Yale University

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Yale University
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Yale University is a

third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, and one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution.[7]

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

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 2023, the university's endowment was valued at $40.7 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

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]

History

Early history of Yale College

Origins

Charter creating the Collegiate School, which became Yale College, October 9, 1701

Yale traces its beginnings to "An Act for Liberty to Erect a Collegiate School", a would-be charter passed during a meeting in

James Pierpont, is now known as "The Founders".[17]

A front view of "Yale-College" and the college chapel, printed by Daniel Bowen in 1786

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

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

Coat of arms of the family of Elihu Yale, after whom the university was named in 1718

In 1718, at the behest of either Rector

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.

Deist books in the library.[23]

Curriculum

Connecticut Hall, oldest building on the Yale campus, built between 1750 and 1753
First diploma awarded by Yale College, granted to Nathaniel Chauncey in 1702

Yale College undergraduates follow a

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

LL.D. for his efforts.[27]

Students

As the only college in Connecticut from 1701 to 1823, Yale educated the sons of the elite.

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:

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

Old Brick Row in 1807

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]

Regatta trophy, won in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Along with

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

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 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

Woolsey Hall c. 1905

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

Richard Rummell's 1906 watercolor of the Yale campus facing north

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

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,

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

lawsuit against Harvard alleging the same issue.[76]

Yale alumni in politics

The

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

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]

Administration and organization

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[a] 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.

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]

Campus

Yale Law School, located in the Sterling Law Building
Interior of Beinecke Library

Yale's central campus in

Yale–New Haven Hospital. In western New Haven, the university holds 500 acres (2.0 km2) of athletic facilities, including the Yale Golf Course.[113] In 2008, Yale purchased the 17-building, 136-acre (0.55 km2) former Bayer HealthCare complex in West Haven, Connecticut,[114] the buildings of which are now used as laboratory and research space.[115] Yale also owns seven forests in Connecticut, Vermont, and New Hampshire—the largest of which is the 7,840-acre (31.7 km2) Yale-Myers Forest in Connecticut's Quiet Corner—and nature preserves including Horse Island.[116]

Yale is noted for its largely

Art & Architecture Building. Yale also owns and has restored many noteworthy 19th-century mansions along Hillhouse Avenue, which was considered the most beautiful street in America by Charles Dickens when he visited the United States in the 1840s.[119] In 2011, Travel + Leisure listed the Yale campus as one of the most beautiful in the United States.[120]

Many of Yale's buildings were constructed in the

Yale Drama School.[121][122] Stone sculpture built into the walls of the buildings portray contemporary college personalities, such as a writer, an athlete, a tea-drinking socialite, and a student who has fallen asleep while reading. Similarly, the decorative friezes on the buildings depict contemporary scenes, like a policemen chasing a robber and arresting a prostitute (on the wall of the Law School), or a student relaxing with a mug of beer and a cigarette. The architect, James Gamble Rogers, faux-aged these buildings by splashing the walls with acid,[123] deliberately breaking their leaded glass windows and repairing them in the style of the Middle Ages, and creating niches for decorative statuary but leaving them empty to simulate loss or theft over the ages. In fact, the buildings merely simulate Middle Ages architecture, for though they appear to be constructed of solid stone blocks in the authentic manner, most actually have steel framing as was commonly used in 1930. One exception is Harkness Tower, 216 feet (66 m) tall, which was originally a free-standing stone structure. It was reinforced in 1964 to allow the installation of the Yale Memorial Carillon
.

Statue of Nathan Hale in front of Connecticut Hall
Vanderbilt Hall

Other examples of the Gothic style are on the Old Campus by architects like Henry Austin, Charles C. Haight and Russell Sturgis. Several are associated with members of the Vanderbilt family, including Vanderbilt Hall,[124] Phelps Hall,[125] St. Anthony Hall (a commission for member Frederick William Vanderbilt), the Mason, Sloane and Osborn laboratories, dormitories for the Sheffield Scientific School (the engineering and sciences school at Yale until 1956) and elements of Silliman College, the largest residential college.[126]

The oldest building on campus, Connecticut Hall (built in 1750), is in the Georgian style. Georgian-style buildings erected from 1929 to 1933 include Timothy Dwight College, Pierson College, and Davenport College, except the latter's east, York Street façade, which was constructed in the Gothic style to coordinate with adjacent structures.

The

Beinecke Plaza
".

Alumnus

Washington Dulles International Airport main terminal, Bell Labs Holmdel Complex and the CBS Building in Manhattan, designed Ingalls Rink, dedicated in 1959,[129] as well as the residential colleges Ezra Stiles and Morse.[130] These latter were modeled after the medieval Italian hill town of San Gimignano – a prototype chosen for the town's pedestrian-friendly milieu and fortress-like stone towers.[131] These tower forms at Yale act in counterpoint to the college's many Gothic spires and Georgian cupolas.[132]

The athletic field complex is partially in New Haven, and partially in West Haven.[133]

Yale's Old Campus at dusk, April 2013

Notable nonresidential campus buildings

Harkness Tower

Notable nonresidential campus buildings and landmarks include

Yale Art & Architecture Building, and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art
in London.

Yale's secret society buildings (some of which are called "tombs") were built to be private yet unmistakable. A diversity of architectural styles is represented:

Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue
, erected 1923–1924, Collegiate Gothic.

Sustainability

Yale's Office of Sustainability develops and implements sustainability practices at Yale.[134] Yale is committed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 10% below 1990 levels by 2020. As part of this commitment, the university allocates renewable energy credits to offset some of the energy used by residential colleges.[135] Eleven campus buildings are candidates for LEED design and certification.[136] Yale Sustainable Food Project initiated the introduction of local, organic vegetables, fruits, and beef to all residential college dining halls.[137] Yale was listed as a Campus Sustainability Leader on the Sustainable Endowments Institute's College Sustainability Report Card 2008, and received a "B+" grade overall.[138] Yale is a member of the Ivy Plus Sustainability Consortium, through which it has committed to best-practice sharing and the ongoing exchange of campus sustainability solutions along with other member institutions.[139]

Relationship with New Haven

Yale is the largest taxpayer and employer in the City of

New Haven,[140] and has often buoyed the city's economy and communities. Yale, however, has consistently opposed paying a tax on its academic property.[141] Yale's Art Galleries, along with many other university resources, are free and openly accessible. Yale also funds the New Haven Promise program, paying full tuition for eligible students from New Haven public schools.[142]

Town–gown relations

Yale has a complicated relationship with its home city; for example, thousands of students volunteer every year in myriad community organizations, but city officials, who decry Yale's exemption from local property taxes, have long pressed the university to do more to help. Under President Levin, Yale has financially supported many of New Haven's efforts to reinvigorate the city. Evidence suggests that the town and gown relationships are mutually beneficial. Still, the economic power of the university increased dramatically with its financial success amid a decline in the local economy.[143]

Campus safety

Several campus safety strategies have been pioneered at Yale. The first campus police force was founded at Yale in 1894, when the university contracted city police officers to exclusively cover the campus.

safety escort
, and 24-hour shuttle service.

In the 1970s and 1980s,

poverty and violent crime rose in New Haven, dampening Yale's student and faculty recruiting efforts.[148] Between 1990 and 2006, New Haven's crime rate fell by half, helped by a community policing strategy by the New Haven Police and Yale's campus became the safest among peer schools.[149]

In 2004, the national non-profit watchdog group Security on Campus filed a complaint with the

U.S. Department of Education, accusing Yale of under-reporting rape and sexual assaults.[150][151]

In April 2021, Yale announced that it will require students to receive a COVID-19 vaccine as a condition of being on campus during the fall 2021 term.[152]

Academics

Admissions

Undergraduate admission to Yale College is considered "most selective" by U.S. News.[153][154] In 2022, Yale accepted 2,234 students to the Class of 2026 out of 50,015 applicants, for an acceptance rate of 4.46%.[155] 98% of students graduate within six years.[156]

Through its program of need-based financial aid, Yale commits to meet the full demonstrated financial need of all applicants, and the university is

need-blind for both domestic and international applicants.[157] Most financial aid is in the form of grants and scholarships that do not need to be paid back to the university, and the average need-based aid grant for the Class of 2017 was $46,395.[158] 15% of Yale College students are expected to have no parental contribution, and about 50% receive some form of financial aid.[156][159][160] About 16% of the Class of 2013 had some form of student loan debt at graduation, with an average debt of $13,000 among borrowers.[156] For 2019, Yale ranked second in enrollment of recipients of the National Merit $2,500 Scholarship (140 scholars).[161]

Half of all Yale undergraduates are women, more than 39% are

non-traditional students
through the Eli Whitney Students Program.

Collections

Yale University's Sterling Memorial Library, as seen from Maya Lin's sculpture, Women's Table. The sculpture records the number of women enrolled at Yale over its history; female undergraduates were not admitted until 1969.

Yale University Library, which holds over 15 million volumes, is the third-largest university collection in the United States.[9][162] The main library, Sterling Memorial Library, contains about 4 million volumes, and other holdings are dispersed at subject and location libraries.

Rare books are found in several Yale collections. The

Beinecke Rare Book Library has a large collection of rare books and manuscripts. The Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library includes important historical medical texts, including an impressive collection of rare books, as well as historical medical instruments. The Lewis Walpole Library contains the largest collection of 18th‑century British literary works. The Elizabethan Club
, technically a private organization, makes its Elizabethan folios and first editions available to qualified researchers through Yale.

The Night Café, Vincent van Gogh, 1888, Yale Art Gallery

Yale's museum collections are also of international stature. The Yale University Art Gallery, the country's first university-affiliated art museum, contains more than 200,000 works, including Old Masters and important collections of modern art, in the Swartwout and Kahn buildings. The latter, Louis Kahn's first large-scale American work (1953), was renovated and reopened in December 2006. The Yale Center for British Art, the largest collection of British art outside of the UK, grew from a gift of Paul Mellon and is housed in another Kahn-designed building.

The Peabody Museum of Natural History in New Haven is used by school children and contains research collections in anthropology, archaeology, and the natural environment.

The Yale University Collection of Musical Instruments, affiliated with the Yale School of Music, is perhaps the least-known of Yale's collections because its hours of opening are restricted.

The museums once housed the artifacts brought to the United States from Peru by Yale history professor Hiram Bingham in his Yale-financed expedition to Machu Picchu in 1912 – when the removal of such artifacts was legal. The artifacts were restored to Peru in 2012.[163]

Forbes[165]
2
U.S. News & World Report[166]5
Washington Monthly[167]8
WSJ / College Pulse[168]3
Global
ARWU[169]11
QS[170]16
THE[171]10
U.S. News & World Report[172]11

Rankings

The U.S. News & World Report ranked Yale third among U.S. national universities for 2016,[153] as it had for each of the previous sixteen years. Yale University is accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education.[173]

Internationally, Yale was ranked 11th in the 2016 Academic Ranking of World Universities, tenth in the 2016–17 Nature Index[174] for quality of scientific research output, and tenth in the 2016 CWUR World University Rankings.[175] The university was also ranked sixth in the 2016 Times Higher Education (THE) Global University Employability Rankings[176] and eighth in the Academic World Reputation Rankings.[177] In 2019, it ranked 27th among the universities around the world by SCImago Institutions Rankings.[178]

Faculty, research, and intellectual traditions

Yale is a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU) and is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity".[179] The National Science Foundation ranked Yale 15th among American universities for research and development expenditures in 2021 with $1.16 billion.[180][181]

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] The college is, after normalization for institution size, the tenth-largest baccalaureate source of doctoral degree recipients in the United States, and the largest such source within the Ivy League.[182] It also is a top 10 (ranked seventh) baccalaureate source (after normalization for the number of graduates) of some of the most notable scientists (Nobel, Fields, Turing prizes, or membership in National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, or National Academy of Medicine).[183]

Yale's English and Comparative Literature departments were part of the

southern historians; likewise, David Montgomery, a labor historian, advised many of the current generation of labor historians in the country. Yale's Music School and department fostered the growth of Music Theory in the latter half of the 20th century. The Journal of Music Theory was founded there in 1957; Allen Forte and David Lewin
were influential teachers and scholars.

Since the late 1960s, Yale produces social sciences and policy research through its Yale Institution for Social and Policy Studies (ISPS).

In addition to eminent faculty members, Yale research relies heavily on the presence of roughly 1200 Postdocs from various national and international origin working in the multiple laboratories in the sciences, social sciences, humanities, and professional schools of the university. The university progressively recognized this working force with the recent creation of the Office for Postdoctoral Affairs and the Yale Postdoctoral Association.

Campus life

Student body composition as of May 2, 2022
Race and ethnicity[184] Total
White 35% 35
 
Asian 24% 24
 
Hispanic 15% 15
 
Foreign national 10% 10
 
Black 9% 9
 
Other[b] 6% 6
 
Economic diversity
Low-income[c] 20% 20
 
Affluent[d] 80% 80
 

Yale is a research university, with the majority of its students in the

professional schools. Undergraduates, or Yale College students, come from a variety of ethnic, national, socioeconomic, and personal backgrounds. Of the 2010–2011 freshman class, 10% are non‑U.S. citizens, while 54% went to public high schools.[185] The median family income of Yale students is $192,600, with 57% of students coming from the top 10% highest-earning families and 16% from the bottom 60%.[186]

Residential colleges

Yale's

Edward S. Harkness, who admired the social intimacy of Oxford and Cambridge and donated significant funds to found similar colleges at Yale and Harvard. Though Yale's colleges resemble their English precursors organizationally and architecturally, they are dependent entities
of Yale College and have limited autonomy. The colleges are led by a head and an academic dean, who reside in the college, and university faculty and affiliates constitute each college's fellowship. Colleges offer their own seminars, social events, and speaking engagements known as "Master's Teas", but do not contain programs of study or academic departments. All other undergraduate courses are taught by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and are open to members of any college.

All undergraduates are members of a college, to which they are assigned before their freshman year, and 85 percent live in the college quadrangle or a college-affiliated dormitory.[187] While the majority of upperclassman live in the colleges, most on-campus freshmen live on the Old Campus, the university's oldest precinct.

While Harkness' original colleges were Georgian Revival or Collegiate Gothic in style, two colleges constructed in the 1960s, Morse and Ezra Stiles Colleges, have modernist designs. All twelve college quadrangles are organized around a courtyard, and each has a dining hall, courtyard, library, common room, and a range of student facilities. The twelve colleges are named for important alumni or significant places in university history. In 2017, the university opened two new colleges near Science Hill.[188]

Calhoun College

Since the 1960s,

Generation Snowflake.[195]

In April 2016, Salovey announced that "despite decades of vigorous alumni and student protests", Calhoun's name will remain on the Yale residential college[196] explaining that it is preferable for Yale students to live in Calhoun's "shadow" so they will be "better prepared to rise to the challenges of the present and the future". He claimed that if they removed Calhoun's name, it would "obscure" his "legacy of slavery rather than addressing it".[196] "Yale is part of that history" and "We cannot erase American history, but we can confront it, teach it and learn from it." One change that will be issued is the title of "master" for faculty members who serve as residential college leaders will be renamed to "head of college" due to its connotation of slavery.[197]

Despite this apparently conclusive reasoning, Salovey announced that Calhoun College would be renamed for groundbreaking computer scientist Grace Hopper in February 2017.[198] This renaming decision received a range of responses from Yale students and alumni.[199][200][201] In his 2019 book Assault on American Excellence, former Dean of Yale Law School Anthony T. Kronman criticized the title and name changes and the lack of support from Salovey for the Christakises, who were targeted by the student activists. Other members of the university community disagreed with Kronman's positions.[202]

Student organizations

In 2024, Yale had 526 registered undergraduate student organizations, plus hundreds of others for graduate students.[203]

The university hosts a variety of student journals, magazines, and newspapers. The

Yale Herald, which was first published in 1986. The Yale Journal of Medicine & Law is a biannual magazine that explores the intersection of law and medicine
.

Dwight Hall, an independent, non-profit community service organization, oversees more than 2,000 Yale undergraduates working on more than 70 community service initiatives in New Haven. The Yale College Council runs several agencies that oversee campus wide activities and student services. The Yale Dramatic Association and Bulldog Productions cater to the theater and film communities, respectively. In addition, the Yale Drama Coalition[205] serves to coordinate between and provide resources for the various Sudler Fund sponsored theater productions which run each weekend. WYBC Yale Radio[206] is the campus's radio station, owned and operated by students. While students used to broadcast on AM and FM frequencies, they now have an Internet-only stream.

The

Yale College Council (YCC) serves as the campus's undergraduate student government. All registered student organizations are regulated and funded by a subsidiary organization of the YCC, known as the Undergraduate Organizations Funding Committee (UOFC).[207]
The Graduate and Professional Student Senate (GPSS) serves as Yale's graduate and professional student government.

The Yale Political Union (YPU) is a debate society founded in 1934 to host student discussions on a wide variety of topics. It is advised by alumni political leaders such as John Kerry and George Pataki
.

The

Yale International Relations Association (YIRA) functions as the umbrella organization for the university's top-ranked Model UN team. YIRA also has a Europe-based offshoot, Yale Model Government Europe
, other Model UN conferences such as YMUN, YMUN Korea, YMUN Taiwan and Yale Model African Union (YMAU), and educational programs such as the Yale Review of International Studies (YRIS), Yale International Relations Leadership Institute, and Hemispheres.

The campus includes several fraternities and sororities. The campus features at least 18 a cappella groups, the most famous of which is The Whiffenpoofs, which from its founding in 1909 until 2018 was made up solely of senior men.

The Elizabethan Club, a social club, has a membership of undergraduates, graduates, faculty and staff with literary or artistic interests. Membership is by invitation. Members and their guests may enter the "Lizzie's" premises for conversation and tea. The club owns first editions of a Shakespeare Folio, several Shakespeare Quartos, and a first edition of Milton's Paradise Lost, among other important literary texts.

Secret societies

Yale's

Linonia, St. Anthony Hall, Shabtai, Myth and Sword, Daughters of Sovereign Government (DSG), Mace and Chain, ISO, Spade and Grave, and Sage and Chalice, among others. The two oldest existing honor societies are the Aurelian (1910) and the Torch Honor Society (1916).[208]

These are akin to

senior societies at University of Pennsylvania
.

Traditions

Yale seniors at graduation smash clay pipes underfoot to symbolize passage from their "bright college years", though in recent history the pipes have been replaced with "bubble pipes".[209][210] ("Bright College Years", the university's alma mater, was penned in 1881 by Henry Durand, Class of 1881, to the tune of Die Wacht am Rhein.) Yale's student tour guides tell visitors that students consider it good luck to rub the toe of the statue of Theodore Dwight Woolsey on Old Campus; however, actual students rarely do so.[211] In the second half of the 20th century Bladderball, a campus-wide game played with a large inflatable ball, became a popular tradition but was banned by administration due to safety concerns. In spite of administration opposition, students revived the game in 2009, 2011, and 2014.[212][213][214]

Athletics

The Yale Bowl, the college football stadium

Yale supports 35 varsity athletic teams that compete in the Ivy League Conference, the Eastern College Athletic Conference, and the New England Intercollegiate Sailing Association. Yale athletic teams compete intercollegiately at the NCAA Division I level. Like other members of the Ivy League, Yale does not offer athletic scholarships.

Yale has numerous athletic facilities, including the Yale Bowl (the nation's first natural "bowl" stadium, and prototype for such stadiums as the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and the Rose Bowl), located at The Walter Camp Field athletic complex, and the Payne Whitney Gymnasium, the second-largest indoor athletic complex in the world.[215]

In 1970 the NCAA banned Yale from participating in all NCAA sports for two years, in reaction to Yale – against the wishes of the NCAA – playing its Jewish center

Kingman Brewster.[216][217][218][219] The decision impacted 300 Yale students, every Yale student on its sports teams, over the next two years.[220]

In 2016, the men's basketball team won the Ivy League Championship title for the first time in 54 years, earning a spot in the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament. In the first round of the tournament, the Bulldogs beat the Baylor Bears 79–75 in the school's first-ever tournament win.[221]

The Walter Camp Gate at the Yale Athletic Complex

In May 2018, the men's lacrosse team defeated the

NCAA Division I Men's Lacrosse Championship,[222] and were the first Ivy League school to win the title since the Princeton Tigers in 2001.[223]

Yale crew is the oldest collegiate athletic team in America, and won

Yale-Harvard Boat Race
.

In 1896, Yale and Johns Hopkins played the first known ice hockey game in the United States. Since 2006, the school's ice hockey clubs have played a commemorative game.[224]

Yale students claim to have invented Frisbee, by tossing empty Frisbie Pie Company tins.[225][226]

Yale athletics are supported by the Yale Precision Marching Band. "Precision" is used here ironically; the band is a scatter-style band that runs wildly between formations rather than actually marching.[227] The band attends every home football game and many away, as well as most hockey and basketball games throughout the winter.

Yale intramural sports are also a significant aspect of student life. Students compete for their respective residential colleges, fostering a friendly rivalry. The year is divided into fall, winter, and spring seasons, each of which includes about 10 different sports. About half the sports are coeducational. At the end of the year, the residential college with the most points (not all sports count equally) wins the Tyng Cup.

Song

Notable among the songs commonly played and sung at events such as commencement, convocation, alumni gatherings, and athletic games are the alma mater, "Bright College Years". Despite its popularity, "Boola Boola" is not the official fight song, albeit being the origin of the university's unofficial motto. The official Yale fight song, "Bulldog" was written by Cole Porter during his undergraduate days and is sung after touchdowns during a football game.[228] Additionally, two other songs, "Down the Field" by C.W. O'Conner, and "Bingo Eli Yale", also by Cole Porter, are still sung at football games. According to College Fight Songs: An Annotated Anthology published in 1998, "Down the Field" ranks as the fourth-greatest fight song of all time.[229]

Mascot

The school mascot is "Handsome Dan", the Yale bulldog, and the Yale fight song contains the refrain, "Bulldog, bulldog, bow wow wow." The school color, since 1894, is Yale Blue.[230] Yale's Handsome Dan is believed to be the first college mascot in America, having been established in 1889.[231]

Mental health

Yale has faced significant criticism for its handling of student mental health on campus.

Americans with Disabilities Act, and in 2018 the Ruderman Family Foundation ranked Yale as having the worst mental health policies in the Ivy League.[236][237][234]

Students at Yale say that the university's policies force them to hide their depression and avoid seeking help, for fear of being forced to leave.[232][236][235] One prominent case was the suicide of Luchang Wang in 2015, who died by suicide after making a Facebook post saying that she needed time to deal with her mental health issues, but could not deal with being forced to medically withdraw for an entire year with an uncertain chance of being readmitted.[238][235][240] Wang had previously withdrawn from school due to mental health issues, and was afraid of being forced to withdraw again, as a second readmission attempt would be considerably more difficult for her.[238][235] A friend of Wang said that she routinely lied to her university therapist to avoid being kicked out,[238] and another student said that many at Yale lie to their counselors as "there's no clear standard established that says exactly what students will get involuntarily hospitalized or withdrawn for".[235] In response, the university convened a commission to evaluate their readmission policies after a mental health withdrawal, renaming the process to "reinstatement" as well as eliminating the $50 reapplication fee.[232]

For students that do seek help, waitlists for therapy can be months long, with individual counselling sessions only 30 minutes in length.[232] In 2022, after a Washington Post article about their medical withdrawal policies, the school increased the number of mental health clinicians on campus from 51 to 60 as well as promised further changes.[233] In 2023, after a lawsuit was filed against the school for what the plaintiffs described as discrimination, the university changed the name of a "medical withdrawal" to a "medical leave of absence" saying that the "leave of absence" terminology would allow students to remain on Yale's insurance while away from the school.[241] The new policy also allowed for students on a leave of absence to participate in extracurricular clubs and visit campus,[241] something a student on medical withdrawal was banned from doing.[232] A representative of Yale also said that the criticism of their policies "misrepresents our efforts and unwavering commitment to supporting our students, whose well-being and success are our primary focus" and that "the mental health of our students is a very, very high priority".[233]

After the death of undergraduate student Rachael Shaw Rosenbaum by suicide, an organization called Elis for Rachael was formed, advocating for mental health-related reforms. The group has sued Yale, demanding changes.[242]

Notable people

Benefactors

Yale has had many financial supporters, but some stand out by the magnitude or timeliness of their contributions. Among those who have made large donations commemorated at the university are:

Stephen Adams enabled the Yale School of Music to become tuition-free and the Adams Center for Musical Arts to be built, while a $150 million contribution[246] by David Geffen enabled the Yale School of Drama (renamed the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale
) to become tuition-free as well.

Notable alumni

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