In the first installation of the congregation’s author series, Stanley spoke on the global movement away from democracy and the role that education plays within it. Stanley began by evaluating the mission that U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon has laid out for her department, stating that the Trump administration’s attack on diversity, equity and inclusion educational policies is evidence of a campaign to America’s youth.

“To battle the ‘toxic’ ideology that the United States was based on slavery,” as McMahon envisions, is to “erase factuality,” said Stanley.

More broadly, the lauding of American democracy and American exceptionalism through patriotic education is to “install the ideology that the United States could never fall to fascism at the very same time at which it is falling.”

According to Stanley, the federal government is targeting programs that address gender and critical race theory in order to obscure the roles that patriarchy and racism play in inhibiting democracy. By claiming that these programs divide society into the oppressor and the oppressed, such targeted policies ignore that the systems they study were instituted with the intention of brewing division.

Stanley recalled W.E.B. DuBois’ ideas on how racism was “used by the northern industrialists to split poor whites and poor blacks apart.” He added, “patriarchy, too, is a method to split us apart.”

To understand the current global movement away from democracy and the construction of a mutiracial far-right, Stanley said, the concept of a scapegoat must be understood. In both America and Western Europe, scapegoatism has led to the proliferation of bigotry and the growth of authoritarian structures as political coalitions build in opposition to minority groups.

Specifically in America, historical antisemitic stereotyping has underlined the attack on elite institutions such as Columbia University. The media is complicit in this mischaracterization, Stanley argued, pushing forth messaging that ultimately harms the groups it claims to defend.

“Henry Ford wrote a book called The International Jew about how Jews supposedly control the institutions. [Today,] the administration is saying, we’re going to destroy the universities and tell you it’s because of the Jews,” Stanley, who is Jewish, said. “But if you look at the anti-war protests on our campus and on other campuses, you’ll see that one of the largest identity groups were Jewish students and faculty. It took months for the media to recognize that.”

Public media, according to Stanley, is complicit not only in the mischaracterization of protests on campus, but also in the criticism of leftist influence within elite universities in general.

Recent assessments of Ivy League universities have touted a lack of intellectual diversity due to an overabundance of liberal voices on campuses. This rhetoric, according to Stanley, is markedly influential.

“The media has been the engine behind the attack on the universities. They’ve been the one pushing the narrative that Marxists run Yale University,” Stanley said. “[There is] no mention ever of the Buckley [Institute], talking about Yale Law School, the power of the Federalist Society … We’ve been in a panic about leftists by a media that doesn’t seem to be aware of the fact that they are targets, too.”

Stanley laid out his thought process for leaving Yale, a choice that has garnered extensive media attention.

Though he held an offer to teach at the University of Toronto, Stanley had not planned on making the move to Canada until Columbia agreed to changes Trump demanded to protest and security policies on March 21, along with the establishment of oversight over the University’s Middle Eastern Studies Department.

He said the decision came to him when he “saw Columbia capitulate in this humiliating way.”

Stanley continued by setting up a comparison between the Trump administration’s current policy decisions and the Nazi’s process of “gleichschaltung,” by which federal workers were vilified as Marxists and communists and replaced by party loyalists.

“What our democratic institutions are doing is not recognizing this,” Stanley said. He added that in the past he has been ridiculed and labeled an alarmist, recalling being told that the government has “legitimate objections, and all of this is normal … there’s no war against universities like this.’”

Stanley has previously criticized the threats to freedom of speech encountered by international faculty members at universities nationwide, and reiterated his disapproval on Wednesday. 

“Even the ones in political science departments … can never speak about politics again,” Stanley warned.

In the Q&A segment of the event, Stanley recounted the former confusion of colleagues to whom he had expressed a desire to leave Yale for the University of Toronto. Recent events, he said, have led to a shift in their view of his departure.

Stanley said he recognizes that faculty at universities like Yale are generally better paid and better resourced than those at other institutions and in other countries, and that leaving, if even a possibility, is a “strong statement.” Still, the magnitude of the Trump administration’s attack on universities is not something to overlook.

“You have to ask whether there will be a Yale University or a Columbia University,” Stanley said. “There might be some buildings and a name, but the university is a democratic institution, and if you yield that, it’s no longer a university, even though it might have that name.”

Those present at Wednesday’s event, which included both congregants of the Unitarian Society and local visitors, expressed concern about the administration’s impact on the institutions that make up civil society.

Bob Congdon ’72 said that it felt “heartbreaking” to see many “things that were anchors” in his life and values being shredded.

Congdon’s wife, Mary Beth Congdon, was employed at the University under Rick Levin and Peter Salovey. She wished “strength and courage” to the current president, Maurie McInnis.

During the talk, Stanley urged attendees to remain informed of the Trump administration’s actions and reject complacency. 

“When you’re in a war, appeasement is surrender. If you do not know you’re in a war, you’re going to lose.”

Stanley’s most recent book was published in September 2024.

The post “When you’re in a war, appeasement is surrender”: Stanley talks leaving Yale, resistance at book talk appeared first on Yale Daily News.

According to AFAY Secretary Siyuan Wang, the association is “exactly doing what we initially envisioned.” Now, AFAY is ready to work with other academic groups to fight for academic freedom.

“It totally aligns with the University’s core values to promote diversity, and it engages our members to contribute to the mission of our University,” Wang said.

While 194 faculty members were registered in 2023, the number has now risen to over 250, according to AFAY President Qin Yan.

To build community among Asian faculty, AFAY has organized functions like a New Year celebration, a Diwali celebration and a “break bread together” event.

It has also provided opportunities for academic enrichment through planning events like the U.S.-China forum in March 2025 and a seminar with the Science editor-in-chief Holden Thorp in April 2024.

“We hope to promote a sense of belonging now for members at Yale,” Wang said. “I think that’s very crucial.”

According to board members, one instance when AFAY stood up to protect the Asian community from governmental trouble was when five Chinese graduate students were unable to enter the U.S. due to visa issues and had to buy “expensive” tickets to return to China.

They said AFAY organized Zoom meetings with the students to understand why their visas were denied and communicated with the provost’s office, Yale Medical School Dean Nancy Brown, the general counsel’s office and the Office of Research Development.

“We helped them apply for the new visa to the U.S.,” AFAY president-elect Yongli Zhang said. For students further in their studies, AFAY “supported them to defend their thesis and complete their studies.”

As a result, Yan said, students were able to get their flights reimbursed, and while only one student was successful in returning, those close to graduation were able to receive their degrees.

When the Office of Science and Technology Policy, a governmental agency under the Executive Office of the President, released guidelines regarding foreign talent recruitment programs in February 2024 as a part of the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, AFAY advised the University in publishing an FAQ page for affected individuals.

“I think the [University] policy was written without consulting with the faculty, so we worked closely with the Office of Research Integrity and the general counsel’s office to put some FAQs for that policy,” Yan said, referring to Yale’s Research Integrity and Security Office.

Yuan added that AFAY has collaborated with similar affinity groups in other institutions as well, an important role in the face of increasing threats to academic freedom.

“It’s not only for the Asian community, it’s also for the whole academic community,” Zhang said. “In order to fight for academic freedom, we have to unite with many other organizations.

Wang said that there haven’t been requests from members about being negatively affected by the new administration yet.

He added that he thinks the University should take a stand first about issues that generally affect the scientific community at Yale.

“In a sense, it’s not our association’s place to take a lead on this effort that actually goes way beyond Asian faculty,” he said.

The annual AFAY meeting will be held on May 4.

The post Asian Faculty Association protects members amid government turbulence 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.

The post Global affairs to change major requirements starting fall 2025 appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Next year marks the 250th anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. The course offered in fall 2025 will span American history from 1776 to the present day, focusing on how the national character and identity have evolved over time. The three professors will each teach eight consecutive lectures, focusing on their respective areas of expertise. 

“It’s a major restock, recalculate, rethinking kind of moment,” Freeman said. “And what’s wonderful about this course is you’re going to be thinking about these things leading into next year.”

Between them, the three professors share nearly 70 years teaching at Yale, as well as two Pulitzer Prizes, for Gage’s “G-Man: J. Edgar Hover and the Making of the American Century” and Blight’s “Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom.”

Freeman will lecture on the Revolutionary Period up to the 1840s, Blight will take over to teach up through Reconstruction and Gage will teach the 20th century up until the present day. 

The unusual length of time which the course will cover has led the three professors to take a unique approach to lecturing.

“We want each lecture to ask and answer a question,” Freeman said. “For example, the American Revolution course lecture might ask, was the revolution revolutionary? And if so, how much?”

The course has also been designated as a DeVane lecture series for the Fall 2025 Term, meaning that all members of the New Haven community are encouraged to attend lectures. Each class will also be recorded and uploaded to YouTube so that anyone can follow along with the material.

The public-facing nature of “America at 250: A History” does not stop there, however.

“After lecture, every Thursday, the three of us are going to go over to the broadcast studio, and record a conversation between the three of us about what we think about the week’s readings, debating each other’s lectures and kind of getting into history,” Gage said. “So we’ll have individual lectures, mostly, but everybody will be able to weigh in.”

History courses co-taught by three professors are rare. Peer advisor Ted Shepherd ’25, who has taken courses with Freeman and Blight, emphasized that course instructors are “some of the three top history professors, not just at Yale, but in all of America.”

Freeman, Shepherd said, puts a lot of thought into organizing the structure of the course, and Blight is “a master storyteller” able to teach history “in a really engaging way.”

Currently, the course is set to have eight discussion sections, which will accommodate 144 students, but more sections will be added as needed so that every student who wants to register for the course is able to.

Both Gage and Freeman emphasized that students from all majors and years are encouraged to take the course. 

“It is this generation of students who are going to have to invent some of these things anew about what the United States is and what its function in the world is,” Gage said.

The Yale Department of History was established in 1919.

The post “America at 250”: Yale history professors confront American identity in one-time-only course appeared first on Yale Daily News.

On March 28, the Law School terminated Doutaghi’s contract, citing her “refusal to cooperate” with the investigation into allegations that she is a member of the Samidoun Network, a designated terrorist organization in Canada and a sanctioned “sham charity” in the United States. 

On April 1, Doutaghi and her lawyer released statements on X alleging that the Law School’s accusations of refusal to cooperate were “false.” 

A series of emails obtained by the News show a back and forth with Yale over the nature of questioning and the party conducting it. Yale requested a live interview, either in person or over Zoom, conducted by an outside counsel. In response, Doutaghi’s attorney, Eric Lee, asked to answer questions in writing and asked for confidentiality for Doutaghi’s responses out of concerns for her safety.

When reached for comment by the News, Lee wrote that Wiggins and Dana, the firm Yale retained as outside counsel, lists “Israel” as a “service.” Lee wrote that due to these “undisputed facts,” he and Doutaghi did not feel that Wiggin and Dana could be a “neutral arbiter.”

Lee added that Doutaghi was “very clear” that she was prepared to answer questions but Yale “simply declined to accept it.” 

Asked about the email communications, the Law School’s spokesperson wrote that the conditions set by Doutaghi and her attorney were “unreasonable,” such as insisting on responding only to written questions and refusing to meet with Yale’s attorney “simply because they disagreed with his client list.”

“Yale informed Ms. Doutaghi’s attorney that we had full confidence in our counsel’s fairness and impartiality and that all we were seeking were the facts to resolve this matter,” the Law School’s spokesperson wrote. “At no time did we receive any information to alleviate our serious concerns about possible U.S. sanctions violations.”

The Law School spokesperson referred back to a prior statement on Doutaghi’s termination for further information.

Lee and Doutaghi express concerns, Yale requests verbal interview 

Correspondence between Lee and the Law School began on March 4, when the outside counsel from Wiggin and Dana offered a meeting with Lee at 4 p.m. that day. The first email from Yale’s lawyer describes Wiggin and Dana as a law firm that advises the University on “compliance with laws enforced by the Office of Foreign Assets Control.”

According to the emails, Lee and Yale’s external counsel met for a brief phone call, after which Lee requested 24 hours of additional time for Doutaghi to respond as she was fasting for Ramadan.

That same day, at approximately 5:30 p.m., the Law School put Doutaghi on immediate administrative leave.

“The university very much wants to understand the facts from Ms. Doutaghi’s point of view, but in light of the seriousness of this matter, the Dean of Yale Law School, Heather Gerken has deemed an administrative leave a necessary interim action,” reads the email from Yale’s lawyer from that day.

In the same email, Yale’s lawyer wrote that neither Lee nor Doutaghi “provided” the University with any facts that would allow it to assess the allegations reasonably. 

The next day, Lee responded with concerns over Yale removing Doutaghi from her University positions. Lee alleged that Doutaghi was put on immediate administrative leave “without due process,” describing the “Jewish Onliner,” which first reported the allegations, as “illegitimate” and “disreputable.”

In the email, Lee wrote that the “Jewish Onliner” lacks a Wikipedia page and cited an investigation from Haaretz that describes the “Jewish Onliner” as a “Pro-Israel Social Media Bot” powered by artificial intelligence.

The Law School’s official statement says that Yale “independently reviewed source materials,” drawing attention to text on the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network’s website that identified Doutaghi as a member of its organization.

“To be clear, Yale does not take administrative action based on press reports and such an action is never initiated based on a person’s protected speech,” the Law School statement reads.

Lee also mentioned in the email that the publication led Doutaghi to receive hateful and threatening messages.

“Given your actions thus far, we have no reason to believe that the ‘interview’ with [Yale’s external counsel] is being proposed in good faith. We are also investigating the likelihood that this behavior violated Title VII,” Lee’s email reads further. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex and national origin.

In response, Yale’s lawyer stated that the Law School staff had been scheduled to speak with Doutaghi to review the circumstances and the “best approach for proceeding.” Yale’s lawyer wrote that they were informed that Doutaghi did not wish to meet as scheduled after hiring Lee’s services.

Yale’s lawyer further defended the use of relying on outside counsel.

“Because the allegations involved possible U.S. sanctions violations, the university deemed it essential for attorneys with expertise in sanctions-related investigations, to learn the facts and assist the university in evaluating its sanctions compliance,” reads Yale’s response.

In the same email, Yale’s lawyer invited Lee to attend the meeting.

In a follow-up email, Lee stated that Doutaghi didn’t cancel the meeting, but that the Law School’s staff did. Lee then doubled down on asking about the “Jewish Onliner” and whether Yale was aware that this was an “illegitimate source” at the time of requesting an interview.

Yale did not respond to Lee’s email for two weeks. On March 20, Yale’s lawyer reached out to Lee, writing that Yale “still awaits answers from Ms. Doutaghi.” In the email, Yale’s lawyer affirms the request for a meeting between Doutaghi and Yale’s counsel.

“As a Yale employee, Ms. Doutaghi has obligations to the university to answer in good faith the concerns raised regarding U.S. sanctions violations,” Yale’s lawyer wrote.

Yale requested that the information be received by March 27. That deadline was later extended by a day to March 28 at 3 p.m. 

Lee acknowledged receipt of the email later that same day it was sent on March 20. He followed up on March 21, proposing that Doutaghi answer questions in writing from Yale and not from outside counsel. He further asked about the confidentiality of Doutaghi’s responses.

On Monday, March 24, Yale’s lawyer reiterated the need for a live meeting, either in person or on Zoom. The email further affirms faith in Yale’s outside counsel.

“We must be able to ask her questions, consider her answers, and ask her follow up questions in real time,” Yale’s lawyer wrote.

In that same email, Yale’s lawyer added that there is “no point” in discussing confidentiality until Doutaghi makes herself available for a meeting.

On March 28, the final day agreed upon for Doutaghi to respond to allegations, Lee emailed Yale’s lawyer discussing three proposed conditions: that the questions be answered in writing, that the outside counsel does not conduct questioning and that Doutaghi’s answers remain confidential.

Later on that same day, in the last email obtained by the News, Yale’s lawyer wrote that a live interview was necessary and “urged” Doutaghi to meet with the outside counsel before 3 p.m. The email added that the Law School has been clear from the “onset” that a meeting was necessary.

The News learned that Doutaghi’s employment was terminated later that day at 3:46 p.m. Her employment was set to expire in April. 

“As a result of her refusal to cooperate with this investigation, Ms. Doutaghi’s employment with Yale — which was already set to expire this April — has been terminated effective immediately,” the Law School released in a statement issued that day in response to an inquiry by the News. 

Doutaghi began working as an associate research scholar at the Law School in 2023.

The post Before Doutaghi was fired, her lawyer clashed with Yale Law School for weeks, emails reveal appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Students were given 10 days to decide to either admit to using AI on any problem set — and have 50 points deducted from the corresponding grade — or risk being faced with disciplinary action if AI use were to be detected in any of their problem set submissions.

“Students who do not come forward voluntarily but are identified through our investigation will receive a score of 0 for each affected problem set,” the announcement read. “Most importantly, your case will be referred to the Executive Committee, which is currently overwhelmed by similar cases. Due to the delays, it is likely that you will not receive a final grade for this course this semester.”

The News interviewed three students in the class, who requested anonymity out of fear of academic consequences. All three students said that they did not use AI to generate code for their problem sets.

One student in the course told the News that their professor told students to admit to AI usage before April 4 and explain the AI-generated code. The student recalled the professor saying that those who failed to self-report would be referred to the Executive Committee.

The Executive Committee, or ExComm, is the body responsible for enforcing the Yale College undergraduate regulations.

Group referrals to ExComm are rare. The last time that a large portion of one class was reported to the committee occurred when 81 students in a biological anthropology class allegedly collaborated during an online final exam in 2022.

ExComm releases summaries each term of the disciplinary cases it has decided. The most recent report summarizes cases from Spring 2024 and contains five instances in which students were “reprimanded via agreement of responsibility” for use of AI in problem sets, projects or papers. 

The Spring 2023 report was the first to cite ChatGPT being used as the violation, with four related cases. The Fall 2023 report records seven such instances.

According to CPSC 223 instructor James Glenn, the traditional practice of running student homework submissions through digital detection tools precedes the advent of AI chatbots like ChatGPT. For decades, Glenn said, professors have used digital tools to detect similarity between submissions.

“These collaboration detection tools are probably better at [detecting similarity] than detecting use of AI,” Glenn said.

Students interviewed by the News reiterated concerns regarding the reliability of AI detection, citing being falsely accused as a significant source of anxiety. One student in the course told the News that it is unclear how students could prove themselves innocent.

“The majority of people I’ve talked to are unsure because I think the biggest worry is that they are going to be told that they used AI, but they didn’t and they wouldn’t be able to explain themselves,” the student told the News.

Another student said that the way problem sets are submitted — along with a completed code, students also upload a log written by the student containing the steps involved in solving the problem — would make it difficult to definitively prove AI usage either way, saying that the log could be “easily faked.”

“There are definitely more than one-third of people in the course who are using AI,” the student said, “and [disciplinary action] would be unfair to the one-third [of students].”

Whether or not professors opt to use plagiarism detectors is up to each individual instructor, in line with the Computer Science Department’s discretionary approach to AI policy in classrooms. 

AI-related policies, however, should be made clear to students, according to Department Chair Holly Rushmeier.

“[Computer science] instructors are given wide pedagogical latitude to structure their courses in the ways they see fit,” Theodore Kim, the department’s director of undergraduate studies, wrote to the News. “This includes the level of AI usage allowed, and the detection methods employed. As in the past, we strive to educate students so that their skillsets are not tied to specific software products, AI or otherwise.”

For the Spring 2025 term, CPSC 223’s syllabus explicitly prohibits the use of AI-based code generators.

A student in the course told the News that the professors did note during the first lecture that AI was not allowed, but rather that most of the emphasis was on not collaborating with someone else. Additionally, learning concepts with AI was allowed, but generating code for problem sets was expressly not.

Glenn expressed that professors teaching lower-level computer science courses like CPSC 223 often impose stricter AI-use policies than those teaching more advanced courses.

“It’s easier to use AI to help in the intro course,” Glenn said. “Our goal is to teach students exactly the kinds of things that AIs are good at.”

Ozan Erat, who teaches CPSC 223 alongside Glenn and Alan Weide, cited student concerns around AI’s impact on job availability within the field of computer science. According to Erat, the fact that employers may begin adopting AI technologies to replace software developers increases the responsibility students have to avoid the use of these technologies.

“[The adoption of AI technologies in the workplace] makes it even more important for students to fully engage with their studies and master all concepts so that they are undispensable for their future jobs,” Erat wrote to the News. “I tell my students that if you let AI do the job for you, AI will take your job.”

Students in the course told the News that they generally understood the policy banning AI but felt that allowing AI in a limited form would reduce its abuse. 

One student said that they felt ChatGPT should be very limited for introductory courses, but due to its perpetual availability — compared to the limited office hours hosted by teaching assistants — students should not be punished for using it to learn or for error correction.

“In my opinion, it would be better if they would just make everyone explain their code in comments [to] their code, and just explain why it does and what it does. I guess you could use [AI] to generate those too, but it would be a way to [encourage] more integrity,” another student said.

In the announcement sent through Canvas, CPSC 223 students were also warned that further use of AI on problem sets may result in a restructuring of the course design, such as placing more weight on grades received on in-class exams.

OpenAI debuted ChatGPT in 2022.

The post Dozens of CS students flagged for AI use, urged to self-report or face ExComm appeared first on Yale Daily News.

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.

The post Faculty concerned for Yale’s Middle East studies amid unrest at peer institutions appeared first on Yale Daily News.

With the summer abroad season approaching, the News looked into past study abroad statistics and figures, analyzing the data provided by the Office of International and Summer Programs from 2018 to 2024. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, international travel was suspended from the summer of 2020 until the spring of 2022. These years have been omitted from the graphs below. Data is grouped in terms of academic years, which includes each succeeding summer. 

Ever wonder where Yalies fly off to when they study abroad? Check out the graphs below to check out the top regions they choose for academic adventures:

Europe has consistently been the most popular travel destination, with 72 percent of study abroad experiences taking place across the continent during the 2023-24 academic year. Asia and Latin America were the second and third most visited regions, respectively. 

Assessment and Director of Study Abroad Kelly McLaughlin told the News that the percentages of participation by class year tend to remain relatively stable. 

During the 2023-24 academic year, the majority of participants — approximately 53 percent — were rising sophomores. Rising juniors made up nearly 24 percent of Yale students studying abroad and rising seniors around 23 percent. 

Economics, history, political science, computer science and MCDB — molecular, cellular and developmental biology — were the top five most common majors amongst students who studied abroad last year, while the majority of participants were undeclared. 

Approximately 23 percent of graduating seniors in the class of 2024 studied abroad for credit during their time at Yale, a two point increase from the preceding class year. However, McLaughlin emphasized the impact of the pandemic on these figures.

He suspects that the graduating class’ participation in study abroad will eventually rise towards 50 percent, noting that 47 percent of the pre-COVID-19 class of 2019 studied abroad for credit. However, he acknowledged that there was no “guarantee” that the numbers would increase. 

The majority of study abroad experiences occur over the summer, as opposed to during the academic year or individual semesters. 

The number of students participating in YSS and non-Yale study programs this year has yet to be finalized. However, McLaughlin expects the data from the 2024-25 academic year to be similar to previous years’ statistics, with possibly higher numbers overall. 

He noted that the Office of International and Summer Programs was conscious of the travel bans recently announced by President Donald Trump. The office is working to assess the situation alongside the Office of International Students and Scholars, as well as other colleagues in the field of study abroad. 

“In terms of travel bans, we’re watching this very closely together,” he said. “We aim to provide the best guidance and support possible to students as/if needed. This landscape is still evolving, of course.” 

The United Kingdom was the most visited country throughout all three academic years. 

Cecile Tchano Tchandja ’28 will attend the London School of Economics over the summer. She noted her excitement to experience a new culture alongside other Yale students.

She added, “Personally, I love — not bad weather — but dreary, gloomy weather, and that is what London and the UK is so famous for. So I’m excited to kind of be a part of that and see London’s culture.”

Sofiia Tiapkina ’28 plans to pursue studies in Chinese at the CET Beijing program this summer. She will receive full funding for her trip — including financial coverage of room and board, tuition and transportation — through Yale’s Richard U. Light Fellowship Award. 

Tiapkina emphasized her anticipation for the program. She noted that although she was still in the process of applying for a visa and securing plane tickets, this final preparation was an “exciting challenge.”

“Language learning is really important,” said Tiapkina, referencing the program’s “language pledge,” which encourages students only to speak in Chinese. “I would really like the opportunity to really focus on language … In a way, it’s kind of restricting, but also, liberating.”

Waitlisted Yale Summer Session programs abroad applicants will receive a decision by April 1. 

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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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“WGSS faculty members have been discussing for a number of years the possibility of a trans studies hire to match the directions of our field and the interests in our student body,” Roderick Ferguson, chair of the WGSS department, wrote to the News.

Currently, 12 faculty members teach full-time within the department, a number that has tripled in the last 15 years. Each term, WGSS enrolls over 500 undergraduate students across a broad range of major interests in its classes.

According to Igor de Souza, director of undergraduate studies for WGSS, students and faculty members alike have expressed a need for a specialist in trans studies.

“WGSS lacks somebody who is thinking about transness full-time, doing work on transness and pushing the boundaries of how we conceive of gender, of gender relations, of gender and sexuality,” de Souza said. “And transness is such an integral part of how we understand gender, how we live and practice gender, in the sense that it calls all of us to think about how we fall in transness.”

The department currently offers several courses focusing on trans studies, such as “Gender and Transgender,” an introductory course taught by Greta LaFleur, and “Gender Expression before Modernity,” taught by de Souza. 

Margaret Homans, professor of English and WGSS, teaches “Fiction and Sexual Politics,” a course which covers the trans experience as portrayed in literature.

“I’m thrilled that WGSS has hired a specialist in the field to start at Yale next year,” Homans wrote to the News. “It would be great to see more trans related courses all over the catalogue.”

The department, which listed the position last fall, is nearing the end of the process of choosing a final candidate for the new assistant professorship, and is currently vetting a short list of applicants.

According to de Souza, WGSS has opened up the role in order to offer more courses concerning transness not only historically, but also in the context of other related fields. These fields include  the performing arts and the sciences.

“I really imagine this position as sort of doing a transness of the present. So, dealing with topics in contemporary discourse, and performance in the arts,” de Souza said. “Transness and performance, transness in politics, transness and science would be another aspect of that.”

The growth of the WGSS department has also allowed it to become better equipped to welcome early career scholars into roles such as the Transgender Studies professorship, as opposed to more senior, tenured professors. 

Yet even as the department seeks to expand its curriculum and as the hiring process for the new professorship has progressed, the intellectual climate in which the department operates has become one of “fear,” according to de Souza.

“We have some troubling developments in other states at the level of public universities and WGSS departments being curtailed or closed. Courses being sort of stricken off the books,” de Souza said. “ I don’t anticipate that happening here. But the federal administration has levers that they can pull to pressure Yale to move to a certain direction.”

The federal threat to remove scientific funding, for example, impacts the resources available for departments such as WGSS. 

Still, de Souza expressed an unrelenting commitment not just to the department’s continuing operations, but to its flourishing and growth. The assistant professorship in Transgender Studies is only one of several positions that WGSS is looking to fill in the fall. These include openings for lecturers and postdoctoral researchers.

“I think that it’s really important, in line with what [Yale history professor] Tim Snyder has argued, that we don’t silence ourselves preemptively and we don’t obey preemptively. So we are proceeding as normal, as in we are offering the courses that we have always offered. We are still reading the same texts and discussing the same ideas that we always have,” said de Souza. “We are going to keep doing our work that is so vital for us, that has touched the lives of so many students.”

The Program in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies was established in 1979 as the Women’s Studies program.

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