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Light & Verity
February
2003
Provost's
Departure Means Changes in Top Ranks
The surprise announcement
late last year that provost Alison Richard was leaving Yale to become the vice chancellor of Cambridge
University touched off a flurry of new appointments that have dramatically
changed the face of the University's top administration.
Less than a month after
Richard's announcement, President Richard Levin named Susan
Hockfield, dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences,
to be the new provost. Then, a scant three weeks later, came the
news that Peter Salovey, chairman of the psychology department,
would serve as the new dean of the Graduate
School.
Levin had the highest
praise for all three scholars and expressed confidence that the
new appointments would only build upon and enhance the accomplishments
of those who formerly held the positions.
Noting Richard's skill
in balancing the University's budget and achieving more faculty
diversity during her tenure as provost, Levin said, "She inspires
us all by her unwavering commitment to excellence and her unfailing
good judgment. She listens, she cares, she reflects, and she acts
with a decisiveness based on both reason and compassion."
Richard joined the
Yale faculty in 1972. She chaired the anthropology department from
1986 to 1991 and was the director of the Peabody Museum of Natural
History from 1990 to 1994. During her nine years as provost, the
University recovered from a series of multimillion-dollar deficits,
and austerity measures such as deferred maintenance and a faculty
cap were lifted. Her fiscal management skills were surely attractive
to the overseers of Cambridge, a university that is dealing with
an annual deficit of roughly $15 million.
Though Levin left little
doubt that Richard's departure from Yale is a big loss, he expressed
deep confidence in her successor, Susan Hockfield. "She has been
a remarkably effective leader of the Graduate School and has fostered
an unprecedented sense of community within it," he said. "Susan
has built an impressive array of programs to serve the needs of
students and helped to strengthen graduate programs throughout the
Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the School of Medicine."
Hockfield came to Yale
in 1985 and was named a full professor of neurobiology in 1994.
Four years later, Levin appointed her dean of the Graduate School,
where she took the initiative in improving the quality of life for
graduate students. These steps included extending stipend, tuition,
and health care support; creating a monthly Graduate School newsletter; establishing a matriculation ceremony to welcome new students; and
creating an Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity.
In naming Salovey to
succeed Hockfield, Levin praised the psychology professor's "special
talent for bringing out the best in people" and in "fostering collaboration."
He called Salovey an "inspired teacher" and "devoted mentor" who
has won awards for his pedagogical skills.
Salovey, who got his
undergraduate degree from Stanford University, did his graduate
study at Yale. He completed his doctoral work in the department
of psychology and joined the faculty in 1986. He has served as chairman
of the psychology department for the past two and a half years.
Salovey's appointment marks the first time a past president of the
Graduate and Professional Student Senate has become Graduate School
dean.
Salovey started his
new job immediately. Hockfield's appointment became effective on
January 1, and Richard is on sabbatical in Madagascar, where she
studies lemurs, before starting her new job this fall.
Campus
Debates Israel Divestment
First it was South
Africa, then the tobacco industry. Now, there's a new divestment
debate roiling on campus: Should Yale sell its shares of companies
that do business in Israel?
The grassroots divestment
movement, which has been percolating at universities around the
country since last spring, is now starting to gain some traction
at Yale, where two groups of students and faculty are calling on
Yale to exert its economic leverage on the Israeli government to
change its policies toward the Palestinians.
"The whole premise
of Israel is built on the illegal occupation of the occupied territories
in the West Bank and Gaza, which it has the power to do because
of the backing of the United States and U.S. corporations," says
Sam Bernstein '05, a member of the Yale chapter of Students for
Justice in Palestine.
Bernstein sees strong
similarities between Israel today and South Africa 20 years ago.
"Israel is an apartheid state based on Zionism," he says. "There
are many parallels between the treatment of blacks under apartheid
and the exclusion of Palestinians from mainstream life by the Israeli
government."
Another student group
known as the Yale Divest from Israel Campaign has launched a petition
drive, calling on the University to sell all its holdings in Israel.
The petition and a Web site, www.yaledivestnow.org, were announced
in November in a paid advertisement in the Yale Daily News.
On the opposite side
is Yale Friends of Israel (www.yaledontdivest.org), an equally passionate
student group that denounces divestment as a means to achieve peace.
"It is an immoral and completely illegitimate way for them to delegitimize
the nation of Israel," says Emily Scharfman '05, co-president of
the group. "Anyone who knows the facts knows there's no apartheid
in Israel. That's not a sound argument."
So where does the Yale
administration stand? "The University has faith in the guidelines
that have been adopted [to respond to divestment requests]," says
Yale spokesman Thomas Conroy.
A key step in that
process is for a group to present its case before the University's
Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility. School of Management
professor William Goetzmann, who chairs the committee, says that
Israel divestment forces made a preliminary presentation last April.
If the group makes a more formal presentation this year, Goetzmann
says, he will convene a broad-based meeting to allow speakers on
all sides of the issue to air their views. The committee would then
make a recommendation to the Corporation, which has the final say
on all divestment issues.
Whiffs
Perform for Pretend Prez
The Whiffenpoofs
may have to consider adopting a new anthem. After four days of hair
stylists and make-up artists, socializing with television stars,
and performing for an audience of 115 million, it might be hard
for them to sing "We are poor little lambs who have lost our way"
with straight faces any more.
Last December, the
venerable a cappella singing group appeared on a holiday episode
of the NBC series The
West Wing in which the gentlemen songsters were snowed in
at the fictional White House of president Josiah Bartlet (Martin
Sheen). Portions of three of their songs were heard on the soundtrack,
including an extended rendition of "O Holy Night" that played over
a closing montage.
"It was phenomenal,
amazing, and wonderful," says Whiffenpoof Kevin Sladek about the experience. Fellow Whiff Courtney Williams was equally giddy. "Allison
Janney is ridiculously nice," he says, referring to the actress
who plays press secretary C.J. Cregg. "She's the most elegant, glamorous
person I've seen in my life."
The feelings of awe,
it seems, were mutual. When the group arrived at the studio, Sladek
says, they were warmly greeted by the show's creator and producer
Aaron Sorkin, who told them, "This invitation to come on The
West Wing might be big for you guys, but however big it is for
you, it's much bigger for us."
As they prepared to
return to New Haven, the Whiffs tapped Sorkin and Sheen as honorary
members. Williams said Sheen took delight in the fact that while he was now a Whiffenpoof, "the real president, who actually
went to Yale, wasn't."
Nonprofit
Center Moves to SOM
In 1977, when Yale's
Program on Nonprofit Organizations (PONPO)
was launched, the term "nonprofit," let alone any deep understanding
of how such groups fit into the economic mainstream, barely existed.
But that's all changed.
Last October, PONPO moved from its former home at the Divinity School
to SOM, where it became part of the new Nonprofit Management Center.
"It seemed like a natural
step to move PONPO to the School of Management," says Sharon Oster,
an SOM professor who will co-direct the new program with deputy
dean Stan Garstka. "We already have a reputation of commitment to
nonprofit ventures, so it made sense to create one sizeable program
at SOM."
"If all goes well,
it could be a wonderful thing," agrees former PONPO director Peter
Dobkin Hall. "I certainly don't think it could be in better hands."
This isn't a claim
Hall would have made a quarter of a century ago. In the early days,
he says, the group's relationship with the University was less than
ideal. "PONPO had an international reputation, but nobody at Yale
knew we existed," he says. Still, the program's researchers managed
to do groundbreaking work that led to much of the basic literature
on the nonprofit field.
Founded by University
President Kingman Brewster, political economist Charles Lindblom,
and law professor John Simon, PONPO was the first academic center
in the world to sponsor basic research on philanthropy, voluntarism,
and nonprofit organizations. Initially headquartered at the Institution
for Social and Policy Studies, PONPO has inspired the creation of
more than 100 similar organizations around the country.
Oster says the program's
research mission won't change, but its scope will become more international
and will encompass a wider range of institutions in the nonprofit
sector. "This is consistent with the direction Yale has taken as
an increasingly global institution, and also a recognition of the
role of nongovernmental organizations in contemporary society,"
she says.
PONPO represents only
a portion of the new Nonprofit Management Center. The rest comes
from a $4.5 million grant from the Goldman Sachs Foundation and
the Pew Charitable Trusts to launch business ventures designed to
help philanthropic organizations generate outside revenue.
Library
to House Saarinen Papers
Few architects are
more strongly linked to Yale than the late Eero Saarinen (1910-1961),
who studied, taught, and built at the University. Such a connection
made Saarinen a natural subject for a new effort by the University
Library to acquire papers and drawings by prominent architects.
Some 600 tubes of Saarinen's drawings, along with project specifications,
personal files, and photographs, are currently being catalogued
after having been given to the Library recently by Saarinen's successor
firm, Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo Associates of Hamden.
The new acquisitions
complement a collection of papers and records that Saarinen's wife
had given to the Library in 1971. The collection provides a detailed
look at the creative process of a man that School of Architecture
dean Robert A. M. Stern calls "the
most artistically adventurous architect of his generation." Besides
his well-known works at Yale -- Ingalls Rink and Ezra Stiles and
Morse colleges -- Saarinen was acclaimed as the architect of the
Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Dulles International Airport in Washington,
D.C., and the TWA Terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport
in New York.
Richard Szary, the
University Archivist, says the acquisition is part of an effort
to collect papers of architects with Yale connections. "Our collections
in the arts have always come in serendipitously," he says. "We wanted
to get more focused and more detailed in our documentation of the
arts at Yale." Szary says Stern has been working actively with alumni
to secure donations of not only papers from their practice but also
their student work.
Teachers
Institute Turns 25
The Yale-New
Haven Teachers Institute had a lot to celebrate at a November
13 gala benefit at the Omni Hotel. This year marks the 25th anniversary
of the Institute, which is the country's oldest sustained partnership
between a University and its home community designed to improve
teaching in public schools. In addition, the event honored Howard
Lamar, the former Yale President who has played a major role
in the Institute's success since he helped establish it in 1977.
To date, more than
500 New Haven teachers at the elementary, middle, and high school
levels have taken part in the Institute's seminars, which are led
by Yale faculty. The teachers use the seminars -- and their access
to Yale's libraries -- to create curricula for their classrooms.
In 1998, the Institute received a major grant from the DeWitt Wallace-Reader's
Digest Fund to help establish similar partnerships in Pittsburgh,
Houston, Albuquerque, and Santa Ana- Anaheim, California
Calvin Trillin '57
served as master of ceremonies for the event. The evening's most
anticipated speaker, though, was actor and education advocate Bill
Cosby, who issued a challenge to the Institute and the University
to improve public schools. "How do you grade a teacher where the
system is an 'F'?" asked Cosby, referring to "lower economic dungeons"
where students struggle with basic learning.
"We have to put more
soldiers out there, not more money," he said. "We are teachers.
We are people who get up at four in the morning because some child
doesn't 'get it' and we are trying to figure out what 'it' is."
Grappling
for Respect
by Jeremy Licht '03
Cardboard and garbage
bags on the windows keep out the draft in the small mat room on
the fifth floor of Payne Whitney Gymnasium, where members of the
Yale wrestling team practice every weekday afternoon. Some days,
when 10 or 12 wrestlers crowd in, space is at a premium. On other
days, though, the room suits just fine the 3 or 4 who make it to
practice.
The varying turnout
is normal for a club sport, a status the team has held since being
cut from the varsity ranks in 1990 to help Yale comply with Title
IX, a federal law requiring gender equity in college athletics.
As a club sport, the wrestlers lack the visibility of Yale's varsity
teams, but they have achieved successes that almost any Yale team
would envy. In 1998, they won the national championship in the National
Collegiate Wrestling Association -- a mixture of student-run clubs
and young varsity programs. Yale wrestlers are routinely named All-Americans
in the NCWA, among them Kevin McGill '02, 2001 national champion
in the 184-pound weight class, and David Farrell '03, third nationally
in the 285-pound class.
While some, like Farrell,
have been wrestling since high school, the club team also invites
novices to join. Ryan Bonfiglio, who was the volunteer coach last
year before becoming the coach at Princeton, said some of his greatest
successes occurred with the team's least experienced members. "When
you get them out on the mat winning matches against guys with experience,
that is a great feeling," he said.
But while the opportunities
for neophytes and the flexible degree of commitment are advantages
of club status, the team also faces regular scheduling, transportation,
and money problems. "If [Yale] ever wanted to be serious about wrestling,
to be successful on a consistent basis, it would have to be a varsity
sport," says former captain Farrell, who was a first team All-Ivy
offensive lineman in football.
Yale's wrestlers have
tried unsuccessfully to reclaim their varsity status over the past
decade. Their situation is not unique: Because so many Division
I schools have cut varsity wrestling in order to comply with Title
IX, the National Wrestling Coaches Association has sued the Department
of Education over its enforcement of Title IX. (The Yale Wrestling
Association, an alumni support group, is among the plaintiffs.)
As a result, the Bush administration has appointed a commission
that will review the enforcement of Title IX.
Changes to Title IX enforcement could have sweeping effects on college athletics, but
for now, Yale's wrestlers get by without varsity status and the
benefits it confers. Farrell and his teammates continue to practice
their sport in relative anonymity.
"It is the hardest
sport I have ever done, by far," says Farrell, who risks injury
and the ire of his football coaches each time he takes to the mat.
"At the end of the match, when you stand up from the mat and your
body is aching and sweating, but you're victorious, that's when
you know it's worth it."  |
