Yale University is an American private Ivy
League research university in New Haven, Connecticut.
Founded in 1701, it is the third-oldest institution
of higher education in the United States and
one of the nine Colonial Colleges chartered
before the American Revolution.Chartered by
Connecticut Colony, the "Collegiate School"
was established by clergy to educate Congregational
ministers. It moved to New Haven in 1716 and
shortly after was renamed Yale College in
recognition of a gift from British East India
Company governor Elihu Yale. Originally restricted
to theology and sacred languages, the curriculum
began to incorporate 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 Ph.D. in the United States in 1861
and organizing as a university in 1887. Its
faculty and student populations grew after
1890 with rapid expansion of the physical
campus and scientific research.
Yale is organized into fourteen constituent
schools: the original undergraduate college,
the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
and twelve professional schools. 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, Connecticut and forest
and nature preserves throughout New England.
The university's assets include an endowment
valued at $29.4 billion as of October 2018,
the second largest endowment of any educational
institution in the world. 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.Yale College undergraduates
follow a liberal arts curriculum with departmental
majors and are organized into a social system
of residential colleges. Almost all faculty
teach undergraduate courses, more than 2,000
of which are offered annually. Students compete
intercollegiately as the Yale Bulldogs in
the NCAA Division I – Ivy League.
As of October 2018, 61 Nobel laureates, 5
Fields Medalists and 3 Turing award winners
have been affiliated with Yale University.
In addition, Yale has graduated many notable
alumni, including five U.S. Presidents, 19
U.S. Supreme Court Justices, 20 living billionaires
and many heads of state. Hundreds of members
of Congress and many U.S. diplomats, 78 MacArthur
Fellows, 247 Rhodes Scholars and 119 Marshall
Scholars have been affiliated with the university.
== History ==
=== Early history of Yale College ===
==== Origins ====
Yale traces its beginnings to "An Act for
Liberty to Erect a Collegiate School", passed
by the General Court of the Colony of Connecticut
on October 9, 1701, while meeting in New Haven.
The Act was an effort to create an institution
to train ministers and lay leadership for
Connecticut. Soon thereafter, a group of ten
Congregational ministers, Samuel Andrew, Thomas
Buckingham, Israel Chauncy, Samuel Mather
(brother 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
in Branford, Connecticut, to pool their books
to form the school's library. The group, led
by James Pierpont, is now known as "The Founders".Originally
known as the "Collegiate School", the institution
opened in the home of its first rector, Abraham
Pierson, today considered the first president
of Yale. Pierson lived in Killingworth (now
Clinton). The school moved to Saybrook and
then Wethersfield. 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.
==== 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
through trade while living in Madras as a
representative of the East India Company,
donated nine bales of goods, which were sold
for more than £560, a substantial sum at
the time. Cotton Mather suggested that the
school change its name to "Yale College".
(The name Yale is the Anglicised spelling
of the Welsh toponym, Iâl. from the family
estate at Plas yn Iâl near the village of
Llandegla, Denbighshire, Wales).Meanwhile,
a Harvard graduate working in England convinced
some 180 prominent intellectuals that they
should donate books to Yale. The 1714 shipment
of 500 books represented the best of modern
English literature, science, philosophy and
theology. 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 struggled
to return the college to Calvinist orthodoxy,
but he did not close the library. Other students
found Deist books in the library.
==== Curriculum ====
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 fights with the Connecticut
legislature.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 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. Stiles' greatest challenge
occurred in July 1779 when hostile 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, interceded and
the College was saved. In 1803, Fanning was
granted an honorary degree LL.D. for his efforts.
==== Students ====
As the only college in Connecticut, Yale educated
the sons of the elite. Offenses for which
students were punished included cardplaying,
tavern-going, destruction of college property,
and acts of disobedience to college authorities.
During the period, Harvard was distinctive
for the stability and maturity of its tutor
corps, while Yale had youth and zeal on its
side.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.
=== 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. All institutions experimented
with changes in the curriculum, often resulting
in a dual-track. In the decentralized environment
of higher education in the United States,
balancing change with tradition was a common
challenge because no one could afford to be
completely modern or completely classical.
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 whole man possessed of religious
values sufficiently strong to resist temptations
from within, yet flexible enough to adjust
to the 'isms' (professionalism, materialism,
individualism, and consumerism) tempting him
from without. William Graham Sumner, professor
from 1872 to 1909, taught in the emerging
disciplines of economics and sociology to
overflowing classrooms. He bested President
Noah Porter, who disliked social science 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.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 gained its current, and shorter, name
of "Yale University".
==== Sports and debate ====
The Revolutionary War soldier Nathan Hale
(Yale 1773) was the prototype 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 combat and tests of strength
in the Wild West. The fictional, turn-of-the-20th-century
Yale man Frank Merriwell embodied the heroic
ideal without racial prejudice, and his fictional
successor Frank Stover in the novel Stover
at Yale (1911) 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, and the
alumni, as well as the team itself.
Along with Harvard and Princeton, Yale students
rejected elite British concepts about 'amateurism'
in sports and constructed athletic programs
that were uniquely American, such as football.
The Harvard–Yale football rivalry began
in 1875. Between 1892, when Harvard and Yale
met in one of the first intercollegiate debates
and 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
even were rallies sending 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.In 1909–10, football faced
a crisis resulting from the failure of the
previous reforms of 1905–06 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.
President Arthur Hadley of Yale, A. Lawrence
Lowell of Harvard, and Woodrow Wilson of Princeton
worked to develop moderate changes to reduce
injuries. Their attempts, however, were reduced
by rebellion against the rules committee and
formation of the Intercollegiate Athletic
Association. The big three had tried to operate
independently of the majority, but changes
did reduce injuries.
==== Expansion ====
Yale expanded gradually, establishing the
Yale School of Medicine (1810), Yale Divinity
School (1822), Yale Law School (1843), Yale
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (1847),
the Sheffield Scientific School (1847), and
the Yale School of Fine Arts (1869). In 1887,
as the college continued to grow under the
presidency of Timothy Dwight V, Yale College
was renamed Yale University, with the name
Yale College subsequently applied to the undergraduate
college. The university would later add the
Yale School of Music (1894), the Yale School
of Forestry & Environmental Studies (founded
by Gifford Pinchot in 1900), the Yale School
of Public Health (1915), the Yale School of
Nursing (1923), the Yale School of Drama(1955),
the Yale Physician Associate Program (1973)
and the Yale School of Management (1976).
It would also reorganize its relationship
with the Sheffield Scientific School.
Expansion caused controversy about Yale's
new roles. Noah Porter, 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. Levesque
argues Porter was not a simple-minded reactionary,
uncritically committed to tradition, but a
principled and selective conservative. 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. 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 ===
==== Behavioral sciences ====
Between 1925 and 1940, philanthropic foundations,
especially ones connected with the Rockefellers,
contributed about $7 million to support the
Yale Institute of Human Relations and the
affiliated Yerkes Laboratories of Primate
Biology. The money went toward behavioral
science research, which was supported by foundation
officers who aimed to "improve mankind" under
an informal, loosely defined human engineering
effort. The behavioral scientists at Yale,
led by President James R. Angell and psychobiologist
Robert M. Yerkes, tapped into foundation largesse
by crafting research programs aimed to investigate,
then suggest, ways to control sexual and social
behavior. For example, Yerkes analyzed chimpanzee
sexual behavior in hopes of illuminating the
evolutionary underpinnings of human development
and providing information that could ameliorate
dysfunction. Ultimately, the behavioral-science
results disappointed foundation officers,
who shifted their human-engineering funds
toward biological sciences.
==== Biology ====
Slack (2003) compares three groups that conducted
biological research at Yale during overlapping
periods between 1910 and 1970. Yale proved
important as a site for this research. The
leaders of these groups were Ross Granville
Harrison, Grace E. Pickford, and G. Evelyn
Hutchinson, and their members included both
graduate students and more experienced scientists.
All produced innovative research, including
the opening of new subfields in embryology,
endocrinology, and ecology, respectively,
over a long period of time. Harrison's group
is shown to have been a classic research school;
Pickford's and Hutchinson's were not. Pickford's
group was successful in spite of her lack
of departmental or institutional position
or power. Hutchinson and his graduate and
postgraduate students were extremely productive,
but in diverse areas of ecology rather than
one focused area of research or the use of
one set of research tools. Hutchinson's example
shows that new models for research groups
are needed, especially for those that include
extensive field research.
==== 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, unfortunately lasted for only
a few years before the opposition of resentful
anti-Semitic colleagues drove him to resign.
==== 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.
==== History and American studies ====
The American studies program reflected the
worldwide anti-Communist ideological struggle.
Norman Holmes Pearson, who worked for the
Office of Strategic Studies in London during
World War II, returned to Yale and headed
the new American studies program, in which
scholarship quickly became an instrument of
promoting liberty. Popular among undergraduates,
the program sought to instruct them in the
fundamentals of American civilization and
thereby instill a sense of nationalism and
national purpose. Also during the 1940s and
1950s, Wyoming millionaire William Robertson
Coe made large contributions to the American
studies programs at Yale University and at
the University of Wyoming. Coe was concerned
to celebrate the 'values' of the Western United
States in order to meet the "threat of communism".
==== Women ====
In 1793, Lucinda Foote passed the entrance
exams for Yale College, but was rejected by
the President on the basis of her gender.
Women studied at Yale University as early
as 1892, in graduate-level programs at the
Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.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. Amy Solomon
was the first woman to register as a Yale
undergraduate; 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; at the time,
all undergraduate women were housed in Vanderbilt
Hall at the south end of Old Campus.A decade
into co-education, student assault and harassment
by faculty became the impetus for the trailblazing
lawsuit Alexander v. Yale. 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.
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. In response,
the university formed a Title IX steering
committee to address complaints of sexual
misconduct.
==== Class ====
Yale, like other Ivy League schools, 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 was one of the
last of the Ivies to eliminate such preferences,
beginning with the class of 1970.
==== Town–gown relations ====
Yale has a complicated relationship with its
home city; for example, thousands of students
volunteer every year in a myriad of 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.
=== 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. In July 2012, the
Peking University-Yale University Program
ended due to weak participation.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."President George W. Bush, a Yale
alumnus, criticized the university for the
snobbery and intellectual arrogance he encountered
as a student there.The Boston Globe wrote
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". Yale
alumni were represented on the Democratic
or Republican ticket in every U.S. Presidential
election between 1972 and 2004. 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 made serious bids for the Presidency
during this period include 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. 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.
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." 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. 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." 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". 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.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' 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". 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".In
2009, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair
picked Yale as one location – the others
are Britain's Durham University and Universiti
Teknologi Mara – for the Tony Blair Faith
Foundation's United States Faith and Globalization
Initiative. 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". As of 2009, former presidential
candidate and DNC chair Howard Dean teaches
a residential college seminar, "Understanding
Politics and Politicians". 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".New
international Yale initiatives launched included
(among many others):
Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, promoting
international education University-wide;
Global Health Initiative, uniting and expanding
global health efforts across campus;
Yale India Initiative, expanding the study
of and engagement with India;
Yale Center for the Study of Globalization,
bridging the gap between academia and the
world of public policy; and
Yale China Law Center, promoting the rule
of law in China.
Yale – Management Guild
New global research and educational partnerships
included (among many others):
Yale-Universidad de Chile International Program
in Astronomy Education and Research;
Peking-Yale Joint Center for Plant Molecular
Genetics and Agrobiology;
Todai–Yale Initiative for the Study of Japan;
Fudan-Yale Biomedical Research Center in Shanghai;
Yale-University College London Collaboration;
and
UNSAAC-Yale Center for the Study of Machu
Picchu and Inca Culture in Peru.The most ambitious
international partnership to date is Yale-NUS
College in Singapore, a joint effort with
the National University of Singapore to create
a new liberal arts college in Asia featuring
an innovative curriculum that weaves Western
and Asian traditions, which opened in August
2013.
== Administration and organization ==
=== Leadership ===
The President and Fellows of Yale College,
also known as the Yale Corporation, is the
governing board of the university.
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.The Yale Provost's
Office has launched several women into prominent
university presidencies. In 1977 Hanna Holborn
Gray was appointed acting President of Yale
from this position, and went on to become
President of the University of Chicago, the
first woman to be full president of a major
university. In 1994 Yale Provost Judith Rodin
became the first female president of an Ivy
League institution at the University of Pennsylvania.
In 2002 Provost Alison Richard became the
Vice Chancellor of the University of Cambridge.
In 2004, Provost Susan Hockfield became the
President of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. In 2007 Deputy Provost H. Kim
Bottomly was named President of Wellesley
College. In 2003, the Dean of the Divinity
School, Rebecca Chopp, was appointed president
of Colgate University and now heads Swarthmore
College.
The university has three major academic components:
Yale College (the undergraduate program),
the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences,
and the professional schools. In 2008 Provost
Andrew Hamilton was confirmed to be the Vice
Chancellor of the University of Oxford. Former
Dean of Yale College Richard H. Brodhead serves
as the President of Duke University.
=== Staff and labor unions ===
Much of Yale University's staff, including
most maintenance staff, dining hall employees
and administrative staff, are unionized. Clerical
and technical employees are represented by
Local 34 of UNITE HERE and service and maintenance
workers by Local 35 of the same international.
Locals 34 and 35 make up the Federation of
Hospital and University Employees along with
the dietary workers at Yale–New Haven Hospital,
who are members of 1199 SEIU. In addition
to these unions, officers of the Yale University
Police Department are members of the Yale
Police Benevolent Association, which affiliated
in 2005 with the Connecticut Organization
for Public Safety Employees. Finally, Yale
security officers voted to join the International
Union of Security, Police and Fire Professionals
of America in fall 2010 after the National
Labor Relations Board ruled they could not
join AFSCME; the Yale administration contested
the election.Yale has a history of difficult
and prolonged labor negotiations, often culminating
in strikes. 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. Yale's unusually large endowment
exacerbates the tension over wages. Moreover,
Yale has been accused of failing to treat
workers with respect. In a 2003 strike, however,
the university claimed that more union employees
were working than striking. Professor David
Graeber was 'retired' after he came to the
defense of a student who was involved in campus
labor issues.
== Campus ==
Yale's central campus in downtown New Haven
covers 260 acres (1.1 km2) and comprises its
main, historic campus and a medical campus
adjacent to the Yale–New Haven Hospital.
In western New Haven, the university holds
500 acres (2.0 km2) of athletic facilities,
including the Yale Golf Course. In 2008, Yale
purchased the 136-acre (0.55 km2) former Bayer
Pharmaceutical campus in West Haven, Connecticut,
the buildings of which are now used as laboratory
and research space. 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.Yale
is noted for its largely Collegiate Gothic
campus as well as several iconic modern buildings
commonly discussed in architectural history
survey courses: Louis Kahn's Yale Art Gallery
and Center for British Art, Eero Saarinen's
Ingalls Rink and Ezra Stiles and Morse Colleges,
and Paul Rudolph's 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. In 2011, Travel+Leisure
listed the Yale campus as one of the most
beautiful in the United States.Many of Yale's
buildings were constructed in the Collegiate
Gothic architecture style from 1917 to 1931,
financed largely by Edward S. Harkness, including
the Yale Drama School. 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 such as 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, 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.
Other examples of the Gothic (also called
neo-Gothic and collegiate Gothic) style are
on Old Campus by such architects as Henry
Austin, Charles C. Haight and Russell Sturgis.
Several are associated with members of the
Vanderbilt family, including Vanderbilt Hall,
Phelps Hall, 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.
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 so as
to co-ordinate with adjacent structures.
The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library,
designed by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings
& Merrill, is one of the largest buildings
in the world reserved exclusively for the
preservation of rare books and manuscripts.
It is located near the center of the University
in Hewitt Quadrangle, which is now more commonly
referred to as "Beinecke Plaza".
The library's six-story above-ground tower
of book stacks is surrounded by a windowless
rectangular building with walls made of translucent
Vermont marble, which transmit subdued lighting
to the interior and provide protection from
direct light, while glowing from within after
dark.
The sculptures in the sunken courtyard by
Isamu Noguchi are said to represent time (the
pyramid), the sun (the circle), and chance
(the cube).
Alumnus Eero Saarinen, Finnish-American architect
of such notable structures as the Gateway
Arch in St. Louis, Washington Dulles International
Airport main terminal, Bell Labs Holmdel Complex
and the CBS Building in Manhattan, designed
Ingalls Rink at Yale and the residential colleges
Ezra Stiles and Morse. These latter were modelled
after the medieval Italian hilltown of San
Gimignano – a prototype chosen for the town's
pedestrian-friendly milieu and fortress-like
stone towers. These tower forms at Yale act
in counterpoint to the college's many Gothic
spires and Georgian cupolas.Yale's Office
of Sustainability develops and implements
sustainability practices at Yale. Yale is
committed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions
10% below 1990 levels by the year 2020. As
part of this commitment, the university allocates
renewable energy credits to offset some of
the energy used by residential colleges. Eleven
campus buildings are candidates for LEED design
and certification. Yale Sustainable Food Project
initiated the introduction of local, organic
vegetables, fruits, and beef to all residential
college dining halls. 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.
Grove Street Cemetery, New Haven
Marsh Botanical Garden
Yale Sustainable Food Program Farm
=== Notable nonresidential campus buildings
===
Notable nonresidential campus buildings and
landmarks include Battell Chapel, Beinecke
Rare Book Library, Harkness Tower, Ingalls
Rink, Kline Biology Tower, Osborne Memorial
Laboratories, Payne Whitney Gymnasium, Peabody
Museum of Natural History, Sterling Hall of
Medicine, Sterling Law Buildings, Sterling
Memorial Library, Woolsey Hall, Yale Center
for British Art, Yale University Art Gallery,
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 both to be
private yet unmistakable. A diversity of architectural
styles is represented: Berzelius, Donn Barber
in an austere cube with classical detailing
(erected in 1908 or 1910); Book and Snake,
Louis R. Metcalfe in a Greek Ionic style (erected
in 1901); Elihu, architect unknown but built
in a Colonial style (constructed on an early
17th-century foundation although the building
is from the 18th century); Mace and Chain,
in a late colonial, early Victorian style
(built in 1823). (Interior moulding is said
to have belonged to Benedict Arnold);Manuscript
Society, King Lui-Wu with Dan Kniley responsible
for landscaping and Josef Albers for the brickwork
intaglio mural. Building constructed in a
mid-century modern style; Scroll and Key,
Richard Morris Hunt in a Moorish- or Islamic-inspired
Beaux-Arts style (erected 1869–70); Skull
and Bones, possibly Alexander Jackson Davis
or Henry Austin in an Egypto-Doric style utilizing
Brownstone (in 1856 the first wing was completed,
in 1903 the second wing, 1911 the Neo-Gothic
towers in rear garden were completed); St.
Elmo, (former tomb) Kenneth M. Murchison,
1912, designs inspired by Elizabethan manor.
Current location, brick colonial; and Wolf's
Head, Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, erected 1923–1924,
Collegiate Gothic.
=== Relationship with New Haven ===
Yale is the largest taxpayer and employer
in the City of New Haven, and has often buoyed
the city's economy and communities. 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.
==== 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. Later hired
by the university, the officers were originally
brought in to quell unrest between students
and city residents and curb destructive student
behavior. In addition to the Yale Police Department,
a variety of safety services are available
including blue phones, a 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. 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 the Ivy League and
other peer schools. Nonetheless, across the
board, the city of New Haven has retained
the highest levels of crime of any Ivy League
city for more than a decade.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.
== Academics ==
=== Admissions ===
Undergraduate admission to Yale College is
considered "most selective" by U.S. News.
In 2017, Yale accepted 2,285 students to the
Class of 2021 out of 32,914 applicants, for
an acceptance rate of 6.9%. 98% of students
graduate within six years.Through its program
of need-based financial aid, Yale commits
to meet the full demonstrated financial need
of all applicants. 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. 15% of Yale College
students are expected to have no parental
contribution, and about 50% receive some form
of financial aid. 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.Half of all Yale undergraduates
are women, more than 39% are ethnic minority
U.S. citizens (19% are underrepresented minorities),
and 10.5% are international students. Fifty-five
percent attended public schools and 45% attended
private, religious, or international schools,
and 97% of students were in the top 10% of
their high school class. Every year, Yale
College also admits a small group of non-traditional
students through the Eli Whitney Students
Program.
Circa 1999, about 29% of Yale students were
Jewish.
=== Collections ===
Yale University Library, which holds over
15 million volumes, is the third-largest university
collection in the United States. The main
library, Sterling Memorial Library, contains
about 4 million volumes, and other holdings
are dispersed at subject 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.
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 180,000 works,
including Old Masters and important collections
of modern art, in the Swartout 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.
=== Rankings ===
The U.S. News & World Report ranked Yale 3rd
among U.S. national universities for 2016,
as it has for each of the past sixteen years,
in every list trailing only Princeton and
Harvard.
In the international sphere, it was ranked
11th in the 2016 Academic Ranking of World
Universities, 10th in the 2016-17 Nature Index
for quality of scientific research output,
and 10th in the 2016 CWUR World University
Rankings. The university was also ranked 6th
in the 2016 Times Higher Education (THE) Global
University Employability Rankings and 8th
in the THE Academic World Reputation Rankings.
=== Faculty, research, and intellectual traditions
===
Yale's faculty include 61 members of the National
Academy of Sciences, 7 members of the National
Academy of Engineering and 49 members of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 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.Yale's English and Comparative
Literature departments were part of the New
Criticism movement. Of the New Critics, Robert
Penn Warren, W.K. Wimsatt, and Cleanth Brooks
were all Yale faculty. Later, the Yale Comparative
literature department became a center of American
deconstruction. Jacques Derrida, the father
of deconstruction, taught at the Department
of Comparative Literature from the late seventies
to mid-1980s. Several other Yale faculty members
were also associated with deconstruction,
forming the so-called "Yale School". These
included Paul de Man who taught in the Departments
of Comparative Literature and French, J. Hillis
Miller, Geoffrey Hartman (both taught in the
Departments of English and Comparative Literature),
and Harold Bloom (English), whose theoretical
position was always somewhat specific, and
who ultimately took a very different path
from the rest of this group. Yale's history
department has also originated important intellectual
trends. Historians C. Vann Woodward and David
Brion Davis are credited with beginning in
the 1960s and 1970s an important stream of
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 summer 2010, Yale has also been host
to Yale Publishing Course.
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 ==
Yale is a medium-sized research university,
most of whose students are in the graduate
and professional schools. Undergraduates,
or Yale College students, come from a variety
of ethnic, national, socioeconomic backgrounds,
and personal backgrounds. Of the 2010–2011
freshman class, 10% are non‑U.S. citizens,
while 54% went to public high schools.
=== Residential colleges ===
Yale's residential college system was established
in 1933 by 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 comprise 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. Instead,
all 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. 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.
==== Calhoun College ====
Since the 1960s, John C. Calhoun's white supremacist
beliefs and pro-slavery leadership had prompted
calls to rename the college or remove its
tributes to Calhoun. The racially motivated
church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina,
led to renewed calls in the summer of 2015
for Calhoun College, one of 12 residential
colleges, to be renamed. In July 2015 students
signed a petition calling for the name change.
They argued in the petition that—while Calhoun
was respected in the 19th century as an "extraordinary
American statesman"—he was "one of the most
prolific defenders of slavery and white supremacy"
in the history of the United States. In August
2015 Yale President Peter Salovey addressed
the Freshman Class of 2019 in which he responded
to the racial tensions but explained why the
college would not be renamed. He described
Calhoun as "a notable political theorist,
a vice president to two different U.S. presidents,
a secretary of war and of state, and a congressman
and senator representing South Carolina".
He acknowledged that Calhoun also "believed
that the highest forms of civilization depend
on involuntary servitude. Not only that, but
he also believed that the races he thought
to be inferior, black people in particular,
ought to be subjected to it for the sake of
their own best interests." Student activism
about this issue increased in the fall of
2015, and included further protests sparked
by controversy surrounding an administrator's
comments on the potential positive and negative
implications of students who wear culturally
sensitive Halloween costumes. Campus-wide
discussions expanded to include critical discussion
of the experiences of women of color on campus,
and the realities of racism in undergraduate
life. The protests were sensationalized by
the media and led to the labelling of some
students as being members of Generation Snowflake.In
April 2016 Salovey announced that "despite
decades of vigorous alumni and student protests,"
Calhoun's name will remain on the Yale residential
college 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". "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.Despite this apparently
conclusive reasoning, Salovey announced that
Calhoun College would be renamed for groundbreaking
computer scientist Grace Murray Hopper in
February 2017. This renaming decision received
a range of responses from Yale students and
alumni.
=== Student organizations ===
In 2014, Yale had 385 registered student organizations,
plus an additional one hundred groups in the
process of registration.The university hosts
a variety of student journals, magazines,
and newspapers. Established in 1872, The Yale
Record is the world's oldest humor magazine.
Newspapers include the Yale Daily News, which
was first published in 1878, and the weekly
Yale Herald, which was first published in
1986. 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 serves to coordinate between and
provide resources for the various Sudler Fund
sponsored theater productions which run each
weekend. WYBC Yale Radio is the campus's radio
station, owned and operated by students. While
students used to broadcast on AM & 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). The Graduate and
Professional Student Senate (GPSS) serves
as Yale's graduate and professional student
government.
The Yale Political Union is advised by alumni
political leaders such as John Kerry and George
Pataki. The Yale International Relations Association
functions as the umbrella organization for
the top-ranked Model UN team.
The campus includes several fraternities and
sororities. The campus features at least 18
a cappella groups, the most famous of which
is The Whiffenpoofs, who are unusual among
college singing groups in being made up solely
of senior men.
Yale's secret societies include Skull and
Bones, Scroll and Key, Wolf's Head, Book and
Snake, Elihu, Berzelius, St. Elmo, Manuscript,
Shabtai, Myth and Sword, Mace and Chain and
Sage and Chalice. The two oldest existing
honor societies are the Aurelian (1910) and
the Torch Honor Society (1916).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, a first edition
of Milton's Paradise Lost, among other important
literary texts.
=== 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". ("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. Actual students rarely do so.
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,
but its future remains uncertain.
=== Athletics ===
Yale supports 35 varsity athletic teams that
compete in the Ivy League Conference, the
Eastern College Athletic Conference, 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.In May 2018, the men's lacrosse
team defeated the Duke Blue Devils to claim
their first ever NCAA Division I Men's Lacrosse
Championship, and are the first Ivy League
school to win the title since the Princeton
Tigers in 2001.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 Men's Division I 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.October
21, 2000, marked the dedication of Yale's
fourth new boathouse in 157 years of collegiate
rowing. The Gilder Boathouse is named to honor
former Olympic rower Virginia Gilder '79 and
her father Richard Gilder '54, who gave $4
million towards the $7.5 million project.
Yale also maintains the Gales Ferry site where
the heavyweight men's team trains for the
Yale-Harvard Boat Race.
Yale crew is the oldest collegiate athletic
team in America, and won Olympic Games Gold
Medal for men's eights in 1924 and 1956. The
Yale Corinthian Yacht Club, founded in 1881,
is the oldest collegiate sailing club in the
world.
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.For
kicks, between 1954 and 1982, residential
college teams and student organizations played
bladderball.Yale students claim to have invented
Frisbee, by tossing empty Frisbie Pie Company
tins.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. 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 ten 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", and
the Yale fight song, "Down the Field".
Two other fight songs, "Bulldog, Bulldog"
and "Bingo Eli Yale", written by Cole Porter
during his undergraduate days, are still sung
at football games. Another fight song sung
at games is "Boola Boola". According to College
Fight Songs: An Annotated Anthology published
in 1998, "Down the Field" ranks as the fourth-greatest
fight song of all time.
==== Mascot ====
The school mascot is "Handsome Dan," the Yale
bulldog, and the Yale fight song (written
by Cole Porter while he was a student at Yale)
contains the refrain, "Bulldog, bulldog, bow
wow wow". The school color, since 1894, is
Yale Blue. Yale's Handsome Dan is believed
to be the first college mascot in America,
having been established in 1889.
== 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: Elihu Yale; Jeremiah Dummer; the Harkness
family (Edward, Anna, and William); the Beinecke
family (Edwin, Frederick, and Walter); John
William Sterling; Payne Whitney; Joseph Earl
Sheffield, Paul Mellon, Charles B. G. Murphy
and William K. Lanman. The Yale Class of 1954,
led by Richard Gilder, donated $70 million
in commemoration of their 50th reunion. Charles
B. Johnson, a 1954 graduate of Yale College,
pledged a $250 million gift in 2013 to support
the construction of two new residential colleges.
The colleges have been named respectively
in honor of Pauli Murray and Benjamin Franklin.
A $100 million contribution by Stephen Adams
enabled the Yale School of Music to become
tuition-free and the Adams Center for Musical
Arts to be built.
=== Notable alumni and faculty ===
Yale has produced alumni distinguished in
their respective fields. This includes U.S.
Presidents William Howard Taft, Gerald Ford,
George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George
W. Bush; heads of state, including Italian
prime minister Mario Monti, Turkish prime
minister Tansu Çiller, Mexican president
Ernesto Zedillo, German president Karl Carstens,
Philippine president José Paciano Laurel,
and Malawian president Peter Mutharika; U.S.
Supreme Court Justices Taft, Sonia Sotomayor,
Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Brett Kavanaugh;
Secretaries of State John Kerry, Hillary Clinton,
Cyrus Vance, and Dean Acheson; U.S. Secretaries
of the Treasury Oliver Wolcott, Robert Rubin,
Nicholas F. Brady, and Steven Mnuchin; and
United States Attorneys General Nicholas Katzenbach,
John Ashcroft, and Edward H. Levi. Confederate
States Secretary of State, Secretary of War,
and Attorney General; Judah P. Benjamin.Some
royals have attended, among them: Crown Princess
Victoria of Sweden, Prince Rostislav Romanov
and Prince Akiiki Hosea Nyabongo;
In the arts, Yale alumni include authors Sinclair
Lewis, Stephen Vincent Benét, John Hersey,
Thornton Wilder, Doug Wright, William Matthews,
and Tom Wolfe; actors, directors and producers
Jodie Foster, Paul Newman, Henry Winkler,
Vincent Price, Meryl Streep, Sigourney Weaver,
Angela Bassett, Elia Kazan, George Roy Hill,
Douglas Wick, Claire Danes, Edward Norton,
Lupita Nyong'o, James Whitmore, Oliver Stone,
Brian Dennehy, Joshua Malina, and Sam Waterston;
composers Charles Ives, Douglas Moore and
Cole Porter; visual artists Matthew Barney,
Eva Hesse, Alex Israel, Brice Marden, Wangechi
Mutu, Richard Serra, and Kehinde Wiley; fine
art photography popularizer Sam Wagstaff;
entertainer Rudy Vallee; and photographer
and writer Nicholas Muellner.
In business, Time magazine co-founder Henry
Luce, Morgan Stanley founder Harold Stanley,
Blackstone Group founder Stephen A. Schwarzman,
Boeing and United Airlines founder William
Boeing, FedEx founder Frederick W. Smith,
chairman and CEO of Sears Holdings Edward
Lampert, Time Warner president Jeffrey Bewkes,
Electronic Arts co-founder Bing Gordon, PepsiCo
CEO Indra Nooyi, Pinterest co-founder and
CEO Ben Silbermann, sports agent Donald Dell,
and investor/philanthropist Sir John Templeton
all hail from Yale.
In academia, distinguished Yale graduates
and faculty have included theologian and religious
scholar Kathryn Tanner, philosopher of religion
John E. Hare, literary critic and historian
Henry Louis Gates, economists Irving Fischer,
Mahbub ul Haq, and Paul Krugman; Nobel laureates
in Physics, Ernest Lawrence and Murray Gell-Mann;
Fields Medalist John G. Thompson; Human Genome
Project director Francis S. Collins; "father
of biochemistry" Russell Henry Chittenden;
neurosurgeon Harvey Cushing; pioneering computer
scientist Grace Hopper; chairman of Caltech's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory Committee Clark
Blanchard Millikan; education philosopher
Robert Maynard Hutchins; pioneer in fractal
geometry Benoit Mandelbrot; mathematician/chemist
Josiah Willard Gibbs; and U.S. National Women's
Hall of Fame member and biochemist Florence
B. Seibert.
Former Yale students in the sporting arena
include "The perfect oarsman" Rusty Wailes;
Olympic silver medalist rower Josh West; Olympic
silver and bronze medalist Sada Jacobson;
runner Frank Shorter; baseball executives
Theo Epstein and George Weiss, and baseball
players Ron Darling, Bill Hutchinson, and
Craig Breslow; basketball player Chris Dudley;
football players Dick Jauron, Kenny Hill,
Calvin Hill, Gary Fencik, Chuck Mercein, Amos
Alonzo Stagg, and "Father of American Football"
Walter Camp; nine-time U.S. Squash men's champion
Julian Illingworth; ice hockey player Chris
Higgins; figure skater Sarah Hughes; swimmer
Don Schollander; and Olympic figure skater
Nathan Chen.
Yale also counts among its former students
Secretary of State, Secretary of War and U.S.
Senator John C. Calhoun; Peace Corps founder
Sargent Shriver; urban planner Robert Moses;
child psychologist Benjamin Spock; architects
Maya Lin, Eero Saarinen and Norman Foster;
television personalities Stone Phillips, Dick
Cavett and Anderson Cooper; pundits Garry
Trudeau, William F. Buckley, Jr. and Fareed
Zakaria; pioneer in electrical applications
Austin Cornelius Dunham; inventors Samuel
F.B. Morse, Eli Whitney, and John B. Goodenough;
patriot and "first spy" Nathan Hale; lexicographer
Noah Webster; and theologians Jonathan Edwards
and Reinhold Niebuhr.
== In fiction and popular culture ==
Yale University, as one of the oldest universities
in the United States, is a cultural referent
as an institution that produces some of the
most elite members of society and its grounds,
alumni, and students have been prominently
portrayed in fiction and U.S. popular culture.
For example, Owen Johnson's novel, Stover
at Yale, follows the college career of Dink
Stover, and Frank Merriwell, the model for
all later juvenile sports fiction, plays football,
baseball, crew, and track at Yale while solving
mysteries and righting wrongs. Yale University
also is mentioned in F. Scott Fitzgerald's
novel The Great Gatsby. The narrator, Nick
Carraway, wrote a series of editorials for
the Yale News, and Tom Buchanan was "one of
the most powerful ends that ever played football"
for Yale. In the popular TV show The Simpsons,
Mr. Burns is a Yale alumnus.
== Notes and references ==
== Further reading ==
=== Secret societies ===
Robbins, Alexandra, Secrets of the Tomb: Skull
and Bones, the Ivy League, and the Hidden
Paths of Power, Little Brown & Co., 2002;
ISBN 0-316-73561-2 (paper edition).
Millegan, Kris (ed.), Fleshing Out Skull & Bones,
TrineDay, 2003. ISBN 0-9752906-0-6 (paper
edition).
== External links ==
Official website
Yale Athletics website
Yale University from the Library of Congress
at Flickr Commons
