Members of the faculty senate and Yale’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, or AAUP, delivered the letter to McInnis and Strobel on April 11. In response, McInnis’ office has reached out to schedule a meeting among the two administrators and the faculty who delivered the letter, per Strobel. 

“American universities are facing extraordinary attacks that threaten the bedrock principles of a democratic society, including rights of free expression, association, and academic freedom,” the letter reads. “We write as one faculty, to ask you to stand with us now.”

In the letter, faculty call on McInnis and Strobel to legally challenge “unlawful demands that threaten academic freedom and university self-governance” and to commit that the University will not reorganize or remove any departments or programs in response to political threats. The letter also asks the University to provide support in forms such as immigration assistance to individuals who have experienced government infringement on their freedom of speech. 

Strobel expressed gratitude for the faculty letter and wrote to the News that he and McInnis will continue to discuss concerns about academic freedom with faculty members.

“The university remains unwavering in its commitment to realizing Yale’s mission; enabling academic freedom, deep intellectual inquiry, and the free exchange of ideas; and supporting our community,” Strobel wrote to the News. 

Professor Daniel HoSang, president of Yale’s AAUP chapter, highlighted how faculty from all 14 graduate and professional schools have signed the letter. For HoSang, the wide breadth of the signatories reflects the “majority sentiment on campus” that the Yale community is ready to defend its scholarship in the face of unlawful orders from the federal government. 

HoSang also told the News that the University must take both public stances and substantive action to resist political pressures such as threatened cuts to research funding. 

McInnis previously told the News that she is prioritizing behind-the-scenes lobbying over public statements, though she issued a statement in February denouncing President Donald Trump’s cuts to funding cuts in the National Institutes of Health. 

HoSang said that the University’s public statements are complementary to its behind-the-scenes lobbying.

“If behind the scenes, what we’re saying is, ‘here’s the critical research that’s done on our campus and why it needs to be protected,’ why would we not say that publicly?” HoSang said. 

According to HoSang, McInnis has continued to hold listening sessions and meetings with faculty to discuss concerns about political attacks on academic freedom. After Yale’s AAUP chapter sent a letter to McInnis in February asking her to vocally resist federal policies that threaten the University’s mission, McInnis had a “productive and respectful” conversation with HoSang and other letter writers, per HoSang.

“We understand the deep, dangerous waters that universities and higher ed are navigating now, and we know the difficult decisions that face administrators,” HoSang said. “The administrators are listening to faculty, and they value what faculty have to say.”

However, Professor Naftali Kaminski, a faculty signatory of the letter, wrote to the News that faculty “undoubtedly” do not have enough input in the University’s responses to political threats.

The letter was sent shortly before McInnis announced a new president’s committee to address declining trust in higher education.

Kaminski wrote that while he is glad the committee was formed, he is “not really” reassured that the Yale administration will address the calls in the faculty letter.

“I think Yale faculty need to be reassured that Yale will not capitulate to the [Trump] administration’s request,” Kaminski wrote. “If Yale and other top Universities unite, they will be able to prevail this unprecedented attack and save U.S. education and science.”

Kaminski also emphasized that his identity as a Jewish Israeli was important to his signing the letter. According to Kaminski, antisemitism has been “weaponized to attack U.S. higher education and research,” and he is worried that new developments such as Yale’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s contested definition of antisemitism will further enable this weaponization.

As of Fall 2024, Yale has 5,744 faculty members.

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The Yale Daily News is excited to present a collection of stories and artwork that showcases the diverse experiences of Yale’s Asian American community. Some of our stories capture programming and festivities at the Asian American Cultural Center, which celebrated Pan-Asian American Heritage Month throughout March and early April. Other stories encapsulate how community members — from faculty to New Haven residents to students — envision radically optimistic futures for Asian America through tradition and advocacy.

In this special issue, Tina Li profiles local organizers in New Haven, whose Asian American heritage informs their advocacy. Kamini Purushothaman covers Yalies who celebrate their heritage and culture through vibrant performing arts. Madison Butchko reflects on her experience growing up as an adopted Chinese American. Zeyna Malik captures the stories of six visual artists at Yale, who capture beauty and community through brush and lens.

We would like to thank all of the talented writers and artists who contributed to this special issue. For our readers both within and beyond the Asian American community, we hope this issue can be one of joy and reflection.

With love,

Ellie Park, Jane Park and Yolanda Wang are the lead special issue editors for the News’ Asian American Special Issue. Ellie is the Multimedia Managing Editor, Jane is the Arts Editor and Yolanda is a staff reporter for the University Desk.

The post Introduction: Asian American Special Issue appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Students accepted to the major starting next academic year will be required to complete 13 courses, a non-English language course designated L4 and either a one-semester senior thesis or a one-semester senior capstone project. 

Within the 13 courses, students will now be required to take two classes each in both history and political science. The new curriculum will replace two core courses on international security and development — which have received some of the lowest student reviews on Yale Course Evaluations in the past several years — with a single core course. Required economics courses have been expanded to include game theory and qualitative methods and the number of required electives has decreased from four to three. 

Previously, the major required 12 courses, a non-English language at L5 and a one-semester senior capstone.

“The reformed curriculum will better reflect the multidisciplinary nature of the major and give students some added flexibility around advanced courses and the senior project to better support the range of their interests and goals,” Bonnie Weir, assistant dean for undergraduate education at the Jackson School of Global Affairs, wrote to the News.

Weir also highlighted that the Jackson School has added new course offerings and programming, such as new certificates in human rights and a series of research workshops, to serve “areas of intense student interest.”

The changes are the result of a review process spanning the current academic year that involved input from students and faculty. 

As part of the process, Weir conducted a formal survey of student perspectives of the major and analyzed course-taking trends in global affairs from recent years. She also convened a committee of senior faculty members in economics, history and political science to evaluate course offerings in global affairs.

According to Weir, the review found that beyond security and development, students were also interested in areas such as human rights, peacebuilding, climate, technology and regime dynamics.

The changes come three years after the Jackson School was formally dedicated as Yale’s newest professional school in fall 2022.

Ethan Chiu ’26, a junior majoring in global affairs, wrote to the News that the new course requirements in history and political science increase flexibility for students, though he also expressed hesitance at the newly decreased language level requirement.

“I think not having students required to take L5 may decrease readiness for international affairs careers, especially because L5 seems to be more intermediate level anyways,” Chiu wrote.

Owen Setiawan ’27, who majors in global affairs, said that he also regrets to see the L5 language requirement go.

Setiawan said that the expansion of the intermediate economics requirement to include game theory and any approved qualitative methods course may diminish the understanding of global affairs.

“Having taken intermediate macroeconomics,” he said, “I feel like it’s very relevant to understanding things related to global affairs and having a strong understanding of the macro economy.”

In contrast, David Yun ’28, a prospective global affairs major, welcomed the changes, which he says will allow him to choose a wider variety of courses within international affairs.

The Jackson School of Global Affairs was founded in 2010.

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Amid President Donald Trump’s accusations that peer institutions are tolerating antisemitism, faculty are calling on Yale to stand by its Middle East programs and scholars. They also expressed hope that University administrators may take a different approach to political threats that protects the independence of Middle East studies at Yale.

“We are currently witnessing concerted efforts to force universities to retreat from the world and abandon core humanistic values of free inquiry and open exchange,” CMES Chair Travis Zadeh wrote to the News. “These developments are alarming and unprecedented.”

After the federal government canceled $400 million in grants and contracts with Columbia University on March 7, citing its alleged failure to combat antisemitism on campus, the school announced on March 21 that it will place its Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies department and its Center for Palestine Studies under the purview of a senior vice provost. 

On March 25, Harvard University dismissed two faculty leaders of its Center for Middle Eastern Studies following pressure from the federal government to address alleged instances of antisemitism on campus. The Trump administration announced on Monday that it would review over $8 billion in federal grants to Harvard as part of an ongoing investigation by the Federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism.

Yale faculty have started to weigh in on developments at other schools. Aslı Bâli LAW ’99, a professor at Yale Law School and the president of the Middle East Studies Association, recently co-wrote a letter on behalf of MESA calling on Harvard administrators to reinstate faculty leaders of its Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

“We regard Harvard’s action in this matter as an egregious violation of longstanding and widely accepted norms of faculty governance as well as the principles of academic freedom,” the letter reads. “Rather than facilitating or acting in the interests of government repression, we must all take a collective stance to defend higher education in the United States.”

Faculty have also expressed that they expect the University to stand up to external pressures to reshape Middle East studies.

Hussein Fancy ’97, a history professor affiliated with CMES, told the News that submitting to these pressures will do nothing to curb them.

“Of course, I am concerned about academic freedom,” Fancy wrote. “I suspect Yale’s administrators recognize that capitulating in advance to external pressures to curtail that freedom will only embolden those who are using the cover of antisemitism to attack higher education.”

Fancy added that “curtailing inquiry, shuffling administrators, or imposing crude definitions” will not solve campus antisemitism or any form of racism.

One lecturer affiliated with CMES, who asked to remain anonymous due to their lack of tenure, suggested that the size of Yale’s endowment could enable the University to stand up to potential funding freezes.

“Yale must stay the course in fulfilling its mission to provide outstanding research and education through ‘free exchange of ideas’ in the face of external pressure, even if that means it must draw on its endowment to preserve programs and scholars under attack,” the faculty member wrote.

In the 2024 fiscal year, Yale’s endowment grew to $41.4 billion. In the same year, Columbia’s endowment reached $14.8 billion, while Harvard’s increased to $53.2 billion.

Jonathan Wyrtzen, a professor of sociology and history affiliated with CMES, wrote to the News that, to his knowledge, the Council has not yet faced explicit pressure from donors, alumni or the administration to alter academic programming. Wyrtzen also wrote that CMES faculty and Yale administrators have not met to discuss concerns about academic freedom.

“Every faculty member working on the Middle East in any institution in the United States, including Yale, has concerns right now about the exceptional threats to our academic freedom in researching and teaching about the MENA region,” Wyrtzen wrote. “Middle East-related studies are at the front line of a deeper, defining struggle about freedom of speech, academic freedom, and institutional autonomy.”

Defending this front line is all the more important at Yale, Wyrtzen continued, because of the University’s background as one of the first American colleges to offer academic programs related to the Middle East. In 1841, Yale became the first American university to establish a professorship in Arabic and a Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, per the CMES website. 

According to Wyrtzen, the University has continuously expanded research and academic offerings related to the modern Middle East and North Africa across its schools during his 16 years of teaching here.

“Now is a time where a line in the sand is being drawn and decisions are being made that define what we stand for and are committed to doing as a whole university,” Wyrtzen wrote.

Yale appointed the first professor of Arabic in 1841.

Correction, April 2: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Yale awarded its first doctoral degree in Middle East studies in 1861. The correct year is 1888.

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The News obtained a copy of the survey, which was created by the Office of General Counsel and emailed to department leaders by Lynn Cooley, dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, as part of an effort to “evaluate the impact of recent executive orders and other federal directives” on Yale’s DEI programs. The survey and email did not specify plans to change these programs.

Department leaders were asked to respond to 15 questions and report detailed information about DEI practices that relate to faculty hiring and student programs, including any programs that “have the appearance of being limited” to particular identity groups.

One question asked for the names of all employees, departments and offices with the keywords “diversity,” “equity” or “inclusion” in their titles or who work in those areas. Another question asks for the names of all affinity groups and other groups organized by demography that receive University funding or are otherwise linked to Yale. A third question requests all official materials, especially statements on DEI or department values, “that should be reviewed or which may benefit from changes.”

A University spokesperson wrote to the News on behalf of Cooley and vice president for university life Kimberly Goff-Crews that the goal of the survey is “to understand how these activities support members of the Yale community and confirm that their description and implementation accurately reflect that these programs are accessible to the entire Yale community.” 

“The review is being done thoughtfully and carefully to both comply with the law and support the diverse and inclusive environment that is essential to fulfilling Yale’s mission,” the spokesperson wrote.

The survey, which requested an “immediate response” by March 28, raised alarm among faculty. 

Following a March 27 meeting between top administrators and over 100 faculty members, Goff-Crews agreed to extend the survey deadline and schedule further informational meetings with department leaders, according to an email sent by FAS-SEAS Senate chair Mark Solomon and deputy chair Marijeta Bozovic to faculty the next day.

“Because the survey came to the departments with no advance warning or preparation, many faculty were alarmed by the request and its legalistic tone,” Solomon wrote to the News, adding that he was not commenting on behalf of the Senate.

The Trump administration has issued several executive orders targeting DEI programs at various institutions, naming higher education as a particular target. A February 14 letter sent to educational institutions threatened to revoke federal funding if the schools continued their DEI policies, later walking back aspects of the letter. Universities across the country have been eliminating DEI offices, rolling back programs and scrubbing DEI pages from their websites.

“I find the confidentiality of the document and the nature of the questions to be very disturbing in that I am required to report on programs and colleagues without their knowledge,” Mimi Yiengpruksawan, Director of Graduate Studies for the Council on East Asian Studies, wrote to GSAS Dean Cooley in response to the survey. “I am also reluctant, after consultation with my own counsel, to be a signatory to information that might eventuate in my being deposed in litigation relating to misrepresentation of a program or individual employee.”

One section of the survey focuses on employment and asks for lists of all gender- and race-conscious practices in hiring and promotion processes for faculty and staff. The section lists as examples policies that require diversity in job candidate pools, hiring committees, promotion decisions and tenure processes. 

Other questions target programs such as diversity-related mentorships, training seminars, workshops, fellowships, internships, summer programs, mandatory courses, orientation programs and faculty or staff training.

A section about student policies requests an inventory of “any policies or programs that are intended to support diversity, equity, and inclusion in student life.” The section asks for descriptions of fellowships, internships, student jobs, support programs and educational or extracurricular programs that offer admission or preference on a demographic basis or are restricted to one demographic group.

One section labeled “vendor selection” asks for any diversity considerations used in the selection of “external vendors or service providers for the school or unit.”

In their March 28 email, Solomon and Bozovic explained that while the survey’s purpose and context were conveyed to deans across Yale’s schools, these details were “regrettably” not conveyed to department chairs and directors of graduate studies until the Senate meeting.

During the Senate meeting, administrators assured faculty that the survey intended to gather information, “rather than to prompt anticipatory obedience or to chill efforts to promote diversity in advance of any legal requirement to do so,” according to the email.

Goff-Crews also confirmed that brief answers stating only that a department has followed best practices set by the University in fall 2024 were sufficient, according to Solomon and Bozovic’s email.

Yiengpruksawan later wrote to the News that she is “somewhat alleviated” following these reassurances but said that administrators’ approach to the original survey presented “bad optics.”

“It tells us that we — departmental leadership and the faculty as a whole — were ‘last to know’ in a reactive situation in which the University appears to have been giving in to some form of political pressure through preemptive measures,” Yiengpruksawan wrote to the News. “I am not saying that such was the case. But it looked that way to me when I opened the survey.”

Department chairs will meet with Goff-Crews for further guidance on the survey on April 8.

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The 42-page complaint asked Connecticut Attorney General William Tong to investigate whether the Yale Corporation has breached its fiduciary duties under the state’s Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act, or UPMIFA. Thirty other student and community organizations across Yale and New Haven have endorsed the complaint.

“As stewards of the endowment, state law imposes clear duties on the fiduciaries of charitable trusts, like the Corporation, including the duty to invest with consideration of the institution’s charitable purpose, the duty of loyalty, and the duty of good faith,” organizers wrote in the complaint. “We believe that the Corporation has breached all three.”

The UPMIFA requires tax-exempt nonprofit organizations such as universities to invest with charitable interests in mind. The Yale Corporation is also governed by its own ethical investment guidelines, which define a standard of grave social injury as the prerequisite for divestment from a given company or industry. Yale has previously reviewed and upheld its investments in military weapons manufacturers, stating that weapons manufacturing can contribute to authorized purposes for military and law enforcement and thus does not meet this standard.

The University spokesperson wrote to the News that Yale is reviewing the complaint and expressed confidence that the University is in compliance with the UPMIFA and its own investment guidelines.

The attorney general’s office has expressed hesitation at intervening in Yale’s investment practices. 

“The Office of the Attorney General does not believe it is lawful or appropriate for the government to use its law enforcement authority to control the financial decisions or policy choices of private universities,” Elizabeth Benton, a spokesperson for the attorney general, wrote to the News.

The complaint recapitulates arguments from previous organizing efforts against Yale’s military weapons investments, asserting that the destruction caused by military weapons companies is opposed to charitable interests and that investments in such companies are “deeply incompatible” with Yale’s investment guidelines.

The complaint is one of student activists’ latest efforts to pressure the University to divest from military weapons, especially those that arm the Israeli military. Previously, the Sumud Coalition spearheaded a student body referendum on divestment from weapons, which overwhelmingly passed in December but did not result in changes to Yale’s investment practices. In the complaint, the coalition also claims that the Yale Corporation has failed to act loyally and in good faith by ignoring sustained calls from community members to divest from military weapons manufacturers and suppliers.

Sumud Coalition organizers also allege in the complaint that a “limited review” shows that at least $4 billion of the University’s endowment is invested with asset managers with histories of investing in military weapons manufacturers and suppliers. The News has not been able to independently verify this figure, and Yale’s relationships with its asset managers do not necessarily translate to direct holdings in military weapons companies.

Yale’s February SEC filings, which account for under 0.002 percent of the University’s $41.4 billion endowment, show that the school holds $792,814 in the iShares Core S&P Total U.S. Stock Market Exchange Traded Fund. 3.25 percent of the fund’s portfolio is invested in military contracting, per Morningstar, meaning around $25,800 of Yale’s publicly available holdings is exposed to military weapons companies.

The other 99.998 percent of the Yale endowment is held in private companies and related organizations, making it difficult to determine whether and how much Yale invests in weapons companies beyond its publicly disclosed amount.

The Sumud Coalition’s complaint is similar to a complaint filed in 2022 by the Endowment Justice Coalition, a member group of the Sumud Coalition. The EJC’s 2022 complaint to Attorney General Tong alleged that Yale’s investments in fossil fuel companies also violated the UPMIFA. 

EJC organizers met with representatives of the attorney general’s office to discuss their complaint in December 2022. However, it is unclear whether the attorney general’s office ever opened an investigation into Yale’s fossil fuels investments.

When asked if the Sumud Coalition plans to continue pushing their current complaint through a long legal process, organizer Isabel Matos ’28 wrote to the News that the coalition plans to keep on building pressure “from above and below” until Yale divests from military weapons companies.

Yale’s endowment grew by $2.3 billion in the 2024 fiscal year.

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Philosophy professor Jason Stanley announced this week that he will leave Yale, while history professors Timothy Snyder and Marci Shore, who are married, decided to leave around the November elections. The three professors will work at Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. 

Stanley wrote to the Daily Nous that his decision to leave was “entirely because of the political climate in the United States.” On Wednesday, he told the Guardian that he chose to move after seeing how Columbia University handled political attacks from Trump. 

After the Trump administration threatened to deport two student protesters at Columbia and revoked $400 million in research funding from the school, Columbia agreed on Friday to concede to a series of demands from the Trump administration that included overhauling its protest policies and imposing external oversight on the school’s Middle Eastern studies department.

“When I saw Columbia completely capitulate, and I saw this vocabulary of, well, we’re going to work behind the scenes because we’re not going to get targeted — that whole way of thinking presupposes that some universities will get targeted, and you don’t want to be one of those universities, and that’s just a losing strategy,” Stanley told the Guardian.

“I just became very worried because I didn’t see a strong enough reaction in other universities to side with Columbia,” he added.

Yale has not released a statement addressing the revocation of Columbia’s funding. Yale College Dean Pericles Lewis has told the News that he does not anticipate any changes in Yale’s free expression and protest policies. University President Maurie McInnis previously said that she is prioritizing lobbying for Yale’s interests in Washington over issuing public pronouncements.

Shore wrote that the Munk School had long attempted to recruit her and Snyder and that the couple had seriously considered the offers “for the past two years.” Shore wrote that the couple decided to take the positions after the November 2024 elections. However, a spokesperson for Snyder told Inside Higher Ed that Snyder’s decision was made before the elections, was largely personal and came amid “difficult family matters.” The spokesperson also said that he had “no desire” to leave the United States. 

Shore wrote that her and Snyder’s children were factors in the couple’s decision.

Snyder and Shore both specialize in Eastern European history and each has drawn parallels between the fascist regimes they have studied and the current Trump administration. Stanley, a philosopher, has also published books on fascism and propaganda, including the popular book “How Fascism Works.”  

In 2021, Stanley and Snyder co-taught a course at Yale titled “Mass Incarceration in the Soviet Union and the United States.” Earlier this week, Stanley and Shore joined nearly 3,000 Jewish faculty across the U.S. to sign a letter denouncing the arrest of a Columbia student protester and urging their respective institutions to resist the Trump administration’s policies targeting colleges.

“I know Jason Stanley very well, he’s been one of my most important interlocutors on political, historical and philosophical questions for the better part of a decade now,” Shore wrote to the News on Wednesday. “I am thrilled that he’ll be joining us in Toronto, but also heartbroken at what’s happened to my own country.”

Paul Franks, the chair of Yale’s philosophy department, described the news of Stanley’s departure as a shock, although he knew that Stanley had been considering leaving Yale “for quite some time.” Franks described Stanley as an irreplaceable “pioneer” in analytic philosophy and as a “rare” American philosophical public intellectual.

Angel Nwadibia ’24, who took several classes with Stanley and worked as a research assistant on his latest book on fascism, lauded Stanley’s commitment to including a diverse canon in his classes’ syllabi, and to relating his courses to relevant current events.

“He has a really neat ability to marry the tools of the discipline with the contemporary crises that we as students, as people in the world, are currently facing,” Nwadibia said.

With Shore and Snyder departing, Yale’s faculty will be short two of its most prominent scholars of Eastern Europe. Although Stanley’s academic work was not focused on the region, the philosophy professor has commented and written on the war in Ukraine and taught a course at the Kyiv School of Economics in Ukraine in the summer of 2024.

Olha Tytarenko, a Ukrainian language professor, shared that Snyder and Shore provided a crucial platform for conversations and events focused on Ukraine.

“The departure of Professors Shore and Snyder leaves behind a profound void,” Tytarenko wrote to the News. “The intellectual and moral leadership they offered in advancing public understanding of Ukrainian history, culture, and politics at Yale is, in many ways, irreplaceable.”

Andrei Kureichik, a Belarusian dissident and research scholar at the MacMillan Center, called the professors’ departure “a big loss” for Yale and American education, but urged the University community to carry forward the pro-Ukraine advocacy Snyder and Shore led on campus.

Molly Brunson, Director of the Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies Program, also emphasized the couple’s “tireless” advocacy for Eastern European scholarship on campus.

When Yevhenii Monastyrskyi GRD ’23 studied European and Russian studies at Yale, Shore advised his thesis and Snyder served as his “spiritual guide,” Monastyrskyi said. He described the two professors as “generous scholars” who made time for their students.

“Professor Snyder is always good with conceptual thinking. He helps to grasp the bigger picture students are trying to pursue,” Monastyrski said. “Professor Shore is a person of ideas and language, so she really helps her students to develop the clearest but also the most beautifully written pieces.”

Asked whether she believes other professors might be encouraged to leave the United States, Shore wrote that she believes many of her colleagues will consider relocating due to the current political climate, which she deemed an “American descent into fascism.”

“I don’t feel confident that American universities will manage to mobilize to protect either their students or their faculty,” Shore said.

Franks wrote that he is not aware of other faculty in the philosophy department who are considering leaving the country for political reasons.

This semester, Shore is on leave from Yale to finish a book manuscript, though she has resided in Toronto since the beginning of the academic year. She will begin teaching at the University of Toronto in the fall as the Munk School’s chair in European intellectual history. Snyder will be the school’s inaugural chair in Modern European History. 

The University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy was founded in 2010.

Yurii Stasiuk contributed reporting.

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The statement, titled “Not In Our Name,” was drafted by the Boston chapter of Concerned Jewish Faculty & Staff and first circulated on March 11. Nearly 3,000 faculty, staff and students at universities across the United States have signed the letter.

“We are united in denouncing, without equivocation, anyone who invokes our name — and cynical claims of antisemitism — to harass, expel, arrest, or deport members of our campus communities,” the letter reads.

The statement specifically called out the arrest of Columbia University alumnus Mahmoud Khalil as an attack on political dissent that uses “Jews as a shield.”

Khalil, a permanent legal U.S. resident, was arrested on March 8 by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents for his role as a lead negotiator for the pro-Palestine encampment at Columbia last spring. While Khalil has not been charged with any crime, he is currently detained in Louisiana and faces deportation.

“I might not agree with much of what Mahmoud Khalil has said, but if we allow agents to come knock on the door at any time and take away anyone for non-violently expressing their opinions, we’ve descended into a reign of terror,” Marci Shore, a statement signatory and professor of Eastern European history, wrote to the News. “And we need to stand in solidarity to protect one another’s rights.”

Shore also drew parallels between the Trump administration’s actions and the history of the Soviet Union. She warned that the illegal deportation of a critic of Israel under the guise of protecting Jewish people from antisemitism could itself provoke antisemitic violence, “whereupon Jews can be scapegoated for the violence carried out by a fascist administration.”

In response to Khalil’s arrest, signatories of the statement called on their respective universities to “devote institutional resources to free Mahmoud Khalil,” to protect other community members targeted by the Trump administration and to “cease any voluntary collaboration with federal immigration enforcement.”

The letter also urged universities to “reject the dangerous narrative that pro-Palestinian advocacy, in which many Jews have participated, is presumptively anti-Jewish.” Rather than partnering with organizations like the Anti-Defamation League, the letter argues, universities should “meaningfully address antisemitism” by engaging with Jewish stakeholders.

The ADL gave Yale a grade of ‘D’ on its 2025 Campus Antisemitism Report Card and filed a complaint last year with the U.S. Department of Education that Jewish and Israeli students face harassment on Yale’s campus. Yale is one of 60 universities currently under investigation by the Education Department for failing to address antisemitic discrimination and harassment.

A University spokesperson previously wrote to the News that Yale has “long been committed” to combating antisemitism.

The letter’s demand for universities to democratize governance comes at a time when Yale faculty have revived efforts to increase their role in university decision-making and push for more vocal leadership from administrators.

“President McInnis has met with Jewish community members several times in different forums,” a University spokesperson wrote to the News. “The university has been communicating with international students and scholars and has provided them with protocols on how to respond to law enforcement personnel if approached.”

The Yale Office of International Students and Scholars outlines non-citizens’ rights and risks when engaging in protests on its website.

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The letter, which was sent to McInnis on Wednesday, comes amid a whirlwind of policies from the Trump administration targeting scientific research and higher education. Faculty identified their concern about directives ranging from a ban on inclusive language in research papers to a significant cut in funding from the National Institutes of Health for overhead expenses, which is currently blocked in Connecticut by a federal court. Faculty also called for McInnis to collaborate with other universities in sharing resources to promote transparency.

“We stand with you, President McInnis, ready and willing to protect and uphold the mission of the University to ensure that no political or ideological agenda now or ever threatens our collective ability to carry out Yale’s mission through the free exchange of ideas in an ethical, interdependent, and diverse community of faculty, staff, students, and alumni,” the letter states.

Faculty concern about Trump’s executive orders coalesced into a letter-writing effort after a town hall that professors Jeffrey Wickersham and Gregg Gonsalves called on Jan. 31, following a temporary federal funding freeze that threatened nearly $1 billion in research grants for Yale.

The University’s recently renewed chapter of the American Association of University Professors, which has similarly called for McInnis to issue statements about Yale’s protections for immigrant students, later joined faculty efforts to circulate the letter and gather signatures.

Professor Theodore Cohen, who co-authored the letter along with Wickersham, Gonsalves and five other faculty members, told the News that the letter presented faculty with the chance to express a strong, collective opinion.

“The importance of a collective voice to represent our joint interests had not been as clear to me as it is in this particular moment,” Cohen said. “I certainly feel that, without bringing our voices together, it’s going to be difficult to be heard.”

On Monday, McInnis issued her first public statement slamming Trump’s policies, warning that cuts to NIH indirect research cost funding undermine Yale’s core research mission. Before her statement, McInnis previously told the News that she preferred to limit her public comments while working behind the scenes with legislators to advocate for the University’s interests.

McInnis declined to answer questions about the faculty letter, instead directing the News to her Monday statement.

Cohen told the News that he is “very encouraged” by the University’s actions to protect academic freedom so far.

Wickersham echoed Cohen’s sentiments and pointed to the letter’s calls for Yale to incorporate more transparency and faculty involvement in the University’s ongoing response to political threats.

“I have every confidence that President McInnis and others are doing everything they can,” Wickersham said. “This letter is a call to action, but it’s a call to shared action, where faculty and administration and leadership take a shared ownership in the effort to find solutions collectively. Something we really want to emphasize is that no one individual, the president of the University included, can shoulder this enormous burden.”

Co-authors and signatories of the letter also stressed the letter’s call for McInnis to “link arms” with other universities.

Professor Daniel HoSang, a board member of Yale’s AAUP chapter and letter signatory, highlighted that the Trump administration’s research policies affect other institutions across Connecticut and suggested that Yale should be collaborating with neighbors such as the University of Connecticut. HoSang also pointed out that limiting research and scholarly work likely poses a “significant economic impact” on the state.

“I don’t envy anyone who’s in higher ed leadership today, including our colleagues in leadership at Yale,” HoSang said. “It’s a really difficult time, and they’re navigating very uncertain waters. A lot of the letter is an acknowledgment of that and a belief that faculty and higher ed leaders, collaborating together, are best positioned to protect not only our university but higher education as a whole.”

Professor Lucian Davis, another letter co-author, said that for now, faculty, who are “used to challenges,” will find ways to continue their research in the face of political adversity. He added that they will also have to collaborate beyond their usual research groups to overcome uncertainty amid Trump’s policies. 

Yale’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors was restarted in November.

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One of Yale’s largest computer science courses, jointly taught with Harvard University, was canceled during a monthly faculty meeting after facing budgetary challenges, according to Ozan Erat, the most recent Yale instructor for the course. However, administrators expect the computer science department’s expanding faculty size will allow students to take more specialized introductory courses in future semesters.

“I think Yale CS benefited from CS50 a lot,” Erat wrote. “I have met students who decided to get into CS after taking CS50 for fun in their first year. CS50 was a fun course.”

Since Yale started offering the course in 2015, CS50 has consistently seen enrollment numbers in the hundreds and was often the department’s largest class. While students primarily watched lectures via the course’s website, they attended in-person sections and office hours led by undergraduate learning assistants, or ULAs.

However, according to Erat, the original donation that made CS50 possible ended in June 2024, and the cost of employing so many ULAs for the course had become unsustainable. 

“From the beginning we were using a generous gift from someone (I don’t know who) for many years, but that ended in June 2024,” Erat wrote. “[The School of Engineering and Applied Sciences] helped us covering our costs [in fall 2024], but we had to cut down on many things. Maintaining CS50 at Yale was becoming difficult.”

In 2022, after ULAs for the course threatened to strike for higher wages, the computer science department increased the weekly pay limit for CS50 ULAs from 7.5 hours to 10 hours. In 2023, the course instruction team introduced an artificial intelligence chatbot known as the “CS50 duck,” which served as a virtual learning assistant to supplement the course’s roughly 40 ULAs. 

According to Erat, both of these developments posed challenges to CS50’s diminishing financial resources.

“We were also using lots of ULA force for this class,” Erat wrote. “Regular ULAs work for 7.5 hours, but we were paying our ULAs 10 hours’ worth of payment. Thanks to the CS50 duck, we had less students in office hours and the excessive amount of ULA force became another financial burden.”

According to Theodore Kim, the director of undergraduate studies in computer science, the end of CS50 is a reflection of broader changes in the department, including a wider range of students taking computer science courses and a faculty size that has more than doubled since 2015. 

Kim pointed to newer introductory offerings such as “Python for Humanities and Social Sciences,” “AI for Future Presidents” and “C Programming Language and Linux.” 

“We now have the people and expertise to bring more focused pedagogy to the specific interests of the students,” Kim wrote to the News. “Students can choose the course that best fits their needs, rather than trying to get what they want from one giant course.”

Kim also noted that, for students still interested in taking CS50, the course’s content is available for free online. 

In an email to former CS50 ULAs, Erat wrote that the department will offer an “enhanced” version of the course “Introduction to Programming” for both the fall and spring semesters.

However, some students and staff are concerned the end of CS50 may reduce opportunities for new students from underrepresented communities to become involved in computer science. 

“CS50 was the space within the department where I felt like I belonged,” Wini Aboyure ’25, a former CS50 ULA, wrote. “I do worry that without CS50, we will lose some of the diversity that it introduces into the major.”

While Yale shifts to more specialized computer science introductory courses, David Malan, who teaches CS50 at Harvard, will focus on a new partnership with the University of Oxford. However, Malan looks back on his partnership with Yale as a “perfect proof of concept” that higher education can be more collaborative.

“That two schools, rivals no less, could come together in this way educationally has been a remarkable thing,” Malan wrote to the News. “I don’t think the world needs just one course in computer science. But I don’t think we need thousands, each siloed within institutions.”The Yale Computer Science Department was founded in 1969.

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