The two met at the Yale Entrepreneurial Society in their freshman year, hosting a podcast called “The Founder Series” where they interviewed Yale startup owners about their entrepreneurial journeys and bonded over their shared experiences as Black students in the Ivy League. Now, they are focused on democratizing access to social networks and changing perceptions of entrepreneurship by launching their own startup.

“A lot of the founders we spoke to seemed to base their success on an ‘engineering of luck’. They would say a friend of a friend was the reason I was able to build this — or an uncle’s relative,” said Johnson. “For us, that wasn’t feasible, which led us to build Series.” 

Users joining the Series network are able to make requests for support from other users whether it be in entrepreneurship or business. The request is made to an AI-powered agent which then scours the network to introduce the user to potential members of value. The $3.1 million round is led by the venture firm Parable, with participation from Pear VC, DGB.VC, 47th Street, Radicle Impact and Uncommon Projects. The product has also attracted business angel investors such as Steve Huffman, the CEO of Redditt, and Edward Tian, a founder at GPTZero.

When they arrived on campus, Hargrow said they quickly realized there weren’t many people who looked like them. As tall Black men, they felt others often assumed they must be athletes, playing basketball or football at Yale.  

While the two bonded over their shared background, they also had different paths to their startup. 

Johnson stated that he “always knew” he wanted to start a business. In high school, he engineered cube satellites, and built a social app the summer before college called Mix26 to help students navigate social events during freshman orientation.

Hargrow, on the other hand, said that his passion throughout high school was basketball. During his senior year, he received scholarships to schools such as Boston University, but when Yale accepted him on a full ride, he ultimately decided to leave athletics behind.

“When I joined the Yale Entrepreneurial Society, suddenly the idea of a venture became a lot more viable,” Hargrow said. “I met more people, including Nathaneo. We did a lot of fun stuff our first year with the club, then said, ‘Can we do more?’”

Johnson said that one of the greatest challenges of the startup process has been overcoming the initial bias and public perception regarding how he and Hargrow looked and presented themselves differently. 

Hargrow also noted the difficulties of a school culture where freshmen are pressured to join organizations such as Yale Student Investment Group or Yale Undergraduate Consulting Group because “that’s what you’re supposed to do.” 

“Pursuing things that aren’t as popular in the Yale realm closed some doors on campus or got me certain perceptions I didn’t necessarily want,” said Hargrow. “I didn’t rush or have those experiences with my class, so that also kind of put me in a box of being lonely my first year. These things were a challenge, but also a blessing because they allowed me to see what’s important and find my tribe.”

The two will soon be embarking on a “college tour” at schools such as Stanford, MIT, Rutgers and UCI to spread their platform and gather a community of student startups to create a “new face of entrepreneurship.”

The founders hope that their business will inspire younger entrepreneurs, particularly those in the Black community. 

“When I was growing up, it was very hard to relate to people who had accomplished the things I wanted to do,” said Johnson. “We’re setting the records at Yale, and we just happen to be Black. But it was this step that was needed to show that in the startup space, on this campus, people who look like us can be entrepreneurs.”

Albert Yang ’26, who co-founded BullMont, a student venture studio, with Johnson in 2023, said that he appreciates the two’s willingness to “stand out and do something unconventional” and build a product that “disrupts,” no matter what the pushback might be.

“Hopefully in the next few decades, we’ll be like 50 or something and we’ll be looking back and saying Harvard did it wrong in ’04, and Yale did it right in 2025,” said Hargrow, referring to Facebook’s founding on Harvard’s campus. 

Readers can access Series at series.so. 

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In the 2024 fiscal year, the investment return on the Yale endowment, the largest source of the University’s revenue, was 5.7 percent. This marked the third consecutive year the investment return was below the 8.25 percent return needed to sustain the current level of endowment spending. 

“Yale’s budget will have enough endowment revenue to pay for existing expenses but not new ones,” Provost Scott Strobel wrote in a message to the Yale community. 

According to the budget update, new initiatives or investments will require new sources of revenue. Absent such sources of revenue, such initiatives or investments may need to be deferred or reconsidered. The announcement sets expectations for what funding for faculty and staff may look like ahead of when schools and units submit budget proposals to the University next year. 

When asked about the condition of the endowment’s financial stability, Marcella Rooney, head of business affairs and administration at the Yale Investments Office, said that the University’s investment portfolio is constructed with a long-term focus, and that success is measured in decades rather than any single fiscal year’s return. 

Accounting professor Rick Antle also stated that it is to be expected that endowment returns will occasionally be below target, but that the more important question is whether expectations about future returns have changed. 

“We believe that over long periods of time, we’ll be able to achieve our goal of investment returns,” Rooney wrote to the News. 

She clarified that Yale has returned 10.3 percent per annum over the past two decades, outperforming a typical 70/30 stock and bond portfolio by 3.8 percent per year on average. 

Both Antle and Rooney noted that interest rates continue to move in flux and that the current economic climate remains uncertain, which has the potential to impact future revenues. 

Beyond current economic conditions, Antle stated that the federal government’s attitudes regarding allowing indirect cost recovery in federal grants and a potential tax on the endowment would be “by far” the largest concern for the budget. 

“These are, of course, not things that would have been factored into the choice of the spending rule and the university has not experienced anything like them,” said Antle. 

On March 5, the University announced that as it creates the 2026 fiscal year budget, it expects to reduce spending on faculty raises, faculty and staff hiring, campus construction and general non-salary expenditures as it braces for funding cuts from the Trump administration. 

“At this point, we do not yet know when many of the possible federal actions impacting institutions of higher education, including Yale, will take effect,” University President Maurie McInnis wrote to the News. “We also do not know the scale of their impact. What we do know is that actions such as a possible increase to the endowment tax and changes to the university’s F&A rate could have profoundly negative consequences on Yale’s finances.”

McInnis emphasized that because the current landscape remains uncertain, the University approach is to remain thoughtful and measured, hence why it has not yet instituted a hiring freeze. 

According to McInnis, the university’s current actions include asking schools and units to engage in contingency planning should federal policies be enacted that significantly impact university revenue. This includes reviewing capital projects to consider where delays may be warranted, anticipating more modest salary increases for faculty and staff, and asking deans and university leaders to slow non-salary expenditures — particularly multi-year commitments.

“Yale has a big endowment, but it is also a big institution,” said Antle. “I think in terms of flows of resources, and with big flows, small changes in percentage terms can translate into very large dollar amounts. Yale has a lot of resources, but if activities have to be adjusted, it won’t be easy.” 

The Yale Investments Office is located on 55 Whitney Ave.

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The Yale University Press aims to promote global scholarship in human affairs through the publishing of books in a variety of academic disciplines. With offices in New Haven and London, the Press annually publishes over 400 books in subjects across science, economics, history, literature and more.

University President Maurie McInnis announced the decision on Monday, praising Pfund for his “immersive understanding” of scholarly publishing and serious nonfiction and his extensive experience in the academic press.

“The question for any quality publisher such as Yale is how best to balance the demands of growth, sustainability, and transformation with the desire to publish as many important and beautiful works as well and in as many formats as possible,” Pfund wrote to the News. “I look forward to working with my new colleagues to strategize on how we might best do so in future.”

In a message to the Yale community, McInnis wrote that the search advisory committee focused on choosing a candidate who would support the University’s mission of elevating long-form scholarship in the public consciousness. She commended Pfund for his past commitment to contributing to a global understanding of human affairs.

Pfund believes the two primary purposes of a university press are to facilitate scholarly conversation within the academy and to serve as a “signal booster” for academic voices.

“My entire publishing career has revolved around these two roles, and Yale University Press does a splendid job with each,” he told the News. 

In an announcement to the Yale community, Susan Gibbons, Yale’s vice provost for collections and scholarly communication, said Pfund’s “earned reputation and deep experience as a publisher will be an incredible asset” to the university and “all of us who appreciate the work it does to illuminate our world.

When asked what excited Pfund most about his role, he responded, “The sheer range of the Press’s list.  It’s such an impressive cornucopia of history, politics, art, religious studies, finance, architecture, classics, economics, etc., etc., just an absolute feast.”

Pfund noted that one of the greatest challenges that the press will face is AI, and that understanding when to sell content through traditional versus emerging channels is a “key” part of serving as a scholarly publisher.

Ultimately, the goal within any “information economy,” he said, is to ensure that the publications reach the widest possible audience.

“It can be exhausting to run faster and faster in place just to keep your head above water when structural forces are transforming the landscape,” he said. “There are no ‘eureka!’ panacea solutions; rather there is the hard but rewarding work of assessing strategic priorities and strengths and acting on them.”

The Yale University Press was founded in 1908. 

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On Monday, Trump published a public notice detailing his plan to impose tariffs on all imports from Canada and Mexico, following a 10 percent tariff on China from Feb. 4. As of 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, the U.S. is scheduled to begin collecting a 25 percent tax on all imports from both countries, along with a doubling of duties on Chinese goods to 20 percent. 

Jefferey Sonnenfeld, associate dean at the School of Management, said there is uncertainty about the extent to which U.S. institutions like Yale will be impacted, especially given that Mexico has not yet imposed retaliatory tariffs. 

“There’s a reasonable chance that this is yet again, trust destroying, and may not last,” Sonnenfeld said. “More than anything else, it’s the antagonistic relationship with close partners in North America, Canada and Mexico, and this sense of confusion with companies and institutions that had abided by the U.S.-Canada trade agreement — which was Trump’s own agreement — that he now says was a terrible agreement.” 

According to Ernie Tedeschi, former White House chief economist, given that the tariffs are regressive taxes, particularly in the short run, low-income households will bear the greatest burden of the tax.  

Because China’s tariffs strengthen the dollar and weaken the Chinese yuan, Yale’s tuition and other expenses, priced in U.S. dollars, will effectively rise for international students from China, Tedeschi added. 

The Budget Lab at Yale,  a non-partisan policy research center analyzing federal U.S. economic policy proposals where Tedeschi serves as Director of Economics, modeled the effects of the planned China, Mexico and Canada tariffs in a research report published on Monday. According to the report, price levels will rise by 1.0-1.2 percent, the equivalent of an average per household consumer loss of $1,600–2,000. 

“If the 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico go into effect, the impact on Yale will be more pronounced, with food, energy, and construction materials getting pinched,” Tedeschi wrote to the News last week. “To the extent the Yale community relies on [international goods], expenses could go up.” 

Regarding the Mexico tariff in particular, Tedeschi said that the University might “redirect certain supply chains” given that the U.S. sources one-third of its fresh produce from Mexico. 

For instance, he explained, Yale dining services might opt for domestic or lower-tariff sources of fresh fruits and vegetables. He added that the strategy is not “fool-proof,” given that domestic firms that compete with tariffed industries often opportunistically raise their prices in tandem with tariffs. 

In an interview with the News, Yale College Dean Pericles Lewis said that financial changes such as endowment taxes and tariffs from the federal administration would likely have a “big impact” on the University. 

University President Maurie McInnis stated last week that the University remains cautious about how the financial changes may directly affect work at Yale and that it will continue conversing with lawmakers and lobbying in Washington to “advocate for the mission of higher education.” 

The Budget Lab at Yale was founded in April 2024 by a Yale Law School professor, former White House Chief Economist and former White House Senior Economic Advisor. 

Jerry Gao contributed reporting.

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In January 2024, Strobel assembled the Yale Task Force on Artificial Intelligence, a committee of faculty and senior leaders across academic disciplines, to strategize AI initiatives at Yale. The University’s work will start with increasing access to AI computing power while also exploring the institution’s position in the ethics of AI, Strobel said on Monday. 

“One of the things we consistently heard about was access [to tools and computing],” Strobel said of the task force meetings. “We’ve made a substantial commitment to purchasing GPUs so that faculty and students have access to the computing power they need. Now, we’re not Google and Open AI. We’re not spending billions of dollars on this, but we will increase the capacity of the University to have GPU access.”

The task force was created two years after ChatGPT’s public release. Since then, Yale has pledged $150 million over five years to invest in AI, and University leaders have been convening with companies like Google and Microsoft to discuss the direction of the field, Strobel said. 

In August 2024, Nisheeth Vishnoi, a professor of computer science and member of the task force, stated that investment in AI is necessary for Yale to remain “competitive” as AI innovation expands at peer universities. 

“This is something that had to be done,” Vishnoi said. “[If it did not] then I think pretty soon [Yale would] become a very unattractive and non-competitive place.”

When asked how Yale plans on catching up to universities like MIT, which recently pledged $1 billion in AI investments, Strobel said that the University’s goal for AI is not to compete with other higher education institutions. Instead, he noted the distinctions between the competing roles of industry and higher education. 

“I see it as a competition between higher education and industry. Our question is, what role do universities have in this new AI world?” he said. “It’s not to make money. It’s to think about what this means in terms of ethical consequences, ethical impacts, and what AI makes possible in research, advancement, and discovery.” 

In late March, the University will begin drafting its budget plan for the next fiscal year to finalize in June. According to Strobel, the process will involve a series of 45 to 50 meetings in which deans and leaders from each budgetary unit will request funding allocations while presenting revenue and expense plans to the University’s Budget Advisory Group. 

When asked about the University’s plans for investing in STEM programs, the provost pointed toward a longer-term approach to the University’s academic strategy. The budget generally does not fluctuate significantly year-to-year and “we hope it stays consistent,” he added. 

Strobel stated that currently, the University’s largest ongoing investment in the physical sciences is an upcoming building dedicated to quantum research, which will be located next to Wright Physics Laboratory.

The provost acknowledged that a “huge financial investment” is necessary for universities like Yale to “be great at the physical and biological sciences.” One of the “expectations,” he stated, is for University scientists to gradually stop relying on University funds as they develop a research portfolio that is supported by grants. 

Recent weeks have seen significant disruptions to federal science funding due to executive orders and policy changes. The National Science Foundation froze funds for existing research grants, while the National Institute of Health implemented cuts up to 15 percent for indirect costs — both measures were temporarily blocked by federal courts. Meanwhile, scientists at Yale have reported delays in grant approvals.

The Provost stated that the University will continue to take a more holistic approach to academic investment rather than emphasize one specific area.

In May, the Office of the Provost will host a campus-wide symposium where Yale students, faculty, and staff will share and discuss the ways in which they are engaging with AI.

Correction, March 4: The Office of The Provost does not draft the budget plan, but rather it is drafted by leaders and deans from across the University. The article has been updated to reflect this.

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After four years at Yale, Rockenbach has been reappointed to the position, in which she will continue leading Yale’s over 500 library staff members, dozen libraries and locations and millions of physical and digital records.

“We have such a strong, 300-year humanistic tradition at Yale, so it’s important that we continue to buy print books and invest in our special collections across the humanities,” said Rockenbach. “However, we also have this incredible opportunity to take our grounding in humanistic critical thinking and apply it to these new technologies by leaning into data science, computation, and AI.”

Since 2020, Rockenbach has led a variety of digitization projects, including expanding Yale’s digitized archival offerings, launching Yale Dataverse, establishing Yale Libraries’ Computational Methods and Data Department, forming staff partnerships with the Data-Intensive Social Science Center, and creating a book delivery by mail system.

According to Rockenbach, these efforts were started during the pandemic, when she first arrived at Yale and learned that many people did not have access to the University’s collections.

“During COVID, we had a period of almost two years where most outside researchers couldn’t access things in the Beinecke,” Rockenbach told the News. “That left us realizing that one of the greatest challenges is making everything available online. The collections are incredible, but they’re only incredible if you can see them.”

According to Lauren Di Monte, associate university librarian for Research and Learning, though thousands of Yale’s collections are now available online, only 1 to 2 percent of the entire University collection has actually been digitized so far. Proper digitization, she explained, can be difficult when it comes to deciding the “right materials” to “digitize in the right way.”

Both Di Monte and Rockenbach stated that making the collections increasingly accessible to New Haven residents, as well as nationally and internationally, is a driving factor of the project. 

Rockenbach also shared that libraries have been using AI tools to help them catalog and navigate their collections. She anticipates that in a few years, AI will take on a larger, front-facing role in libraries, where it can serve as patrons’ general guides to the vast collections while librarians provide more specific information.

“With new technologies, it’s a form of new literacy, right? Libraries have always been in the business of literacy — whether textual or visual — and now with AI and digitization, it’s just a new form of literacy,” said Rockenbach. “Our job is to think critically about the information ecosystem, and there’s a lot we can do to help students and faculty engage smartly with these new technologies — and with healthy skepticism.”

According to Di Monte, in addition to collections navigation, the library staff are collaborating with the Poorvu Center to develop AI research tools, guidance, and support for students and faculty.

“Providing access to data collections is a rapidly emerging and extremely important role for the library in facilitating and supporting research and academic work more broadly at Yale. Use of AI to make sense of rapidly expanding data collections is, and will continue to be, a critical tool,” Vice Provost of Research Michael Crair wrote to the News. “The library is in a unique position to develop these tools and services for Yale, and Ms. Rockenbach has brought impressive insight and energy to address this need.”

In a message to the Yale library community, University President Maurie McInnis and Provost Scott Strobel emphasized Rockenbach’s “ability to both honor the historic significance of Yale Library” and “introduce innovations that support the continued growth” as highlights of her work.

When asked what the greatest challenge university libraries face today, Rockenbach replied that she believes that public perception of higher education is at an “all-time low.”

“Not to get too political, but we’ve got an administration that isn’t valuing higher education in the way I would like,” said Rockenbach. “Our job is to work directly with students and researchers, so I think it makes sense for us to be a front door to AI, a front door to new data, research support, all these things. Being able to tell that story and that higher education is a place where one can learn, become an expert in something, and that that has value — that’s a challenge but a huge opportunity for us.” 

The Yale University Library system began in 1701 when a group of ministers donated books to a new “Collegiate School.”

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In the coming weeks, the center will host a “first-of-its-kind” convening led by Dawn Leaks Ragsdale, executive director of the center, bringing together community stakeholders and Yale leaders to define what inclusive growth means for New Haven and develop an action plan. 

The center, an initiative dedicated to local economic development in New Haven, was one of the four main components of the six-year pledge. A key goal of the Center, according to Alexandra Daum, associate vice president for New Haven affairs, is to serve as an opportunity for New Haven community members to provide direct input on the University’s plans for local economic affairs.  

“The Center for Inclusive Growth is one of the key pillars of Yale’s financial commitment to the City of New Haven,” Daum wrote to the News. “Yale committed $5M of funding for the Center which is a significant amount in and of itself, but we anticipate that that $5M will serve as seed funding to bring in additional funding.” 

One year  after its establishment, the center has launched two research projects in entrepreneurship and small business development, led by teams of Yale School of Management students through the Inclusive Growth Fellowship and Inclusive Economic Development Lab. The first cohort of the fellowship took place in spring 2024. 

Inclusive Growth Fellow Michael Yanagisawa SOM ’25 worked in affordable housing where he researched possibilities for mass timber construction in New Haven. According to Yanagisawa, the work involved collaborating with Yale SOM professors, New Haven city officials, contractors and unions. 

“I think the Yale and New Haven relationship has been and will continue to be a tough relationship to build,” said Yanagisawa. “But there’s always been people at the business school and Yale at large who want to help, and from the city level, there are all these needs that have to be met, so I think the fellowship is a great way to match those interest points.” 

As a long-time New Haven resident, Yanagisawa believes that the most important purpose of the center is that it will serve as a way for the University to build long-term trust with the city. 

“I think if you’re a Yale student and not from New Haven, you kind of come in with preconceptions about what you know and what should be, and it can be difficult to adapt to what the city actually needs,” Yanagisawa told the News. “So more than anything else, I think just having a consistent University leader and figure in this field that people can trust is the most important part.” 

While the center plans to continue the Inclusive Growth Fellowship for the upcoming semester, it has not yet established formal metrics for assessing the effectiveness of its programs. According to Leaks Ragsdale these measures are “under development,” and the center anticipates finalizing and sharing more details about evaluating strategy later in the year. 

Leaks Ragsdale stated that another key priority of the center for the year is to avoid duplicating existing efforts and ensuring that the initiative’s work complements ongoing initiatives in New Haven. 

According to Ward 1 Alder Kiana Alder Flores ’25, continuous conversation between Yale and New Haven is critical as they navigate their relationship, as both parties are constantly changing and subsequently impacting one another in the process. 

“The main thing is making sure that the programs are the right fit — that they directly impact the lives of New Haven residents,” Mayor Justin Elicker told the News. “Once the Center starts to roll out programs, it will be an opportunity for a lot more people in the community to understand why the Center is important to their lives.” 

Elicker added that Leaks Ragsdale has been working on planning “potential programs” but that there are no definite plans on “exact programs” to initiate yet. “She wants to be thoughtful about it,” he said. 

In late March, the center will host its first open house where Yale community members can learn more about its work and get involved. 

Correction 2/17: This article has been updated to correct that the Center is hosting a “convening” rather than a “convention” and that it has been one year since the Center’s legal establishment.

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His eight years at the helm of Yale’s operations were marked by administrative accomplishments, such as advancing the University’s transition to the Workday platform and launching OneFinance. They were also characterized by a series of challenges, from the COVID-19 pandemic to pro-Palestine campus protests to now-emerging threats to University funding from the federal government.

The VP of operations role was created in 2016 to streamline the business side of the University. Former Yale President Peter Salovey’s goal for the position was to give a single leader the administrative power to develop a cohesive strategy for finance and administration.

In an interview with the News, Callahan said it was the right point in his life to retire. He does not plan to take on another full time job, but said he may linger on the boards of Notre Dame High School and the Yale New Haven Health system. He said that challenges such as the Trump administration’s efforts to slash university funding and campus protests did not motivate him to retire, and that in fact, he enjoys handling moments of crisis.

“This is much more about life, planning with my wife and just thinking that this is the appropriate time,” Callahan said.

The senior vice president plans to retire this year but will remain in his role until a search process to identify his replacement is completed, per a retirement announcement from University President Maurie McInnis.

Defining his role

In 2016, when Callahan got a call asking if he would be interested in joining Yale, he had been running businesses for 30 years. He was six years into building an operating company, S&P Global, and previously held leadership roles at companies including PepsiCo and General Electric after graduating from Yale and the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. He had no plans to leave the business world, but was struck by the idea of being in an environment he saw as youthful and ambitious, and decided to jump ship.

“In my old roles, in a C-suite of corporate, I was clearly the boss. I was not the boss here,” he said. “I think what it takes to make the shift from a corporate leadership role to a role of higher ed is that you have to have a little less ego and a little bit more commitment to the academic mission.”

Colleagues and former teammates said that as a leader, Callahan exuded warmth and knew how to delegate responsibility and act decisively in critical moments.

Anna Maria Hummerstone, a School of Medicine administrator who worked with Callahan, noted that his demeanor was friendly and casual despite his senior role.

“You run into him on the street, and you’d be like, ‘Hi, Jack,’” Hummerstone said “He’s very down to Earth and very personable and genuinely interested in you. He’s just Jack.” 

Tim Pavlis, who reported to Callahan as head of academic business operations and as associate vice president for strategy and analytics before leaving Yale in 2022, remembered that Callahan once moved to a worse office in order to be on the same floor as the provost, with whom he worked closely, to improve their collaboration. Pavlis took that moment as indicative of Callahan’s commitment to advancing Yale’s mission.

In an email to the News, Provost Scott Strobel commended Callahan for spending the last phase of his professional life “giving back” to the University after his career in business.

Former Yale administrator Sam Chauncey ’57 — who also served as Callahan’s first-year undergraduate advisor in 1976 — said that as Yale became a larger and more complex organization, many senior leadership positions were added. Salovey saw a need to centralize the roles under one person, and Callahan’s position was created to provide a center of gravity for those administrators to work together.

Nine areas of the University officially fall under the operations office. Facilities is the largest of these units, and the others are public safety, hospitality, New Haven affairs and University Properties, IT services, utilities, finance and audit, human resources and administrative operations. Callahan’s job goes beyond the central campus areas that he directly manages, also roping in administrators from the professional schools and the medical school to coordinate strategy.

Callahan said he worries that business operations can be viewed as out-of-touch decision-makers, powerful but detached from the rest of the University. He said that rather, he sees academic leaders as “setting the tone,” and considers himself to be more of a facilitator of Yale’s mission.

Administrative accomplishments

Marc Ulan, who worked at Yale until 2019 in the office of the Chief Information Officer, worked with Callahan when the senior vice president served as the interim CIO for a brief stint in late 2016 and early 2017. 

“His focus was on trying to get the operations of the university to be more efficient and get a better relationship between the operations of the university, and then the various departments that actually run the university,” Ulan said. “Those things have always been at odds.”

Ulan described a long-standing tension between front-facing departments — students, faculty and alumni — and the “back office” running the University’s systems and processes. According to Ulan, Callahan “did a lot of listening” and communicating between these sectors of the University.

Callahan himself noted that he prioritizes listening to differing perspectives.

“I like to work with people,” he said. “I didn’t grow up in a very hierarchical organization, so I like to talk to people at various different levels of the organization, because they all tell you different things and you learn a lot.”

In this spirit, Callahan oversaw much of the University’s efforts to shift its enterprise reporting platform — on which University employees can be recruited, paid and managed — to Workday. 

The transition to Workday began in 2015, before Callahan assumed his position at Yale, through transferring HR Payroll benefits, according to Hummerstone, who works in faculty administrative operations.

When Callahan became vice president for operations, he oversaw the second large push to the platform in 2017 — Workday Financials. Hummerstone said that a large part of Callahan’s role was in making sure the new Workday systems worked for all its users across the University.

“Jack used to say, Yale University is like an archipelago, just a bunch of islands,” Hummerstone recalled. “Where is the administration? We’re the bridges that are supposed to connect all those different islands, particularly when it comes to administrative operations and finances.”

Hummerstone described Callahan as supportive, appreciative of his colleagues’ work and proficient at prioritizing and allocating resources. 

Callahan said that the transition to Workday has allowed for Yale’s financial system to be updated on a regular basis, whereas before it was static and difficult to change.

“We still have work to do to better use the tool to better simplify our processes in terms of how we use it,” he said. “But we now have a stable operating system that we can continue to evolve for the future.”

Aside from the Workday rollout, Hummerstone said that OneFinance, an initiative to strengthen internal financial processes and controls, was one of Callahan’s biggest focuses.

OneFinance was launched after a former School of Medicine administrator was arrested for embezzling $40 million from the University in an eight-year money laundering scheme. The initiative was explicitly announced as a response to a “call to action” by School of Medicine administrators after the scheme came to light.

According to Hummerstone, Callahan was persistent in treating the embezzlement scheme as an event to learn from, but “not the only reason” for OneFinance’s implementation. 

Stephen Murphy ’87, the University’s vice president for finance who reports to Callahan, oversees OneFinance and helped launch Workday at Yale. He characterized his boss as a “seasoned, thoughtful, strategic leader” with a sense of humor and a drive for progress.

“His love and devotion to Yale are boundless and infectious,” Murphy wrote to the News. “As SVP for Operations he has had an enormous positive impact on the university.”

For his part, Callahan said that increasing Yale’s voluntary contribution to New Haven in 2021 was a milestone for him during his time at the University. He expressed hopes that the development will set the groundwork for increased commitments to the city.

Pandemic-era perseverance

Pavlis, who helped run Yale’s response to the pandemic, described Callahan leading a “huge team effort” to bring the operations team together as a group.

“The hierarchy broke down a lot during that time, because it was all hands on deck kind of moment. I think Jack really orchestrated that and allowed us to all step up in various ways.”

Callahan served on the University’s “policy board,” a collective of senior officials which participated in negotiations with Local 34 and Local 35 —  the unions representing Yale’s clerical, technical, service and maintenance staff. Joe Sarno, Yale’s labor relations director, called Callahan “phenomenal” to work with, and described him as a collaborative negotiator with “natural instincts on labor,” especially in his role conducting bargaining sessions over Zoom during the pandemic.

Callahan said that he frequently found Yale to be “siloed” among different staffs; he took it upon himself to break down the walls of non-communication.

“COVID showed us how we had to work together in new and different ways,” Callahan said. “I think it’s been a lasting lesson.”

That lesson was tested last spring, when student protests over divesting from weapons manufacturers rocked campus. Callahan said that he worked with Yale Public Safety to maintain security in “the most fair and equitable way that we thought possible.”

“We all were collectively attuned to the issues and the concerns of everyone on campus and also committed to safety and public expression,” Callahan said.

Chauncey believes Callahan’s role has continued to prove important recently as Yale has expanded its investment in the sciences, including projects such as a plan to transform Science Hill.

A University-wide email from McInnis on Monday announcing Callahan’s retirement highlighted Callahan’s “exceptional agility” in adapting and supervising University operations during the pandemic, as well as his “commitment to the community” in shaping Yale’s landmark $140 million investment in New Haven. 

Callahan believes he should not be involved in finding a successor for his position, but that the efficacy of the role he inaugurated is cemented. 

“I think everyone has now seen the value of having someone who is the leader across a number of the staff to run them in a more integrated way,” he said.

Sarno was more explicit in his expectations for Callanan’s successor. 

“Jack’s a great person to work for, and that makes work a lot better,” he said. “So I hope they find someone very similar to Jack.” 

As senior vice president for operations, Callahan sits on the University president’s cabinet.

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On Jan. 21, one day after his inauguration, Trump issued an executive order requiring executive agencies and federally funded institutions to terminate all race- or gender-based diversity programs that could violate federal civil rights laws. On Jan. 27, a memo moved to freeze federal funding to review whether programs align with “the President’s priorities,” such as eliminating DEI initiatives, before the White House budget office rescinded the order Wednesday. In an interview Wednesday, University President Maurie McInnis said to expect more executive orders from the federal government that may threaten Yale’s programs and funding.

After widespread advocacy in 2020 called for institutions to create diversity programs, Yale committed fully to DEI policies. Former University President Peter Salovey formed the Committee on Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging and created Belonging at Yale, which has become the University’s main arm facilitating diversity initiatives. In 2022, the University kicked off a five-year DEI plan.

Yale College Dean Pericles Lewis told the News he does not believe that Trump’s new policies would directly affect Yale’s “educational mission” but that the University’s “research mission and graduate education” could be impacted.

According to Lewis, ongoing research at Yale that uses federal funding to study issues related to diversity “may have to be re-evaluated.” Last week, Trump directed federal science agencies to cancel all scheduled meetings, effectively suspending the review of the National Institutes of Health grant applications. The president also expressed a willingness to reduce climate spending and eradicate funding for DEI initiatives.

Lewis said that the University would be “careful that all programs comply with federal law” in its response to all of Trump’s executive orders, citing how the University changed its policies after the fall of affirmative action so that admission officers no longer have access to applicants’ self-identified race or ethnicity.

When asked whether Yale will amend the language it uses about diversity in response to Trump, Lewis said, “There might be tweaks here or there, but in general, we try and use language that is broad, and — if I can use the expression — inclusive, and so I don’t think we’ll be radically changing anything.” 

According to Lewis, Yale’s long-term goals remain committed to a “strong and diverse community with excellence across all dimensions.” He also affirmed that Yale’s cultural centers stand at no risk, given their clear role as centers for support and availability to a diverse student body. 

University administrators who run diversity programs did not respond to requests for comment.

Gary Désir, chair of the ASCEND Committee — a Yale initiative that facilitates collaborations with faculty at HBCUs — initially accepted an interview request from the News on Monday, then canceled the meeting. After multiple requests to comment, Désir referred the News to a statement from ASCEND Committee Co-Chair Lakia Scott that discussed accomplishments from the past year without addressing Trump’s executive orders, on behalf of both ASCEND and Belonging at Yale. The Office of Institutional Equity and Accessibility also did not respond to a request to comment.

In early interviews, after she assumed the presidency, McInnis voiced explicit support for maintaining diversity at Yale. In the Wednesday interview, when asked whether DEI is still a priority for Yale, McInnis responded, “We at Yale have always cared about the well-being of all members of our community, and we will continue to care about all members of our community.”

When asked whether Yale will defend its DEI policies in the face of Trump’s orders threatening to revoke federal funding, McInnis said that “it’s premature to say” as the University doesn’t yet know the full impact of the orders. She continued, “We will understand what the impact could be to Yale, what the federal law actually requires, and then we will formulate our responses from that.”

Duncan Hosie LAW ’21, an appellate lawyer and writer, stated that given the ferocity and speed at which the Trump administration has announced its new policies, the federal government will only grow more radical in its efforts to sequester Yale.

He anticipates this particularly following the 2020 lawsuit Trump launched against Yale, accusing the University of discriminating against white and Asian American applicants in its undergraduate admissions process, which was dropped by the U.S. Department of Justice after former President Joe Biden took office. 

“What I see happening is a pincer movement, where in one direction you have the Trump DOJ pressuring with the threat of formal government lawsuits, and on the other, you have conservative legal groups led by Ed Blum and similar organizations scrutinizing everything Yale does,” Hosie said. “There’ll be both formal, top-down pressure from the government and then external pressure from these outside institutions that are coordinating with the government to make sure Yale drops any type of DEI program.”

Hosie believes that though the Trump administration’s actions are framed in opposition to DEI, they encompass a larger goal seeking to unravel diversity programs tracing back to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He noted that no past Republican administration has had the same desire to purge diversity programs as Trump.

Civil rights attorney Alex Taubes LAW ’15 noted that oftentimes executive orders passed on the first day of administration aren’t always “well thought out” and lack the deliberation of “hearings, fact finding and comments from affected parties that normal government regulations go through.”

According to Taubes, this makes Trump’s order vulnerable to legal challenges. 

Even though Trump has moved the Supreme Court to the right by appointing conservative judges, the Court’s conservative rulings may also serve in the University’s favor, according to Hosie. The overturn of the Chevron doctrine — which had courts defer to federal agencies’ expertise in rulemaking — “gives Liberals opportunities to challenge the executive orders the Trump administration has issued.” 

Legal resistance wouldn’t be unprecedented, said Hosie. In 2017, universities led by Princeton sued the Trump administration for attempting to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program, which protects undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children, arguing the act would harm university students.

Yet the more likely scenario, Hosie said, is for universities to try to reduce scrutiny of the programs based on the principle that “not much is to be gained from drawing attention” and that the better strategy is to “comply.”

In a Wednesday interview, McInnis shared that the University prioritizes working with legislators behind the scenes to advocate for Yale’s mission while limiting public statements. 

When asked whether the University may consider legal action in response to arising federal orders, McInnis said that the Office of General Counsel will “consider whether they think they have standing, whether there is a case to bring, whether there’s an appropriate legal argument to make.”

“Right now is an extremely perilous time for higher education in America,” said Hosie. “This is just the opening salvo of a larger campaign to go after Yale and like-minded institutions. Unfortunately, there’s a lot more to come.” 

Trump is in his second term as president.

Karla Cortes contributed reporting.

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Excluding laboratory courses, the three most popular courses are “Introductory Macroeconomics,” “Bioethics and Law” and “Psychology and Global Capitalism” with enrollments at 358, 275 and 250 respectively, according to the Course Demand Statistics site as of Dec. 1. Enrollment numbers will likely fluctuate until the end of the add/drop period. 

While the News has excluded laboratory classes from course popularity rankings, some laboratory classes outnumber their co-requisite classes in enrollment. For example, 265 students are enrolled in “General Chemistry Laboratory II” and 263 students are enrolled in “General Physics Laboratory.” 

Economics professor Aleh Tsyvinski, who teaches “Introductory Macroeconomics,” wrote to the News that he designs his course to equip students with the tools to analyze and understand the world on a large scale. 

“This class is not just about acing your investment banking internship interview (though we will give you all the tools to do exceptionally well in those),” Tsyvinski wrote. “It’s about building an analytical foundation that remains relevant decades after graduation, whether you become a diplomat, an artist, a scientist, or anything else.”

Tsyvinski also said that since he began teaching the course, he’s consistently surprised by how frequently he encounters former students who took his “Introductory Macroeconomics” class, whether it be in “Beijing, Los Angeles, or Rome.” 

As a prerequisite for majors like economics and ethics, politics and economics, the course’s high demand also reflects the popularity of economics-related majors at Yale. Economics was recorded as the most popular undergraduate field of study, according to Yale’s 2023-2024 Facts Report, with about 11 percent of Yale college students completing the major. 

“Bioethics and Law” is taught by Stephen Latham, a political science professor and director of Yale’s Interdisciplinary Center of Bioethics. It was also the second most popular course last spring. According to the course description, the class focuses on the intersection of law and contemporary biomedical ethics, including topics such as abortion, informed consent, assisted reproduction and stem cell research. 

Alex Bonn ’27 said that she enrolled in the course because of recommendations from friends. 

“It was highly recommended by the older girls on my team, and they said I couldn’t graduate from Yale without taking this class,” Bonn said. 

The psychology department is a new department on the leaderboard for most popular courses in the spring semester. Psychology professor Tariq Khan wrote to the News that he “can’t say for sure” what drives high student interest in his course specifically, but that he has consistently witnessed Yale students express genuine care for socioeconomic world issues. 

“My experience at Yale has been that students care deeply about intertwined problems such as economic and social injustice, war, ecological crisis, mental health crisis, and the seeming ascendance of anti-democratic authoritarian ‘strong man’ control over political institutions in the United States and globally,” Khan said. “Students are eager to find courses that will help them better understand and grapple with these problems.” 

Khan noted that though the class is listed as a psychology course, he hopes students will take away a more developed consciousness of the relationship between individual, social, political, economic and even cultural problems they see in the world to underlying systems, structures and histories. 

Due to the large sizes of these lectures, promoting student engagement can become a challenge. To Khan, fostering engagement is not about any “specific tricks, techniques, or activities,” but about centering the course around relevant and intellectually stimulating content. In other words, “no boring or irrelevant readings.” 

Ilse Lindenlaub’s “Intermediate Macroeconomics” and Paul Cooper’s “General Chemistry II” were the fourth and fifth most popular courses, with 240 and 227 students respectively. 

Correction, Dec. 5: The article has been updated to clarify that the course registration is still open.

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