The program connects current Yale undergraduates with Asian American alumni sponsors around the world who provide participants with a one-to-two week unpaid internship experience in a variety of fields. This year, the AACC offered externships to 28 students across eight different professional sectors.

“We are very mindful about offering experiences that can expose students to their own heritage,” said Victory Lee ’25. “I think it is an important way to encourage students to connect what they’re doing professionally to their own identity, and the impact that they can have to the community that they belong to.”

Lee serves as one of the AACC’s two Alumni Engagement Student Coordinators. She and Mark Chung ’25 were in charge of organizing the program and oversaw the entire process. 

For Lee, the mission at the core of this externship program is to celebrate Yale’s Asian American alumni and amplify their work’s visibility to current undergraduates. 

“It’s not just an alternative to conventional internships. It’s more like highlighting the work that Asian American alumni are doing in more community-focused industries and building Asian American communities in particular,” said Lee. 

One of these alums was Grant Din ’79. 

Din served as Yale’s Asian American Students Alliance president during the second semester of his first year and remained heavily involved in Asian advocacy on campus throughout his undergraduate career. When he first received an email inviting him to host AACC externs, he was working at the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation in San Francisco. 

“It was a perfect match,” said Din regarding the externship program. “I wanted to not only have them, have the students do research at the National Archives, go to Angel Island, but ideally, learn a little bit about the Asian community, out here in the Bay Area.”

This year, four students participated in the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation externship. For Sophia Li ’27, it aligned perfectly with her aspirations to enter the non-profit field. 

For Hubert Tran ’27, the five-day program provided a break from his typical STEM research and allowed him to engage in a different kind of inquiry. 

During their week in San Francisco, students conducted independent research at the National Archives at the Leo J. Ryan Federal Records Center. Each student chose a topic to focus on, and many chose deeply personal subjects. 

Tran, whose family is of Vietnamese origin, investigated the disparate experiences of immigrants from China compared with those from French Indochina. 

The externship also included a visit and guided tour of Angel Island. 

“When they look at all these case files, they can see something in addition to what you might learn in a textbook or in a class,” said Din. “You can read about it, but if you go in and see the carvings that people left because they were being detained and are not able to see their families or just get out of there and just walk around and see all that, that’s pretty profound.”

The students agreed with Din’s perspective — each found their trip to the island, which is now a museum and state park, deeply meaningful.

At the end of the externship, each student presented their research to the director and other staff members and tour guides of the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation. 

Din emphasized how the students’ novel perspectives provide regular employees useful “exposure” to ideas and experiences they may not have previously considered. 

For many participants, their externship experience also granted them insight into the professional world. 

“It was really useful for me personally, because I didn’t have experience with architecture professionally before this, so what I really valued was that I got this thought that these architects are working on real life projects, and I went on site to see exactly what they do,” said Tajrian Khan ’27, an architecture and computer science student who was an extern at Apicella + Bunton Architects in New Haven. 

Khan spent the week researching and presenting precedents to clients looking to renovate particular spaces, visiting architectural sites and meeting with construction engineers. His externship host additionally invited experts to speak with Khan and the other employees at the firm over “educational lunches.” 

The externship validated Khan’s interest in architecture.

Muhammad Nuliadi ’28 worked with five other externs in Seattle, Washington, at the International Rescue Committee, which helps refugees settle into life in the United States. 

“I see the passion of the people I was lucky enough to work with, and I think that was a big one, just being able to see the people that are passionate about this,” said Nuliadi. 

Through the program, Nuliadi said he also gained a more nuanced view of Asian American student life at the University. He cherished the opportunity to grow close with students from “diverse parts of campus.”

“Having an Asian American community and being able to see the alumni staying connected under that shared identity is something that I think is really powerful,” said Lee. “The spring break externship is ultimately really focused on community building.”

For Din, the benefit goes both ways. The AACC externship has allowed him to continue to feel involved in Yale’s Asian American community and to share the Bay Area with these students. He added that he has designed a special “sightseeing” tour for the externs and connects them with other alumni in the area over meals. 

Many externs emphasized the kindness their hosts extended to them. Khan told the News that from his host’s frequent check-ins, he “felt like she really cared.” Additionally, Li described how meeting Din “gave me hope for the future.” 

“Being able to meet these extraordinary trailblazers, really, who were able to start programs, the first of its kind in the U.S. and especially here at Yale, was very inspiring,” said Tran. “Seeing people who look like us in these roles of power, of success and leadership, it tells young people that we are able to do things that we want to do.” 

According to Li, meeting alumni was the highlight of her externship experience, and everyone was enthusiastic to work with externs. 

Grant Din ’79 served as a member of AASA during the student movement to found the Asian American Cultural Center in 1978.

The post AACC connected Asian American alumni with current students for spring break externships appeared first on Yale Daily News.

During his speech, President Trump displayed a chart listing the “tariffs charged to the U.S.A., including currency manipulation and trade barriers” by select countries, along with “discounted reciprocal tariffs” with which his administration is responding. 

Yale English professor and journalist James Surowiecki was immediately skeptical of the tariff rates supposedly faced by the United States.

“If you knew anything about, and, I mean, barely anything about foreign trade, you knew that the numbers just didn’t make any sense,” Surowiecki told the News. “I thought they had basically made the numbers up.”

Though the tariff rates imposed on the United States by foreign countries are easily accessible, the non-tariff trade barriers supposedly used to limit imports of U.S. goods, such as currency manipulation and value-added taxes, are more difficult to calculate.

At first, Surowiecki believed that the Trump administration had preemptively chosen a reciprocal tariff rate, which is 50 percent of the supposed tariff and non-tariff trade barrier calculation, and then “backfilled” by making up the non-tariff trade barrier number that would result in that tariff rate.

Economist Paul Krugman ’74, in an interview with The New York Times, shared Surowiecki’s skepticism about the validity of the non-tariff trade barrier figure. 

“Who would be doing that careful assessment of other countries’ trade policies, country by country? That’s a massive undertaking,” Krugman said. “And it seemed implausible, basically impossible, that they could have done that.”

After closer analysis and “screwing around on a little calculator function on my laptop,” however, Surowiecki stumbled upon the formula that the Trump administration had used to calculate the combined tariff and non-tariff trade barrier figure — and it didn’t have to do with trade barriers at all.

He found that the administration had simply divided the trade deficit — the goods the United States imports from a country minus the goods it exports to that country — by the total goods the United States imports from that country. Then, to arrive at the “reciprocal” rate with which the countries will be faced on April 9, this figure was halved.

“There is no connection between bilateral trade deficits and trade restrictions imposed by a foreign country on its imports from the United States,” Samuel Kortum, Yale economics professor, wrote to the News.

The official formula’s reliance on the trade deficit on goods reflects the Trump administration’s ultimate goal of establishing a trade balance with each of its trade partners, according to Surowiecki. 

The adoption of reciprocal tariffs claims to operate on the idea that if countries impose no tariffs or trade barriers upon the United States, the United States will respond in kind. Under the formula proposed by the Trump administration, the only way for a country’s supposed tariffs and trade barriers to be calculated to be zero is if the United States has a trade balance of zero with that country. 

“The basic premise of the formula is that any trade deficit has to be the result of trade barriers, manipulation and bad behavior on the part of our trading partners,” Surowiecki said. “The point of the tariffs is to get those tariff rates that are imposed on us down to zero. But the only way to do that is to get rid of trade deficits with every single country in the world.”

A trade deficit is often considered by mainstream economists to be a sign of a productive nation. Yale economics professor Amit Khandelwal emphasized that trade balances must be analyzed in the context of many other relationships in the global market. 

“If you’re a really productive nation, and you have high levels of productivity, you might be having a lot of investment, your savings might be a little bit slower and other countries might want to invest in your country,” Khandelwal said. “That will lead to a current capital account surplus and a current trade deficit.” 

Yet according to Surowiecki, Trump’s “zero-sum” view of the world leads him to see any trade deficit as a sign that the United States is being “ripped off” by a trading partner.

This view, which has been put forward by the president for forty years, Surowiecki said, reflects his psychology more than it does America’s place in the world.

“I think he just sees existence as basically a struggle,” Surowiecki said.

In the case of countries with which the United States does in fact maintain a trade surplus, exporting more goods than it imports, the numerator in Trump administration’s formula is negative, resulting in a non-viable, negative reciprocal rate. Surowiecki realized that the administration had remedied this defect by simply applying a duty rate of 10 percent to these countries.

Surowiecki took to X — formerly Twitter — where he posted his findings and wrote, “the tariff rates that foreign countries are supposedly charging us are just made-up numbers.” He expressed later in an X post, “What extraordinary nonsense this is.”

Surowiecki’s post on X quickly gained notoriety, and as of April 6 has garnered 19.1 million views and almost 30 thousand reposts. The shock generated by the calculation’s simplicity prompted a reposted response from the Trump administration’s deputy press secretary, Kush Desai, who told Surowiecki, “No we literally calculated tariff and non tariff barriers.”

The Office of the United States Trade Representative posted an official formula, which was included in Desai’s tweet, that appears much more complicated than the calculation proposed by Surowiecki. However, when one multiplies the values representing different price variables, the formula ultimately simplifies to Surowiecki’s formula: trade deficit divided by goods imported.  

The Budget Lab at Yale sprang into action as soon as Trump announced the tariffs on April 2, publishing a comprehensive report with an eye to the impact the new tariffs would have on the global economy.

“We had invested in setting up our tariff modeling ahead of time, which allows us to respond quickly in the moment,” said Budget Lab Representative Kelly Friendly.  

The study predicts the April 2 tariffs will cause a -0.4 percent reduction in the domestic GDP, reflecting a loss of over $100 billion from the United States economy. Additionally, the anticipated rise of consumer product prices will effectively reduce the average disposable income of American households by over $2,000. And because lower-income households spend a larger proportion of their income on disposable goods, these tariffs disproportionately harm the poor — in other words, they are regressive. 

The experts at the Budget Lab commented on the confusion around the relationship between the April 2 tariffs and the tariffs announced in March. Chinese products have already been hit with 20 percent tariffs, and the country faces 34 percent tariffs based on the April 2 announcement. 

“Overall this policy is highly unusual,” Friendly wrote to the News. “Would the rate on China be 34 percent or 54 percent? Would the rate for products dominate or the rate for the country? One of the reasons markets are reacting as they are is because of the chaos in the announcement – not just on the substance.”

Since Wednesday’s announcement, the stock market has been thrown into mayhem, with the S&P 500 experiencing its worst two-day plunge since the pandemic began in March 2020. Yet the impact of the April 2 tariffs, should they remain in effect, will not be limited to these short-term market effects.

According to Khandelwal, the effects of the newest tariffs are twofold. 

“One is kind of the direct effect of the tariffs, which is that prices are likely to rise,” Khandelwal said. “When you have a magnitude of tariffs or taxes that is so high, my guess is that they would get passed to consumers pretty quickly. But then there’s the secondary thing, which is what you’re seeing in the stock market. Even companies like Facebook, which is a service company not affected by tariffs, is also collapsing.”

Surowiecki emphasized that the Trump administration’s tariff calculations only concern the goods imported and exported from a country, leaving out the services that are considered in the calculation of a full trade deficit. Services provided to foreign consumers by domestic companies like Facebook, for example, are not considered in the deficits used to determine reciprocal rates.

This choice is a deliberate one, according to Surowiecki, reflecting Trump’s larger motivations for implementing such sweeping tariffs.

“We specialize in digital services. We specialize in entertainment,” Surowiecki said. “So Trump is basically reading the numbers to suit his particular view of the world, like only these dollars are real, or whatever it is. And obviously this is connected to the fetishization of manufacturing.”

Aside from the goal of attaining a trade balance with each of its foreign partners, the Trump administration has aimed its efforts at reshoring manufacturing. 

However, preliminary estimates do not foresee the April 2 tariffs as meaningfully increasing the share of the U.S. workforce employed in manufacturing jobs.

“I saw one estimate that suggested that even if the tariffs worked relatively well, that the share of the U.S. workforce that was in manufacturing and employment would rise from 8 percent to 9 percent,” Surowiecki said. “Is that really worth overturning the global economic order?”

The Yale Economics Department is located at 28 Hillhouse Ave.

The post “The numbers just didn’t make any sense”: Yale professors react to Trump reciprocal tariffs appeared first on Yale Daily News.

“This course represents a significant step toward embedding Ukrainian studies into Yale’s

broader curriculum, ensuring that students can explore Ukraine’s history and culture through multiple disciplinary lenses,” said Tytarenko, who teaches “Elementary Ukrainian” and spearheaded the program’s creation. 

The “Elementary Ukrainian” course, like many of Yale’s other intensive language courses, meets every day for 50 minutes. Students describe the coursework as “rigorous” but rewarding. 

“I enjoy learning languages, and this has been by far the most transformative language process I’ve been through,” said Mike York GRD ’17 ’26, one of two students in the nascent language program. 

York is pursuing a doctorate in European and Russian Studies and was inspired to enroll in Ukrainian due to his fascination with the culture. York retired from the Army in 2023, shortly after the conflict in Ukraine escalated, and told the News that the war inspired his interest in Ukrainian language and writing. 

For York’s classmate, Jack Leydiker ’25, learning Ukrainian also carries personal significance. Leydiker’s family emigrated from Ukraine in the late 1970s. 

“I have a very checkered relationship with Ukrainian culture because Ukrainians and Jews have a very fraught relationship,” shared Leydiker. However, after a semester and a half of Ukrainian, he said, “I feel like I’m understanding the culture where my family comes from better.”

Both York and Leydiker emphasized how the course goes beyond teaching the language and offers profound opportunities for cultural exchange. On Fridays, class time is exclusively dedicated to translating Ukrainian poetry from refugees and soldiers on the front lines. Leydiker described this experience as “personally very meaningful.”

As part of this project, the class welcomed acclaimed Ukrainian poet Marianna Kiyanovska. 

“It’s me, Jack, Marianna, sitting in a hotel lobby just talking. It was a really, really singular experience,” York said. “We had an incredible conversation. It was a really unique opportunity for a first-year language.”

York has found that translating poetry and “arguing over specific wording” facilitates an “intuitive understanding” of the language. The poems that York and Leydiker have translated in “Elementary Ukrainian” will be published in Yale’s Journal of Literary Translation. 

“Poetry is something which could be understood by the heart. It makes emotional connections,” said professor Andrei Kureichik. “I think that it will be a great, grand opening for American students and professors when they really understand the treasure that was created in Belarus, Ukraine and Georgia in their languages: what kinds of great poetry, great dramas, science and art.”

Kureichik, a Belarusian playwright and recipient of The Sakharov Prize of Freedom of Speech for his human rights activism spent several years in Ukraine and has partnered with Tytarenko to bring more Ukrainian studies to Yale.

To him, a Ukrainian language program is essential since most Ukrainian works translated into English are first translated into Russian. He believes that learning Ukrainian prevents scholars from encountering Ukraine through “the lenses of imperial culture.”

Kureichik expressed frustration that American perspectives often homogenize former-Soviet Union Eastern European countries. 

“I really believe that 21st century is about the decolonization of nations. We must throw out all the imperial thinking, imperial agenda. We must understand that sometimes a small country could be as important in a scientific or cultural way than a country with a bigger population,” he said. 

Tytarenko had kept this mission in mind when designing and teaching “Elementary Ukrainian.” 

“There is an urgent need to revisit history from Ukraine’s perspective, challenging longstanding narratives and highlighting Ukraine’s cultural resilience and historical continuity — not just in response to the current war, but as an integral part of its centuries-old history. In our curriculum, this means emphasizing Ukraine’s unique artistic and intellectual heritage, whether through film, literature, or art,” Tytarenko said.

Tytarenko’s unique background in pedagogy has inspired her to implement several unique and experimental teaching methods in her class. This past week, York and Leydiker found themselves strapped into VR headsets. They had to communicate with each other in Ukrainian to work together and navigate a virtual world.

The class also traveled to Amherst College to visit the Mead Art Museum’s special exhibition: “The Juncture: Ukrainian Artists in Search of Modernity and Identity.” Leydiker recalls analyzing the grammar and syntax of Russian propaganda posters in Ukrainian. He found working with “real” primary sources “incredibly helpful.”

“The methodologies that she’s come up with and the ways that we are learning things are much more effective than some of the other language-learning modules,” said York. “It’s been really, really exciting, and it’s made learning a very difficult language a lot easier, and made me really passionate about it.”

Both students had nothing but praise for Tytarenko’s novel course and are excited to see how it grows in the coming years. Their feedback has inspired Tytarenko to make immersive and aesthetic learning experiences a permanent feature of the Ukrainian language program. 

“Honestly, I just want more attention to be put on this. It’s a really great opportunity to learn a language that’s horribly under-resourced, and that’s extremely important,” said Leydiker.

In terms of the program’s future, Tytarenko has ambitious plans to build up a multi-disciplinary Ukrainian studies program around the new language course. In fall 2025 she will teach a film course titled “Cinematic Ukraine: Culture, Identity, and Memory.” 

Additionally, Tytarenko has initiated discussions with Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, Ukraine. She hopes to establish an academic fellowship between the two institutions that may include joint research, study abroad and student exchange programs. 

“Ultimately, our goal is not only to teach Ukrainian but to actively participate in and support cultural initiatives that originate in Ukraine — to be a bridge between academic scholarship and real-world cultural production. That, I believe, is what would make this program so meaningful,” said Tytarenko. 

Tytarenko expressed excitement for “incredible momentum” these initiatives have enjoyed. Nevertheless, she recognizes in the face of Ukrainian’s “modest” enrollment that this critical project requires “long-term visibility and institutional support.”

York hopes more Yale students will take advantage of the investment Tytarenko has made to this program.

“I think there is an element of preservation and keeping something alive and vibrant. And it would be just phenomenal if we could get more people who are interested in learning this language. It’s such a beautiful language,” said York. “Please, please, take Ukrainian.”

The war in Ukraine just entered its third year. 

Correction, Feb. 28: Kureichik is a recipient of the Sakharov Prize, not the Nobel Peace Prize. 

The post Flagship Ukrainian language program enters its second semester appeared first on Yale Daily News.

New taps and pledges are frequently spotted completing tasks around campus: running relay races in the dining halls, blasting music in the library and serenading passersby at the Elm. Not even classrooms are safe from this flurry of fraternity activity.

Ryan Chao ’28 did not expect much excitement from his regular Wednesday morning “Introductory Macroeconomics” lecture.

“I wasn’t paying a lot of attention,” he said. “And then all of a sudden, a bunch of frat guys run in. They’re like, ‘Where is he?!’”

Chao describes how a parade of students with “masks and bags over their heads” ran through the lecture hall, picked up a student sitting in the front row, and dragged their victim from the room.

“And everyone’s looking over, laughing, filming. And the professor’s just like, ‘another one of these,’” Chao said.

Professor Aleh Tsyvinski, the professor in question, lectures in the economics department for Economics 115 and 116, and is no stranger to such interruptions. These introductory classes usually enroll upwards of 400 students; the large class size makes these lectures a preferred venue for public stunts.

He approaches these interruptions with a light-hearted attitude.

“The social clubs tapping is usually fun — sometimes it does get a bit overboard, but as long as the folks who do it keep it civil and mindful of others, it usually is ok,” he said. 

According to Chao, the momentary chaos caused by the interruption did not last long, and students quickly settled and returned their attention to the material. 

Economics student Jean-Claude Pierre ’28 recalls similar incidents this past fall in his “Introductory Microeconomics” course taught by professor Cormac O’Dea. In this instance, the student stood up during the lecture and began “pushing back” against the professor. The student repeatedly insisted, obviously as a joke: “You’re wrong. You’re actually explaining this wrong.”

“Cormac is funny,” Pierre said. “He just says his rule is: if you interrupt class with a prank, it has to be funny. So, like, he’ll rate the funniness.”

According to Pierre, O’Dea declared: “That one? Wasn’t that funny.”

O’Dea clarified that interruptions are only amusing insofar as they are respectful.

“While I am always eager for members of the class to engage and participate, I don’t exactly encourage interruptions from those outside the course,” he said. “Such interruptions do occur in a large class, and when they do, I think they need to be respectful of everyone in the class and should end as soon as the instructor asks that they do.”

During the last week, classes have also welcomed a different kind of interruption: a surprise singing valentine from New Blue of Yale, one of Yale’s student a cappella groups.

For decades, “since Yale had receiver phones in their rooms,” New Blue has granted members of the Yale community the opportunity to purchase “singing valentines” for their friends, loved ones and even professors. The offering includes a barbershop-quartet-style performance of one of six predetermined song choices, serenading the recipient at the buyer’s choice of location and time between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m.

Amiah Hanson ’27, a business manager for New Blue, described singing in front of large lectures as “definitely hectic” but “fun.”

“Sometimes the people themselves will start laughing, like the people we’re singing to. And so we have to try to keep it together. It’s usually a lot of fun, but yeah, a little nerve-wracking,” added fellow New Blue business manager Jas Hollis ’27.

Hollis and Hanson described that when they receive requests for in-class singing valentines, they will email the professors.

“If the professor says no, then we don’t come. If they say yes, then yes, we come. And sometimes they’re really excited about it, and it’s really cute!” said Hollis.

Hollis said that while many professors are open to their visits, the group has received their fair share of polite rejections. Professors often decline the valentine due to concerns about class time and getting through material. Nevertheless Hollis clarified this “wasn’t the most common response” and, generally, “professors are all really happy” to welcome New Blue.

Professor Paul Cooper received one such email from the group the week leading up to Valentine’s Day and was happy to facilitate the singing valentine’s delivery in his “General Chemistry II” lecture. In fact, he thought to himself, “This sounds kind of fun!”

“I don’t particularly have a problem with it. I think it sort of reminds us that we’re connected to a bigger part of the world,” he said.

“I very much like the Valentine’s Day tradition and think it is very nice,” said Tsyvinski, echoing Cooper and describing the performance as “phenomenal.”

When professors are valentines’ intended target, New Blue still reaches out, pretending that the delivery is for a student in the class.

The students of professor Benjamin Foster’s GRD ’74 ’75 “Earliest Literature of the Ancient World” class ordered him a song from New Blue. He described his pleasant surprise when the valentine turned out to be for him.

“It was not set up by my wife. So I will always wonder … who was it in my first-year seminar who had such a sweet idea?” said Foster.

Foster, who has been teaching at Yale since receiving his doctorate in 1975, has watched the New Blue tradition evolve throughout the years. He recalls how before the age of email, the group had no method of contacting professors beforehand and would show up to lectures without notice. 

“I thought it a beautiful interlude and was not at all disturbed by the unannounced interruption to my lecture,” he said.

“When you’re talking about the history of the Middle East, a few magical moments devoted to love can indeed be salutary,” he added. 

New Blue of Yale was founded in 1969 as the University’s first women’s a cappella group.

The post Yale professors react to class interruptions appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Dr. Karen Foster GRD ’74 ’76 and Dr. Benjamin Foster GRD ’74 ’75 met while attending the University as graduate students, and have been married for nearly 50 years. And until Karen Foster’s recent retirement, both taught together in the Near Eastern and Classical Languages Department.

“It’s astonishing to me to think that’s how long it has been that we have known each other,” said Karen Foster. “From the very beginning, we had a little two room apartment off of Orange Street in New Haven, and we shared a study.”

For professor of history John Lewis Gaddis, a job offer from Yale prompted a proposal. He met his wife, theater studies professor Toni Dorfman, when they both worked at Ohio University in the ’90s. Their relationship had only recently blossomed when he determined he would soon be leaving Ohio for New Haven. 

“On the fourth date, after two weeks, I proposed, and the proposal line was: having just got tenure at Ohio University, which she had done, would you consider giving it up to move to the east coast with a guy you don’t really know, into a house you haven’t seen and without any assurance of a job?” recalled Gaddis.

Dorfman said yes “on the spot,” proclaiming: “I didn’t want John to outdo me in audacity!”

The couple spent a year long-distance dating through the telephone before Dorfman was able to join Gaddis as a professor at Yale. Dorfman said that she had not initially applied for a job and was hoping to take some time to settle into her new home when David Krasner, the then-theater studies director of undergraduate studies asked her to teach a single acting class. Apparently, Provost Alison Richard had sent out Dorfman’s CV to various departments at Yale, determined to find Dorfman an outlet to continue teaching. 

Dorfman remains grateful to this day and describes how she keeps a picture of Richard scotch-taped to her desktop computer. For her, teaching at Yale has been a tremendous gift. 

“You students are so brilliant, brave, honest and endearing, I’m forever learning from you, and I wouldn’t stop teaching for the world,” she said. 

Gaddis and Dorfman were not the only couple facilitated by Yale hiring. Professor Laurie Santos, who teaches the highly popular course “The Science of Wellbeing,” finally mustered the courage to speak to her husband, philosophy lecturer Mark Maxwell, having spent months referring to him as the handsome “1369 Coffee House Guy,” just after accepting a job at Yale. 

For the first few years of Santos’ employment, Maxwell would travel to New Haven from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to spend weekends together, times the couple fondly remembers as spent purely enjoying each other’s company. 

“It certainly had never occurred to me that we would work together academically,” said Maxwell. 

Nevertheless, after the two were married, Maxwell “followed” Santos to New Haven and enrolled at Yale as a graduate and then doctoral student in philosophy. He describes how the philosophy department “graciously” offered him a lecturer position and invited him to teach a couple of undergraduate classes. 

“It was a relatively painless process for us,” said Maxwell. “I know some people go through fire trying to figure out where to be together.”

This certainly was the case for the Fosters. Benjamin Foster began teaching the year after his graduation, filling an urgent vacancy in the NELC department. Despite having the same doctoral degree, Karen Foster claims her husband was told by his superiors: “Oh yes, we know that your wife is eminently qualified. We know that she’s done all of these things. We know this, blah, blah, blah. We don’t want to hear a word about an appointment for her.”

Karen Foster remembers how during her senior year as an undergraduate student, her advisors warned her that institutions would be hesitant to hire her if she chose to start a family. The Fosters described how for almost two decades Karen Foster taught anywhere she could within driving distance of New Haven, sometimes going as far as Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

Karen Foster was even a finalist for a permanent position until the university in question learned more about her family life.

“It was quite discouraging and disillusioning to be the final choice of the search committee and all of that, and then to have some Dean say, ‘Oh, well, if you’re married, you don’t take us seriously’ and just withdraw the offer,” said Benjamin Foster regarding his wife’s experience.

Once a friend of the couple became the chair of the NELC Department, Karen Foster was promptly brought on as a Yale professor. However, in her 25 years at Yale, Foster never received the tenure her husband has enjoyed.

“Do I ever wish that I had tenure? Yes, but do I ever wish that I had not had an incredibly rich and satisfying personal life? No, never. I wouldn’t trade that for anything,” said Foster. 

According to Foster, only three women in the NELC department have ever received tenure and none of them have had children. 

Benjamin Foster told the News that a commitment to the “life of the mind” often requires academics to follow opportunities to distant locations. Despite the “stressful” years before Karen Foster joined him at Yale, he appreciates how their employment at the University allowed them to “stay together as a family.”

Sterling Professor Howard Bloch and professor Ellen Handler Spitz, bound by both love and scholarship, also share their lives as devoted partners and colleagues. In an unpublished essay chronicling their highly intellectual romance, Spitz reveals how she was first introduced to Bloch through his writing. A mutual friend had provided her with a copy of Bloch’s work, “One Toss of the Dice.” She read the book on a plane to Paris, where she had plans to meet him in person.

“High over the clouds as my plane sped across the Atlantic, I fell hopelessly in love,” she writes. 

Their connection flourished over discussions about the book, which Spitz offered to review as a writer for The New Republic. Bonding over their mutual fascination with each others’ ideas, Spitz described their relationship as “an ongoing conversation that has continued uninterrupted ever since.”

The two take full advantage of their mutual employment, co-teaching a seminar entitled “Love, Marriage, Family: A Psychological Study through the Arts.”

Additionally, Spitz and Bloch both teach in the Directed Studies literature track. Grace Malko ’28, who is currently a student in Bloch’s Directed Studies section, describes how Bloch and Spitz have occasionally combined their sections for special presentations. 

“They taught their two seminar classes together last week, and their dynamic is very sweet. You can tell they really do love each other,” said Malko, who is a staff writer at the News.

As scholars in the same department, Karen and Benjamin Foster are constantly working together and supporting the other’s projects. 

“She reads all of my books and manuscripts and all of my major articles, and I read all of hers,” said Benjamin Foster. “I recently published a 1,000 page book, for example, and she read every single word of it and edited it extremely well, much better than a professional editor. So yes, I depend on her in many ways.”

The Fosters professionally collaborated on their 2009 book titled “Civilizations of Ancient Iraq,” which they co-authored. The book was inspired by a series of teach-ins they held on the region’s history.

“We have quite different ways of looking at material evidence and material culture,” said Karen Foster. “We were able to combine these two different perspectives and sets of insights into a unified book.”

Gaddis and Dorfman are also frequent collaborators, deeply in awe of each other’s passion and expertise in their respective fields. 

“Toni is a regular in coming into my seminars,” said Gaddis. 

In fact, he recalls he first became enamoured with Dorfman when he invited her to give a lecture on the First Balkan War in his contemporary history course.

“I thought since I was teaching about it that it would be fun for her to visit my seminar and talk about dramatizing history. And so she came sweeping in dramatically, red scarf flowing behind her. The history students had seen nothing like this, and I hadn’t either. So I thought that was really something special.”

All too familiar with this story, Dorfman laughs and clarifies she never wore a red scarf. All the same, her bold, theatrical approach to historical content left a lasting impression on Gaddis. Their relationship has similarly changed the way Dorfman thinks about history. 

“Historians are people who turn something that happened into a story with a beginning, a middle and an end. That’s exactly what we do in the theater,” Dorfman told the News. “We tell storieswith an arc like that, and both of them are supposed to help us understand ourselves and the world better.”

For Gaddis and Dorfman, their academic pursuits play a crucial role in their domestic life. 

“We have a surprising number of common interests, I think, and we never get tired of talking about our students. We have enough difference in our topics and what we teach that we’re always learning something from each other,” said Gaddis. “Every night, when we have had a full day of teaching, come home and we either watch some television series or, more likely, just talk about our students — sometimes for an hour — talk about our students and the questions that arise in our seminars.”

Similarly, shared scholarly passions facilitated Santos and Maxwell’s initial romantic connection. Maxwell recalls how early in their relationship they traveled together to Puerto Rico, where Santos was conducting studies on monkeys and Maxwell served as her research assistant. 

“This is a thing about being a nerdy academic, we like to share ideas, right?” said Santos. “When I was an undergrad, I was just like: that is what I would want someday in a partner. I want someone who will lie awake with me at night and wonder about the brain. And we always wonder about the brain. Mark has a habit of wondering about all kinds of weird things.”

Working together at Yale has yielded numerous benefits for Santos and Maxwell. They enjoy having the same vacation days and have conveniently found they can help each other figure out “who to email” when interacting with the administration. The two make the most of their life together in New Haven, and love to attend Yale colloquia and interesting speaker events. They even got married locally in Sleeping Giant State Park.  

For Gaddis and Dorfman, working together at Yale has enabled them to find community. They love to host students for dinner in their New Haven home.

“We think it’s wonderful, because it is kind of like a family. We feel like we have hundreds of children for whom we have no financial responsibility!” said Gaddis.

There is perhaps no more romantic setting than New Haven, Connecticut, where love giddies the hearts of undergraduate freshmen and tenured professors alike. 

For those of us who are lucky, perhaps this is what Yale University can be: a place for minds to fall irrevocably in love. 

Carl Eifler ’70 and Deborah Johnson ’71 were the first Yale students to be married on Aug. 8, 1970.

The post Academic affairs: The love stories of Yale’s faculty appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Since 2020, the summer program has provided first-generation Yale College students with summer employment under Yale alumni working in various fields. 1stGenYale announced that the program would not run this summer due to the organization’s insufficient “capacity and resources.”

“As a first-year student, it might be a little bit intimidating, especially if you come from a background where you basically don’t have as much experience in attaining internships on a college level,” said Andrey Sokolov ’27, who participated in the Summer Bulldogs program in 2024. “I really benefited from the program, and I really appreciated the availability of the resources that the program provided. And I think that I’m not the only freshman who can say that.”

According to 1stGenYale Board President Lise Chapman SOM ’81, the Summer Bulldogs Program has been entirely organized by two volunteers who work around the clock between January and April to solicit host organizations, review internship applications and pair interns.

Yet, the two alumni volunteers cannot sustain the effort by themselves and a fundraising campaign to hire a staff member did not come through in time, Chapman said. The team will explore options to continue the program for the summer of 2026. 

This suspension comes despite five years of operation. According to the 1stGenYale’s final report recapping the impact of Summer Bulldogs’ 2024 program, between 2020 and 2024 they helped 295 student interns find paid internship opportunities wherein students earned a total of $1.2 million. 

In 2024, 190 Yale College students applied for only 107 internship opportunities. Ninety-six percent of student interns came from low-income backgrounds.

Sokolov said that though the suspension is disappointing, he understands it happened because the program was a massive undertaking for those involved. 

The program allowed participants to foster professional skills and gain crucial workplace experience. Sokolov described his summer with the program interning with the Yale Alumni Nonprofit Alliance as immensely beneficial.

Beta Lomeda ’26 also participated in the 2024 Summer Bulldogs program where she gained firsthand experience in a Yale School of Medicine research lab. Her time in the program “affirmed” her intention to pursue a career in public health. 

The program was particularly helpful for younger students with limited professional experience or connections: 78 percent of Summer Bulldogs interns were first and second-year students. 

Alumni partners also benefited from the program. Host organizations profited from interns for little to no cost, as they were assisted with supplementary funding from the Office of Career Strategy’s Summer Experience Award. This allowed students to work with non-profit organizations and in Yale labs that would not have ordinarily been able to support a paid internship.

“Hosting a Yale Summer Bulldog intern has been a transformational experience for me professionally,” said Dr. Anje Van Berckelaer ’95, who hosted a Summer Bulldog intern at Battenkill Valley Health Center. “Working with enthusiastic students at a time when the workforce shortage is devastating our rural area has renewed my enthusiasm for my work and offered our staff an opportunity to share, teach, learn and grow together.”

The program endeavored to serve and foster the broader Yale community by connecting Yale faculty, graduate and postgraduate researchers with qualified undergraduate students. According to its final report, 37 percent of program interns worked on projects at Yale schools.

Anne Wyllie, a four-year Summer Bulldog intern host and professor at the School of Public Health, said that the internship program has proven to be an “incredibly rewarding experience” for her lab, as student interns brought enthusiasm and dedication with them.

Yale faculty in the Office of Career Strategy who partnered with 1stGenYale also expressed sadness upon hearing the program would not run this summer. 

Yale offers many alternative resources for students in need of summer employment. 1stGenYale encourages students who planned to participate in the program this summer to contact the Office of Educational Opportunity and their OCS advisors for support in finding internship opportunities.

“While we will certainly miss the collaboration with our wonderful, very dedicated colleagues in the 1stgenYale alumni group, the availability of opportunities for all students, and funding for students on financial aid, remains constant,” said OCS Assistant Director Lisa Blees.

Despite the demand for the program, it is unclear whether 1stGenYale can return to its previous capacity without more robust funding, organization and support.

Twenty-one percent of the Yale College class of 2028 are first-generation college students.

The post 1stGenYale suspends Summer Bulldog Internship Program for 2025 season appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The new position, which lasts from August 2025 to May 2026, entails conducting individual research and teaching an undergraduate seminar related to Palestine in fall 2025 or spring 2026. According to the job listing, the Council on Middle East Studies — or CMES — is seeking recent Ph.D. recipients and is “particularly interested” in candidates who specialize in the early modern or modern period.

“CMES frequently brings scholars and postdoctoral fellows to help research and teach about the region,” professor Travis Zadeh, chair of CMES, wrote in an email to the News. “For instance, the council has hosted a longstanding postdoctoral position attached to the Program in Iranian Studies. Next year’s fellowship on the study of Palestine adds to our council’s mix of offerings, and speaks to strong continuing faculty and student educational interest in understanding the region.”

Various faculty members advocated for the creation of a postdoctoral position. According to Zadeh, the “decisive factor” in the creation of the position was his and other CMES faculty members’ view that the position served an “important educational purpose.” 

The position listing comes months after Yalies4Palestine launched their ‘Sustain Our Scholars’ — or SOS — campaign, which called for the University to “invest in the transformative study of Palestine,” among other demands. Rohan Lokanadham ’28, a student organizer in Yalies4Palestine — or Y4P — celebrated the new postdoctoral position as a triumph for the campaign.

“It’s our first big win for the SOS campaign, which is just so exciting,” Lokanadham said. “It makes us feel like a lot of our other goals are also very tangible and able to happen.” 

While Lokanadham said that members of Y4P had met with University administrators to discuss a potential postdoctoral position in the study of Palestine, Lokanadham also told the News that he does not want to “take credit” for the creation of the new position, instead crediting faculty in CMES and in the Yale Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine.

The postdoctoral position also follows a Yale College Council referendum backed by the pro-Palestine Sumud Coalition, of which Y4P is a member group. The referendum, which overwhelmingly passed among undergraduate students, called for the University to “act on its commitment to education by investing in Palestinian scholars and students,” among other calls for divestment and reinvestment.

Lokanadham stressed that Y4P did not recognize the new position as a response to the referendum. 

Members of Y4P met with University Provost Scott Strobel last semester to discuss how students can continue to work with the University to realize the SOS campaign’s goals, including the possibility of creating a Palestinian studies program, per Lokanadham.

According to Lokanadham, Strobel had told members of Y4P that such a program would require significant amounts of funding, which would go toward professorships, postdoctoral positions and an endowment for the program. 

“The University has not estimated the cost of starting a Palestinian Studies Program or Center for Palestinian Studies,” Strobel wrote in an email to the News. “The cost of setting up new centers or programs varies greatly — depending on the entity’s scope, existing resources, and many other factors.”

Strobel also wrote that it is up to relevant unit leaders to decide on the scope of a new center or program, and it is “typically the responsibility” of unit leaders to fundraise for the establishment of a center.

Meanwhile, members of Y4P have taken it upon themselves to seek donors for a potential Palestinian studies program.

“We’re looking for people who are willing to donate to Palestinian scholarship and continue that being taught here,” Lokanadham said. “We do also want donors to continue funding mutual aid projects if their donations are smaller. Something that we’ve talked about is ensuring that people in Gaza right now are supported, so mutual aid projects are still very important to us. But larger donations and donors can be pointed to helping fund our Palestinian studies program.”

However, Zadeh wrote that “the creation of one postdoc that responds to strong educational interest in a region should not be taken as an indication (or not) of a wider CMES programmatic goal, at present.”

Yale awarded its first Ph.D. in Middle East Studies in 1861.

Correction, Jan. 23: This article has been updated with the correct spelling of Rohan Lokanadham’s name. 

The post Yale seeking new Palestinian studies postdoctoral associate appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Owen Setiawan ’27, the primary sponsor of this proposal, emphasized that students require a way to still have a meal while balancing academic, extracurricular and work commitments that occur at the same time that the dining halls are open. He hopes this proposal will make meals at the Elm and Ivy more accessible financially and fit better with student schedules. 

The Elm is a café open on weekdays from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and serves a wide selection of drinks, breakfasts, pastries and lunch items such as sandwiches, soups and salads. The Ivy is its neighboring late-night eatery catering “pub fair” that includes tacos, sliders, sushi and more. 

“I initially was driven to draft the proposal out of the combined removal of to-go boxes this year and my experiences as a first-year last year on the full meal plan,” said Setiawan. “During my first year, I rarely bought food at the Elm and Ivy due to the fact that I didn’t have dining points on my meal plan.”

The Elm and Ivy currently accepts Eli Bucks, Yale Dining Points and credit cards. However, students that pay $4,300 per semester for the full meal plan, which does not include Eli Bucks or Dining Points, must pay out of pocket to enjoy offerings at either location. 

For many Yale first years, who are required to purchase the full meal plan for their first year, this entirely rules out the Elm & Ivy as a dining option. 

“I can’t afford that. Why am I going to spend money on that?” said Abi Herr ’28 regarding her choice not to dine at the Elm or Ivy. “Also, why don’t we get dining points? Like, okay, I paid for the full meal plan. I should get dining points too.”

The charge can make it harder for all first-year students and anyone who opts into the full meal plan to participate in the central campus dining locations. Yale’s website boasts the Underground as a comforting and lively student center intended for students to come together and enjoy. 

“The atmosphere here is amazing,” Kelly Wu ’28 said. 

She made her first venture into the space during the last week of classes and shared that the only reason she waited until now was her meal plan’s incompatibility with the locations. 

Additionally, many upperclassmen schedule interviews and meetings for extracurriculars at the Elm “over coffee,” which students on the full meal plan must finance themselves. 

“If it was a meal transfer, I would definitely want to come here. But I feel like a lot of people I talk to just end up not coming here because they know they have to pay for it. And some people don’t want to do that, some people can’t do that. So it kind of makes the space a little obsolete sometimes. But I really do want to use it,” said Dawit Bonga ’28.  

The Elm and Ivy’s unique payment system is also a source of confusion for many first years still adjusting to the Yale landscape. 

Carter Flemming ’28 described how her first trip to the Elm turned from exciting to embarrassing.

“The first time I went to the Elm in the first week of classes, I didn’t know I couldn’t use the meal swipe. I guess maybe that’s my fault, but I don’t know where I would find that. And so I waited in the line, got to the front and then had to put all my stuff back. And it was sad,” Flemming said.

Flemming was not alone in this experience; Bonga shared a similar story about his introduction to the Elm and Ivy. When he realized he could not use his meal swipe, he “walked away.”

In addition to first years, the proposed YCC policy would expand options for any student on the full meal plan and provide additional payment options for upperclassmen on the flex or connect meal plans. 

“I do think generally that it would be a great idea to have the cash equivalent to be able to redeem that at Elm and Ivy because I do find a lot of times that I don’t always use my swipe,” said Elm diner Stuart Baker ’25. 

Another leading factor behind the proposal to make the Elm and Ivy more accessible is to address frequent difficulties students face when it comes to getting meals and working around the strict open hours of residential dining halls. 

For those with busy schedules, it has grown increasingly challenging this year to find quick, on-the-go options given the elimination of to-go boxes from dining halls, according to Setiawan.

“There are so many times where I have extracurricular obligations or discussion section at 7 p.m. or 6 p.m. And all the other dining halls are doing family hours from five to six now,” said Isabel Matos ’28, describing the challenges she faces finding reliable dinners at Yale. 

Setiawan specified that this issue inspired the YCC to submit this policy proposal. The YCC has observed that while locations such as the Bow Wow and Steep, which accept meal transfer swipes, allow students more flexibility and faster lunch options, there is no equivalent location available during dinner hours. 

The Ivy, which is open from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. allows students on the flex and connect meal plans to use their dining points even if they swiped into dinner, but students on the full meal plan who miss dinner hours at residential dining halls cannot purchase food there even with an unused meal swipe. 

“I think it’s generally better to have more options for people so then they can use their plan as they see fit,” said Baker.

When asked for comment on this proposal, Yale Hospitality Senior Marketing and Communications Manager Alexa Gotthardt told the News that Yale Hospitality receives feedback regularly from the Student Dining Advisory team and will continue to work collaboratively this school year.

“I hope that the suggested change will allow students the ability to have meals while still attending to academic, extracurricular, and work commitments,” said Setiawan.

The Elm is currently serving two seasonal drinks: an apple cider chai and a pumpkin spice latte.

The post YCC considers proposal advocating for the Elm & Ivy to accept meal transfer swipes appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Several students this year mistakenly requested their ballot be sent to the Barnes & Noble Student Package Center, which is not able to process paper mail. 

Clarissa Tan ’26 was among these students. Tan lives in Nebraska and decided, prior to learning about the early voting process, to look into requesting a ballot by mail.

“I wasn’t really sure where to do that, so I just Googled,” Tan said. “They asked me for an address to mail it to us. I was like: Yale tells you, you should mail things to Barnes & Noble, that’s where I’ve been getting packages for two years. And so I was like: okay, makes sense. I’ll mail it to here.” 

Eager to cast her first presidential vote, Tan described how, after over a month of waiting for her ballot, she finally checked her mail’s status after her friends had already received and returned their ballots. Her request form noted that her ballot had been shipped, but when Tan went in person to the Student Package Center, she was informed that since the Student Package Center cannot receive paper mail, her ballot was bounced back to sender. 

Because Tan checked her ballot’s status, she realized it had bounced from the Package Center and instead voted early and in person over October break. 

“If I hadn’t gone back home, I don’t think I would have been able to vote this season,” Tan said.

The USPS does not recognize the package center as a valid address to receive paper mail.

“Paper mail that was addressed to the package center was returned to sender,” Associate Director for Student Life Nina Fattore told the News. “USPS does not notify the Student Package Center that this has occurred.” 

Quinn Luong ’26 also mailed his ballot to the Student Package Center based on information he received from his friend by word of mouth. When he realized this was the incorrect address, he began a frantic search for his missing ballot. He described waiting on the phone on hold with his county’s bureau of elections, finally leaving a voicemail and receiving no response. 

“I felt really guilty, because I’m from Pennsylvania, my vote really matters. So I was like, ‘Oh my God, where is my ballot now?’” Loung said. “Okay, I can mail a mail-in ballot, but am I sure it’s gonna be received? No.” 

Alex Moore ’26, president of Yale Votes: A Student Initiative, told the News that unreceived mail-in ballots have been a common issue for students. 

“We’ve even talked to a lot of people who properly addressed them to their residential colleges and still had them rejected,” Moore said.

He added that mail-in voting is especially important for Yale students.

“Voting in Connecticut is not a very powerful way to vote, and many students live in states where their votes have a lot more power. So we encourage almost all students to vote outside of Connecticut if they can.” 

Some students who faced challenges with mail-in voting said they did so due to insufficient information. Luong criticized the University’s communication.

“I think that they should have done more media campaigns to let everyone know that we should mail it to the receiving office of every residential college,” said Luong. “I feel like it should be better publicized, it shouldn’t be that hard to find it out.”

Moore added that he is also dissatisfied with Yale’s mail system.

“Two of the 14 residential colleges don’t even use Yale mail. For some reason, they just receive mail directly, which is kind of strange. And so when we talk to the administration, they don’t even necessarily know what’s going on either,” he said. 

Fattore told the News that the Package Center’s inability to process paper mail for most students has been standard procedure since its creation. She declined to say whether Yale could create a system that would allow all students to receive paper mail. 

Yale University requires students to purchase a P.O. box with USPS in order to receive regular paper mail. According to Fattore, however, the United States Government does not allow federal forms such as mail-in ballots to be delivered to a non-residential address, which includes P.O. boxes. Yale’s website does not mention that students cannot address their ballot to their P.O. box.

Saybrook resident Aruna Balasubramanian ’26 rents a P.O. box at Yale and used that address in requesting her mail-in ballot. She never received her ballot, and now, the week before the election, she is considering flying home to Pennsylvania to make sure her vote counts.

Moore expressed frustration that Yale has “not advertised almost at all” to students that they should request their absentee ballot at their residential college.

Incorrect addresses were not the only complications in the voting process, according to Moore. Some students properly addressed their ballots to their residential college office, but the USPS still bounced back their mail. Others faced issues registering in their state. 

Yale Votes has been assisting students in navigating the process of voting while at Yale, Moore added.

“We’ve hosted more than 50 tabling events this semester alone. So we’ve been all over and our stats show that we’ve probably talked to like 2,000 students about voting this semester, so in person, face-to-face is definitely the biggest way that we try to spread that info,” said Moore.

Additionally, Yale Votes sends out a newsletter that identifies misinformation and provides approachable graphics and instructions for how students can cast their votes. 

However, some students are uncertain whether these initiatives are enough to ensure voting is accessible and encouraged at Yale.  

“It’s an issue because a lot of people aren’t on the mailing list. If you’re already signed up for the Yale Votes mailing list, you probably are trying to figure out how to vote, whereas people who don’t vote and don’t actively seek out that information just aren’t getting it,” Tan said. “​​Let’s say I’m a student who’s really busy, or I’m a student who doesn’t care that much. At the first sign of confusion or hurdle, I’m just gonna give up and just decide not to vote.”

A survey conducted by the News of the Yale community found that 71 percent of respondents planned to vote by mail in 2024. 

The post Yalies’ mail-in ballots returned after sending them to Package Center appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Habesha is a family-run establishment owned and operated by New Haven locals Solomon Fiseha and Tigist Desalegn. The restaurant’s name, “Habesha,” is the name of the Semitic-speaking people of Ethiopia — a nod to the dynamic cultural tradition that the husband-and-wife duo is passionate about sharing with their customers — even those with a more sensitive palette. 

“Our food, it’s not too spicy, it’s normal and mild. And once you start eating it, then after that, you get addicted to it,” Fiseha joked. “99 percent of the product is coming from Ethiopia. So that’s what makes me happy: to introduce everyone to our culture.”

Fiseha stressed how bringing people together is a core aspect of Ethiopian cuisine, encouraging patrons to come with groups of loved ones to enjoy shared dishes.

“The beauty of our food is, you’re going to eat together. You’re going to use your bare hand, you’re going to break the injera, scoop with the sauce, and then sometimes we feed each other. That is one way of expressing your love,” Fiseha said.

Opening Habesha has been a whole family ordeal. While Fiseha manages the restaurant, his son Yossias designed and remodeled the interior space, and his daughter Yeabsira has been a crucial support throughout the process. 

Fiseha’s wife, Desalegn, brings the kitchen to life with the savory, spiced aromas of her renowned cooking. Fiseha recommends that diners order the Doro Wat, a chicken stew and a traditional staple of Ethiopian cuisine. He proudly boasts that Desalegn’s take on the dish is particularly expert. 

When asked what makes Habesha unique, Fiseha told the News, “Well, the key for us is customer satisfaction. We want to make everyone who’s walking into our restaurant happy and then satisfied.” In a Yale University Properties press release, Desalegn added, “Through our restaurant, we want people to experience not just the flavors of Ethiopia but also the warmth and hospitality that are central to our way of life.”

The New Haven community is mutually receptive to Habesha’s opening. While many are no strangers to Ethiopian cuisine, thanks to the popular Lalibela Ethiopian Restaurant, locals expressed enthusiasm to try Habesha. 

“I think it’s going to be very big in the public’s eyes, especially for college students, so I think it’s going to be awesome. I’m very excited,” Noah Mihalko, a recent graduate of Southern Connecticut State University who now works in the New Haven Area, said. 

Residents are also pleased to welcome another small, locally-owned business to the Elm City’s commercial landscape. 

Ibrahim Cheek, who lives in New Haven with his young family of three, appreciates new economic activity coming into the area.

“I think if they’re local and they’re not a big brand or anything like that, I think that’s a good thing. So, it looks like it’s moving in the right direction, for sure,” Cheek said. 

Habesha also hopes to foster a thriving relationship with Yale’s community of faculty, students and staff. Fiseha himself currently works in Yale’s Department of Technology Services and hopes the restaurant can serve as a space for Yale students to gather. Further down the road, he anticipates opening the space for student organizations to hold events.

Student organizations such as the Yale Ethiopian and Eritrean Students’ Association are eager to welcome Habesha to New Haven. President Rebekah Alemayehu ’26 shared what this addition to the city means to her.

“Personally, Habesha food has not only been a cure for homesickness, but a space where I can hear my language, taste the food so familiar to me, and cultivate a pride in my culture in a new environment,” she said. “As the Ethiopian-Eritrean community grows on campus, so should our representation and spaces, and I am comforted to know that the incoming freshmen will have a greater access to the familiarity of their culture.” 

Having a new restaurant close to campus will mean more representation of Ethiopians in the area.

There is already a buzz about the restaurant among non-Ethiopian communities on campus as well. Kevin Guillen ’26 discussed visiting with his friends while mingling on Cross Campus. 

“My first time having Ethiopian food was at an event. They catered Lalibela, and it was really, really good, so I really like Ethiopian food,” he said. 

Emi Glass ’26 also had her first experience with Ethiopian cuisine dining at Lalibela — a fact that does not deter her from visiting Habesha once it opens. 

“I’m willing to try new foods all the time, so it’ll be good to have a new place to try. I’m looking forward to the new place because I’m in Murray, so I think it’s a lot closer,” she said. 

Whether there will be a rivalry as monolithic as New Haven’s pizza scene between the two Ethiopian restaurants remains to be seen, but Cheek predicts a certain level of competition.

“There’s not a lot of Ethiopian restaurants. I mean, they’re gonna definitely get compared, probably, because that’s what everyone’s familiar with,” he said. 

Through a combination of traditional Ethiopian dishes and family-run values, Habesha promises to add a unique and flavorful option to New Haven’s growing list of eateries.

Habesha is located at 46 Whitney Ave.

The post New Ethiopian restaurant offers community building through cultural exchange appeared first on Yale Daily News.