Dear Members of the Yale Community,
Whenever I am asked why Yale matters, I cite examples of our faculty and students who, through their unflagging quest for knowledge, contribute to our nation and our world.
I point to Professor Emeritus Michel Devoret, who exhaustively experimented in quantum mechanics despite the skepticism of some of his fellow physicists, and whose work was recognized last October with the Nobel Prize. I refer to our three seniors who were named Rhodes Scholars in November, and have spent their time here researching Parisian archives, Japanese fishing villages, and the neighborhoods of New Haven. I mention the Yale Symphony Orchestra’s sixtieth anniversary concert, which expressed the very ethos of a university—of many people harmonizing their various passions in pursuit of light and truth.
These are just a handful of ways Yale offers society a singular and irreplaceable devotion to teaching and scholarship. And they encapsulate why we have worked hard this academic year to keep securing the future of our institution during this time of historic uncertainty for higher education.
As this academic year draws to a close, I want to update you on our efforts to advance university priorities and shape Yale’s future. These priorities emerged from my listening tour last year and have remained at the center of discussions I had this term with faculty, students, staff, and alumni. You told me your aspirations, and you also explained your concerns, especially about declining public trust in higher education. That trend has been a focus of mine since assuming my responsibilities at Yale, and I have been observing it for the past decade in my roles at both public and private universities. I am glad to report that we have made progress on this and several other pivotal issues for our university.
1. Advancing our core mission
Our university’s purpose is found in our teaching, scholarship, and research, which contribute knowledge and breakthroughs to society and affirm the tangible connection between our efforts and the everyday lives of people across the nation and the world. This purpose is expressed most fundamentally by Yale’s core mission of creating, disseminating, and preserving knowledge.
That mission, long outlined in the faculty handbook, has enduringly guided our university, and it will continue to do so. In pursuing our mission, Yale’s faculty and students have addressed global challenges, generational opportunities, and perpetual questions about the human condition, aspiring to solve the seemingly unsolvable and answer the seemingly unanswerable.
One of the most effective ways to realize our mission is to reaffirm the centrality of the liberal arts in undergraduate education. The liberal arts are the foundation for active engagement in civic life. They provide durable human skills through the arts, humanities, sciences, and social sciences, and prepare students to contribute to discoveries and innovations across all fields. Building on the 2023 strategic plan for Yale College that focused on continuing curricular innovation and strengthening our community of learning for students, Dean Pericles Lewis is now overseeing the college’s most comprehensive strategic review in more than two decades. In the fall, Dean Steven Wilkinson began a complementary strategic planning process for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences to redouble our exceptional research and teaching to meet this era’s evolving issues and emerging fields of inquiry.
This month, we celebrated the forty-fifth anniversary of the Whitney Humanities Center, underscoring Yale’s historic strength in this area. Our longstanding commitment to the humanities has taught us how rigorous inquiry and expansive thinking can lead to transformative discoveries.
We approach our aspirations for engineering and the sciences with equal intellectual resolve. This year, we continued to make strides in reimagining Science Hill, which is crucial to realizing our science strategy that was developed by faculty members in 2018. We are building a space for fundamental and practical science and engineering that will be home to dozens of faculty-led research laboratories and several modern core facilities that will drive research progress across the university, from astronomy to chemistry.
This new facility will supercharge quantum science at Yale. Through a public-private partnership called QuantumCT, we aim to build a quantum technology economy in Connecticut. We will make our home state more attractive to start-ups, create a talented workforce in this area, and encourage existing companies to adopt quantum technologies and new companies to turn theory into practical applications.
At the same time, the School of Medicine recently released a refreshed strategic plan. It includes goals to expand AI education, advance the science of healthy aging, and develop novel therapies to treat rare genetic disorders. Those efforts, combined with the strategic visioning of the now independent School of Public Health and ongoing investments in science and medicine across the university, will bolster research and innovation that keep us all stronger, safer, and healthier.
2. Broadening intellectual life
Questions are the foundation of education and scholarship. Breakthroughs can only happen if unorthodox and even provocative questions and ideas are discussed openly. Yale has a long history of bolstering free expression, which culminated in the iconic Woodward Report half a century ago. We must continue that tradition of leading the unfettered exchange of ideas.
In 2024, the Center for Academic Freedom and Free Speech was launched at Yale Law School in time for the Woodward Report’s fiftieth anniversary. This semester, Provost Scott Strobel formed the Committee on the Principles of Academic Freedom to develop guiding principles for safeguarding free inquiry for Yale faculty.
Similarly, the Center for Civic Thought was founded this past July to foster rigorous but respectful debate on both contentious breaking news and perennial philosophical questions. This academic year, it hosted over eighty-five events on topics like capital punishment and constitutional reform.
We also recently created the Presidential Senior Fellowship. This initiative will bring leaders and experts with a wide range of perspectives to campus. They will teach classes, host events that encourage thoughtful debate, and create free content available to the public online. The first presidential senior fellow, David Brooks, has already begun a five-year appointment. It is my hope that current and future fellows will both encourage the questioning of intellectual assumptions and communicate our work to the wider world.
3. Investing in education, scholarship, and research
Our students are the heart of our university, and I believe we can help them reach their greatest potential by providing them with more options to follow their career aspirations based on their abilities, skills, and passions rather than financial constraints. This is why one of the most important ways we can invest in Yale’s mission is through financial aid.
Earlier this semester, we announced that we had raised Yale College’s financial aid threshold to include more students than ever before. For students from families with annual incomes below $100,000, Yale has eliminated all expected costs of attendance, and students from families with annual incomes below $200,000 will receive scholarships that meet or exceed the cost of tuition. I appreciate the generous donors who made this possible, particularly during our current fiscal constraints. Beginning next academic year, students from nearly half of American households with schoolchildren will be eligible to attend Yale College at zero cost, and students from eight in ten families in the U.S. will be eligible for free tuition at Yale College.
This effort, along with all our others, is made possible by robust financial and administrative support. And expanding our crucial work entails maximizing the resources available for teaching, scholarship, research, and student experiences. To that end, Geoff Chatas, senior vice president for operations, will work with his team to ensure that our operations support our mission with utmost efficiency.
The operations team is beginning their efforts by launching an initiative to streamline processes, improve the delivery of support services, and reduce day-to-day complexity in university operations. The initial project will focus on optimizing how the university manages procurement, executes capital projects, and performs functions related to finance and human resources. They will improve the way we provide these critical services and, in turn, make additional resources available for research and education, including financial aid.
4. Strengthening community partnerships
I believe that Yale’s relationship with the city of New Haven is fundamental to the flourishing of both our university and our hometown. Just as no academic discipline exists in a vacuum, our university itself is intertwined with our surrounding community, and that connection offers opportunities for both Yale and New Haven to grow together. That is why we recently announced a plan for Yale to increase its annual voluntary contribution to the city.
Yale is expanding its partnership with New Haven in other ways as well. We are exploring local initiatives that support nonprofit groups, bolster businesses, and address food insecurity and other community needs.
The Office of New Haven Affairs is also developing a community grant program to make meaningful, project-specific investments in organizations that are working to strengthen the fabric of our shared community. In addition, we are working on ways we might contribute to the creation of additional housing options in New Haven. We look forward to sharing more information about these initiatives when they launch.
Continuing our work
Our work this year reaffirms the essential purpose of our university, and many of these efforts also relate back to my focus on evaluating and addressing how higher education has fallen short of the American people’s expectations over the past decade. We cannot fulfill our academic ambitions unless the public believes that higher education serves the common good.
Last year, I formed the Committee on Trust in Higher Education to study the loss of public confidence, and the committee delivered its report earlier this month. The result was an honest assessment of Yale’s part in contributing to the decline of public trust in higher education, followed by twenty recommendations for how we can embrace the vitalizing spirit of education. Once again, I applaud the committee for its unflinching work. We have already begun implementing many of its recommendations, and you can read my response to the report.
Our progress this year—advancing our core mission; broadening intellectual life; investing in teaching, scholarship, and research; and strengthening community partnerships—demonstrate the essential work that universities do best. They are also how we are showing the American people that Yale’s work ripples far beyond our campus.
But the advances of the past year represent just the beginning. The endless promise of a university is that there is always another question to ponder, always another idea to debate, always another bold undertaking to support. The fruits of these efforts are the knowledge we will continue to discover, disseminate, and preserve for humanity. They are the palpable benefits we offer to our nation and our world in the form of innovations and insights that can come from nowhere else.
Over the summer, I will continue refining our work on our university priorities, and in the fall, I will update you on our progress. I look forward to more opportunities to learn from faculty, students, staff, and alumni, and engage with communities in our home city and across the nation. Until then, please know how grateful I am for your contributions to Yale’s everlasting pursuit of knowledge, your unwavering commitment to our community, and your enduring belief in the promise of higher education during this period of uncertainty.
Sincerely,
Maurie
Maurie McInnis
President
Professor of the History of Art