterized Yale's institutional priorities: "First, among the nation's finest research universities, Yale is distinctively committed to excellence in undergraduate education. Second, in our graduate and professional schools, as well as in Yale College, we are committed to the education of leaders."[60]
In 2009, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair picked Yale as one location – the others being Britain's Durham University and Universiti Teknologi Mara – for the Tony Blair Faith Foundation's United States Faith and Globalization Initiative.[61] As of 2009, former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo is the director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization and teaches an undergraduate seminar, "Debating Globalization".[62] As of 2009, former presidential candidate and DNC chair Howard Dean teaches a residential college seminar, "Understanding Politics and Politicians".[63] Also in 2009, an alliance was formed among Yale, University College London, and both schools' affiliated hospital complexes to conduct research focused on the direct improvement of patient care—a growing field known as translational medicine. President Richard Levin noted that Yale has hundreds of other partnerships across the world, but "no existing collaboration matches the scale of the new partnership with UCL".[64]
In August 2013, a new partnership with the National University of Singapore led to the opening of Yale-NUS College in Singapore, a joint effort to create a new liberal arts college in Asia featuring a curriculum including both Western and Asian traditions.[65]
In 2017, having been suggested for decades,[66] Yale University renamed Calhoun College, named for slave owner, anti-abolitionist, and white supremacist Vice President John C. Calhoun (it is now Hopper College, after Grace Hopper).[67][68]
In 2020, in the wake of protests around the world focused on racial relations and criminal justice reform, the #CancelYale tag was used on social media to demand that Elihu Yale's name be removed from Yale University. Most support for the change stemmed from politically conservative pundits, such as Mike Cernovich and Ann Coulter, satirizing perceived excesses of online cancel culture.[69] Yale was president of Fort St George in Madras, a fort of the East India Company in India, which was one of the biggest corporations in the world at the time. The company traded textiles, goods, diamonds, cotton, spices, among others, and was involved in the slave trade in India, with a private army of 260,000 soldiers, twice the size of Britain's army.[70] His singularly large donation of paintings and books to the college led some critics to argue that Yale relied on money related to the slave trade for its first scholarships and endowments.[71][72][73][74]
In August 2020, the US Justice Department sued Yale for alleged discrimination against Asian and white candidates on the basis of their race through affirmative action admission policies.[75] In early February 2021, under the new Biden administration, the Justice Department withdrew the lawsuit. The group, Students for Fair Admissions, later won a similar lawsuit against Harvard alleging the same issue.[76]
Yale alumni in politics
The Boston Globe wrote in 2002 that "if there's one school that can lay claim to educating the nation's top national leaders over the past three decades, it's Yale".[77] Yale alumni were represented on the Democratic or Republican ticket in every U.S. presidential election between 1972 and 2004.[78] Yale-educated presidents since the end of the Vietnam War include Gerald Ford, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, and major-party nominees during this period include Hillary Clinton (2016), John Kerry (2004), Joseph Lieberman (vice president, 2000), and Sargent Shriver (vice president, 1972). Other Yale alumni who have made serious bids for the presidency during this period include Amy Klobuchar (2020), Tom Steyer (2020), Ben Carson (2016), Howard Dean (2004), Gary Hart (1984 and 1988), Paul Tsongas (1992), Pat Robertson (1988) and Jerry Brown (1976, 1980, 1992).
Several explanations have been offered for Yale's representation in national elections since the end of the Vietnam War. Various sources note the spirit of campus activism that has existed at Yale since the 1960s, and the intellectual influence of Reverend William Sloane Coffin on many of the future candidates.[79] Yale President Richard Levin attributes the run to Yale's focus on creating "a laboratory for future leaders", an institutional priority that began during the tenure of Yale Presidents Alfred Whitney Griswold and Kingman Brewster.[79] Richard H. Brodhead, former dean of Yale College and now president of Duke University, stated: "We do give very significant attention to orientation to the community in our admissions, and there is a very strong tradition of volunteerism at Yale."[77] Yale historian Gaddis Smith notes "an ethos of organized activity" at Yale during the 20th century that led John Kerry to lead the Yale Political Union's Liberal Party, George Pataki the Conservative Party, and Joseph Lieberman to manage the Yale Daily News.[80] Camille Paglia points to a history of networking and elitism: "It has to do with a web of friendships and affiliations built up in school."[81] CNN suggests that George W. Bush benefited from preferential admissions policies for the "son and grandson of alumni", and for a "member of a politically influential family".[82] New York Times correspondent Elisabeth Bumiller and The Atlantic Monthly correspondent James Fallows credit the culture of community and cooperation that exists between students, faculty, and administration, which downplays self-interest and reinforces commitment to others.[83]
During the 1988 presidential election, George H. W. Bush (Yale '48) derided Michael Dukakis for having "foreign-policy views born in Harvard Yard's boutique". When challenged on the distinction between Dukakis's Harvard connection and his own Yale background, he said that, unlike Harvard, Yale's reputation was "so diffuse, there isn't a symbol, I don't think, in the Yale situation, any symbolism in it" and said Yale did not share Harvard's reputation for "liberalism and elitism".[84] In 2004 Howard Dean stated, "In some ways, I consider myself separate from the other three (Yale) candidates of 2004. Yale changed so much between the class of '68 and the class of '71. My class was the first class to have women in it; it was the first class to have a significant effort to recruit African Americans. It was an extraordinary time, and in that span of time is the change of an entire generation".[83]
Leadership
School founding | |
---|---|
School | Year founded |
Yale College | 1701 |
Yale School of Medicine | 1810 |
Yale Divinity School | 1822 |
Yale Law School | 1824 |
Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences | 1847 |
Sheffield Scientific School[lower-alpha 1] | 1847 |
Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science | 1852 |
Yale School of Fine Arts | 1869 |
Yale School of Music | 1894 |
Yale School of the Environment | 1900 |
Yale School of Public Health | 1915 |
Yale School of Architecture | 1916 |
Yale School of Nursing | 1923 |
David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University | 1955 |
Yale School of Management | 1976 |
Jackson School of Global Affairs | 2022[40] |
The President and Fellows of Yale College, also known as the Yale Corporation, or board of trustees, is the governing body of the university and consists of thirteen standing committees with separate responsibilities outlined in the by-laws. The corporation has 19 members: three ex officio members, ten successor trustees, and six elected alumni fellows.[85] The university has three major academic components: Yale College (the undergraduate program), the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the twelve professional schools.[86]
Yale's former president Richard C. Levin was, at the time, one of the highest paid university presidents in the United States with a 2008 salary of $1.5 million.[87] Yale's succeeding president Peter Salovey ranks 40th with a 2020 salary of $1.16 million.[88]
The Yale Provost's Office and similar executive positions have launched several women into prominent university executive positions. In 1977, Provost Hanna Holborn Gray was appointed interim president of Yale and later went on to become president of the University of Chicago, being the first woman to hold either position at each respective school.[89][90] In 1994, Provost Judith Rodin became the first permanent female president of an Ivy League institution at the University of Pennsylvania.[91] In 2002, Provost Alison Richard became the vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge.[92] In 2003, the dean of the Divinity School, Rebecca Chopp, was appointed president of Colgate University and later went on to serve as the president of Swarthmore College in 2009, and then the first female chancellor of the University of Denver in 2014.[93] In 2004, Provost Dr. Susan Hockfield became the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[94] In 2004, Dean of the Nursing school, Catherine Gilliss, was appointed the dean of Duke University's School of Nursing and vice chancellor for nursing affairs.[95] In 2007, Deputy Provost H. Kim Bottomly was named president of Wellesley College.[96]
Similar examples for men who have served in Yale leadership positions can also be found. In 2004, Dean of Yale College Richard H. Brodhead was appointed as the president of Duke University.[97] In 2008, Provost Andrew Hamilton was confirmed to be the vice chancellor of the University of Oxford.[98]
Staff and labor unions
Yale University staff are represented by several different unions. Clerical and technical workers are represented by Local 34, and service and maintenance workers are represented by Local 35, both of the same union affiliate UNITE HERE.[99] Unlike similar institutions, Yale has consistently refused to recognize its graduate student union, Local 33 (another affiliate of UNITE HERE), citing claims that the union's elections were undemocratic and how graduate students are not employees;[100][101] the move to not recognize the union has been criticized by the American Federation of Teachers.[102] In addition, officers of the Yale University Police Department are represented by the Yale Police Benevolent Association, which affiliated in 2005 with the Connecticut Organization for Public Safety Employees.[99][103] Yale security officers joined the International Union of Security, Police and Fire Professionals of America in late 2010,[104] even though the Yale administration contested the election.[105] In October 2014, after deliberation,[106] Yale security decided to form a new union, the Yale University Security Officers Association, which has since represented the campus security officers.[99][107]
Yale has a history of difficult and prolonged labor negotiations, often culminating in strikes.[108][page needed] There have been at least eight strikes since 1968, and The New York Times wrote that Yale has a reputation as having the worst record of labor tension of any university in the U.S.[109] Moreover, Yale has been accused by the AFL–CIO of failing to treat workers with respect,[110] as well as not renewing contracts with professors over involvement in campus labor issues.[111] Yale has responded to strikes with claims over mediocre union participation and the benefits of their contracts.[112]