Okay, let's get into it. Today we are unpacking
a true giant, Yale University. And this is a
deep dive. Our mission here is, well, it's pretty
simple. We're going to cut through all the history,
the prestige, the controversies. All the layers.
Exactly. All the layers. And we want to give
you, the learner, a really complete, fast -tracked
education on one of the most powerful universities
in the world. And we're drawing on just this
incredible stack of sources we have right here.
And we really are talking about a global powerhouse.
I mean, to understand Yale, you have to get the
scale of it right away. It's a private Ivy League
research university. And it's the third oldest
institution of higher education in the U .S.
Third oldest. So it was chartered before the
American Revolution. Way before. And the numbers
that define it today are just they're on another
level. The financial scale alone is mind boggling.
I mean, Yale is an economic engine. The sources
point to an endowment of, what is it, $44 .1
billion as of 2025? Yeah. That's an immense amount
of financial gravity. And then you have the knowledge
infrastructure itself. Libraries. So over 15
million volumes. Yeah. That makes its library
system the second largest academic library in
the entire United States. So it's a serious,
serious investment in sustained intellectual
capital. And that capital, well, it translates
directly into human influence, into power. The
sources, they really highlight this, this astonishing
concentration of power among the alumni. Yeah,
let's run through that list because it's... It's
pretty wild. You're looking at five U .S. presidents,
10 founding fathers. 19 U .S. Supreme Court justices.
19 and 72 Nobel laureates connected to the university
in some way. I mean, that is just an unparalleled
pipeline of influence. It really is. And that
political pipeline, especially. Our sources point
out that near unbroken streak of Yale alumni
on presidential tickets from 1972 all the way
to 2004. Right. That feels like the defining
political hook of the modern institution. We're
definitely going to circle back to how that.
happens later. But first, we have to go back
to the beginning. Three centuries back, to the
very start, we're talking intensely religious
Puritan roots, a big rivalry with Harvard, and
some very controversial money that gave the school
its name. Right. The origin story of Yale is,
at its heart, it's really an exercise in theological
preservation. It all starts with an act for liberty
to erect a collegiate school. which was passed
in the Connecticut colony in 1701. And the goal
seems pretty straightforward, right? Educate
ministers, educate lay leaders for this new growing
colony? It was practical, yes. But the driving
force behind it, that was intellectual discontent.
The Fanders were 10 congregational ministers.
And here's the kicker, the detail that changes
everything. All 10 of them were alumni of Hart.
Every single one. They meet up in Brantford and
they inaugurate the school by... What? Donating
their own books for a library? Exactly. A symbolic
act. That's why they're known as the founders.
And the first rector, a man named Abraham Pearson,
he literally starts the collegiate school in
his own home in Killingworth. So why? Why do
this? Why not just support their alma mater,
Harvard? Well, that's where the rift comes in.
The sources make it really clear there was a
serious theological and political split happening
at Harvard. Okay. A man named Increase Mather,
who was Harvard's sixth president and a lot of
other conservative clergy. They looked at Harvard
and saw it as becoming too liberal, theologically
lax. They felt it was drifting away from the
strict Puritan orthodoxy it was founded on. Yale
wasn't created to expand education. It was a
conservative breakaway. It was a reaction. It
was a defensive maneuver. Absolutely. Mather
was championing this new collegiate school, hoping
it would be a bastion for the kind of traditional
religious thought he felt Harvard was just abandoning.
They were trying to build a wall around their
original religious mission. And then the irony.
Oh, the irony is incredible. The very engine
they created to preserve this orthodoxy, the
library. almost immediately undermines it. How
so? The sources detail this crucial shipment
of books in 1714. It was about 500 books, organized
by a man named Jeremiah Dummer. And they represented
the best of modern English thought. So not just
Puritan texts. Not at all. We're talking science,
philosophy, theology, enlightenment thinkers.
Which is just incredible. The collection that
was meant to bolster strict Puritanism becomes
this vector for radical new ideas. And the shift
was profound. For instance, a young undergraduate
named Jonathan Edwards, he discovers the works
of John Locke in that collection. Wow. And Locke's
ideas about empiricism and reason, they completely
reshape Edwards' thinking. He ends up developing
what he calls his new divinity, which is a major
departure from the old guard Calvinist. And it
didn't stop there, right? The intellectual fallout
got even bigger. Oh, much bigger. Just eight
years later, in 1722, you have this major event.
The school's own rector, Timothy Cutler, and
six of his friends, they formed a study group
to talk about all these new ideas. They announced
a massive theological conversion. It was known
at the time as the Great Apostasy. They publicly
declare they've abandoned Calvinism and have
joined the Church of England. Anglicanism. Wait,
the head of the school defected? The school founded
to fight creeping liberalism. The head of the
school and six key religious leaders, they saw
the Anglican structure as more legitimate than
the Congregationalist model. They were immediately
kicked out, sailed to England, got ordained,
and came back as Anglican missionaries. That's
a complete institutional crisis. It's a total
meltdown. And it just shows the irresistible
force of Enlightenment thought filtering through
those new books. So for the next few decades,
the presidents, people like Thomas Clapp and
Ezra Stiles, they're just trying to manage all
this. Exactly. They're navigating the currents
of the Great Awakening, which is this religious
revival, and the Enlightenment, this intellectual
revolution. They're trying to build up the science
curriculum to keep pace, but also hold on to
some kind of theological grounding. All while
dealing with student riots. the French and Indian
War, and then the Revolutionary War. All that
turmoil. That must have meant they needed money
constantly. They were always desperate for funds.
And that brings us directly to the money that
gave the institution its name and the moral conflict
that's been attached to it ever since. Elihu
Yale. Elihu Yale. In 1718, Cotton Mather, who
had been a supporter of the school from the start,
he reaches out to this incredibly wealthy Boston
-born businessman living in London. And Yale
had made his fortune where? In Madras, India.
He had been the first president of Fort St. George
for the East India Company. He'd amassed a huge
fortune. So Mather asks for money and Yale responds.
He does. He sends over nine bales of goods, textiles,
calicos, and a portrait of King George I. And
when all that stuff was sold in the colonies,
it brought in over 560 pounds. Which at that
time was an absolute fortune. A transformative
amount of money. And in recognition of that,
it was Cotton Mather who suggested, let's rename
the school Yale College. Okay, but here's where
the historical reckoning comes in. really complicated.
It's very complicated. Modern analysis of the
East India Company's records, which the sources
we have really dig into, shows a deep, deep reliance
on exploitative colonial trade. And Elihu Yale
himself. His involvement in the Indian Ocean
slave trade while he was in India is, well, it's
a matter of debate, but it's explicitly noted
by critics. So the argument is that this foundational
money. the money that funded the first scholarships,
that kept the lights on. It came directly from
the slave trade and colonial exploitation. That's
the core of the criticism, that this money essentially
established the financial footing for one of
the world's most enduring institutions. And this
isn't just some dusty historical debate. It came
to a head much more recently, right? It did.
In 2020, during the George Floyd protests, the
social media tag, hashtag cancel Yale, started
trending. The demand was to remove Elihu Yale's
name from the institution entirely because of
these ties. But there was a weird twist to that,
wasn't there? There was. The sources note that
a lot of the online support for the hashtag cancel
Yale movement was actually being amplified by
right -wing pundits. To what end? They were using
it to satirize what they saw as the excesses
of cancel culture. It's a fascinating example
of how these really serious historical and moral
debates can get co -opted and twisted in modern
political fights. Right. but regardless of the
online noise the central fact is still there
the university's financial foundation rests on
some morally complex 18th century global trade
it does okay so let's put the finances aside
for a second and go back to the curriculum In
the middle of all this flux, President Ezra Stiles
had a very specific, intense academic focus.
He absolutely did. Stiles, who was president
from 1778 to 1795, was deeply committed to the
classical languages. He insisted on rigorous
study of Hebrew, right alongside Greek and Latin.
Why Hebrew specifically? He saw it as essential
for studying the Old Testament in its purest
original form. For him, it wasn't just a religious
subject. It was a core classical language. And
he made it mandatory. Mandatory for all freshmen,
which is a big deal. At Harvard, Hebrew was generally
for upperclassmen or students specifically going
into divinity. This was Stiles' way of grounding
the whole institution in intellectual rigor and
the sacred tests, even as the world was changing
so fast. And you can still see that legacy today.
You can. It's literally immortalized on the Yale
seal. It features the Hebrew phrase, Urim and
Thummim. Which means? Roughly, lights and perfections,
which links directly to the university's Latin
motto, Lux et Veritas, light and truth. We should
also probably mention this one incredible anecdote
from that period. It really shows how fragile
the whole enterprise was during the Revolutionary
War. Right. Stiles' biggest test. The British
occupation of New Haven in 1779. What happened?
The sources recount that the British forces,
after they took the city, they threatened to
raze the college buildings. Just burned it all
to the ground. Which would have been the end
of Yale. Completely. Great take. It was standard
practice. You destroy centers of revolutionary
education to break morale. But the school was
saved. How? A Yale graduate, a man named Edmund
Fanning, happened to be serving as the secretary
to the British general in command. Fanning personally
intervened and argued for the college's preservation.
And it worked? It worked. The campus was spared.
And years later, in 1803, decades after the war
was over, the university granted Fanning an honorary
degree in gratitude. It's just, it's a powerful
reminder of how close Yale came to just being
wiped off the map. OK, so moving into the 19th
century, Yale survives the war, but now it's
facing a new kind of threat, right? Irrelevance.
Exactly. The country is industrializing, it's
maturing, and the demands on higher education
are changing dramatically. Yale is forced to
really wrestle with its core identity. What should
an American college actually teach? And this
all comes to a head with this document, the 1828
Yale Report. Yes. And this report is seen as
this. This pivotal but profoundly conservative
moment in American higher education. It's basically
a staunch dogmatic defense of the old classical
curriculum. Latin and Greek. Latin and Greek
against this rising tide of demand for modern
languages, practical science, math, vocational
training. Which feels so counterintuitive. I
mean, shouldn't a leader in education be leading
the charge for change? You would think. You have
to understand the context. College leaders back
then, they were under huge pressure to innovate
to get students, but they were terrified of losing
their moral purpose. So the report's argument
wasn't about jobs. It was about... Mental discipline.
That was the term they used. They argued that
studying the classics was the best way to train
the mind for any future job. But the deeper reason,
the one that wasn't just academic... Was moral.
It was fundamentally a moral defense. The New
Haven scholars, they wanted to create students
with strong religious and ethical values. They
wanted them to be able to resist all the new
isms they feared were corrupting society. Like
what? Professionalism, materialism, individualism,
consumerism. They saw classical education as
this wall, this bulwark against the moral decay
they associated with the modern industrial world.
So in a way, resisting science and modern languages
was resisting modernity itself. Yes, on the belief
that it would lead to moral fragmentation. And
this philosophy, it directly fueled one of the
most famous academic fights of the late 19th
century. The clash between President Noah Porter
and Professor William Graham Sumner. A classic
conflict. Sumner, who taught from 1872 to 1909,
was a true pioneer. He was bringing in these
brand new disciplines, economics and sociology.
Subjects that relied on observing the real world,
not just reading old texts. Exactly. And his
classes were hugely popular. I mean, overflowing
with students who were desperate to understand
the... But Porter, who was the president and
a moral philosopher, he saw this as a threat.
An existential threat to Yale's entire tradition.
He didn't just dislike this subject, he actively
objected to the main textbook Sumner was using.
Which was? Herbert Spencer's Social Statics.
which promoted what's called agnostic materialism.
Unpack that for us. Basically, it's the idea
that matter is the fundamental substance in nature,
and everything, consciousness, thought, everything,
is just the result of material interactions.
It doesn't deny God, but makes God unnecessary
to explain the world. So it's a direct assault
on Porter's entire worldview. A frontal assault.
He was afraid it would destroy the students'
faith in their character. It's just this perfect
microcosm of the new social sciences colliding
head on with established moral philosophy. And
yet, despite all this internal resistance from
the president himself, Yale had to expand. It
had no choice. The pressure from the outside
world, the need to compete with new institutions
like Johns Hopkins. It was too much. The school
was becoming too big and complex to just be a
college. So in 1887, it officially becomes Yale
University. Under President Timothy Dwight V,
yes. The name Yale College was kept, but only
for the undergraduate school. And this renaming
happens right as all these professional schools
are taking off. The ones that directly contradicted
the 1828 report's whole philosophy. Right. You
have the School of Medicine founded way back
in 1810, the law school in 1822. But the 19th
century brings the Graduate School of Arts and
Sciences, and crucially, the Sheffield Scientific
School in 1847 for practical science and engineering.
And that growth just kept going. Unabated. You
get the School of Management in 1976, and just
recently, the Jackson School of Global Affairs
in 2022. But the sources note that this expansion
caused deep anxiety inside Yale. President Porter
feared that embracing this new research university
model would corrupt and dilute the undergraduate
experience. And that tension is still there,
isn't it? I mean, how do you balance being...
a cutting -edge research hub with providing a
broad liberal arts education for undergrads.
It's the defining tension of the modern university,
and Yale has been wrestling with it for over
a century. And that whole identity crisis, it
wasn't just in faculty meetings. It filtered
right down to the students and redefined the
Yale ideal. Okay, let's talk about that archetype.
Originally, the sources point to Nathan Hale
from the class of 1773. Right, the aristocratic
scholar. Athletic, fiercely patriotic, the perfect
renaissance man for the new republic. But that
changes. It changes dramatically over the 19th
century. The student heroes, they increasingly
become athletic stars, football players, rowers.
And that shift was driven by whom? Largely by
a powerful alumni base and the student body itself.
They wanted to win the big game. That became
the symbol of institutional prestige and, frankly,
virility. The sources even mention some fictional
examples of this. They do. There's this turn
-of -the -century fictional hero, Frank Merriwell,
who is the perfect, athletic, noble Yale man.
But then his successor in literature, a character
named Dink Stover in a book called Stover at
Yale, he actually starts to question this new
focus on sports and business. So the literature
reflects a real cultural anxiety about the school's
priorities. Absolutely. And this focus on sports
led to the creation of these uniquely American,
highly organized athletic programs. Yale, Harvard
and Princeton, the big three. They explicitly
reject the British idea of gentlemanly amateurism.
And turn sports into a spectacle. A huge spectacle
backed by intense alumni fundraising. The Harvard
-Yale football rivalry, the game, kicks off in
1875. And this athletic rivalry actually starts
to bleed into the academic world. It does. Between
1892 and 1909, the language of sports battling
opponents, victory, it's directly adopted to
talk about intercollegiate debates. They were
trying to manufacture the same hype. Exactly.
Debates were on the front pages of college papers.
Debaters got the equivalent of athletic letters.
But it never really took off with the same passion
as football. Why not? Well, as the sources note,
scoring is subjective. There's no clear, visceral
winner like in a football game. But this obsession
with the sports spectacle, it had a dark side.
There was a major crisis around football, right?
A huge one. In 1909 and 1910, the source material
talks about this period of alarm because of a
series of really serious, sometimes fatal injuries
on the field. The early reforms just hadn't worked.
So the public is losing trust. The public is
alarmed, and it's threatening the future of the
sport in higher education. This forces the presidents
of the big three to step in. Hadley of Yale,
Lowell of Harvard, and Woodrow Wilson of Princeton.
The three of them meet to create moderate reforms
specifically designed to reduce injuries. It
shows the power these elite schools had to set
national trends. But even they face pushback.
Huge pushback. Their reforms were diluted by
rebellion from the entrenched rules committees
and the formation of the Intercollegiate Athletic
Association. Even the most powerful university
presidents struggle to rein in the cultural force
of college sports. Okay, so moving into the 20th
century. Yale starts to physically transform
itself. And the campus architecture, it's a statement.
It's more than a statement. It's almost theatrical.
It's an intentional effort to fabricate a sense
of history. This is the collegiate Gothic style.
Right. Built mostly between 1917 and 1931, this
was almost entirely funded by Edward S. Harkness,
who wanted Yale to look like Oxford and Cambridge.
And the buildings are incredibly detailed, with
little stone sculptures of students, writers,
athletes. But the most fascinating part is the...
the faux aging the architect went told to make
the brand new buildings look centuries old yes
james gamble rogers yeah it wasn't just aging
them it was a performance it was about creating
instant tradition through trickery give us some
of the techniques they're kind of wild okay so
he would splash the newly cut stone walls with
acid to give them a weathered sustained look
he threw acid on the walls he did He also deliberately
had the leaded glass windows broken and then
repaired in a rough medieval style to simulate
centuries of wear and tear. That's incredible.
And maybe the weirdest thing, he left decorative
niches empty on purpose to make it look like
statues had been lost or stolen over the ages.
It's creating history through absence. And it's
all an illusion because behind all that ancient
looking stone. It's modern steel framing, standard
1930s construction. The sources say one building
struggled with that, though. Arknest Tower. It
was built as a freestanding stone structure,
and it had to be heavily reinforced in 1964 just
so they could install the massive memorial carillon
bells. The Gothic aesthetic met the reality of
modern weight and physics. But Yale isn't just
Gothic. There's a lot of architectural diversity.
Right. You have the oldest building, Connecticut
Hall from 1750, which is classic Georgian style.
And then you have these iconic modernist additions.
From Eero Saarinen. Yes. A Yale alumnus himself,
he designed the famous whale -shaped Ingalls
Rink. And even more striking are the Ezra Stiles
and Morse residential colleges. And he modeled
those on an Italian hill town. San Gimignano,
yes. Yeah. The sources suggest he chose it because
he wanted to evoke that sense of a dense, ancient,
protective community. He was translating a medieval
European fortress town into modern American residential
life. Then you also have Louis Kahn, another
giant, who did the Yale Art Gallery and the Center
for British Art. And the thing that holds all
these different styles together is the residential
college system. It really defines the undergraduate
experience. It absolutely does. The whole system
was set up in 1933, again, thanks to a massive
donation from Edward Harkness. He'd seen the
system at Oxford and Cambridge and loved how
it created social intimacy within a huge university.
So it's designed to make a big place feel small.
All undergrads are assigned to a college and
most live there. Right. And they function as
these social and cultural hubs. They have small
seminars, formal dinners and master's teas. So
they're called heads teas now, which is a whole
other story. A place where students can meet
famous people in a really intimate setting. Exactly.
But here's the critical distinction. The colleges
are your home in your community. But they are
not your academic department. Right. All the
courses and lectures are run by the Faculty of
Arts and Sciences and are open to everyone, regardless
of your college. It neatly separates your social
life from your academic life. And layered on
top of that communal structure is the world of
secret societies. Everyone knows the big names.
Skull and Bones, Skrull and Key, Wolf's Head.
And their buildings, the tombs, are designed
to be private, but also... Unmistakable. They're
unmistakable markers of power right in the middle
of campus. And the architecture tells you everything.
Skull and Bones is this imposing, windowless,
Egyptodoric -style building. It screams ancient
power and mystery. While Scroll and Key is totally
different. Totally different. It's more ornamental,
a sort of Moorish, Islamic -inspired, Bozard
style. They're sending a clear message. We are
private, we are powerful, and our traditions
are older than most of what you see around you.
But beyond all that serious secret stuff, Yale
has some traditions that are just chaotic. And
show a healthy disrespect for authority. One
of the more charming ones is the smashing of
clay pipes at graduation during the alma mater.
To symbolize breaking from college life. Right.
Though the sources say they use bubble pipes
now. probably for safety reasons. But the ultimate
example of student defiance has to be bladder
ball. Oh, bladder ball. It was this campus -wide
anarchic game played with a massive inflatable
ball, sometimes six feet in diameter. So just
pure chaos. Total anarchy. Minimal rules, lots
of injuries, frequent property damage. The administration
banned it over and over again. But the students
kept reviving it. Stubbornly. They saw it as
this crucial expression of student spirit and
resistance. The last time a big game was attempted
was as recently as 2014. That shows you how tenacious
these traditions can be. But of course, despite
all the fun and games, Yale's core identity is
still about rigorous research. It's classified
as an R1 university. Right. Doctoral university
with very high research activity. And the money
backs that up. In 2021, R &D spending was over
a billion dollars. And all that research has
led to the formation of these really important,
globally recognized schools of thought. Let's
talk about the one in literature. OK, so the
English and comparative literature departments
were central. to the new criticism movement.
You have huge figures like W .K. Wimsatt and
Clint Brooks. And new criticism, for those who
don't know. It's a mid -20th century approach
that really stresses close reading of the text
itself. The meaning is in the words on the page,
not in the author's life or the historical context.
And then later, the Complit Department became
the American Center for Deconstruction. Yes,
often just called the Yale School. With figures
like Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man, it became...
famous or infamous for questioning fixed meaning
in texts, a major, major turning point in literary
theory. And this intellectual leadership goes
beyond literature. It even gets into the social
sciences that President Porter was so afraid
of. Right. The history department, for example,
originated key streams of American historical
thought. You've got Southern history with C.
Van Woodward and the rigorous study of labor
history with David Montgomery. And all of this
research is supported by Yale's massive collections.
The library system, again, is the second largest
in the country. The main hub is the Sterling
Memorial Library, this Gothic masterpiece that
holds about four million volumes. But the really
priceless stuff is in the Benecke Rare book and
manuscript library. Which is an architectural
marble in its own right. It's famous for those
translucent marble panels instead of glass windows.
Exactly. And that marble serves two purposes.
One, it protects the manuscripts from direct
sunlight. And two, it diffuses the light inside
into this warm, ambient, almost cathedral -like
glow. It's a stunning space. And beyond the books,
Yale has these world -class museums. Three key
ones. The Yale University Art Gallery, which
was the country's first university -affiliated
art museum. The Yale Center for British Art,
with the largest collection outside the UK. And
the Peabody Museum of Natural History. But even
these collections have faced their own historical
reckoning. The Peabody used to house artifacts
from Machu Picchu. Right, from Hiram Bingham's
famous 1912 expedition. And while taking them
was legal at the time... The university, after
years of ethical claims from the Peruvian government,
finally returned the last of the artifacts to
Peru in 2012. Which shows them actively addressing
these colonial era collection controversies.
It does. It's part of that ongoing process of
grappling with its own history. And that grappling
brings us to the major social and political fault
lines of the 20th and 21st centuries. Yale has
this strange paradox, doesn't it? It seems so
conservative and slow to change. And then it
finds itself at the absolute epicenter of social
progress once that change is finally forced upon
it. The inclusion of women is the perfect example.
The road to coeducation was so long. It starts
with Lucinda Foote in 1793, who passes the entrance
exams but is rejected just because she's a woman.
And women don't officially start studying at
Yale. until 1892, and even then, only in graduate
programs. The pressure for undergraduate co -education
builds and builds. They talked about merging
with Vassar in 1966. But Vassar said no. So Yale
finally went co -ed on its own in 1969. Right.
The class of 73 was the first to have women from
freshman year on. But bringing women to campus
quickly exposed some deep institutional failures.
And that leads to the landmark lawsuit, Alexander
v. Yale, in the 1970s. Which was a legal confrontation
that really changed American education. The case
involved students and a faculty member suing
Yale for failing to stop a pervasive culture
of sexual harassment. And the allegations were
serious. They were shocking. Rape, fondling,
and faculty members allegedly offering better
grades in exchange for sex. But the crucial part
of this case was the legal strategy. It was groundbreaking.
It was the first time that Title IXx, the federal
law banning sex -based discrimination, was used
to argue that an institution's tolerance of sexual
harassment is itself a form of illegal sex discrimination.
And even though the plaintiffs didn't ultimately
win their specific cases in court. The legal
reasoning it established changed everything.
It was a warning shot to every university in
the country. And it forced Yale to immediately
create its grievance board and the Women's Center.
And these issues keep coming back. There is another
big Title IX complaint in 2011. Right. Alleging
a hostile sexual climate, which prompted the
university to form another committee to address
sexual misconduct. It's an ongoing struggle.
The other major social fault line is about its
namesakes, particularly their connection to slavery
and white supremacy. Which brings us to John
C. Calhoun. A deeply polarizing figure. A vice
president, the famous political theorist, but
also a staunch slave owner and an avowed white
supremacist. The calls to rename Calhoun College
started way back in the 60s, but they got much
louder after the Charleston church shooting in
2015. And President Salovey's initial decision
in 2016 was not to rename it. Right. And his
argument was fascinating. He said keeping the
name would force students to confront his legacy
directly rather than erasing it. His quote was,
we cannot erase American history, but we can
confront it, teach it, and learn from it. It
was a very deliberate choice to prioritize confrontation
over sanitizing the campus. It was. Though during
that time, they did make one symbolic change.
The title Master for the residential college
heads was changed to Head of College because
of its obvious connotations with slavery. But
then just a year later, they reversed course.
They did. In 2017, they announced Calhoun College
would be renamed Hopper College in honor of the
pioneering computer scientist and Navy Rear Admiral
Grace Hopper, a Yale Ph .D. And that reversal
shows just how difficult this process is. It
really does. The sources say the reaction was
all over the map. Many students and faculty celebrated,
but a lot of alumni and outside observers criticized
it as caving to political pressure. Another area
where Yale has faced intense scrutiny is mental
health. Yes, specifically its policies around
mandatory medical withdrawal. One 2018 report
even ranked Yale as having the worst mental health
policies in the Ivy League. The claim was that
Yale would pressure suicidal or depressed students
to withdraw instead of offering them accommodations.
And the tragedy of Lu Qingwang in 2015 brought
this into sharp focus. Her suicide note explicitly
mentioned her fear of being forced to withdraw
this mandatory full -year leave with a very uncertain
path back. Her friend said she lied to her therapist
because she was terrified that admitting how
much she was struggling would get her kicked
out. It created this climate where students were
incentivized to hide their pain. Therapy became
a risk, not a resource. But in response to all
the activism and lawsuits, things have finally
started to change. What are some of those changes?
Well, the process was renamed from medical withdrawal
to medical leave of absence. And that's not just
cosmetic. The new policy lets students keep their
Yale insurance and, crucially, visit campus and
stay involved in clubs. They're not totally isolated
anymore. And they've also hired more clinicians
and gotten rid of the reapplication fee. Right.
It signals a shift toward supporting student
health rather than just removing high -risk students
from campus. Finally, let's talk about Yale's
relationship with the world around it, both locally
in New Haven and globally. In New Haven, Yale
is a behemoth. It's the city's largest taxpayer
and its largest employer. It's the economic anchor.
But the sources point to this longstanding tension.
The property taxes. Yale has consistently opposed
paying taxes on its academic property. which
is exempt. City officials argue that with a $44
billion endowment, the university should contribute
more to the city's finances. But Yale does provide
support in other ways. It does. Most notably,
it funds the New Haven Promise Program, which
pays full tuition for eligible New Haven public
school students who get into Yale. It's a major
effort to bridge that town gown divide. And internationally,
Yale is right in the middle of modern political
activism. Especially in April 2024, when students
joined the nationwide protests against the war
in Gaza. They specifically demanded that Yale
divest its endowment from military weapons companies.
And that led to arrests. Over 50 people were
arrested at protests near Baneki Plaza. And that's
student activism. culminated in a December 2024
referendum where undergraduates overwhelmingly
voted to call for divestment. And then there's
this very recent, very serious incident with
Russia. Yes. In July 2025, Russian authorities
declared Yale an undesirable organization, effectively
banning all of its activities in the country.
And their reasoning was? The official reason
was that Yale's activities were aimed at violating
the territorial integrity of Russia and destabilizing
the political situation. It's just this stark
reminder that an institution of Yale's size and
influence is never truly separate from world
geopolitics. So if we come back to the university
motto, Lux Veritas, Light and Truth, this deep
dive really shows that Yale has been in this
constant struggle to define what those words
actually mean. It's always balancing this classical
elite identity that was forged back in the 18th
century with the really urgent demands of a changing,
complex world. And the history is full of that
tension. It is. They founded the school to preserve
Puritan orthodoxy. and their first big crisis
was their own leadership converting to Anglicanism
because of ideas in their own library. They defended
the classics against science in 1828, only to
become a world -class research university defined
by science a few decades later. And through it
all, this institutional commitment to creating
a laboratory for future leaders. Yeah. That seems
to have paid off in this incredible amount of
political capital. That concentration of power
we mentioned at the start, the presidents, the
Supreme Court justices, that unbroken streak
on presidential tickets. It demands an explanation.
So what is it? What fosters that? The sources
attribute it not just to legacy and wealth, but
to this intense focus on leadership training
and what they call the ethos of organized activity
on campus. It encourages students to take on
these highly competitive managerial roles from
day one. Give me some examples of that. I mean,
look at the institutions they're managing as
students. Leading the Yale Political Union, which
models parliamentary debate. Managing the Yale
Daily News, one of the most prestigious college
papers in the country. Running huge volunteer
organizations or athletic teams. So they're learning
how to manage budgets, allocate resources. And
most importantly, how to navigate public scrutiny
and internal political fights. It creates a very
specific type of person, one who is pre -adapted
for the national political stage. It's a fascinating
evolution from the old Puritan focus on moral
rectitude to this very modern focus on organizational
competence. But that brings us to the final paradox
that underlies all of this. And that is that
the history of Yale is really a microcosm of
America's own intellectual evolution and its
social fault lines. You have this recurring tension
between the profound, positive impact of single
acts of massive philanthropy. colleges, David
Geffen making the drama school tuition free.
And yet almost every one of those gifts is tied
to these persistent, complex moral questions
about how that wealth was created and who the
historical figures behind it really were. Right.
I mean, we've seen the university rename a college
because of the slavery legacy of John C. Calhoun,
an alumnus. But the university still bears the
name Yale, despite all the scrutiny around Elihu
Yale's debated involvement in the slave trade
that funded its very first endowments. So that
raises a final provocative thought for you, the
learner, to really think about on your own. What
does this ongoing, very selective historical
reckoning tell us about how elite institutions
choose which debts to pay? Which historical wrongs
must be erased in the name of modern morality?
And which ones, the ones tied to their fundamental
identity and origin story, can or even must be
sustained?