WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.399 Okay, let's get into it. Today we are unpacking 00:00:02.399 --> 00:00:06.419 a true giant, Yale University. And this is a 00:00:06.419 --> 00:00:09.240 deep dive. Our mission here is, well, it's pretty 00:00:09.240 --> 00:00:11.660 simple. We're going to cut through all the history, 00:00:11.800 --> 00:00:14.060 the prestige, the controversies. All the layers. 00:00:14.320 --> 00:00:16.460 Exactly. All the layers. And we want to give 00:00:16.460 --> 00:00:20.219 you, the learner, a really complete, fast -tracked 00:00:20.219 --> 00:00:22.600 education on one of the most powerful universities 00:00:22.600 --> 00:00:24.679 in the world. And we're drawing on just this 00:00:24.679 --> 00:00:27.019 incredible stack of sources we have right here. 00:00:27.160 --> 00:00:29.359 And we really are talking about a global powerhouse. 00:00:29.760 --> 00:00:31.539 I mean, to understand Yale, you have to get the 00:00:31.539 --> 00:00:34.280 scale of it right away. It's a private Ivy League 00:00:34.280 --> 00:00:37.299 research university. And it's the third oldest 00:00:37.299 --> 00:00:39.659 institution of higher education in the U .S. 00:00:39.719 --> 00:00:41.740 Third oldest. So it was chartered before the 00:00:41.740 --> 00:00:43.539 American Revolution. Way before. And the numbers 00:00:43.539 --> 00:00:46.240 that define it today are just they're on another 00:00:46.240 --> 00:00:48.799 level. The financial scale alone is mind boggling. 00:00:48.899 --> 00:00:51.479 I mean, Yale is an economic engine. The sources 00:00:51.479 --> 00:00:55.179 point to an endowment of, what is it, $44 .1 00:00:55.179 --> 00:00:58.929 billion as of 2025? Yeah. That's an immense amount 00:00:58.929 --> 00:01:00.969 of financial gravity. And then you have the knowledge 00:01:00.969 --> 00:01:03.850 infrastructure itself. Libraries. So over 15 00:01:03.850 --> 00:01:06.430 million volumes. Yeah. That makes its library 00:01:06.430 --> 00:01:09.269 system the second largest academic library in 00:01:09.269 --> 00:01:11.650 the entire United States. So it's a serious, 00:01:11.750 --> 00:01:14.189 serious investment in sustained intellectual 00:01:14.189 --> 00:01:17.010 capital. And that capital, well, it translates 00:01:17.010 --> 00:01:19.569 directly into human influence, into power. The 00:01:19.569 --> 00:01:23.030 sources, they really highlight this, this astonishing 00:01:23.030 --> 00:01:25.629 concentration of power among the alumni. Yeah, 00:01:25.629 --> 00:01:27.450 let's run through that list because it's... It's 00:01:27.450 --> 00:01:30.189 pretty wild. You're looking at five U .S. presidents, 00:01:30.469 --> 00:01:33.569 10 founding fathers. 19 U .S. Supreme Court justices. 00:01:33.569 --> 00:01:37.650 19 and 72 Nobel laureates connected to the university 00:01:37.650 --> 00:01:40.390 in some way. I mean, that is just an unparalleled 00:01:40.390 --> 00:01:42.510 pipeline of influence. It really is. And that 00:01:42.510 --> 00:01:45.129 political pipeline, especially. Our sources point 00:01:45.129 --> 00:01:47.629 out that near unbroken streak of Yale alumni 00:01:47.629 --> 00:01:50.730 on presidential tickets from 1972 all the way 00:01:50.730 --> 00:01:53.049 to 2004. Right. That feels like the defining 00:01:53.049 --> 00:01:55.230 political hook of the modern institution. We're 00:01:55.230 --> 00:01:56.530 definitely going to circle back to how that. 00:01:56.590 --> 00:01:58.450 happens later. But first, we have to go back 00:01:58.450 --> 00:02:01.269 to the beginning. Three centuries back, to the 00:02:01.269 --> 00:02:04.170 very start, we're talking intensely religious 00:02:04.170 --> 00:02:08.389 Puritan roots, a big rivalry with Harvard, and 00:02:08.389 --> 00:02:10.909 some very controversial money that gave the school 00:02:10.909 --> 00:02:13.509 its name. Right. The origin story of Yale is, 00:02:13.590 --> 00:02:15.930 at its heart, it's really an exercise in theological 00:02:15.930 --> 00:02:19.830 preservation. It all starts with an act for liberty 00:02:19.830 --> 00:02:22.580 to erect a collegiate school. which was passed 00:02:22.580 --> 00:02:25.639 in the Connecticut colony in 1701. And the goal 00:02:25.639 --> 00:02:27.840 seems pretty straightforward, right? Educate 00:02:27.840 --> 00:02:31.020 ministers, educate lay leaders for this new growing 00:02:31.020 --> 00:02:33.900 colony? It was practical, yes. But the driving 00:02:33.900 --> 00:02:37.000 force behind it, that was intellectual discontent. 00:02:37.020 --> 00:02:39.379 The Fanders were 10 congregational ministers. 00:02:39.659 --> 00:02:41.740 And here's the kicker, the detail that changes 00:02:41.740 --> 00:02:44.599 everything. All 10 of them were alumni of Hart. 00:02:44.659 --> 00:02:46.539 Every single one. They meet up in Brantford and 00:02:46.539 --> 00:02:49.099 they inaugurate the school by... What? Donating 00:02:49.099 --> 00:02:51.280 their own books for a library? Exactly. A symbolic 00:02:51.280 --> 00:02:52.639 act. That's why they're known as the founders. 00:02:52.819 --> 00:02:55.099 And the first rector, a man named Abraham Pearson, 00:02:55.280 --> 00:02:57.400 he literally starts the collegiate school in 00:02:57.400 --> 00:03:00.099 his own home in Killingworth. So why? Why do 00:03:00.099 --> 00:03:02.020 this? Why not just support their alma mater, 00:03:02.199 --> 00:03:04.120 Harvard? Well, that's where the rift comes in. 00:03:04.219 --> 00:03:06.319 The sources make it really clear there was a 00:03:06.319 --> 00:03:09.060 serious theological and political split happening 00:03:09.060 --> 00:03:11.400 at Harvard. Okay. A man named Increase Mather, 00:03:11.539 --> 00:03:14.560 who was Harvard's sixth president and a lot of 00:03:14.560 --> 00:03:17.330 other conservative clergy. They looked at Harvard 00:03:17.330 --> 00:03:21.030 and saw it as becoming too liberal, theologically 00:03:21.030 --> 00:03:23.789 lax. They felt it was drifting away from the 00:03:23.789 --> 00:03:27.530 strict Puritan orthodoxy it was founded on. Yale 00:03:27.530 --> 00:03:30.509 wasn't created to expand education. It was a 00:03:30.509 --> 00:03:32.789 conservative breakaway. It was a reaction. It 00:03:32.789 --> 00:03:35.229 was a defensive maneuver. Absolutely. Mather 00:03:35.229 --> 00:03:37.930 was championing this new collegiate school, hoping 00:03:37.930 --> 00:03:39.770 it would be a bastion for the kind of traditional 00:03:39.770 --> 00:03:42.969 religious thought he felt Harvard was just abandoning. 00:03:42.969 --> 00:03:44.770 They were trying to build a wall around their 00:03:44.770 --> 00:03:47.449 original religious mission. And then the irony. 00:03:47.710 --> 00:03:49.550 Oh, the irony is incredible. The very engine 00:03:49.550 --> 00:03:51.750 they created to preserve this orthodoxy, the 00:03:51.750 --> 00:03:54.099 library. almost immediately undermines it. How 00:03:54.099 --> 00:03:56.699 so? The sources detail this crucial shipment 00:03:56.699 --> 00:04:00.319 of books in 1714. It was about 500 books, organized 00:04:00.319 --> 00:04:03.400 by a man named Jeremiah Dummer. And they represented 00:04:03.400 --> 00:04:05.639 the best of modern English thought. So not just 00:04:05.639 --> 00:04:08.360 Puritan texts. Not at all. We're talking science, 00:04:08.500 --> 00:04:11.419 philosophy, theology, enlightenment thinkers. 00:04:11.740 --> 00:04:13.580 Which is just incredible. The collection that 00:04:13.580 --> 00:04:16.319 was meant to bolster strict Puritanism becomes 00:04:16.319 --> 00:04:20.399 this vector for radical new ideas. And the shift 00:04:20.399 --> 00:04:22.800 was profound. For instance, a young undergraduate 00:04:22.800 --> 00:04:26.100 named Jonathan Edwards, he discovers the works 00:04:26.100 --> 00:04:29.139 of John Locke in that collection. Wow. And Locke's 00:04:29.139 --> 00:04:32.939 ideas about empiricism and reason, they completely 00:04:32.939 --> 00:04:35.779 reshape Edwards' thinking. He ends up developing 00:04:35.779 --> 00:04:38.819 what he calls his new divinity, which is a major 00:04:38.819 --> 00:04:40.800 departure from the old guard Calvinist. And it 00:04:40.800 --> 00:04:43.220 didn't stop there, right? The intellectual fallout 00:04:43.220 --> 00:04:45.500 got even bigger. Oh, much bigger. Just eight 00:04:45.500 --> 00:04:49.560 years later, in 1722, you have this major event. 00:04:50.079 --> 00:04:52.240 The school's own rector, Timothy Cutler, and 00:04:52.240 --> 00:04:53.980 six of his friends, they formed a study group 00:04:53.980 --> 00:04:56.000 to talk about all these new ideas. They announced 00:04:56.000 --> 00:04:58.060 a massive theological conversion. It was known 00:04:58.060 --> 00:05:01.060 at the time as the Great Apostasy. They publicly 00:05:01.060 --> 00:05:03.000 declare they've abandoned Calvinism and have 00:05:03.000 --> 00:05:05.819 joined the Church of England. Anglicanism. Wait, 00:05:05.860 --> 00:05:08.459 the head of the school defected? The school founded 00:05:08.459 --> 00:05:11.339 to fight creeping liberalism. The head of the 00:05:11.339 --> 00:05:14.759 school and six key religious leaders, they saw 00:05:14.759 --> 00:05:17.879 the Anglican structure as more legitimate than 00:05:17.879 --> 00:05:20.560 the Congregationalist model. They were immediately 00:05:20.560 --> 00:05:23.540 kicked out, sailed to England, got ordained, 00:05:23.579 --> 00:05:26.120 and came back as Anglican missionaries. That's 00:05:26.120 --> 00:05:28.680 a complete institutional crisis. It's a total 00:05:28.680 --> 00:05:31.089 meltdown. And it just shows the irresistible 00:05:31.089 --> 00:05:33.550 force of Enlightenment thought filtering through 00:05:33.550 --> 00:05:35.730 those new books. So for the next few decades, 00:05:36.050 --> 00:05:38.889 the presidents, people like Thomas Clapp and 00:05:38.889 --> 00:05:41.149 Ezra Stiles, they're just trying to manage all 00:05:41.149 --> 00:05:43.149 this. Exactly. They're navigating the currents 00:05:43.149 --> 00:05:45.050 of the Great Awakening, which is this religious 00:05:45.050 --> 00:05:47.389 revival, and the Enlightenment, this intellectual 00:05:47.389 --> 00:05:49.629 revolution. They're trying to build up the science 00:05:49.629 --> 00:05:52.449 curriculum to keep pace, but also hold on to 00:05:52.449 --> 00:05:55.149 some kind of theological grounding. All while 00:05:55.149 --> 00:05:57.930 dealing with student riots. the French and Indian 00:05:57.930 --> 00:06:00.509 War, and then the Revolutionary War. All that 00:06:00.509 --> 00:06:02.509 turmoil. That must have meant they needed money 00:06:02.509 --> 00:06:05.029 constantly. They were always desperate for funds. 00:06:05.550 --> 00:06:08.189 And that brings us directly to the money that 00:06:08.189 --> 00:06:11.930 gave the institution its name and the moral conflict 00:06:11.930 --> 00:06:14.050 that's been attached to it ever since. Elihu 00:06:14.050 --> 00:06:18.670 Yale. Elihu Yale. In 1718, Cotton Mather, who 00:06:18.670 --> 00:06:20.370 had been a supporter of the school from the start, 00:06:20.509 --> 00:06:22.990 he reaches out to this incredibly wealthy Boston 00:06:22.990 --> 00:06:25.850 -born businessman living in London. And Yale 00:06:25.850 --> 00:06:28.189 had made his fortune where? In Madras, India. 00:06:28.569 --> 00:06:31.009 He had been the first president of Fort St. George 00:06:31.009 --> 00:06:34.189 for the East India Company. He'd amassed a huge 00:06:34.189 --> 00:06:36.870 fortune. So Mather asks for money and Yale responds. 00:06:37.329 --> 00:06:40.790 He does. He sends over nine bales of goods, textiles, 00:06:40.790 --> 00:06:44.490 calicos, and a portrait of King George I. And 00:06:44.490 --> 00:06:46.050 when all that stuff was sold in the colonies, 00:06:46.189 --> 00:06:49.470 it brought in over 560 pounds. Which at that 00:06:49.470 --> 00:06:51.569 time was an absolute fortune. A transformative 00:06:51.569 --> 00:06:54.410 amount of money. And in recognition of that, 00:06:54.490 --> 00:06:56.930 it was Cotton Mather who suggested, let's rename 00:06:56.930 --> 00:06:59.329 the school Yale College. Okay, but here's where 00:06:59.329 --> 00:07:02.689 the historical reckoning comes in. really complicated. 00:07:02.949 --> 00:07:05.649 It's very complicated. Modern analysis of the 00:07:05.649 --> 00:07:08.310 East India Company's records, which the sources 00:07:08.310 --> 00:07:11.389 we have really dig into, shows a deep, deep reliance 00:07:11.389 --> 00:07:14.230 on exploitative colonial trade. And Elihu Yale 00:07:14.230 --> 00:07:16.370 himself. His involvement in the Indian Ocean 00:07:16.370 --> 00:07:18.970 slave trade while he was in India is, well, it's 00:07:18.970 --> 00:07:21.069 a matter of debate, but it's explicitly noted 00:07:21.069 --> 00:07:24.449 by critics. So the argument is that this foundational 00:07:24.449 --> 00:07:27.709 money. the money that funded the first scholarships, 00:07:27.829 --> 00:07:30.490 that kept the lights on. It came directly from 00:07:30.490 --> 00:07:33.269 the slave trade and colonial exploitation. That's 00:07:33.269 --> 00:07:35.550 the core of the criticism, that this money essentially 00:07:35.550 --> 00:07:38.069 established the financial footing for one of 00:07:38.069 --> 00:07:40.209 the world's most enduring institutions. And this 00:07:40.209 --> 00:07:42.730 isn't just some dusty historical debate. It came 00:07:42.730 --> 00:07:44.689 to a head much more recently, right? It did. 00:07:44.850 --> 00:07:48.209 In 2020, during the George Floyd protests, the 00:07:48.209 --> 00:07:51.889 social media tag, hashtag cancel Yale, started 00:07:51.889 --> 00:07:55.300 trending. The demand was to remove Elihu Yale's 00:07:55.300 --> 00:07:58.199 name from the institution entirely because of 00:07:58.199 --> 00:08:00.259 these ties. But there was a weird twist to that, 00:08:00.319 --> 00:08:02.899 wasn't there? There was. The sources note that 00:08:02.899 --> 00:08:04.980 a lot of the online support for the hashtag cancel 00:08:04.980 --> 00:08:07.439 Yale movement was actually being amplified by 00:08:07.439 --> 00:08:09.600 right -wing pundits. To what end? They were using 00:08:09.600 --> 00:08:12.139 it to satirize what they saw as the excesses 00:08:12.139 --> 00:08:14.379 of cancel culture. It's a fascinating example 00:08:14.379 --> 00:08:17.220 of how these really serious historical and moral 00:08:17.220 --> 00:08:20.000 debates can get co -opted and twisted in modern 00:08:20.000 --> 00:08:22.839 political fights. Right. but regardless of the 00:08:22.839 --> 00:08:25.160 online noise the central fact is still there 00:08:25.160 --> 00:08:28.160 the university's financial foundation rests on 00:08:28.160 --> 00:08:31.420 some morally complex 18th century global trade 00:08:31.420 --> 00:08:33.700 it does okay so let's put the finances aside 00:08:33.700 --> 00:08:36.309 for a second and go back to the curriculum In 00:08:36.309 --> 00:08:38.509 the middle of all this flux, President Ezra Stiles 00:08:38.509 --> 00:08:41.850 had a very specific, intense academic focus. 00:08:42.149 --> 00:08:44.830 He absolutely did. Stiles, who was president 00:08:44.830 --> 00:08:49.149 from 1778 to 1795, was deeply committed to the 00:08:49.149 --> 00:08:52.090 classical languages. He insisted on rigorous 00:08:52.090 --> 00:08:54.809 study of Hebrew, right alongside Greek and Latin. 00:08:54.990 --> 00:08:57.690 Why Hebrew specifically? He saw it as essential 00:08:57.690 --> 00:08:59.909 for studying the Old Testament in its purest 00:08:59.909 --> 00:09:02.779 original form. For him, it wasn't just a religious 00:09:02.779 --> 00:09:05.039 subject. It was a core classical language. And 00:09:05.039 --> 00:09:07.620 he made it mandatory. Mandatory for all freshmen, 00:09:07.779 --> 00:09:11.000 which is a big deal. At Harvard, Hebrew was generally 00:09:11.000 --> 00:09:13.539 for upperclassmen or students specifically going 00:09:13.539 --> 00:09:16.240 into divinity. This was Stiles' way of grounding 00:09:16.240 --> 00:09:18.639 the whole institution in intellectual rigor and 00:09:18.639 --> 00:09:21.019 the sacred tests, even as the world was changing 00:09:21.019 --> 00:09:23.200 so fast. And you can still see that legacy today. 00:09:23.399 --> 00:09:26.000 You can. It's literally immortalized on the Yale 00:09:26.000 --> 00:09:28.539 seal. It features the Hebrew phrase, Urim and 00:09:28.539 --> 00:09:31.980 Thummim. Which means? Roughly, lights and perfections, 00:09:32.000 --> 00:09:34.480 which links directly to the university's Latin 00:09:34.480 --> 00:09:38.789 motto, Lux et Veritas, light and truth. We should 00:09:38.789 --> 00:09:40.970 also probably mention this one incredible anecdote 00:09:40.970 --> 00:09:43.129 from that period. It really shows how fragile 00:09:43.129 --> 00:09:45.230 the whole enterprise was during the Revolutionary 00:09:45.230 --> 00:09:47.690 War. Right. Stiles' biggest test. The British 00:09:47.690 --> 00:09:50.929 occupation of New Haven in 1779. What happened? 00:09:51.169 --> 00:09:53.129 The sources recount that the British forces, 00:09:53.289 --> 00:09:55.429 after they took the city, they threatened to 00:09:55.429 --> 00:09:57.730 raze the college buildings. Just burned it all 00:09:57.730 --> 00:09:59.090 to the ground. Which would have been the end 00:09:59.090 --> 00:10:01.549 of Yale. Completely. Great take. It was standard 00:10:01.549 --> 00:10:03.350 practice. You destroy centers of revolutionary 00:10:03.350 --> 00:10:06.289 education to break morale. But the school was 00:10:06.289 --> 00:10:09.710 saved. How? A Yale graduate, a man named Edmund 00:10:09.710 --> 00:10:12.049 Fanning, happened to be serving as the secretary 00:10:12.049 --> 00:10:14.710 to the British general in command. Fanning personally 00:10:14.710 --> 00:10:17.110 intervened and argued for the college's preservation. 00:10:17.509 --> 00:10:19.929 And it worked? It worked. The campus was spared. 00:10:20.409 --> 00:10:23.750 And years later, in 1803, decades after the war 00:10:23.750 --> 00:10:26.570 was over, the university granted Fanning an honorary 00:10:26.570 --> 00:10:30.490 degree in gratitude. It's just, it's a powerful 00:10:30.490 --> 00:10:33.909 reminder of how close Yale came to just being 00:10:33.909 --> 00:10:36.840 wiped off the map. OK, so moving into the 19th 00:10:36.840 --> 00:10:40.820 century, Yale survives the war, but now it's 00:10:40.820 --> 00:10:44.000 facing a new kind of threat, right? Irrelevance. 00:10:44.080 --> 00:10:46.320 Exactly. The country is industrializing, it's 00:10:46.320 --> 00:10:48.700 maturing, and the demands on higher education 00:10:48.700 --> 00:10:51.679 are changing dramatically. Yale is forced to 00:10:51.679 --> 00:10:54.159 really wrestle with its core identity. What should 00:10:54.159 --> 00:10:56.759 an American college actually teach? And this 00:10:56.759 --> 00:10:59.659 all comes to a head with this document, the 1828 00:10:59.659 --> 00:11:02.440 Yale Report. Yes. And this report is seen as 00:11:02.440 --> 00:11:05.529 this. This pivotal but profoundly conservative 00:11:05.529 --> 00:11:09.750 moment in American higher education. It's basically 00:11:09.750 --> 00:11:13.330 a staunch dogmatic defense of the old classical 00:11:13.330 --> 00:11:15.190 curriculum. Latin and Greek. Latin and Greek 00:11:15.190 --> 00:11:17.350 against this rising tide of demand for modern 00:11:17.350 --> 00:11:20.149 languages, practical science, math, vocational 00:11:20.149 --> 00:11:22.250 training. Which feels so counterintuitive. I 00:11:22.250 --> 00:11:24.129 mean, shouldn't a leader in education be leading 00:11:24.129 --> 00:11:26.799 the charge for change? You would think. You have 00:11:26.799 --> 00:11:28.659 to understand the context. College leaders back 00:11:28.659 --> 00:11:30.740 then, they were under huge pressure to innovate 00:11:30.740 --> 00:11:33.120 to get students, but they were terrified of losing 00:11:33.120 --> 00:11:34.980 their moral purpose. So the report's argument 00:11:34.980 --> 00:11:37.759 wasn't about jobs. It was about... Mental discipline. 00:11:37.879 --> 00:11:39.980 That was the term they used. They argued that 00:11:39.980 --> 00:11:42.179 studying the classics was the best way to train 00:11:42.179 --> 00:11:45.440 the mind for any future job. But the deeper reason, 00:11:45.559 --> 00:11:48.279 the one that wasn't just academic... Was moral. 00:11:48.460 --> 00:11:51.559 It was fundamentally a moral defense. The New 00:11:51.559 --> 00:11:53.960 Haven scholars, they wanted to create students 00:11:53.960 --> 00:11:57.059 with strong religious and ethical values. They 00:11:57.059 --> 00:11:59.080 wanted them to be able to resist all the new 00:11:59.080 --> 00:12:01.519 isms they feared were corrupting society. Like 00:12:01.519 --> 00:12:04.860 what? Professionalism, materialism, individualism, 00:12:04.960 --> 00:12:07.840 consumerism. They saw classical education as 00:12:07.840 --> 00:12:10.220 this wall, this bulwark against the moral decay 00:12:10.220 --> 00:12:12.620 they associated with the modern industrial world. 00:12:12.879 --> 00:12:15.659 So in a way, resisting science and modern languages 00:12:15.659 --> 00:12:18.919 was resisting modernity itself. Yes, on the belief 00:12:18.919 --> 00:12:21.539 that it would lead to moral fragmentation. And 00:12:21.539 --> 00:12:23.620 this philosophy, it directly fueled one of the 00:12:23.620 --> 00:12:25.919 most famous academic fights of the late 19th 00:12:25.919 --> 00:12:27.980 century. The clash between President Noah Porter 00:12:27.980 --> 00:12:30.740 and Professor William Graham Sumner. A classic 00:12:30.740 --> 00:12:34.179 conflict. Sumner, who taught from 1872 to 1909, 00:12:34.480 --> 00:12:37.080 was a true pioneer. He was bringing in these 00:12:37.080 --> 00:12:39.179 brand new disciplines, economics and sociology. 00:12:39.500 --> 00:12:41.679 Subjects that relied on observing the real world, 00:12:41.740 --> 00:12:44.840 not just reading old texts. Exactly. And his 00:12:44.840 --> 00:12:47.720 classes were hugely popular. I mean, overflowing 00:12:47.720 --> 00:12:50.019 with students who were desperate to understand 00:12:50.019 --> 00:12:53.279 the... But Porter, who was the president and 00:12:53.279 --> 00:12:55.899 a moral philosopher, he saw this as a threat. 00:12:56.059 --> 00:12:58.440 An existential threat to Yale's entire tradition. 00:12:58.960 --> 00:13:02.200 He didn't just dislike this subject, he actively 00:13:02.200 --> 00:13:05.139 objected to the main textbook Sumner was using. 00:13:05.259 --> 00:13:07.659 Which was? Herbert Spencer's Social Statics. 00:13:08.139 --> 00:13:10.940 which promoted what's called agnostic materialism. 00:13:11.080 --> 00:13:13.600 Unpack that for us. Basically, it's the idea 00:13:13.600 --> 00:13:16.139 that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, 00:13:16.200 --> 00:13:18.860 and everything, consciousness, thought, everything, 00:13:18.960 --> 00:13:21.759 is just the result of material interactions. 00:13:22.019 --> 00:13:25.240 It doesn't deny God, but makes God unnecessary 00:13:25.240 --> 00:13:27.980 to explain the world. So it's a direct assault 00:13:27.980 --> 00:13:30.539 on Porter's entire worldview. A frontal assault. 00:13:30.799 --> 00:13:32.740 He was afraid it would destroy the students' 00:13:32.840 --> 00:13:35.129 faith in their character. It's just this perfect 00:13:35.129 --> 00:13:38.009 microcosm of the new social sciences colliding 00:13:38.009 --> 00:13:40.309 head on with established moral philosophy. And 00:13:40.309 --> 00:13:42.409 yet, despite all this internal resistance from 00:13:42.409 --> 00:13:45.710 the president himself, Yale had to expand. It 00:13:45.710 --> 00:13:47.909 had no choice. The pressure from the outside 00:13:47.909 --> 00:13:50.269 world, the need to compete with new institutions 00:13:50.269 --> 00:13:54.490 like Johns Hopkins. It was too much. The school 00:13:54.490 --> 00:13:56.710 was becoming too big and complex to just be a 00:13:56.710 --> 00:13:59.429 college. So in 1887, it officially becomes Yale 00:13:59.429 --> 00:14:01.870 University. Under President Timothy Dwight V, 00:14:02.049 --> 00:14:05.799 yes. The name Yale College was kept, but only 00:14:05.799 --> 00:14:08.399 for the undergraduate school. And this renaming 00:14:08.399 --> 00:14:10.539 happens right as all these professional schools 00:14:10.539 --> 00:14:13.100 are taking off. The ones that directly contradicted 00:14:13.100 --> 00:14:15.919 the 1828 report's whole philosophy. Right. You 00:14:15.919 --> 00:14:17.279 have the School of Medicine founded way back 00:14:17.279 --> 00:14:21.139 in 1810, the law school in 1822. But the 19th 00:14:21.139 --> 00:14:23.120 century brings the Graduate School of Arts and 00:14:23.120 --> 00:14:26.120 Sciences, and crucially, the Sheffield Scientific 00:14:26.120 --> 00:14:29.620 School in 1847 for practical science and engineering. 00:14:29.860 --> 00:14:32.279 And that growth just kept going. Unabated. You 00:14:32.279 --> 00:14:34.539 get the School of Management in 1976, and just 00:14:34.539 --> 00:14:36.799 recently, the Jackson School of Global Affairs 00:14:36.799 --> 00:14:40.200 in 2022. But the sources note that this expansion 00:14:40.200 --> 00:14:43.399 caused deep anxiety inside Yale. President Porter 00:14:43.399 --> 00:14:45.340 feared that embracing this new research university 00:14:45.340 --> 00:14:47.799 model would corrupt and dilute the undergraduate 00:14:47.799 --> 00:14:50.379 experience. And that tension is still there, 00:14:50.460 --> 00:14:52.779 isn't it? I mean, how do you balance being... 00:14:53.019 --> 00:14:55.960 a cutting -edge research hub with providing a 00:14:55.960 --> 00:14:59.200 broad liberal arts education for undergrads. 00:14:59.279 --> 00:15:01.360 It's the defining tension of the modern university, 00:15:01.659 --> 00:15:03.740 and Yale has been wrestling with it for over 00:15:03.740 --> 00:15:06.279 a century. And that whole identity crisis, it 00:15:06.279 --> 00:15:08.259 wasn't just in faculty meetings. It filtered 00:15:08.259 --> 00:15:10.679 right down to the students and redefined the 00:15:10.679 --> 00:15:13.779 Yale ideal. Okay, let's talk about that archetype. 00:15:14.120 --> 00:15:16.960 Originally, the sources point to Nathan Hale 00:15:16.960 --> 00:15:20.019 from the class of 1773. Right, the aristocratic 00:15:20.019 --> 00:15:24.159 scholar. Athletic, fiercely patriotic, the perfect 00:15:24.159 --> 00:15:26.340 renaissance man for the new republic. But that 00:15:26.340 --> 00:15:28.299 changes. It changes dramatically over the 19th 00:15:28.299 --> 00:15:31.360 century. The student heroes, they increasingly 00:15:31.360 --> 00:15:34.399 become athletic stars, football players, rowers. 00:15:34.559 --> 00:15:37.200 And that shift was driven by whom? Largely by 00:15:37.200 --> 00:15:40.000 a powerful alumni base and the student body itself. 00:15:40.279 --> 00:15:42.600 They wanted to win the big game. That became 00:15:42.600 --> 00:15:45.700 the symbol of institutional prestige and, frankly, 00:15:45.879 --> 00:15:48.720 virility. The sources even mention some fictional 00:15:48.720 --> 00:15:51.299 examples of this. They do. There's this turn 00:15:51.299 --> 00:15:53.360 -of -the -century fictional hero, Frank Merriwell, 00:15:53.500 --> 00:15:57.379 who is the perfect, athletic, noble Yale man. 00:15:57.940 --> 00:16:00.159 But then his successor in literature, a character 00:16:00.159 --> 00:16:02.159 named Dink Stover in a book called Stover at 00:16:02.159 --> 00:16:04.600 Yale, he actually starts to question this new 00:16:04.600 --> 00:16:07.419 focus on sports and business. So the literature 00:16:07.419 --> 00:16:10.159 reflects a real cultural anxiety about the school's 00:16:10.159 --> 00:16:12.899 priorities. Absolutely. And this focus on sports 00:16:12.899 --> 00:16:15.820 led to the creation of these uniquely American, 00:16:15.960 --> 00:16:19.240 highly organized athletic programs. Yale, Harvard 00:16:19.240 --> 00:16:21.759 and Princeton, the big three. They explicitly 00:16:21.759 --> 00:16:25.279 reject the British idea of gentlemanly amateurism. 00:16:25.360 --> 00:16:28.080 And turn sports into a spectacle. A huge spectacle 00:16:28.080 --> 00:16:32.080 backed by intense alumni fundraising. The Harvard 00:16:32.080 --> 00:16:34.980 -Yale football rivalry, the game, kicks off in 00:16:34.980 --> 00:16:37.820 1875. And this athletic rivalry actually starts 00:16:37.820 --> 00:16:40.480 to bleed into the academic world. It does. Between 00:16:40.480 --> 00:16:43.620 1892 and 1909, the language of sports battling 00:16:43.620 --> 00:16:46.399 opponents, victory, it's directly adopted to 00:16:46.399 --> 00:16:48.320 talk about intercollegiate debates. They were 00:16:48.320 --> 00:16:50.100 trying to manufacture the same hype. Exactly. 00:16:50.399 --> 00:16:52.559 Debates were on the front pages of college papers. 00:16:53.059 --> 00:16:55.240 Debaters got the equivalent of athletic letters. 00:16:55.519 --> 00:16:57.659 But it never really took off with the same passion 00:16:57.659 --> 00:17:00.340 as football. Why not? Well, as the sources note, 00:17:00.500 --> 00:17:04.460 scoring is subjective. There's no clear, visceral 00:17:04.460 --> 00:17:07.160 winner like in a football game. But this obsession 00:17:07.160 --> 00:17:09.960 with the sports spectacle, it had a dark side. 00:17:10.039 --> 00:17:11.759 There was a major crisis around football, right? 00:17:11.819 --> 00:17:15.359 A huge one. In 1909 and 1910, the source material 00:17:15.359 --> 00:17:18.119 talks about this period of alarm because of a 00:17:18.119 --> 00:17:20.680 series of really serious, sometimes fatal injuries 00:17:20.680 --> 00:17:23.700 on the field. The early reforms just hadn't worked. 00:17:23.859 --> 00:17:26.779 So the public is losing trust. The public is 00:17:26.779 --> 00:17:28.839 alarmed, and it's threatening the future of the 00:17:28.839 --> 00:17:32.039 sport in higher education. This forces the presidents 00:17:32.039 --> 00:17:34.319 of the big three to step in. Hadley of Yale, 00:17:34.559 --> 00:17:36.819 Lowell of Harvard, and Woodrow Wilson of Princeton. 00:17:37.309 --> 00:17:39.470 The three of them meet to create moderate reforms 00:17:39.470 --> 00:17:42.589 specifically designed to reduce injuries. It 00:17:42.589 --> 00:17:45.069 shows the power these elite schools had to set 00:17:45.069 --> 00:17:47.549 national trends. But even they face pushback. 00:17:47.710 --> 00:17:50.750 Huge pushback. Their reforms were diluted by 00:17:50.750 --> 00:17:52.750 rebellion from the entrenched rules committees 00:17:52.750 --> 00:17:55.369 and the formation of the Intercollegiate Athletic 00:17:55.369 --> 00:17:58.269 Association. Even the most powerful university 00:17:58.269 --> 00:18:01.170 presidents struggle to rein in the cultural force 00:18:01.170 --> 00:18:04.329 of college sports. Okay, so moving into the 20th 00:18:04.329 --> 00:18:07.099 century. Yale starts to physically transform 00:18:07.099 --> 00:18:10.700 itself. And the campus architecture, it's a statement. 00:18:10.839 --> 00:18:12.779 It's more than a statement. It's almost theatrical. 00:18:13.059 --> 00:18:15.880 It's an intentional effort to fabricate a sense 00:18:15.880 --> 00:18:18.039 of history. This is the collegiate Gothic style. 00:18:18.279 --> 00:18:21.839 Right. Built mostly between 1917 and 1931, this 00:18:21.839 --> 00:18:24.259 was almost entirely funded by Edward S. Harkness, 00:18:24.400 --> 00:18:26.680 who wanted Yale to look like Oxford and Cambridge. 00:18:26.960 --> 00:18:29.319 And the buildings are incredibly detailed, with 00:18:29.319 --> 00:18:31.619 little stone sculptures of students, writers, 00:18:31.900 --> 00:18:34.559 athletes. But the most fascinating part is the... 00:18:34.809 --> 00:18:37.589 the faux aging the architect went told to make 00:18:37.589 --> 00:18:40.289 the brand new buildings look centuries old yes 00:18:40.289 --> 00:18:42.710 james gamble rogers yeah it wasn't just aging 00:18:42.710 --> 00:18:44.910 them it was a performance it was about creating 00:18:44.910 --> 00:18:47.230 instant tradition through trickery give us some 00:18:47.230 --> 00:18:49.490 of the techniques they're kind of wild okay so 00:18:49.490 --> 00:18:52.250 he would splash the newly cut stone walls with 00:18:52.250 --> 00:18:55.069 acid to give them a weathered sustained look 00:18:55.069 --> 00:18:58.690 he threw acid on the walls he did He also deliberately 00:18:58.690 --> 00:19:01.670 had the leaded glass windows broken and then 00:19:01.670 --> 00:19:04.609 repaired in a rough medieval style to simulate 00:19:04.609 --> 00:19:07.210 centuries of wear and tear. That's incredible. 00:19:07.509 --> 00:19:10.250 And maybe the weirdest thing, he left decorative 00:19:10.250 --> 00:19:13.529 niches empty on purpose to make it look like 00:19:13.529 --> 00:19:15.890 statues had been lost or stolen over the ages. 00:19:16.190 --> 00:19:19.769 It's creating history through absence. And it's 00:19:19.769 --> 00:19:22.750 all an illusion because behind all that ancient 00:19:22.750 --> 00:19:25.670 looking stone. It's modern steel framing, standard 00:19:25.670 --> 00:19:28.509 1930s construction. The sources say one building 00:19:28.509 --> 00:19:30.970 struggled with that, though. Arknest Tower. It 00:19:30.970 --> 00:19:32.930 was built as a freestanding stone structure, 00:19:33.049 --> 00:19:36.009 and it had to be heavily reinforced in 1964 just 00:19:36.009 --> 00:19:38.250 so they could install the massive memorial carillon 00:19:38.250 --> 00:19:41.049 bells. The Gothic aesthetic met the reality of 00:19:41.049 --> 00:19:43.230 modern weight and physics. But Yale isn't just 00:19:43.230 --> 00:19:45.190 Gothic. There's a lot of architectural diversity. 00:19:45.630 --> 00:19:47.410 Right. You have the oldest building, Connecticut 00:19:47.410 --> 00:19:50.269 Hall from 1750, which is classic Georgian style. 00:19:50.670 --> 00:19:53.289 And then you have these iconic modernist additions. 00:19:53.630 --> 00:19:57.319 From Eero Saarinen. Yes. A Yale alumnus himself, 00:19:57.680 --> 00:20:00.500 he designed the famous whale -shaped Ingalls 00:20:00.500 --> 00:20:04.039 Rink. And even more striking are the Ezra Stiles 00:20:04.039 --> 00:20:06.539 and Morse residential colleges. And he modeled 00:20:06.539 --> 00:20:09.160 those on an Italian hill town. San Gimignano, 00:20:09.220 --> 00:20:11.990 yes. Yeah. The sources suggest he chose it because 00:20:11.990 --> 00:20:15.910 he wanted to evoke that sense of a dense, ancient, 00:20:16.049 --> 00:20:18.869 protective community. He was translating a medieval 00:20:18.869 --> 00:20:22.109 European fortress town into modern American residential 00:20:22.109 --> 00:20:24.849 life. Then you also have Louis Kahn, another 00:20:24.849 --> 00:20:27.230 giant, who did the Yale Art Gallery and the Center 00:20:27.230 --> 00:20:29.170 for British Art. And the thing that holds all 00:20:29.170 --> 00:20:31.170 these different styles together is the residential 00:20:31.170 --> 00:20:33.740 college system. It really defines the undergraduate 00:20:33.740 --> 00:20:36.500 experience. It absolutely does. The whole system 00:20:36.500 --> 00:20:39.099 was set up in 1933, again, thanks to a massive 00:20:39.099 --> 00:20:41.319 donation from Edward Harkness. He'd seen the 00:20:41.319 --> 00:20:43.059 system at Oxford and Cambridge and loved how 00:20:43.059 --> 00:20:45.319 it created social intimacy within a huge university. 00:20:45.619 --> 00:20:48.500 So it's designed to make a big place feel small. 00:20:48.970 --> 00:20:50.950 All undergrads are assigned to a college and 00:20:50.950 --> 00:20:52.869 most live there. Right. And they function as 00:20:52.869 --> 00:20:54.730 these social and cultural hubs. They have small 00:20:54.730 --> 00:20:57.809 seminars, formal dinners and master's teas. So 00:20:57.809 --> 00:20:59.349 they're called heads teas now, which is a whole 00:20:59.349 --> 00:21:01.809 other story. A place where students can meet 00:21:01.809 --> 00:21:04.450 famous people in a really intimate setting. Exactly. 00:21:04.589 --> 00:21:07.890 But here's the critical distinction. The colleges 00:21:07.890 --> 00:21:10.900 are your home in your community. But they are 00:21:10.900 --> 00:21:13.279 not your academic department. Right. All the 00:21:13.279 --> 00:21:15.519 courses and lectures are run by the Faculty of 00:21:15.519 --> 00:21:18.240 Arts and Sciences and are open to everyone, regardless 00:21:18.240 --> 00:21:21.019 of your college. It neatly separates your social 00:21:21.019 --> 00:21:23.819 life from your academic life. And layered on 00:21:23.819 --> 00:21:26.559 top of that communal structure is the world of 00:21:26.559 --> 00:21:28.940 secret societies. Everyone knows the big names. 00:21:29.059 --> 00:21:32.420 Skull and Bones, Skrull and Key, Wolf's Head. 00:21:32.579 --> 00:21:35.119 And their buildings, the tombs, are designed 00:21:35.119 --> 00:21:38.740 to be private, but also... Unmistakable. They're 00:21:38.740 --> 00:21:41.440 unmistakable markers of power right in the middle 00:21:41.440 --> 00:21:44.240 of campus. And the architecture tells you everything. 00:21:44.640 --> 00:21:46.980 Skull and Bones is this imposing, windowless, 00:21:47.019 --> 00:21:50.480 Egyptodoric -style building. It screams ancient 00:21:50.480 --> 00:21:53.319 power and mystery. While Scroll and Key is totally 00:21:53.319 --> 00:21:55.579 different. Totally different. It's more ornamental, 00:21:55.579 --> 00:21:57.839 a sort of Moorish, Islamic -inspired, Bozard 00:21:57.839 --> 00:22:00.940 style. They're sending a clear message. We are 00:22:00.940 --> 00:22:03.500 private, we are powerful, and our traditions 00:22:03.500 --> 00:22:05.579 are older than most of what you see around you. 00:22:05.819 --> 00:22:08.720 But beyond all that serious secret stuff, Yale 00:22:08.720 --> 00:22:11.539 has some traditions that are just chaotic. And 00:22:11.539 --> 00:22:14.400 show a healthy disrespect for authority. One 00:22:14.400 --> 00:22:16.700 of the more charming ones is the smashing of 00:22:16.700 --> 00:22:19.059 clay pipes at graduation during the alma mater. 00:22:19.220 --> 00:22:22.000 To symbolize breaking from college life. Right. 00:22:22.079 --> 00:22:24.000 Though the sources say they use bubble pipes 00:22:24.000 --> 00:22:27.019 now. probably for safety reasons. But the ultimate 00:22:27.019 --> 00:22:29.579 example of student defiance has to be bladder 00:22:29.579 --> 00:22:32.640 ball. Oh, bladder ball. It was this campus -wide 00:22:32.640 --> 00:22:35.940 anarchic game played with a massive inflatable 00:22:35.940 --> 00:22:38.680 ball, sometimes six feet in diameter. So just 00:22:38.680 --> 00:22:42.240 pure chaos. Total anarchy. Minimal rules, lots 00:22:42.240 --> 00:22:45.660 of injuries, frequent property damage. The administration 00:22:45.660 --> 00:22:48.359 banned it over and over again. But the students 00:22:48.359 --> 00:22:51.160 kept reviving it. Stubbornly. They saw it as 00:22:51.160 --> 00:22:53.019 this crucial expression of student spirit and 00:22:53.019 --> 00:22:55.490 resistance. The last time a big game was attempted 00:22:55.490 --> 00:22:59.210 was as recently as 2014. That shows you how tenacious 00:22:59.210 --> 00:23:01.170 these traditions can be. But of course, despite 00:23:01.170 --> 00:23:03.890 all the fun and games, Yale's core identity is 00:23:03.890 --> 00:23:06.210 still about rigorous research. It's classified 00:23:06.210 --> 00:23:09.190 as an R1 university. Right. Doctoral university 00:23:09.190 --> 00:23:11.970 with very high research activity. And the money 00:23:11.970 --> 00:23:15.700 backs that up. In 2021, R &D spending was over 00:23:15.700 --> 00:23:18.440 a billion dollars. And all that research has 00:23:18.440 --> 00:23:20.640 led to the formation of these really important, 00:23:20.819 --> 00:23:23.619 globally recognized schools of thought. Let's 00:23:23.619 --> 00:23:25.799 talk about the one in literature. OK, so the 00:23:25.799 --> 00:23:27.940 English and comparative literature departments 00:23:27.940 --> 00:23:30.720 were central. to the new criticism movement. 00:23:30.960 --> 00:23:33.980 You have huge figures like W .K. Wimsatt and 00:23:33.980 --> 00:23:36.440 Clint Brooks. And new criticism, for those who 00:23:36.440 --> 00:23:38.339 don't know. It's a mid -20th century approach 00:23:38.339 --> 00:23:40.819 that really stresses close reading of the text 00:23:40.819 --> 00:23:43.640 itself. The meaning is in the words on the page, 00:23:43.819 --> 00:23:46.420 not in the author's life or the historical context. 00:23:46.759 --> 00:23:48.420 And then later, the Complit Department became 00:23:48.420 --> 00:23:50.359 the American Center for Deconstruction. Yes, 00:23:50.420 --> 00:23:53.299 often just called the Yale School. With figures 00:23:53.299 --> 00:23:56.839 like Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man, it became... 00:23:57.339 --> 00:24:00.759 famous or infamous for questioning fixed meaning 00:24:00.759 --> 00:24:04.019 in texts, a major, major turning point in literary 00:24:04.019 --> 00:24:06.119 theory. And this intellectual leadership goes 00:24:06.119 --> 00:24:08.359 beyond literature. It even gets into the social 00:24:08.359 --> 00:24:10.319 sciences that President Porter was so afraid 00:24:10.319 --> 00:24:12.759 of. Right. The history department, for example, 00:24:12.940 --> 00:24:15.200 originated key streams of American historical 00:24:15.200 --> 00:24:17.799 thought. You've got Southern history with C. 00:24:17.880 --> 00:24:20.500 Van Woodward and the rigorous study of labor 00:24:20.500 --> 00:24:22.670 history with David Montgomery. And all of this 00:24:22.670 --> 00:24:24.990 research is supported by Yale's massive collections. 00:24:25.309 --> 00:24:28.190 The library system, again, is the second largest 00:24:28.190 --> 00:24:31.130 in the country. The main hub is the Sterling 00:24:31.130 --> 00:24:33.569 Memorial Library, this Gothic masterpiece that 00:24:33.569 --> 00:24:36.460 holds about four million volumes. But the really 00:24:36.460 --> 00:24:39.160 priceless stuff is in the Benecke Rare book and 00:24:39.160 --> 00:24:41.180 manuscript library. Which is an architectural 00:24:41.180 --> 00:24:43.640 marble in its own right. It's famous for those 00:24:43.640 --> 00:24:46.220 translucent marble panels instead of glass windows. 00:24:46.539 --> 00:24:48.920 Exactly. And that marble serves two purposes. 00:24:49.240 --> 00:24:51.420 One, it protects the manuscripts from direct 00:24:51.420 --> 00:24:54.160 sunlight. And two, it diffuses the light inside 00:24:54.160 --> 00:24:57.559 into this warm, ambient, almost cathedral -like 00:24:57.559 --> 00:25:00.059 glow. It's a stunning space. And beyond the books, 00:25:00.119 --> 00:25:03.359 Yale has these world -class museums. Three key 00:25:03.359 --> 00:25:06.369 ones. The Yale University Art Gallery, which 00:25:06.369 --> 00:25:08.170 was the country's first university -affiliated 00:25:08.170 --> 00:25:10.569 art museum. The Yale Center for British Art, 00:25:10.630 --> 00:25:13.210 with the largest collection outside the UK. And 00:25:13.210 --> 00:25:15.910 the Peabody Museum of Natural History. But even 00:25:15.910 --> 00:25:18.230 these collections have faced their own historical 00:25:18.230 --> 00:25:21.230 reckoning. The Peabody used to house artifacts 00:25:21.230 --> 00:25:23.910 from Machu Picchu. Right, from Hiram Bingham's 00:25:23.910 --> 00:25:26.869 famous 1912 expedition. And while taking them 00:25:26.869 --> 00:25:29.220 was legal at the time... The university, after 00:25:29.220 --> 00:25:31.740 years of ethical claims from the Peruvian government, 00:25:32.000 --> 00:25:34.480 finally returned the last of the artifacts to 00:25:34.480 --> 00:25:37.720 Peru in 2012. Which shows them actively addressing 00:25:37.720 --> 00:25:40.500 these colonial era collection controversies. 00:25:40.640 --> 00:25:42.859 It does. It's part of that ongoing process of 00:25:42.859 --> 00:25:45.359 grappling with its own history. And that grappling 00:25:45.359 --> 00:25:47.859 brings us to the major social and political fault 00:25:47.859 --> 00:25:50.980 lines of the 20th and 21st centuries. Yale has 00:25:50.980 --> 00:25:53.220 this strange paradox, doesn't it? It seems so 00:25:53.220 --> 00:25:55.819 conservative and slow to change. And then it 00:25:55.819 --> 00:25:58.279 finds itself at the absolute epicenter of social 00:25:58.279 --> 00:26:00.799 progress once that change is finally forced upon 00:26:00.799 --> 00:26:03.240 it. The inclusion of women is the perfect example. 00:26:03.559 --> 00:26:05.940 The road to coeducation was so long. It starts 00:26:05.940 --> 00:26:09.059 with Lucinda Foote in 1793, who passes the entrance 00:26:09.059 --> 00:26:11.279 exams but is rejected just because she's a woman. 00:26:11.400 --> 00:26:13.660 And women don't officially start studying at 00:26:13.660 --> 00:26:17.130 Yale. until 1892, and even then, only in graduate 00:26:17.130 --> 00:26:20.490 programs. The pressure for undergraduate co -education 00:26:20.490 --> 00:26:23.029 builds and builds. They talked about merging 00:26:23.029 --> 00:26:27.000 with Vassar in 1966. But Vassar said no. So Yale 00:26:27.000 --> 00:26:29.940 finally went co -ed on its own in 1969. Right. 00:26:30.000 --> 00:26:32.759 The class of 73 was the first to have women from 00:26:32.759 --> 00:26:35.400 freshman year on. But bringing women to campus 00:26:35.400 --> 00:26:37.799 quickly exposed some deep institutional failures. 00:26:38.019 --> 00:26:40.599 And that leads to the landmark lawsuit, Alexander 00:26:40.599 --> 00:26:43.299 v. Yale, in the 1970s. Which was a legal confrontation 00:26:43.299 --> 00:26:46.460 that really changed American education. The case 00:26:46.460 --> 00:26:48.799 involved students and a faculty member suing 00:26:48.799 --> 00:26:51.339 Yale for failing to stop a pervasive culture 00:26:51.339 --> 00:26:53.720 of sexual harassment. And the allegations were 00:26:53.720 --> 00:26:56.359 serious. They were shocking. Rape, fondling, 00:26:56.380 --> 00:26:58.579 and faculty members allegedly offering better 00:26:58.579 --> 00:27:01.259 grades in exchange for sex. But the crucial part 00:27:01.259 --> 00:27:04.140 of this case was the legal strategy. It was groundbreaking. 00:27:04.400 --> 00:27:07.240 It was the first time that Title IXx, the federal 00:27:07.240 --> 00:27:10.019 law banning sex -based discrimination, was used 00:27:10.019 --> 00:27:12.500 to argue that an institution's tolerance of sexual 00:27:12.500 --> 00:27:15.279 harassment is itself a form of illegal sex discrimination. 00:27:15.920 --> 00:27:17.980 And even though the plaintiffs didn't ultimately 00:27:17.980 --> 00:27:20.700 win their specific cases in court. The legal 00:27:20.700 --> 00:27:22.640 reasoning it established changed everything. 00:27:22.859 --> 00:27:24.920 It was a warning shot to every university in 00:27:24.920 --> 00:27:27.440 the country. And it forced Yale to immediately 00:27:27.440 --> 00:27:30.000 create its grievance board and the Women's Center. 00:27:30.119 --> 00:27:31.819 And these issues keep coming back. There is another 00:27:31.819 --> 00:27:35.700 big Title IX complaint in 2011. Right. Alleging 00:27:35.700 --> 00:27:37.700 a hostile sexual climate, which prompted the 00:27:37.700 --> 00:27:40.019 university to form another committee to address 00:27:40.019 --> 00:27:42.490 sexual misconduct. It's an ongoing struggle. 00:27:42.690 --> 00:27:45.049 The other major social fault line is about its 00:27:45.049 --> 00:27:47.789 namesakes, particularly their connection to slavery 00:27:47.789 --> 00:27:51.069 and white supremacy. Which brings us to John 00:27:51.069 --> 00:27:54.390 C. Calhoun. A deeply polarizing figure. A vice 00:27:54.390 --> 00:27:56.569 president, the famous political theorist, but 00:27:56.569 --> 00:28:01.029 also a staunch slave owner and an avowed white 00:28:01.029 --> 00:28:03.769 supremacist. The calls to rename Calhoun College 00:28:03.769 --> 00:28:06.130 started way back in the 60s, but they got much 00:28:06.130 --> 00:28:07.970 louder after the Charleston church shooting in 00:28:07.970 --> 00:28:10.470 2015. And President Salovey's initial decision 00:28:10.470 --> 00:28:13.990 in 2016 was not to rename it. Right. And his 00:28:13.990 --> 00:28:15.950 argument was fascinating. He said keeping the 00:28:15.950 --> 00:28:18.289 name would force students to confront his legacy 00:28:18.289 --> 00:28:21.910 directly rather than erasing it. His quote was, 00:28:21.950 --> 00:28:24.470 we cannot erase American history, but we can 00:28:24.470 --> 00:28:27.029 confront it, teach it, and learn from it. It 00:28:27.029 --> 00:28:29.490 was a very deliberate choice to prioritize confrontation 00:28:29.490 --> 00:28:32.460 over sanitizing the campus. It was. Though during 00:28:32.460 --> 00:28:34.859 that time, they did make one symbolic change. 00:28:35.400 --> 00:28:38.619 The title Master for the residential college 00:28:38.619 --> 00:28:41.799 heads was changed to Head of College because 00:28:41.799 --> 00:28:44.019 of its obvious connotations with slavery. But 00:28:44.019 --> 00:28:46.079 then just a year later, they reversed course. 00:28:46.200 --> 00:28:49.119 They did. In 2017, they announced Calhoun College 00:28:49.119 --> 00:28:51.660 would be renamed Hopper College in honor of the 00:28:51.660 --> 00:28:54.240 pioneering computer scientist and Navy Rear Admiral 00:28:54.240 --> 00:28:57.140 Grace Hopper, a Yale Ph .D. And that reversal 00:28:57.140 --> 00:28:59.579 shows just how difficult this process is. It 00:28:59.579 --> 00:29:01.940 really does. The sources say the reaction was 00:29:01.940 --> 00:29:04.720 all over the map. Many students and faculty celebrated, 00:29:05.019 --> 00:29:07.640 but a lot of alumni and outside observers criticized 00:29:07.640 --> 00:29:11.000 it as caving to political pressure. Another area 00:29:11.000 --> 00:29:13.380 where Yale has faced intense scrutiny is mental 00:29:13.380 --> 00:29:16.539 health. Yes, specifically its policies around 00:29:16.539 --> 00:29:19.500 mandatory medical withdrawal. One 2018 report 00:29:19.500 --> 00:29:22.240 even ranked Yale as having the worst mental health 00:29:22.240 --> 00:29:24.980 policies in the Ivy League. The claim was that 00:29:24.980 --> 00:29:27.359 Yale would pressure suicidal or depressed students 00:29:27.359 --> 00:29:29.339 to withdraw instead of offering them accommodations. 00:29:29.819 --> 00:29:33.059 And the tragedy of Lu Qingwang in 2015 brought 00:29:33.059 --> 00:29:36.599 this into sharp focus. Her suicide note explicitly 00:29:36.599 --> 00:29:38.920 mentioned her fear of being forced to withdraw 00:29:38.920 --> 00:29:42.319 this mandatory full -year leave with a very uncertain 00:29:42.319 --> 00:29:44.980 path back. Her friend said she lied to her therapist 00:29:44.980 --> 00:29:46.900 because she was terrified that admitting how 00:29:46.900 --> 00:29:48.259 much she was struggling would get her kicked 00:29:48.259 --> 00:29:51.019 out. It created this climate where students were 00:29:51.019 --> 00:29:54.269 incentivized to hide their pain. Therapy became 00:29:54.269 --> 00:29:57.410 a risk, not a resource. But in response to all 00:29:57.410 --> 00:29:59.970 the activism and lawsuits, things have finally 00:29:59.970 --> 00:30:02.150 started to change. What are some of those changes? 00:30:02.569 --> 00:30:04.750 Well, the process was renamed from medical withdrawal 00:30:04.750 --> 00:30:07.349 to medical leave of absence. And that's not just 00:30:07.349 --> 00:30:10.170 cosmetic. The new policy lets students keep their 00:30:10.170 --> 00:30:13.069 Yale insurance and, crucially, visit campus and 00:30:13.069 --> 00:30:15.710 stay involved in clubs. They're not totally isolated 00:30:15.710 --> 00:30:17.930 anymore. And they've also hired more clinicians 00:30:17.930 --> 00:30:20.420 and gotten rid of the reapplication fee. Right. 00:30:20.599 --> 00:30:23.359 It signals a shift toward supporting student 00:30:23.359 --> 00:30:26.240 health rather than just removing high -risk students 00:30:26.240 --> 00:30:29.180 from campus. Finally, let's talk about Yale's 00:30:29.180 --> 00:30:31.519 relationship with the world around it, both locally 00:30:31.519 --> 00:30:34.440 in New Haven and globally. In New Haven, Yale 00:30:34.440 --> 00:30:37.039 is a behemoth. It's the city's largest taxpayer 00:30:37.039 --> 00:30:39.980 and its largest employer. It's the economic anchor. 00:30:40.400 --> 00:30:43.680 But the sources point to this longstanding tension. 00:30:43.940 --> 00:30:46.740 The property taxes. Yale has consistently opposed 00:30:46.740 --> 00:30:49.440 paying taxes on its academic property. which 00:30:49.440 --> 00:30:52.619 is exempt. City officials argue that with a $44 00:30:52.619 --> 00:30:55.500 billion endowment, the university should contribute 00:30:55.500 --> 00:30:58.480 more to the city's finances. But Yale does provide 00:30:58.480 --> 00:31:00.960 support in other ways. It does. Most notably, 00:31:01.039 --> 00:31:03.420 it funds the New Haven Promise Program, which 00:31:03.420 --> 00:31:05.880 pays full tuition for eligible New Haven public 00:31:05.880 --> 00:31:08.440 school students who get into Yale. It's a major 00:31:08.440 --> 00:31:11.400 effort to bridge that town gown divide. And internationally, 00:31:11.660 --> 00:31:13.839 Yale is right in the middle of modern political 00:31:13.839 --> 00:31:16.859 activism. Especially in April 2024, when students 00:31:16.859 --> 00:31:18.759 joined the nationwide protests against the war 00:31:18.759 --> 00:31:21.400 in Gaza. They specifically demanded that Yale 00:31:21.400 --> 00:31:23.859 divest its endowment from military weapons companies. 00:31:24.099 --> 00:31:27.000 And that led to arrests. Over 50 people were 00:31:27.000 --> 00:31:30.500 arrested at protests near Baneki Plaza. And that's 00:31:30.500 --> 00:31:33.619 student activism. culminated in a December 2024 00:31:33.619 --> 00:31:36.819 referendum where undergraduates overwhelmingly 00:31:36.819 --> 00:31:39.539 voted to call for divestment. And then there's 00:31:39.539 --> 00:31:41.980 this very recent, very serious incident with 00:31:41.980 --> 00:31:45.500 Russia. Yes. In July 2025, Russian authorities 00:31:45.500 --> 00:31:49.119 declared Yale an undesirable organization, effectively 00:31:49.119 --> 00:31:51.259 banning all of its activities in the country. 00:31:51.460 --> 00:31:53.519 And their reasoning was? The official reason 00:31:53.519 --> 00:31:56.099 was that Yale's activities were aimed at violating 00:31:56.099 --> 00:31:59.759 the territorial integrity of Russia and destabilizing 00:31:59.759 --> 00:32:02.359 the political situation. It's just this stark 00:32:02.359 --> 00:32:04.839 reminder that an institution of Yale's size and 00:32:04.839 --> 00:32:07.420 influence is never truly separate from world 00:32:07.420 --> 00:32:09.890 geopolitics. So if we come back to the university 00:32:09.890 --> 00:32:12.710 motto, Lux Veritas, Light and Truth, this deep 00:32:12.710 --> 00:32:14.569 dive really shows that Yale has been in this 00:32:14.569 --> 00:32:16.529 constant struggle to define what those words 00:32:16.529 --> 00:32:20.269 actually mean. It's always balancing this classical 00:32:20.269 --> 00:32:22.829 elite identity that was forged back in the 18th 00:32:22.829 --> 00:32:25.930 century with the really urgent demands of a changing, 00:32:25.970 --> 00:32:28.289 complex world. And the history is full of that 00:32:28.289 --> 00:32:31.089 tension. It is. They founded the school to preserve 00:32:31.089 --> 00:32:34.049 Puritan orthodoxy. and their first big crisis 00:32:34.049 --> 00:32:36.589 was their own leadership converting to Anglicanism 00:32:36.589 --> 00:32:39.730 because of ideas in their own library. They defended 00:32:39.730 --> 00:32:42.730 the classics against science in 1828, only to 00:32:42.730 --> 00:32:45.309 become a world -class research university defined 00:32:45.309 --> 00:32:48.440 by science a few decades later. And through it 00:32:48.440 --> 00:32:51.279 all, this institutional commitment to creating 00:32:51.279 --> 00:32:54.240 a laboratory for future leaders. Yeah. That seems 00:32:54.240 --> 00:32:56.359 to have paid off in this incredible amount of 00:32:56.359 --> 00:32:58.559 political capital. That concentration of power 00:32:58.559 --> 00:33:00.740 we mentioned at the start, the presidents, the 00:33:00.740 --> 00:33:03.000 Supreme Court justices, that unbroken streak 00:33:03.000 --> 00:33:05.240 on presidential tickets. It demands an explanation. 00:33:05.279 --> 00:33:08.210 So what is it? What fosters that? The sources 00:33:08.210 --> 00:33:10.990 attribute it not just to legacy and wealth, but 00:33:10.990 --> 00:33:13.549 to this intense focus on leadership training 00:33:13.549 --> 00:33:16.089 and what they call the ethos of organized activity 00:33:16.089 --> 00:33:18.650 on campus. It encourages students to take on 00:33:18.650 --> 00:33:21.170 these highly competitive managerial roles from 00:33:21.170 --> 00:33:23.450 day one. Give me some examples of that. I mean, 00:33:23.450 --> 00:33:25.089 look at the institutions they're managing as 00:33:25.089 --> 00:33:27.710 students. Leading the Yale Political Union, which 00:33:27.710 --> 00:33:30.230 models parliamentary debate. Managing the Yale 00:33:30.230 --> 00:33:32.470 Daily News, one of the most prestigious college 00:33:32.470 --> 00:33:35.450 papers in the country. Running huge volunteer 00:33:35.450 --> 00:33:38.670 organizations or athletic teams. So they're learning 00:33:38.670 --> 00:33:42.089 how to manage budgets, allocate resources. And 00:33:42.089 --> 00:33:44.190 most importantly, how to navigate public scrutiny 00:33:44.190 --> 00:33:47.190 and internal political fights. It creates a very 00:33:47.190 --> 00:33:50.190 specific type of person, one who is pre -adapted 00:33:50.190 --> 00:33:52.730 for the national political stage. It's a fascinating 00:33:52.730 --> 00:33:55.609 evolution from the old Puritan focus on moral 00:33:55.609 --> 00:33:59.549 rectitude to this very modern focus on organizational 00:33:59.549 --> 00:34:02.430 competence. But that brings us to the final paradox 00:34:02.430 --> 00:34:04.769 that underlies all of this. And that is that 00:34:04.769 --> 00:34:07.829 the history of Yale is really a microcosm of 00:34:07.829 --> 00:34:10.010 America's own intellectual evolution and its 00:34:10.010 --> 00:34:12.590 social fault lines. You have this recurring tension 00:34:12.590 --> 00:34:15.650 between the profound, positive impact of single 00:34:15.650 --> 00:34:22.409 acts of massive philanthropy. colleges, David 00:34:22.409 --> 00:34:24.550 Geffen making the drama school tuition free. 00:34:24.710 --> 00:34:27.769 And yet almost every one of those gifts is tied 00:34:27.769 --> 00:34:31.030 to these persistent, complex moral questions 00:34:31.030 --> 00:34:33.530 about how that wealth was created and who the 00:34:33.530 --> 00:34:35.670 historical figures behind it really were. Right. 00:34:35.789 --> 00:34:37.949 I mean, we've seen the university rename a college 00:34:37.949 --> 00:34:40.389 because of the slavery legacy of John C. Calhoun, 00:34:40.389 --> 00:34:43.650 an alumnus. But the university still bears the 00:34:43.650 --> 00:34:46.789 name Yale, despite all the scrutiny around Elihu 00:34:46.789 --> 00:34:49.150 Yale's debated involvement in the slave trade 00:34:49.150 --> 00:34:51.949 that funded its very first endowments. So that 00:34:51.949 --> 00:34:54.130 raises a final provocative thought for you, the 00:34:54.130 --> 00:34:56.670 learner, to really think about on your own. What 00:34:56.670 --> 00:34:58.789 does this ongoing, very selective historical 00:34:58.789 --> 00:35:01.429 reckoning tell us about how elite institutions 00:35:01.429 --> 00:35:04.929 choose which debts to pay? Which historical wrongs 00:35:04.929 --> 00:35:06.670 must be erased in the name of modern morality? 00:35:07.010 --> 00:35:09.170 And which ones, the ones tied to their fundamental 00:35:09.170 --> 00:35:12.550 identity and origin story, can or even must be 00:35:12.550 --> 00:35:12.969 sustained?