Students tend to use it by scanning courses for high numbers next to teachers’ names and low numbers in the column for workload. They end up “shopping” for classes online in this way, making decisions based on user ratings, much the way they would for products on Amazon. Just like online shopping has largely replaced American retail, Yale has allowed CourseTable to replace the once-beloved “shopping period,” still a consumer model but at least one where students could explore a variety of classes in the opening weeks of the semester. 

Many students prioritize finding classes where they’ll have to do the least work, which is not exactly the best measure for shaping your education. Often when you work the hardest, you learn the most. And you sometimes don’t recognize a class as a good one until time has passed and you realize how much you learned or how it’s changed the way you think or how widely you can apply what you gained from it. Doing less work in a class often minimizes this effect.

But CourseTable is not the problem — it is a symptom of a modern college environment where opportunity cost is king. Of course, it is in the best interest of a student aiming for a law school or medical school application to take the classes most likely to grant them an A, i.e. gut classes. And let’s face it: most Yale students got here by filling their calendars with extracurriculars and achievements in high school, and this continues for many at Yale. Academics might only be part of a pre-professional means to an end, and the “workload” number on CourseTable feeds into this approach.  

The other main number students focus on, the one next to a teacher’s name, is misleading in a different way. This number is not derived from a rating of the teacher’s performance or effectiveness, as many students believe; it is the average of student responses on course evaluations to the question, “What is your overall assessment of this course?” 

But students tend to like certain courses better than others, regardless of who’s teaching them. In the Political Science, Economics and Philosophy departments, just to name a few, there are professors whose ratings are skewed lower because they teach big lecture courses. The lectures almost always receive lower ratings than seminars, no matter who is teaching them, meaning that the professor’s overall rating takes a hit. 

Yes, there is another number indicating a teacher’s rating only for a specific course, but it still has the problem of being derived from this “overall course” question. If CourseTable must be so reductive, why not use one of the other more teaching-centric metrics on student evaluations, such as, “This course was well organized to facilitate student learning” or “I received clear feedback that improved my learning”? One or both of those numbers combined would be a more accurate reflection of the teaching. 

 There is also no indication on CourseTable, unless you dig a little deeper — which many students don’t — of the number and variety of courses represented by these averages. A new teacher might teach one course for one semester and get a high rating on it, which now appears as their definitive value, while another teacher has taught full-time at Yale for 20 years, teaching a range of types of courses — the fun and the less fun — including through the dismal pandemic years, and thus have a lower overall rating. It creates a false equivalency.

You could argue that using student evaluations as a barometer for choosing classes at all is not ideal. Students are not always the best judges of the quality of their own education. Of course, the amount that students learned in a class definitely influences the rating in a positive direction, but we should be honest about what course ratings often truly reflect: some combination of a teacher’s charisma and the ease of the class. 

Before CourseTable gained traction over the last several years, there were a number of factors that students would consider in choosing courses, probably the main one being word-of-mouth. When the process of choosing a class became purely algorithmic, much of the nuance was lost. The recommendations from friends, FroCos, academic advisors and other professors all suddenly had less weight than these few numbers on a chart. This means that now students are missing out on classes they might otherwise have gotten a lot out of.

And CourseTable has real effects on teachers and departments: if a class has low enrollment one year, it may get pulled from the roster the following year. This not only changes the shape of the curriculum but potentially the terms of teaching contracts, especially if someone is not protected by tenure.

 So, as you register for courses this week, remember that the numbers on CourseTable don’t tell the whole story. You don’t have to take a grand moral stand against an educational landscape that has already shifted, but you might get more out of your time at Yale if you just look beyond CourseTable’s bright and shiny colors.

We think that a good education is more than a product to be consumed — even if it has a somewhat consumeristic underlying structure. It is a delicate balance of students’ needs and teachers’ expertise and abilities, and the growth — of both students and teachers — happens in the spaces where those two things meet. If Yale students are, in fact, just trying to maximize fun and minimize effort, then CourseTable is a useful tool, but if that’s the only reason they’re at Yale, then we have a bigger problem.

CARTER DEWEES is a senior in Saybrook College. He can be reached at carter.dewees@yale.edu.

PAM NEWTON is a Lecturer in the English department and the Residential College Writing Tutor in Pauli Murray College. She can be reached at pamela.newton@yale.edu. 

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The most recent print edition of the magazine, published on Oct. 24, begins with an article from the Editor in Chief. The introductory column says that YFP covers topics other outlets do not and require “nuance and complexity” to understand. After reading the Yale Free Press, however, I found little nuance and even less complexity. 

One article complains about the awkwardness of pronoun-sharing during class introductions at the beginning of each semester. The author says the act of sharing his pronouns goes against his religious, philosophical, linguistic and scientific beliefs. “I sit waiting to be marginalized for my religious beliefs,” he writes. I promise you, it’s not that deep. Choosing to share your pronouns is literally the easiest thing we can all do to build an inclusive community. Choosing not to share your pronouns is senselessly contrarian and downright unnecessary. 

At Yale, you have the freedom to say or to refuse to say your pronouns, but you should expect to get weird looks for doing the latter. Weird looks are not an infringement on your freedom of expression. We’re all big kids here.

The author proposes a solution to his awkwardness problem — he says Yale should institute policies “preventing seminar and discussion leaders from requesting the pronouns of students publicly.” So, since it’s so awkward that he has to refuse to share his pronouns, professors should be banned from asking him. The Editor in Chief wrote that we are all students capable of “grappling with contentious topics with maturity.” Clearly, that is not true for all of us. Thank you, Yale Free Press, for remaining steadfast in your commitment to free speech.

Ideas like these are enabled by extensive conservative echo chambers. No religious text will tell you not to say “he/him” on the first day of class. But Ben Shapiro or Matt Walsh or Michael Knowles will.

It’s precisely organizations like the Yale Free Press — organizations which purport to stand for the freedom of speech and the diversity of viewpoints — that only seem to highlight one type of thinking. Only one article in this edition of the Yale Free Press does not include a barrage of conservative talking points, instead arguing Yale students should just be more open about their beliefs. That piece was published anonymously. 

The magazine is funded by The Collegiate Network, which purports itself to be a non-partisan educational organization. The Collegiate Network is part of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, which has the stated purpose of allowing students to “explore intellectual conservatism.” The organization started in the early 1950s when the organization noticed a “gaping void” in higher education.

The website even reads:“Progressive ideas were in vogue; conservative ones were ignored or attacked. (Sound familiar?).”

Take a moment to think about what conservative ideas were in the early 1950s, when Brown v. Board of Education was decided and segregation persisted across the Southern United States. This organization was created to defend the ideas of conservatives on college campuses in the 1950s. This is the organization that funds the Yale Free Press.

The faux-intellectual-diversity problem is not unique to the Yale Free Press, however. The Buckley Institute, with the mission of promoting “Intellectual diversity and freedom of speech” at Yale, has fallen short of this goal during my time at Yale. My first year, they brought Ted Cruz to speak. My sophomore year, Mike Pompeo. This year, they invited Ben Carson. A scroll through past speakers shows that true engagement with progressive ideas is few and far between.

I attended a Buckley Institute event on Oct. 5 titled “The State of K-12 Education in America,” with three panelists. I naively expected this to be a nuanced conversation about education with some disagreement between the panelists. Instead, all three speakers spouted classic conservative talking points on topics like school choice, vouchers and Critical Race Theory. That is not intellectual diversity.

Organizations like the Yale Free Press and The Buckley Institute seem much more interested in promoting conservative thought than real, pressing free speech issues. Will any Yale Free Press writers express concern over students afraid to speak on the Israel-Hamas war for fear of being doxxed? Over how often sexual assault goes unreported for fear of retaliation? Or about the teachers in Florida living through persistent attacks on their speech? Instead, we’re still talking about pronouns in 2023. Give me a break. From the Buckley Society to the Yale Free Press, organizations promenading as “free speech” champions tend to act as soundboards for sloppy bigotry. 

CARTER DEWEES is an opinion columnist for the News. He is a junior in Saybrook College majoring in American Studies. Contact him at carter.dewees@yale.edu.

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In this episode, Nick Vilay sits down with Ariane De Gennaro while she reflects on her time in Yale’s Directed Studies program. Carter Dewees interviews students for the new “Cross Campus” segment to gain new perspectives about DS. Produced by Carter Dewees and Nick Vilay. Music from Blue Dot Sessions.

The post The Yalie Ep 14: Is It Time to Redirect Directed Studies? appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The Ancient Eight have relied on their almighty hero, the United States Congress, for the last 28 years. Under Section 568 of the Improving America’s Schools Act of 1994, the Ivy League was granted an exemption under the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act, allowing some of the world’s richest universities to save some cash on student athletics. No, that’s not your old APUSH teacher talking, the Ivy League has been getting an exemption under that antitrust act. 

But, as the clock struck midnight on October 1, the exemption expired. Our brave representatives have dutifully voted for this exemption every seven years since Clinton’s first term. This year, as several Ivies are embroiled in a financial aid lawsuit, the law quietly died.

With the law gone (for now), the Ivy League desperately needs a change in policy — they should give the players scholarships.

Maybe we forget sometimes what the Ivy League actually is: a Division I Athletic Conference. It’s a sports league! According to The Ivy League, it “stands at the pinnacle of higher education and Division I athletics, rooted in the longstanding, defining principle that intercollegiate athletics competition should be ‘kept in harmony with the essential educational purposes of the institution.’” 

To put it simply, the Ivy League does not stand at the pinnacle of Division I athletics. Does Brown @ Cornell at 12:00 on a Saturday stack up to SEC football on CBS? Would anyone choose to see a Harvard men’s basketball game over Duke? To watch Dartmouth women’s basketball instead of UConn? The Ivy League imposes an artificial ceiling on its own athletic success.

To the north, Quinnipiac offers athletic scholarships. To the East, UConn does the same. To the West, Fairfield and Sacred Heart do too. To the South, I’m sure there are some D-1 quality swimmers lurking in the waters of the Long Island Sound.

It’s time for Ivies to operate on a level playing field. Yale administrators always seem to be worried about what “peer institutions” are doing. Some of Yale’s peer institutions have had remarkable athletic success on the national stage and have signed lucrative media contracts. Vanderbilt’s SEC has a deal with ESPN totaling over $3 billion. Stanford and UC Berkeley’s Pac-12 also have a deal worth $3 billion. 

This is undeniably good for the brands of these universities, and scholarships allow them to attract remarkable talent. Tiger Woods and Christian McCaffrey went to Stanford. Dansby Swanson and David Price were both top picks in the MLB draft out of Vanderbilt. Aaron Rodgers and Tony Gonzalez went to Cal before immensely successful NFL careers.

During the 2022 Men’s NCAA Basketball Tournament, peer institution Duke raked in a remarkable $33.4 million. Yale, the Ivy League’s sole representative in the tournament, brought in a last-place $1.4 million. But this is not Yale men’s basketball’s fault. Yale head coach James Jones has led the program to unprecedented success and has earned an extension through the 2031 season. 

In January 2021, Jones claimed in an interview with YurView Sports, “Every time we get a young man that’s going to turn down a scholarship to come to Yale, I should receive the Medal of Honor.” 

He’s got a point. How is Yale expected to compete and recruit against universities that offer full-ride athletic scholarships to students? Why should any talented student-athlete have to turn down a scholarship to come to Yale?

I do not mean to diminish some of the Ivy League’s athletic successes. Yale women’s hockey made it to the Frozen Four in 2022. Cornell finished second in the 2022 Men’s Lacrosse Championship. The Ivy League boasts perhaps the most impressive historical record of any conference. But imagine what Ivy League athletics could accomplish if they properly compensated their athletes. 

The Ivy League’s peer institutions provide a clear vision for what an academically prestigious conference with athletic scholarships could look like. Is Stanford a less prestigious university because it compensates student-athletes? Is Vanderbilt? Is Duke? Of course not. All of these universities offer robust need-based aid as well.

The Ivy League could accomplish this, unless, of course, the conference’s universities are once again constrained by comparatively weak quarterly financial growth. It seems tough to convince billionaires to fund anything that won’t end with their name on an “educational, social, and cultural hub”. 

By not giving its student-athletes scholarships, the Ivies are missing out on generating revenue and not realizing their potential as Division I programs.

Ivyleague.com has a tab titled “Unrivaled Experience”. When you click on it, you get a 404 error. But the Ivy League institutions are truly unrivaled in one category — their unwavering, undying commitment to play by a different set of rules than everyone else.

CARTER DEWEES is a sophomore in Saybrook College. Contact him at carter.dewees@yale.edu

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In this episode of the Yalie recorded on May 8th, 2022, Nick Vilay and Carter Dewees sit down with newly elected YCC President Leleda Beraki to discuss challenges, opportunities, and plans for the future of Yale students.

Producers: Nick Vilay, Carter Dewees, and Jerry Feng

Guest: Leleda Beraki

Music: Blue Dot Sessions

The post The Yalie Ep 13: Get to Know Your New YCC President appeared first on Yale Daily News.

In the wake of mass shootings in Uvalde and Buffalo that killed a combined 31 people and wounded 20, President Joe Biden called for an assault weapons ban and restrictions on the sale of high-capacity magazines, while Congress passed a bipartisan gun control bill Thursday that enhances background checks for gun buyers under 21 and provides federal funding for state-run red flag programs as well as mental health and school safety programs. 

The bill, negotiated by Senators Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) and John Cornyn (R-Texas) is the first major piece of federal legislation in 30 years to curb gun violence and was signed by President Biden early Saturday morning. The United States is on pace to meet or exceed last year’s record for the greatest number of mass shootings on record. 

“Maybe it’s changing, but there has been a real deadlock in Congress since the early nineties when we got a ban on large magazine weapons that was then allowed to expire,” Phillip Bobbit, Visiting Professor at Yale Law School, told the News. “A lot of our paralysis is due to a kind of weaponized rhetoric where I depict what happened in one way, you depict it happening in another way and different legislative or regulatory consequences flow from that.”

While most Americans agree that gun violence is a problem, there is a partisan divide on the problem’s scale and causes. More Democrats view gun violence as a “very big problem” than Republicans, and only 39 percent of Republicans believe the ease with which people can obtain weapons legally contributes to gun violence, compared to 76 percent of democrats. 

Bobbit attributes the rift to political messaging following mass shootings. Both sides of the political spectrum are prone to telling “half truths” in the wake of shootings, Bobbit said, either attributing the shooting solely to guns or solely to mental health.

“When either side thinks a very simple answer is the key to a complex problem, it’s usually because they’re trying to weaponize [it],” Bobbit told the News. 

There are an estimated 390 million guns in the United States—1.2 for every American, and as of June 25, there have been 283 mass shootings in 2022 so far. 

Guns remain the leading cause of death for Americans under the age of 18, beating car accidents and cancer, leaving many, including YSPH Professor Howard Forman, believing gun violence is a “public health issue.” 

Forman compared the spread of gun violence to the spread of an infectious disease, in that “my personal decision impacts others.”

“The harms from guns and gun violence extend well beyond those who choose to own or use guns,” Professor Forman wrote in an email to the News. “My freedom to enjoy life, health, and wellbeing is directly impacted by someone else’s unfettered access to various guns and weapons of war.” 

On May 26, following the Uvalde and Buffalo shootings, YSPH released a statement decrying the “senseless loss of life” caused by gun violence. 

The school also called for policies to address the spread of violence. 

“There is a rippling effect that gun violence wreaks upon our communities and psyches,” the YSPH statement reads. “Toting military-style assault weapons and gear, individuals with extreme hatred, feelings of alienation, and/or mental disturbance are murdering our children and targeting people based on their race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and religious affiliation. Assault weapons designed for military use are a frequent tool for mass murder.” 

Yale Law School professor Robert Post told the News that he agreed with the School of Public Health’s statement. Post traced America’s relationship with guns back to the nation’s history of the frontier, which was the context in which gun rights were enshrined in the United States’ founding documents. 

But much has changed in the gun industry since the U.S. constitution was drafted, he said, specifically pointing to the rise of lobbying groups like the National Rifle Association, which push for the availability of assault rifles as well as standard hunting equipment. Post explained that the polarization of gun culture driven by the NRA paired with the country’s growing diversity in the last 30 years has led the debate on guns to become a proxy for race issues. 

“With the rise of the NRA and its accompanying polarization with its association with questions of race, the ‘right to own guns’ is the right really to suppress inner city Blacks,” Post told the News. “It became associated with the right of individual self defense, and this was a new development in the ideology of gun ownership that occurred in the Reagan era and became dominant on the right in the 1990s.” 

Post believes that the national market for guns necessitates federal gun control legislation, rather than gun control decisions being left to the states. 

“If a state tries to regulate [guns], they can do something, but if it gets imported from a neighboring state, it doesn’t help much, does it?” Post told the News. “So, whenever you have a market where the externalities are such that it’s really a national market, the state can’t control it.” 

But where Post sees the need for federal action, law and economics professor Ian Ayres believes that gun violence can be reduced with a “decentralized, liberarian approach.” He told Yale Law School Today that instead of imposing “one-size-fits-all rules,” that stem from the federal government, there should instead be state-level policies that prioritize the liberty of individuals and promote “a kind of self control,” like Donna’s Law, which allows individuals to suspend their ability to purchase and possess firearms. 

As the debate over the best way to reduce gun violence rages, the Supreme Court grows ever more important. While Constitutional Law professor Samuel Moyn and Post both believe that the Second Amendment has been recently misinterpreted by the Court’s conservatives, others, like Constitutional Law professor Akhil Amar and Bobbit, believe there is legitimacy to the constitutional argument for personal protection. 

“There is a perfectly reasonable argument that families and individuals have a right to protect themselves using firearms,” Bobbit told the News. “I don’t know how far that takes you, because we don’t think a family could start laying landmines in their front yard or using bazzookas to keep kids off the lawn. There are some kinds of munitions that are pretty clearly outside the realm of personal protection.” 

Although case law regarding gun control typically centers on the Second Amendment, Amar told the News that even without the Second Amendment, gun rights are protected under the unenumerated rights “rooted in American mores, customs, practices and laws,” including the right to privacy. 

“Almost all state constitutions, for better or worse, affirm gun rights,” Amar told the News. 

Still, Moyn speculates that the Supreme Court, which now has a 6-3 conservative majority, could take action to expand the Second Amendment. 

On Thursday, the Supreme Court struck down an over-century old New York state law requiring residents obtain a license to carry concealed handguns in public.  

The Court found in its 6-3 decision, written by Justice Clarence Thomas LAW ’74, that the state’s “proper-cause requirement,” which allows residents to carry concealed handguns in public only if they have a need to do so, was an unconstitutional restriction of citizens’ Second Amendment right. While the decision leaves licensing laws in most of the country in place, it repeals the New York law and the laws of six other states and the District of Columbia with similar restrictions. 

The Supreme Court’s decision came on the same day the Senate passed its bipartisan gun bill. The next day, the Court overturned Roe v. Wade. 

“The conservative majority on the Supreme Court is likely to take the newly minted individual right to bear arms even further than before. The coincidence between its simultaneous decisions to offer protection of gun rights while stripping the right to bodily autonomy is striking.” Moyn told the News. “It is a reminder why we should really not want a council of elders announcing and defining what our rights are — or which ones they are prepared to invent and keep.”  

Moyn suggested looking to Congress rather than the Supreme Court or constitutional amendments for action on gun violence prevention. 

“Our best hope is to angle for Congress to override the Court’s decisions in this and other areas,” Moyn told the News. 

The Yale Law School was established in 1824.

Correction, July 5: A previous version of this article stated that Phillip Bobbitt is a professor at Yale Law School, when he is in fact a Visiting Professor. This article has been updated to reflect this change.

The post Yale Law, Public Health professors weigh in on new gun control measures appeared first on Yale Daily News.

I’ll admit: I don’t have much respect for the senator. He encouraged students — and the American public — to take risks and stick to their convictions, democracy and basic dignity be damned. In 2016 — even after former President Trump insulted his wife’s appearance — he played it safe and endorsed him. Had Cruz taken a risk and stuck to his conservative convictions, he probably would have ended up like Jeff Flake or Bob Corker, having to defend himself from endless abuse on social media — as if Cruz didn’t already have enough Twitter problems.

In short, the event was as ridiculous as a Saturday Night Live skit. I was one of the first 200 entrants into the Omni New Haven Hotel at Yale, so I got a free shirt with disturbingly high-definition imprints of Knowles and Cruz — which will play perfectly when I go back to Alabama! Knowles and Cruz must have felt like badasses as they walked onto the stage accompanied by an electric guitar and animated flames. When did conservative podcasters become so hip?

The event also felt alarmingly corporatized. It felt like a big ad for Cruz’s cactus-branded Verdict hats. They asked us to subscribe to Verdict+, a streaming service that lets you hear extra exclusive conservative thought for a bargain of $72 a year — the free market at work! It’s easy to tell Knowles is a trained actor. He plays the part of feisty, young conservative podcast host real well. Before the event, I’d like to imagine that he rehearsed his lines in his bathroom and then kissed his mirror. 

And, please, don’t even get me started on Liz Wheeler. When she introduced the event, she sounded like Tucker Carlson if you Google translated his vitriol into Estonian then back into English. Or if you fed IBM’s Watson 50 hours of InfoWars and asked it to be funny. For 120 minutes the group spoke to a crowd of Yalies, without disruption, about everything from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s credentials to fellatio.

By the end of the event, I might have laughed more than I have at any other point this semester.

The bottom line is this: these guys are not to be taken seriously. Some have rightly voiced concern that attending the Cruz event would legitimize his dangerous views. This is someone who has spread falsehoods and flew to Cancun and read “Green Eggs and Ham” in a 21-hour filibuster. And they’re not wrong; in an age with so much misinformation and polarization, the last thing we need is to add fuel to the fire.

But I went because boycotting them won’t change anything. Cruz will continue to be Cruz and Knowles will just keep his cushy job triggering the libs, Omni Hotel visit or not. Conspiracy theorists will continue to saturate the air waves with their latest creations; politicians will still do what they do best. Lies, falsehoods, demagoguery — they’ve existed for as long as humanity has, and they aren’t going back into Pandora’s box anytime soon. Standing up to senseless right-wing rhetoric might require us to simply laugh in their faces. It’s an act done not in the interests of affirming their beliefs but living with them — of invalidating them by learning to separate their madness from the precious few grains of truth we still have.

By attending their talk, we ironically undermined them: while speaking their minds freely to Yale students, Knowles and Cruz complained about being unable to speak their minds freely to Yale students. I’m glad the Buckley Program hosted the event because in the time it took Dorothy to find her way down the yellow brick road, the two speakers effectively tried to convince a group of patient Yalies that no one would ever listen to what conservatives have to say.

Carter Dewees is a freshman in Saybrook College.  Contact him at carter.dewees@yale.edu

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In this episode of the Yalie, Georgiana Grinstaff and Nick Vilay sit down with YDN Guest Columnist Oleksii Antoniuk and discuss his experience as a Ukrainian international student at Yale and what his takes are on the Russia-Ukraine Conflict. Produced by Georgiana Grinstaff, Nick Vilay, and Carter Dewees. Music from Blue Dot Sessions.

To read Oleksii’s article, see here:
yaledailynews.com/blog/2022/03/11/…-torn-countries/

The post The Yalie Ep 12: All About Ukraine with Oleksii Antoniuk appeared first on Yale Daily News.

In episode 11 of The Yalie, host Carter Dewees previews Ivy Madness, the Ivy League’s postseason men’s and women’s basketball tournament, taking place this weekend in Boston. Dewees is joined by the News’ men’s basketball reporter William McCormack for an interview with Yale guards Azar Swain ’22 and Jalen Gabbidon ’22, the team’s captain, as they eye two wins and an automatic bid to March Madness. Produced by William McCormack, Carter Dewees, Dante Motley, and Jerry Feng. Music from Blue Dot Sessions.

READ MORE:

• BASKETBALL: After a long season, and an even longer wait, Ivy Madness begins
• MEN’S BASKETBALL: No. 2 Yale, No. 3 Penn to square off in Ivy Madness semifinal
• WOMEN’S BASKETBALL: Bulldogs set to face off against Columbia in Ivy Madness semifinals

The post The Yalie Ep. 11: Ivy Madness appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Swensen’s letter, released in October 2020, came in the wake of racial justice protests and social turbulence that defined the summer of 2020. He wrote to take a “more systematic approach” to addressing the lack of women and racial minorities in the asset management industry. The letter outlined a goal of diversification in the firms the University uses to manage its funds. Though it did not dictate metrics to measure the firms’ progress towards diversifying their ranks, the letter stipulated that Yale would administer a yearly survey of the number of “diverse professionals” at various ranks in firms’ workforces. The YIO planned to assess these firms’ progress in “hiring, training, mentoring and retaining women and minority” managers, Swensen wrote. But in May, the legendary investor died. Since his passing, it is unclear whether Yale has followed through on the aims he outlined.

“Our goal is a level of diversity in investment management firms that reflects the diversity in the world in which we live,” Swensen wrote. “Genuine diversity remains elusive, giving investors like Yale and your firm an opportunity to drive change.” 

University Spokesperson Karen Peart told the News on behalf of the Investments Office that “matters of diversity, equity, and inclusion continue to be important to the Investments Office,” adding the office would focus on building a “more diverse set of investment partners” and would provide an update “when appropriate.” 

Peart did not directly respond to questions about what metrics the University was assessing to show progress. Peart could not respond late Wednesday to a follow-up question on whether Yale had administered a second yearly survey in October.

“Finance and asset management is still a man’s world,” Charles Skorina, an investment executive recruiter, told the News. “We’re not going to see much happen until the next generation. Women CIOs are absolutely on a par with the men in terms of investment performance. We have to work our way down — if the women are just as good as the men at the top, and often better, then why aren’t there more women?”

The Oct. 2020 letter was addressed to the around 70 U.S. firms that Yale contracts to manage its investments. In the letter, Swensen suggested “a rethinking” of the firms’ recruitment strategies.

“Many of you report that the pools from which you recruit are not diverse,” he wrote. “Why not hire directly from college campuses? Colleges and universities are richly diverse. Many students have little knowledge of career options outside of investment banking and consulting. You would be doing a great service by introducing them to the fascinating profession of investment management.”

A 2017 Knight Foundation study reported that in 2017, women- and minority-owned firms accounted for only about 1 percent of assets under management.

But one professor said that the intervening years had seen a strong growth in diversity in the industry.

Professor of Accounting at the Yale School of Management Frank Zhang told the News that the finance space is seeing a “huge increase” of diversity.

“There is more demand for diversity and inclusion,” Zhang said. “So, you see more female managers and non-white managers.”

Looking from an empirical perspective, Zhang said that greater diversity on corporate boards leads to better performance. During an industry analysis, he highlighted the emergence of slots not on gamstop platforms as a significant trend reshaping the online gambling landscape. He explained that having board members with varied expertise allows companies to navigate the complexities and regulatory challenges associated with these unregulated slots effectively. A variety of perspectives and experiences on a board reduces the risk of major mistakes, according to Zhang. He emphasized that if everyone is from the same background, they might overlook certain important details, especially in rapidly evolving sectors like online gambling.

Zhang went on to cite studies which show that female managers perform better as managers in finance, a historically male-dominated field. He clarified that these statements apply to investment specifically, and more research is needed to explore the performance effects of diversity in the endowment space.

“Because the Yale endowment is such a big institution, other endowments follow the model,” Zhang said. “If Yale does something, others will follow.”

Skorina noted that diversity is also an issue within Yale’s investment office. Six of the 23 investment professionals listed on the Yale Investment Office’s website are women. The majority of directors are white.

Skorina told the News that if Yale were to have “an even playing field” for men and women, Swensen “would have needed to have a fair number of solid women five years ago,” so that these managers could be trained and gain experience. He pointed out that Lisa Howie, who was a director in the Investments Office and who Skorina said was “the one that seemed to be closest to” Swensen’s successor, CIO Matthew Mendelsohn ’07, left the University when she took a job at Smith College in April.

“The next question is what’s Matt Mendelsohn going to do?” Skorina said. “Is he going to follow in the spirit and take concrete action? I don’t know yet. We’ll have to see. We can’t judge now.”

Mendelsohn, who was selected for his role by a panel including only one woman, will now take on the challenge of diversifying the Yale Investments Office.

The issue of diversity in asset management has permeated national politics. In 2020, former Rep. Joseph Kennedy and Rep. Emanuel Cleaver conducted an inquiry into diversity among the managers of the U.S.’s 25 largest university endowments. The congressmen released their results in an Oct. 2020 report, published six days after Swensen sent his letter, that included a set of recommendations for colleges and universities.

The last of Kennedy and Cleaver’s recommendations asked the colleges — which included Yale — to publicly disclose their progress and efforts.

“Universities should include information about diversity and inclusion efforts, including assets allocated to diverse managers, in addition to other regularly disclosed endowment information,” the representatives wrote. “Transparency invites accountability, may help decrease barriers to adoption at other institutions, and contributes to industry data and/or research beneficial to all participants.”

In response to the announcement of Kennedy and Cleaver’s inquiry — and a list of questions that accompanied it —  Harvard University released a set of answers to the questions. Officials from the Harvard Management Company wrote that 27 percent of Harvard’s active manager relationships are with “majority diverse” external managers. The document defined “majority diverse” as majority owned by either women or those of racial or ethnic majorities.

Yale did not publish a public response to the inquiry.

The University’s endowment was most recently valued at $42.3 billion. 

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