Yale will strengthen teaching on race and ethnicity, its president says
Responding to student demonstrations and demands related to the racial climate at Yale University, its president, Peter Salovey, introduced a host of initiatives and promises in a letter to alumni on Tuesday.
The changes would include creating a “prominent university center” for studies of race and ethnicity, and the addition of four faculty positions.
“It is clear that we need to make significant changes so that all members of our community truly feel welcome and can participate equally in the activities of the university, and to reaffirm and reinforce our commitment to a campus where hatred and discrimination have no place,” he wrote.
Other announced changes include adding teaching staff members and courses to address race and ethnicity, doubling the budgets for four cultural centers, modifying financial aid polices for low-income students and scheduling counselors at the cultural centers. Administrators would receive antidiscrimination training, the school would review its reporting system for discrimination, and the Committee for Public Art would solicit ideas for better celebrating diversity.
In recent weeks, students have demonstrated against discrimination and a racially charged climate on campus, as a series of incidents on campus aligned with nationwide protests, like those at the University of Missouri. Student demands at Yale included requiring all undergraduates to take an ethnic studies class and renaming Calhoun College, which honors John C. Calhoun, a white supremacist who defended slavery.
“I’m constantly thinking about Calhoun the slave owner staring me down,” Maya Jenkins, a black sophomore assigned to the college, said in September.
Salovey said the university would hold meetings at which the public can “express their views” on the name, as well as two unnamed residential colleges that will open in 2017.
In early November, students accused administrators of being insensitive to concerns about Halloween costumes considered to be culturally offensive. After the university’s Intercultural Affairs Council advised student to avoid costumes featuring elements like feathered headdresses, turbans or blackface, Erika Christakis, a faculty member, wrote a dissenting email.
“Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious?” she wrote. “A little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive?” She added, “American universities were once a safe space not only for maturation but also for a certain regressive, or even transgressive, experience; increasingly, it seems, they have become places of censure and prohibition.”
On Halloween, one black student accused a fraternity of holding a “white girls only” party, an allegation the fraternity denied.
The episodes led to protests, where administrators were accused of slowness to address or indifference to the problems of minority students.
“The efforts that we launch today, and the commitment to the core values they represent, must be continuous, ongoing, and shared by all of us,” Salovey wrote.
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