Currently, every Yale-NUS student has two student IDs: one NUS ID that permits him or her to use NUS facilities and one Yale-NUS ID that allows access to Yale-NUS buildings during certain times.

“Yale-NUS seems like a very closed-off place, one isolated from the rest of NUS. People there seem to be in their own world and are very different from us,” said Samara Gang, a freshman at NUS. She added that the appearance of Yale-NUS buildings, its physical boundaries as manifest in the gates and the library trespassing issues only emphasized these differences.

Despite living right across from Yale-NUS, Gang has never been to its campus. Gang said Yale-NUS boasts a sense of elitism and gives her the impression that it only wishes to associate itself with Yale, but not its other parent, NUS.

Valerie Ng, a second-year student at NUS, said the limited interaction between the two schools probably makes people regard Yale-NUS students as “snobbish.”

An anonymous NUS student echoed similar sentiment toward the Yale-NUS “stepsibling syndrome,” and questioned why Yale-NUS included “NUS” in its name in the first place if it identifies only with its New Haven parent.

An NUS student who asked not to be identified said that rumors about Yale-NUS circulate around the NUS campus. For example, the student said, NUS students speculated that NUS cut its funding for its University Scholars Program — often regarded as NUS’s first experiment in liberal arts — due to its growing support for Yale-NUS. But, Lewis said, although the majority of Yale-NUS’s early funding came from NUS, it is the Singapore government rather than NUS that pays the money.

Still, the anonymous student noted Yale-NUS’s inclusiveness in some respects: talks held by the college are often open to NUS as well. While NUS invites locally prominent speakers, Yale-NUS features more guests with international fame and background, the student added.

Other NUS students interviewed also called Yale-NUS “insular,” but said the same situation occurs within every residential system, even NUS’s own residential colleges.

“All small liberal arts schools are self-contained to some degree, and I think that to some degree we should be,” Yale-NUS Dean of Students Christopher Bridges said, “Part of what we are doing here is living in community. By its very nature, we are partly self-contained — in the same way that I would argue Yale, or the School of Engineering at NUS, is self-contained.”

Still, Bridges said Yale-NUS student organizations often partner with those at NUS, and students compete with their NUS peers at inter-college sports games. For example, the G Spot — Yale-NUS’s primary student club tackling issues on sexuality, gender and feminism — opened its membership to NUS students and hosted an orientation for queer-identifying students at both schools.

Lewis said the impression of Yale-NUS being self-contained also stems from the fact that NUS has 37,000 students. Many do not have the chance to meet their peers from Yale-NUS, whose student-body size is only a little over 500. Last fall, several Yale-NUS freshmen set up a club called Hyphen to bridge Yale-NUS with its neighbor and parent institution. The Dean of Students Office at Yale-NUS oversees a “Building Bridges” fund, which supports activities aimed at fostering bonds with NUS, Bridges said.

Academically, Yale-NUS students may take language classes taught at NUS, and a sizable group are pursuing a dual degree at NUS’s Faculty of Law.

Lewis said criticism from the NUS side is an inevitable process of adjustment. When NUS first opened its University Town, a residential complex with modern housing and a plethora of restaurants, its students living in old dorms outside UTown voiced similar unhappiness, he said, adding that the same issue can play out in New Haven.

Yale-NUS’s seeming aloofness is related to a perceived identity crisis as well. Those in New Haven often confuse Yale-NUS with NUS, lumping the duo together; whereas local residents in Singapore simply refer to Yale-NUS as Yale. Overshadowed by its two established parents, Yale-NUS has to assert its independence, and difference, from both Yale and NUS.

Karen Ho YNUS ’17 said Yale-NUS students have spent much time talking about how they wished to define a distinct Yale-NUS campus space to help clarify the college’s relationship with NUS and establish its unique culture. While the school has been successful in cultivating its own identity, Yale-NUS might have appeared to be more self-contained along the way, Ho added.

Isabel Perucho YNUS ’18 agreed that Yale-NUS’s relationship with NUS has been a point of contention on campus and was never “clear-cut from the start.” However, Perucho said fostering Yale-NUS’s own culture needs not come at the expense of interaction with the outside world, as no successful liberal arts college is self-contained.

A POLITICAL OUTLIER?

The question of whether Yale-NUS is self-contained goes beyond its ties with NUS to its engagement with Singaporean society more broadly. Nicknamed the “little red dot,” the small island was home to four major universities before Yale-NUS set its footprint there. One can literally travel across the country in less than two hours, and imports make up a large portion of daily essentials. Singapore’s smallness is not the only aspect that makes it stand out, as its political scene has attracted much attention as well. Although Singapore upholds voting rights, a single political party has ruled the country for the 51 years since its founding. Moreover, any mention of the country in the west invokes memory of its chewing gum ban and caning as a form of punishment.

Therefore, many are paying attention to how Yale-NUS, the country’s first and only liberal arts college, engages with its host country politically.

Yale-NUS administrators and students insist that the school does engage with Singapore’s political scene without great constraint, though members of Singapore’s opposition parties say otherwise. The most cited example of Yale-NUS’s involvement with local politics was a talk given by Chee Soon Juan last fall. Chee is the secretary-general of the Singapore Democratic Party, the country’s second-largest opposition party. In 2012, he travelled to New Haven to discuss the possible pitfalls of Yale’s Singapore project, likening it to a business venture.

Chee told the News that even though he was hosted by Yale-NUS, he had to approach the school first to ask for the opportunity. Moreover, Chee, while grateful for the chance to speak, said the event was limited its openness, as he recalled it being a closed-door event with no photography allowed.

In some ways, Chee’s talk seemed representative of a common tension at Yale-NUS: While the college tries to engage with its home country politically, there are inevitable restrictions to how much it can do so.

“I keep asking myself why. Why?” Chee said. “Have an open discussion; organize a debate for goodness’ sake.”

Kenneth Jeyaretnam, leader of Singapore’s Reform Party, another opposition party, said he was never invited to speak at Yale-NUS and has been denied a platform to speak at other Singaporean universities. Jeyaretnam joined Chee in the 2012 panel at Yale, where he condemned Yale as lending its name to an authoritarian government and “making a pact with a devil.”

According to a 2015 report by Human Rights Watch, Singapore requires local newspapers to renew their registration each year. The government restricts freedom of assembly except for in one park on the entire island, and government officials have used defamation as a way to silence critics. Political activities at Yale-NUS, with the school’s American association and commitment to freedom of speech, thus form an important lens to examine how the school engages with Singaporean society.

Chee said the litmus test for Yale-NUS’s political freedom is whether the school will make it possible for the opposition to visit not only during elections, but also to convey its ideologies at other times and recruit interested students to set up youth branches of political parties. He noted that groups similar to the Yale College Democrats and Yale College Republicans are absent at Yale-NUS. In October 2012, Yale-NUS announced such organizations would be prohibited on campus, in accordance with the nation’s laws.

“If Yale, why not Yale-NUS? The only reason I can think of is that Yale-NUS is in Singapore and has to abide by its rules and regulations,” Chee said. “Where do we get the idea that politics is wrong for university students?”

Chee added that he hasn’t heard any conversation coming from Yale-NUS students asking the “why” question. For Chee and Yale-NUS’s critics in New Haven, the fact that no Yale-NUS student challenged the restriction is troubling. Accepting the government’s rules is a dominant attitude in Singapore’s political culture, and some worried that this culture has begun to find its way into Yale’s Singapore project.

Ai Huy Luu YNUS ’19, who is from Singapore, said though Yale-NUS students cannot set up branches of political parties nor campaign for them on campus, hosting forums is still a good way to engage broader society in political issues. Before Singapore’s parliamentary election last September, Yale-NUS’s International Relations and Political Association hosted a debate among various political parties. Also before the election, a group of juniors at Yale-NUS developed Electionaire, a web survey that allows users to see which Singaporean party best aligns with their political stances. Luu added that because protests are generally banned in Singapore, much dissent has gone online and many of her peers have used online platforms to voice their opinions.

Lewis agreed, noting that some Yale-NUS students contribute to online outlets with more critical stands toward the government.

And, beyond straight politics, Yale-NUS students have also found ways to engage with cultural and social issues relevant to Singaporean society.

The G Spot, for example, has worked with local NGOs on gender equality and the empowerment of the transgender community. It was the first student organization to receive a Student Initiative Award from AWARE, Singapore’s leading gender-equality advocacy group.

Despite students’ effort to branch out, Luu said she understands why so many Singaporeans are unfamiliar with Yale-NUS. The college is still a niche institution and liberal arts remains largely a foreign concept on the island, Luu added.

But Bridges, who moved to Singapore in January, said he has the opposite impression and felt as if “the entire nation is watching Yale-NUS.” He cited the fact that many local newspapers closely follow happenings at Yale-NUS. For example, The Straits Times, Singapore’s most widely circulated newspaper, has an entire webpage titled “Latest: Yale-NUS.”

AN INCONSISTENT ROLE?

Even in the face of Singapore’s relative political restrictions, academic institutions like Yale-NUS are afforded a degree of leeway. A widely held view is that Singapore’s government does not actively enforce its strict and conceivably discriminatory laws on paper. As a result, there is room for Yale-NUS students to freely express themselves within the physical boundaries of the school. In fact, Yale-NUS includes free expression as the school’s “cornerstone” in its Policies and Procedures.

But despite the school’s desire to be as integrated into Singaporean society as possible, some suggest that a degree of isolation is necessary to uphold a commitment to freedom of speech. Whether Yale-NUS needs to be self-contained to carry out its mission is a point of disagreement on campus among students.

“Students feel as free on our campus as they do in New Haven,” Lewis told the News. “It’s true that one segment of political freedom is somewhat more restricted here, but people interact in the same ways, debate same issues and express their views freely.”

For many outside Yale-NUS, however, such political freedom is not guaranteed, and there arises the question of whether Yale-NUS needs to be self-contained, at least politically, to live up to its promise of free expression.

Yale-NUS’s commitment to freedom of speech makes it a “safe haven” for people with dissenting political views, Thu Truong YNUS ’18 said.

Truong added that students defend same-sex marriage and freedom of speech on campus but do not aggressively take these views to the streets. The school needs to be somewhat self-contained in order to guard its values, Truong said.

Only two of 15 Yale-NUS interviewed said the discrepancy between a campus culture and a societal environment made them modify their behaviors when stepping outside campus.

“There are things I would say here and be less strong about when I’m outside,” another anonymous Yale-NUS student said. “It’s not self-censorship but an unconscious response to the environment I’m in.”

Still, Chee challenged the statement, arguing that it ultimately boils down to self-censorship, a huge part of Singaporean culture.

In a 2014 interview with the News, Salovey said when Yale set out its plan in Singapore, the administration was aware of Singapore’s more restrictive laws about political speech as compared to those in U.S. He added that the University ultimately decided that the risks “were worth it,” when balanced against the chance to create a new liberal arts experience in Asia. Salovey told The Indian Express in 2015 that a vigorous liberal arts training, with its inherent discussion and dissent, is the best preparation for Singapore’s not-too-distant future of fuller democracy.

An anonymous Yale-NUS student said the campus environment is indeed more tolerant compared to elsewhere in Singaporean society, making people less afraid of speaking their minds. The student added that it is necessary that such open exercises of freedom of speech stay within the walls of the school if Yale-NUS is to preserve and live up to its values.

“It’s simply not practical to remove the bubble,” the student said. “For example, according to the terms in their Student’s Pass, international students cannot engage in political activities in the country, but they happen to be ones most vocal about political issues.”

For international students, who make up around 40 percent of the Yale-NUS student body, student visas may pose more restrictions.

“You shall not take part in any political or other related activities during your stay in Singapore,” the Terms & Conditions of Singapore’s Student’s Pass states. Generally, every international student pursuing full-time studies in Singapore require a Student’s Pass to legally stay in the country.

Though the document does not specify what “political or other related activities” entail, Lewis said its primary meaning includes joining a political party or attending protests.

In the same way that the U.S. puts limits on foreigners’ contribution to election campaigns, Singapore has its restrictions on internationals’ political involvement, Lewis said, adding that Singaporeans make up the majority of Yale-NUS’s student body and are free to join political parties or participate in campaigns. International students tend to engage more with social matters that intersect with politics, Lewis said.

All eight Yale-NUS international students interviewed said they do not feel restricted by the term on their Student’s Pass.

Carmen Denia YNUS ’17, a student from the Philippines who has spent eight years in Singapore, said that while the term of the Student’s Pass restricts protests, such activities are now allowed in Singapore anyway, and therefore the term does not present international students with additional barriers. She added that the law does not bar her from attending talks or speaking to ministers, for example.

Peter Lewis YNUS ’18, who hails from Arizona, said he felt comfortable speaking his mind and had been allowed to attend political rallies, suggesting a Yale-NUS bubble is not necessary.

“We are guests in this country and the Singapore government provides us with this fantastic education,” he said. “I appreciate it without any feeling that I have to change anything. At the end of the day, I am an American living in this country. I don’t feel the restriction is unjust.”

Julianne Thomson YNUS ’18, who is also American, said she thought about the term before attending Yale-NUS and did not consider it an issue. Thomson said it would have been a problem if some particular issues compelled her to cross the boundary. If that happens, the Student’s Pass will not be a factor holding her back, she added, though she said she could not envision what issues would prompt her to break the rule in the first place.

“I will only know a boundary if I cross over it, and I will keep going if I don’t. Now I feel free to do whatever,” Thomson said.

Moreover, roughly 15 students interviewed, including those from western countries such as the U.S., said the western conception of an authoritarian Singapore is outdated.

Many Americans’ negative perception of Singapore still dwell in the 1990s, when then-U.S. President Bill Clinton LAW ’73 intervened in the case of Michael Fay, a 18-year-old American who was subjected to caning for theft and vandalism, Patrick Wu YNUS ’19, a student from Georgia, said. Wu added that the news coverage of the episode led to the problematic view of Singapore that still exists today.

Paul Jerusalem YNUS ’19 said the rules are strict in Singapore and those who think of the country as “draconian” and a “police state” may have derived their opinion from existing codes of laws. However, the idiosyncrasy of Singapore is that many laws are there simply to reflect the historically traditional fabric of the society, and as long as one’s actions do not hurt someone else, the government does not “police every single thing,” he added.

Luu, a Singaporean student, agreed, saying that Singapore may seem authoritarian on the surface, but there is a lot of leeway as long as one does not openly dispute the status quo nor undermine the state. She added that Singapore gives freedom to academic space. For example, there are university courses taught about queer issues, as well as courses that argue against some of the tenets of government ministries.

Still, Chee said fear and self-censorship are a big part of the Singapore culture, and the problem is not so much about the government saying “no,” but rather about individuals submitting to fear. He warned that if Yale-NUS were not careful enough, it will be swallowed up in the culture without realizing it.

DEBUNKING THE “LIBERAL” MYTH

Although the term “liberal” in “liberal arts” is derived from the Latin word “liberalis,” meaning freedom, many today mistake it to mean the opposite of conservative, especially in the political sense. Because of its American brand and its selling point as a liberal-arts experiment, Yale-NUS is often subjected to this misconception from many outsiders.

Declan Low, a fourth-year student at NUS who studied at Yale for one year, said Yale-NUS engages with more controversial topics that Singaporeans usually abstain from, such as LGBTQ advocacy. This difference is responsible for impressions of Yale-NUS as more liberal leaning, he said.

And due to Yale-NUS’s small student body, people unfamiliar with the college often associate a few vocal, liberal student voices with the entire school. A post on NUS Confessions, a popular Facebook page where members of the public can submit anonymous posts, angrily accused several Yale-NUS students of complaining about how illiberal Singapore was while riding public transit.

And most recently, after a few Yale-NUS students called for Ambassador Chan’s removal from the school’s governing board because she defended the country’s sodomy law, Bilahari Kausikan, another Singaporean ambassador-at-large, lamented the “hopefully noisy minority” liberals of Yale-NUS on Facebook.

While Kausikan made sure not to label the entire Yale-NUS community as liberal, he thought establishing the school was the wrong move.

“I think it was a mistake to have let Yale establish a campus in Singapore. Some sections of the American academy have been behaving in insane ways and their particular band of insanity should not be allowed to be imported into Singapore,” Kausikan wrote in the post.

However defensive or xenophobic these comments seem to many at Yale-NUS, they ultimately speak to a larger issue — how easily Yale-NUS can be wrongly labeled as a habitat for liberals within a conservative social fabric. The fact is, Yale-NUS is home to a significant percentage of Singaporean Christian students who tend to identify with more conservative political and social views. For this particular group, misconceptions surrounding their school can be problematic.

An anonymous student said the student body consists of a few liberal advocates but also a considerable conservative, but silent, population.

According to the student, the liberal voice at Yale-NUS is very powerful but not wholly representative of the student body.

Denia, a Christian herself, said the misconception about Yale-NUS can be hard for her sometimes, especially when outsiders treat Yale-NUS as a “hotbed for atheists and political revolts.”

Whether cautioning Yale-NUS against a liberal frenzy, calling for more interaction with its neighbor or expressing hopes for its greater political freedom, various parts of Singaporean society harbor different expectations for this young college. Ignorance of Yale-NUS’s existence or skewed impressions of its culture persist despite the college’s efforts to engage with its host country. And even among Yale-NUS’s 500 students, opinions remain divided on whether a degree of self-containedness is necessary to cultivating Yale-NUS’s unique culture and uphold its commitment to free expression.

As the college’s polished campus stands tall, tucked in a corner of Singapore, Yale-NUS continues to figure out in which direction to head, how to assert its presence and how to make an impact on this Southeast Asian island.

UP CLOSE:
Under Salovey, Yale Corporation gains influence

by David Shimer

Published on April 7, 2016

It is near midnight on Nov. 12, 2015, and 200 students are marching on University President Peter Salovey’s house in the cold. Advocating for a more diverse and inclusive campus, they present Salovey with a set of demands. Their list includes, among other things, renaming Calhoun College, eliminating the title of master and naming the two new residential colleges after people of color. Just five days later, Salovey responds to campus concerns with a series of initiatives, one inviting the community to listening sessions with the Yale Corporation on naming. But the three issues remained unresolved.

For more than seven months, the 17 members of the Yale Corporation, including Salovey, who chairs each of the body’s meetings, have been deliberating whether to rename Calhoun and eliminate the title of master. They have not yet announced a decision. The Corporation has also been debating what to name the two new residential colleges. This decision has not been reached either.

In November, student activists demanded that Salovey address these issues within days. But for such unusual and significant items, who makes the actual decision: the president or the Corporation as a whole?

To the surprise of former University leaders dating back 60 years, the answer now seems to be the Corporation.

Interviews with Corporation members, former University President Richard Levin and various current and former administrators reveal that past presidents did not see the Corporation as a body that could or should make these types of decisions. Rather, they viewed the Corporation as a feedback mechanism that always accepted presidential recommendations — including on nonroutine issues like these three.

“The Corporation simply never would have controlled these decisions,” said former University Secretary John Wilkinson ’60 GRD ’63, who served in the position under former University Presidents Bartlett Giamatti and Benno Schmidt in the 1980s. “[Giamatti] would have pulled out his hair and just started screaming if he were just another member of the Corporation on something this big. He would have had a fit.”

But Salovey has taken a different approach.

He told the News that upon his ascension to the presidency in 2013, Corporation members expressed a desire to become more involved in difficult decisions — a request he says fits his “collaborative leadership style.” As the Corporation prepares to meet this weekend, he said it is impossible to tell exactly when these three issues will be settled, but that the aim is for them to be resolved by the end of the academic year. When making certain far-reaching decisions, he said he sees himself as just another member of the Corporation and would like the body to reach a consensus at its own pace.

“For nonroutine decisions that have broad and long-term implications, I think consensus, if it can be reached, is a better approach than simply asking for a vote on the president’s recommendation,” Salovey said. “So rather than the usual process of coming with a specific recommendation and asking the Corporation to endorse it, in the case of the naming of the new colleges, Calhoun College and the title of master, we’ll instead lay out options for them to consider.”

In the months that the Yale community has waited for these issues to be resolved, both Harvard and Princeton have decided to eliminate the title of master and settled their own naming debates relatively quickly.

And in these months, the implications of Salovey’s consensus-based approach have become clearer: Some praise it for encouraging thoughtfulness and fostering prudence early in his tenure; others lament that the model has prolonged the decision-making process, distributed accountability across the Corporation and inhibited student access to those with power.

POWER WITHOUT PRECEDENT

In justifying the Corporation’s control over the three naming issues, Woodbridge Hall administrators often point out that the Corporation named the first residential colleges in the 1930s and that the title of master is included in the University’s bylaws, which can only be altered by the Corporation. To Salovey, the long-term implications of these decisions necessitate extended conversations within the Corporation without the guidance, or restriction, of an overriding administrative recommendation. His aim is for a consensus to emerge.

But former University leaders paint a picture of a historically different type of decision-making process for nonroutine issues — one in which Corporation members served as advisers and always followed the recommendations of the president.

“It was not about consensus,” Levin said of his relationship with the Corporation. “While there is a healthy relationship between the president and the Corporation, the body is a sounding board for the ideas of the president, dean and officers. They give feedback, but they rarely actually decide the issue.”

(Amanda Hu, Production & Design Staff)

Levin added that after consulting with individual Corporation members, he would submit recommendations that were virtually never rebuked.

Wilkinson and Sam Chauncey ’57 — who served as special assistant to former University President Kingman Brewster between 1963 and 1972 and secretary of the Corporation from 1973 to 1982 — went one step further. According to them, the University presidents under whom they served would have actively controlled the three issues the Corporation is currently deliberating.

“Consensus was absolutely never the way it worked,” Chauncey said. “It isn’t like Brewster or Levin or Schmidt or Giamatti would walk in with some background research and say, ‘We have this problem — I don’t know what the hell to do about it so let’s figure it out …’ Trustees are there to receive a recommendation, to talk about it, to make honest criticism and to have a vote.”

Granted, the nature of the presidency has evolved over the past few decades. As demonstrated by campus controversies in November, the University sits on a national stage, within which the president can face pressures from both within and without. Still, Salovey said if he were to attend Corporation meetings without recommendations, he would come prepared with broader options for consideration.

Chauncey and Wilkinson said the various presidents under whom they served would have made recommendations on Calhoun, master and the residential colleges to which the Corporation would have undoubtedly adhered.

“I never saw a recommendation turned down,” Wilkinson said.

Chauncey explained that when Ezra Stiles and Morse Colleges were named in the early 1960s, then-University President Alfred Whitney Griswold submitted these two names to the Corporation, which readily approved both. On the contrary, Salovey said in February that he submitted roughly two dozen name possibilities for the new colleges to the Corporation for discussion.

William Nordhaus ’63 GRD ’73, an economics professor who served as provost from 1986 to 1988 and a vice president from 1991 to 1992, said that during the time he had access to Corporation meetings as a high-ranking officer, presidential recommendations almost always guided the body. In his experience, the president is the chief executive officer of the University and controls major decisions, while the role of the Corporation is to dissect those decisions before approving them.

However, this historically unilateral presidential approach prompted disbelief and opposition from current Woodbridge Hall administrators and Corporation members, many of whom said such a model would undermine the Corporation’s role in University governance.

Chauncey said that even though the title of master is in the University’s bylaws, Brewster would have publicly announced whether he wanted the title altered and the Corporation would have fallen in line at its next meeting.

But Corporation Fellow Charles Goodyear IV ’80, who has served with both Levin and Salovey, argued that the Corporation “owns these [three] decisions.”

“That is not the way governance works,” he said. “If the president said we’re naming a college after Adolf Hitler before we met, would the Corporation say he’s a strong president so we agree with him? Absolutely not … The people of the Corporation historically are not shrinking violets, and if they are the ones who had accountability for the decisions, they will own it … We aren’t going to be patsies … I wouldn’t want to be a part of that board.”

Still, Wilkinson said during his time, the value of the Corporation stemmed not from its decision-making power, but from its ability and responsibility to ask the president probing questions about his recommendations.

Yet this former model of dominant presidential recommendations guiding the University seems to have faded, at least for these three decisions.

“It depends on the issue, and [Salovey] is great at this: He loves to listen, and he does that extremely well. If there is a strong view from Corporation members, it is unlikely that [Salovey] is going to stand up and say ‘I am going to do something completely different,’” Goodyear told the News in October.

SALOVEY’S MODEL

(Tresa Joseph, Production & Design Editor)

Under Salovey, the Corporation has gained a degree of influence through its increased involvement in nonroutine decisions and the pace at which they are made. Salovey said while he is sensitive to members of the Yale community who would like matters to be settled more quickly, the reverberations of these decisions will be felt for generations and necessitate patience.

“In my opinion, a weighty matter before the Corporation is not best decided by simply putting it up to a vote and seeing if there is a majority — I think it’s best decided when there has been a full and thorough vetting of that issue where everyone has been heard, and then, a consensus emerges,” Salovey said.

Secretary and Vice President for Student Life Kimberly Goff-Crews and Vice President for Development and Alumni Affairs Joan O’Neill said rather than submit official recommendations on these three issues, Woodbridge Hall is looking to frame the Corporation’s conversations as it works toward a consensus. They explained that Woodbridge Hall administrators are providing the Corporation with background information on the three issues, drawing from listening sessions and surveys presented to the Yale community.

Seeking to contextualize this shift in the decision-making process, Salovey said that, for routine issues, Corporation decisions are still directed by recommendations from him and other University administrators and that the Corporation’s jurisdiction over the naming of the two new residential colleges was decided under Levin. In explanation, Levin said he did not attempt to determine the names before retiring and that Corporation members are the stewards of the long-term health of Yale, thereby justifying their involvement.

Corporation members — who technically are not authorized to speak publicly on Corporation matters — agreed that Salovey has emphasized collaboration.

“Salovey is, I don’t want to say a consensus builder because that suggests a kind of softness — not at all — but he really wants an opportunity for people to weigh in,” Senior Fellow of the Corporation Margaret Marshall LAW ’75 said.

Salovey, Woodbridge Hall administrators and Corporation members all said it is important to remember that Levin was president for two decades while Salovey is less than three years into the role, which perhaps explains his more inclusive approach.

Donna Dubinsky ’77 — who has served on the Corporation since 2006 — said Salovey is more focused on hearing the perspective of the Corporation than Levin was.

By the end of his tenure, Goodyear said Levin grew “very confident” and was deeply familiar with the perspectives of various Corporation members.

A source who attends all Corporation meetings said by the end of his tenure, Levin became complacent and less focused on obtaining broad alignment. Several individuals interviewed went so far as to say Levin grew “dictatorial” in his approach to the Corporation and faculty-related issues, raising the possibility that Salovey’s style is being judged in a relative, not absolute, context.

“Salovey is, I don’t want to say a consensus builder because that suggests a kind of softness — not at all — but he really wants an opportunity for people to weigh in.”

—Margaret Marshall LAW ’75, Senior Corporation Fellow

For now, Goodyear said Salovey appears more focused on collaboration, which may be due in part to his academic background.

“He is a consensus guy; he is a psychologist; and he is very adept at [emotional intelligence]. That’s his style, but maybe 20 years from now he’ll come in and say ‘This is what we’re doing,’” Goodyear said. “But I do think [Salovey] is much more likely to canvass the Corporation.”

Indeed, Wilkinson said Salovey’s expertise suggests that the Corporation has not seized power from him or that he lacks the courage to make decisions. Rather, it suggests that Salovey is sharing influence willingly, Wilkinson said.

Dubinsky said Salovey approaches the Corporation with the mind of a psychologist, while Levin did so through the lens of an economist, enabling Levin to identify tradeoffs and constraints and guide the University through particularly difficult periods. She added that Salovey’s collaborative style fits Yale’s current needs and that the University is fortunate to have “the right guy at the right time.”

In choosing a president to replace Levin, the Corporation chose Salovey, a world-renowned psychologist who had previously served as provost and dean of Yale College.

Goodyear, who led the presidential search, said a desire to move away from the characteristics of the Levin era did not factor into the selection process.

Yet Salovey said upon his ascension to the presidency, Corporation members expressed a desire to become more involved in addressing complex issues from the start.

“Both through a combination of my style and the desire of Corporation members when I interviewed each of them … we are willing to have a more freewheeling discussion in the Corporation room on important issues that might not involve their reacting to specific recommendations,” Salovey said.

As chair of Corporation meetings, Salovey said he has and will continue to express his opinions on current naming issues. And interviews with Corporation members suggest his opinions do carry significant weight because he is the president of the University. But there is an important distinction between Salovey sharing his point of view with the Corporation and submitting a recommendation for the body to ultimately abide by. And even Salovey emphasized that, for unusual matters, while he is not afraid of making recommendations, it is not his prerogative to dictate what the body decides or to formulate a timeline for the Corporation’s decision-making.

“As president of the University, I can organize the discussion; I can provide materials in advance; I can express an opinion,” Salovey said. “But I think it would be a mistake to push for answers before the group is ready.”

MORE TIME, LESS ACCOUNTABILITY

This year has been the first real test of Salovey’s leadership style. The naming of the two new residential colleges, the potential renaming of Calhoun and the potential elimination of the title of master are arguably the most far-reaching and complex decisions Salovey has faced since assuming the presidency.

“I have been on the Corporation for 10 years, and very few things we have grappled with have been at this level,” Dubinsky said.

The Corporation’s increased influence over these major decisions has had sizable consequences. It is unclear to the Yale community who is to be held accountable on these issues, several former administrators and students said. Meanwhile, as the Corporation’s official agenda has grown in scope, the frequency with which the body meets has not increased — inevitably slowing decision-making.

Goodyear, Chauncey and Wilkinson all said Salovey’s approach has both stalled the process and made it more unpredictable. Even Salovey agreed.

“There is no doubt that striving toward a consensus takes more time than simply putting matters up to a vote,” Salovey said. “I’ve been wrong more often than right when I’ve hazarded a guess about when issues will be decided. It is very difficult to predict when [these] issues are going to be decided by them.”

Thirty-eight of 40 students surveyed said the University should be moving more quickly to resolve these three issues.

“It’s time to put these things to rest,” Jacob Bennett ’16 said.

Salovey said that he agrees the naming debates have received much attention — both inside and outside the Corporation — and that the time has come, or will come soon, to “move on.”

Unlike ongoing efforts to choose the names and masters of the two new residential colleges, Wilkinson pointed out that Stiles and Morse had both matters settled years before they opened through the influence of administrative recommendations. He also lamented that under Salovey, individuals who are physically detached from campus increasingly control major University decisions.

“The consensus model is not going to work very well when you’re talking about a multibillion-dollar Corporation,” Wilkinson said. “Corporations like this need a firm hand and firm leadership. What worries me is that Corporation members, no matter how good they are, are only guests of the University.”

In addition, the Corporation only has a small amount of time to discuss naming issues at each meeting. Each board meeting spans just three days, and the body’s confidential agenda includes many items outside of naming issues and the title of master.

“Corporations like this need a firm hand and firm leadership. What worries me is that Corporation members, no matter how good they are, are only guests of the University.”

—John Wilkinson ’60 GRD ’63, former University Secretary

With the Corporation focusing on these three decisions across several meetings, Nordhaus expressed concern from the outside that the body may be neglecting its more traditional responsibilities.

“Someone told me they’re not looking at investments because they’re spending all their time on the new colleges,” Nordhaus said. “I worry about that. Someone told me they’re spending time looking at different schools’ actions, and I worry about that. But I don’t see the agenda.”

One high-ranking administrator who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject said University employees expected decisions to be made more efficiently under Salovey because he rose to prominence within Yale, and thus understands the inner workings of the University. Instead, the administrator said, decision-making has slowed not only for these three issues, but also in areas like capital campaign planning and the development of broader University strategy.

Chauncey said Salovey’s model of consensus management risks robbing Yale of a true leader by distributing accountability throughout the Corporation, adding that other presidents would not have allowed such an increase in the body’s influence.

“Every other president would have resigned by now,” Chancey said. “But if a president doesn’t want to make a mistake, the trustees will keep filling the vacuum … It is my belief that an institution like Yale can only progress if there is someone who is willing to take the responsibility of leadership by making recommendations, including those that might run the risk of getting him or her fired.”

Salovey said that while he is willing to risk making errors, Corporation members have made their desire to be involved “quite clear.”

Indeed, Goodyear said once these three issues are settled, he expects them to be presented to the Yale community as Corporation decisions instead of presidential decisions. That is not the case for typical issues, he said, which represent the vast majority of decisions and are “owned” by the president and his administration. Senior Advisor to the President Martha Highsmith said examples of issues guided by administrative recommendations include the construction of new buildings, increases in the Yale College term bill, the hiring of an officer and the naming of a professor to an endowed chair.

It is, of course, too early to say that decisions made by consensus will be more or less effective than those produced by administrative recommendations, as these three issues are the first to truly test Salovey’s approach. While student memory largely extends only to Salovey’s inauguration, University faculty and administrators are still assessing his style in comparison to past presidents.

Wilkinson said one benefit of Salovey’s model is that full discussion and deliberation will prevent “knee-jerk reactions.” He cited the actions of Harvard and Princeton concerning the title of master.

Dean of the School of Management Edward Snyder noted that while the recommendation-based approach of previous presidents is commonly accepted in research on boards of governance, a more involved, consensus-based approach is as well.

Stephen Schwarzman ’69 — the chairman and CEO of The Blackstone Group who donated $150 million to the University in May — said in his experiences with boards of governance, recommendation-based and consensus-based models each have merit.

“In my experience, both can work,” Schwarzman said.

PEERS MOVE FASTER

By relying on consensus for nonroutine decisions, Salovey has ensured that Yale will not move as quickly, or impulsively, as Harvard and Princeton. Both universities decided to eliminate the title of master in the fall as college campuses across the nation were enveloped by conversations about racism and discrimination, and, in the past few weeks, each has addressed a naming issue of its own: Princeton will not rename buildings honoring former president Woodrow Wilson, and Harvard will change its law school seal, which featured the crest of an 18th-century slaveholding family. In comparison, Yale lags behind.

Unlike Yale, Harvard and Princeton formed special committees that recommended how to settle their respective naming issues. Similar to the approach of former Yale presidents, the Harvard Corporation and Princeton’s Board of Trustees readily approved those recommendations rather than formulate their own. Able to meet more frequently, these committees made decisions relatively quickly.

At Princeton, the 40-person board of trustees was responsible for determining whether to rename buildings honoring Wilson because of his racist legacy. Instead of the entire board settling the issue, however, a trustee committee of 10 put together a formal recommendation.

Princeton’s Assistant Vice President for Communications Daniel Day said forming a special committee enabled Princeton to reach a decision faster. The committee had nine meetings between early December 2015 and late March before submitting its recommendation to the entire board, he said.

In that same period, the Yale Corporation has met twice.

(Amanda Hu, Production & Design Staff)

Harvard also adopted a specialized approach. Rather than ask its Corporation to decide whether to alter the law school seal, Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow charged a committee of faculty, students and an alumnus with doing so in late November. On March 4, the committee recommended to the Harvard Corporation that the symbol be eliminated. The body accepted the recommendation just 10 days later, resolving the issue in under four months.

“The Corporation agrees with your judgment and the recommendation of the committee that the Law School should have the opportunity to retire its existing shield and propose a new one,” wrote Faust and Harvard Corporation Senior Fellow William F. Lee in a March 14 letter to Minow.

Liana Henderson-Semel, a Harvard freshman, said she appreciates the speed with which Harvard responded to concerns about the law school seal and title of master. A recommendations-based approach seems more effective than one based on consensus, she said, because issues this sensitive should be resolved quickly.

Kyle McFadden, a Harvard sophomore, said allowing select members within the Harvard community to formulate recommendations that are ultimately carried out ensures that the direction of the university is determined by those in tune with campus climate.

“If the Harvard Corporation were asked to decide these issues independently, I believe a violation of Harvard’s spirit of community would occur,” McFadden said.

Though Harvard and Princeton have moved at a faster pace than Yale, it seems that their presidents — both of whom publicly endorsed the committees’ recommendations — were less involved in decision-making than Salovey has been on Yale’s three issues.

“The president had no role in the Wilson decision,” Day said. “He was involved in deciding to accept the recommendation, but he was not a formal member of the committee. He wasn’t appointed. The board appointed 10 members, and he was not one chosen.”

But Woodbridge Hall administrators insist that the pace at which Harvard and Princeton have moved should not, and will not, impact Yale’s decision-making timeline.

Despite its relatively infrequent meeting schedule and the progress of Harvard and Princeton, Highsmith said the Yale Corporation has not held any special sessions independent of scheduled meetings to discuss the naming issues.

Salovey said while forming subcommittees can be an effective approach, especially in terms of speed, Yale remains committed to a different course.

“Yale has to be Yale and needs to make its decisions in a way that is consistent with our culture,” Salovey said. “I am completely admiring the efficiency with which Princeton and Harvard made their decisions and announcements. But I think we are just on a different path at Yale, with a larger set of interrelated issues arousing stronger feelings.”

Thirty-four of 40 students surveyed said the University should learn from Harvard and Princeton’s approach to addressing naming issues. But roughly half of those surveyed, such as Sithara Rasheed GRD ’16, emphasized that Yale could absorb the best practices of its peers while crafting an approach of its own.

“We don’t have to behave exactly as they did, but the administration should be engaging with our peers on how to address these issues and learning from them,” Rasheed said.

“Yale has to be Yale and needs to make its decisions in a way that is consistent with our culture.”

—University President Peter Salovey

Snyder said the contrast in progress between Yale and its peers has highlighted a potential downside of Salovey’s more collaborative approach.

“The cost, of course, is a sense of difficulty in reaching a decision, and that cost side is underscored in people’s minds when they see other institutions moving more quickly — at some point you do need decisions,” Snyder said.

A BROADER APPROACH

Salovey’s view of the Corporation may be part of a broader approach to the presidency. He said his professional background undoubtedly influences his leadership style.

“My work as a practicing psychologist certainly allows me to be comfortable with processes that involve a lot of listening with the dynamics of a group, with trying to lead a group toward a consensus,” Salovey said.

In 2013, he established a University-wide cabinet to solicit feedback from vice presidents and professional school deans, demonstrating a penchant for increased collaboration early on.

While discussing the role of the cabinet in response to campus unrest in November, Dean of the School of Health Paul Cleary emphasized that Salovey is highly committed to conversation and inclusion.

A previous investigation by the News found that the cabinet, originally meant to bring University leaders together, was largely excluded from the development of “Toward a Better Yale” initiatives last semester. Under pressure from the Yale community and the national media, Salovey responded to student concerns in just under two weeks.

Perhaps willing to take a more independent approach when under extreme pressure, Salovey’s actions in November suggest he prefers, but does not exclusively require, widespread collaboration.

One of the initiatives established in November involved listening sessions between two Corporation members, including Marshall, and the Yale community to discuss naming issues. On the surface, their establishment made sense: the Corporation controls these issues, and listening sessions fit a larger theme of collaboration. Salovey said there was no hidden message behind the sessions. Rather, he wanted to expand the numbers of University governors who heard directly from the Yale community.

On Nov. 12, students marched on University President Peter Salovey's house, demanding change. (Kaifeng Wu, Photography Editor)

But one problem with these sessions, Wilkinson said, is that they effectively undermined Salovey’s authority. Giamatti would have never proposed such an initiative and would have actively opposed it, he added.

“[Giamatti] would have insisted the senior fellow [who hosted the session] resign,” Wilkinson said.

Chauncey explained that past presidents encouraged trustees to dine with students and hear their points of view face to face. But Corporation members never represented the administration publicly in a policy-making role, he said

Had the senior fellow hosted a conversation about naming issues in the law school auditorium under Brewster, Chauncey said the president would have quit immediately.

“The idea that a trustee was going out with the purpose of bringing back a recommendation would have been unacceptable,” he said. “There were times where trustees would do something like that on their own, and Brewster would say, ‘It’s either you or me.’ Griswold would have done the same thing; Giamatti would have done the same thing; I would have thought Levin was even tougher.”

Indeed, these sessions shed light on one potential issue resulting from consensus management: Students no longer have one clear leader to turn to  or hold accountable.

Noticing the influence Corporation members held over these three decisions, activists told the News last semester that they wanted to speak to those with real power.

“[Salovey] understands he has a responsibility to fix things and is on our side, but the problem is he doesn’t have as much power as students think he does,” said Karleh Wilson ‘16, a member of Next Yale, during the height of campus protests last semester. “He needs the support of other people who have more power — the people who pull the strings he can’t pull.”

It has thus become unclear, to some students, whether they should approach Salovey or the Corporation to weigh in on highly charged issues. The presidency and historic precedent that comes with it suggest the trail ends with Salovey, but his consensus-based approach and collaborative nature suggest that, in this instance, he is just one of 17 Corporation members with a seat at the table.

Regardless of process, Salovey strongly emphasized that he is accountable for all decisions.

“Let me be clear: I consider myself the leader of this institution,” Salovey said. “I will own all decisions, whether I made them alone or I made them in collaboration with the Corporation or if they came out of a formal vote. I would be uncomfortable with any kind of notion that I hide behind Corporation decisions. Rather, on nonroutine, long-range decision-making, I would rather use a more collaborative process, but that does not mean I take any less ownership of the outcome.”

FCK

 

UP CLOSE:
Systemic issues overshadow faculty diversity initiative

by Victor Wang

Published on March 30, 2016

On Nov. 3, 2015, the same day administrators announced a headline-grabbing $50 million faculty diversity initiative, Karen Nakamura GRD ’01, a renowned interdisciplinary scholar of gender and disability studies, sent the University her resignation letter.

The irony is almost self-evident: Nakamura, a tenured professor involved in the Anthropology, East Asian Studies, Film Studies and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies programs, was one of only a few scholars studying disability issues at Yale and embodied the very diversity the initiative seeks to foster. Yet despite repeated calls from her colleagues for the University to retain her, Nakamura has left Yale for the University of California, Berkeley, where she is now the chair of Disabilities Studies. UC Berkeley will provide her with new, centrally located lab space devoted to researching disabilities.

While it is unclear whether this financial support was the main motivation for Nakamura’s departure, her colleagues suggested that Yale was unwilling to offer even a modest counteroffer. Nakamura declined to comment.

“Nakamura very much enjoyed being here … but she was treated so shabbily by the administration,” anthropology professor Bill Kelly said. “It would’ve taken such a small percentage of the initiative’s money to keep her here. So when we get an email about a $50 million initiative, we just roll our eyes.”

Under the new plan, Yale will provide up to $25 million University-wide to support half the salary of any new hires who increase faculty diversity. Individual schools will provide the other half. The initiative will also invite visiting scholars and increase funding for graduate student research.

“I wager that three years from now, Yale will be $50 million poorer and the faculty will be even less diverse than it was in 2004–2005. I can only hope that I’m wrong.”

—African American Studies and American Studies professor Glenda Gilmore

But the $50 million sum, while hefty, pales in comparison with similar initiatives at peer institutions with far smaller endowments: Columbia University has dedicated more than $80 million to faculty diversity over the past decade, and Brown University recently announced a $165 million Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan.

And while Columbia’s and Brown’s initiatives have been widely praised, Yale’s new initiative has generated skepticism. Last fall, a committee of 33 Faculty of Arts and Sciences professors met four times in secret with top administrators to raise concerns about the lack of detail and research in the initiative’s planning. Interviews with more than 20 professors, many of whom served on that committee, revealed doubts about whether the University’s new initiative will do anything to address longstanding problems with Yale’s hiring, promotion and retention of diverse faculty members — problems that have repeatedly been raised over the last few decades to little effect.

“I wager that three years from now, Yale will be $50 million poorer and the faculty will be even less diverse than it was in 2004–2005,” said African American Studies and American Studies professor Glenda Gilmore. “I can only hope that I’m wrong.”

NUMBERS DON’T LIE

By all accounts, Yale’s faculty diversity statistics are cause for concern.

“Without a doubt, the numbers are not good,” Deputy Provost for Faculty Development and Diversity Richard Bribiescas said. “It’s not at what we would like it to be.”

(Sam Laing, Production & Design Staff)

Of the 655 ladder professors in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, 24 are black, 62 are Asian, 18 are Hispanic, two are Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islanders and one is Native American, according to Yale’s Office of Institutional Research. Together, they comprise 16.5 percent of FAS ladder faculty members.

These are the numbers that University administrators cite when asked about Yale’s faculty diversity. But some faculty members say these percentages — already low — may still overstate minority representation.

Technically, Asian-Americans and internationals do not fall under the definition of “underrepresented minorities.” If these two groups are removed from the count of faculty, the percentage of underrepresented minority faculty in the FAS drops to a mere 6.6 percent.

Even using Yale’s metrics, the University’s faculty diversity has deteriorated recently. In the 2011–2012 academic year, 17.6 percent of FAS ladder faculty members were minorities — 1.1 percent more than now. That year was a high point for underrepresented minorities as well, with Latino, black, Native American and Pacific Islander professors making up 8.2 percent of the faculty. By any metric, Yale is doing worse than four years ago.

The University is also doing worse than its peer institutions with similar diversity initiatives. In 2011–2012, Yale outpaced Brown in its percentage of minority faculty, 17.6 percent to 16.6. Today, minorities comprise 18.4 percent of tenure-track faculty at Brown — 1.8 percentage points more than at Yale. At Columbia, the contrast is even starker, with minorities making up 19.2 percent of tenured or tenure-track faculty members. If Columbia included international faculty members in this count, as Yale does, the number would shoot up to 26.7 percent.

“We presented these numbers and comparisons with Brown and Columbia to the University years ago, and little happened. It’s not that they didn’t know,” said former English and African American Studies professor Elizabeth Alexander, who left Yale for Columbia in 2015. “Why does the campus have to explode for faculty diversity to be addressed? Why do faculty of color have to push for this? This should be coming from the top leadership.”

A GAME OF SLOTS

For the first time in its history, the Ethnicity, Race and Migration Program is conducting faculty searches to recruit top scholars studying issues of diversity and ethnicity, who are often also of minority descent.

ER&M’s historic hiring troubles underline how Yale’s faculty hiring system, also known as the slot system, has failed to support interdisciplinary and nontraditional departments. And the new faculty diversity initiative does little to change the system, Gilmore said.

The University allocates resources for faculty hiring by assigning each FAS member a “slot.” Most of these over 700 slots are controlled by individual departments. Slots free up when a faculty member retires or leaves, and departments can fill vacant slots with administrative approval.

The FAS also holds six “pool” slots, which a faculty committee can give out at its discretion to any department to encourage diverse hiring. When hires made on pool slots leave, the committee can reassign the slot to any department.

Traditionally, there have been six pool slots. But Tamar Gendler, the inaugural dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, said her office has added four more pool slots specifically to hire candidates who bring “excellence and diversity” during the current and following two academic years. In addition, one pool slot was designated in November to support faculty whose work addresses the histories, lives and cultures of unrepresented and underrepresented communities, bringing the total number of pool slots to 11.

The combination of the departmental and pool slots creates stability and flexibility for long-term departmental development, Gendler said.

“Why does the campus have to explode for faculty diversity to be addressed? Why do faculty of color have to push for this? This should be coming from the top leadership.”

—Former English and African American Studies professor Elizabeth Alexander

But most faculty members interviewed said that while the slot system makes sense in theory, in reality it is confusing and frustrating, especially in hiring and retaining minority faculty. Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program Chair Margaret Homans said she found it “irksome and surprising” that her program was unable to immediately replace assistant professor Vanessa Agard-Jones following the announcement that she was leaving for Columbia. Since Agard-Jones was hired through a pool slot, WGSS has to reapply to keep the position.

“I think the system is benignly designed to foster diversity, but it’s not working,” Homans said. “It’s clearly a disaster.”

Under the slot system, larger and more established departments have more departmental slots and thus more hiring power. Newer departments — such as those that study ethnicity or identity — are naturally at a disadvantage.

According to Gendler, departmental slot assignments are largely a historical matter. The original configuration was determined in 1992 and has remained largely unchanged since then, she said.

But this means that traditionally marginalized departments still have largely the same limited hiring power that they did over two decades ago, despite growing student interest.

“[The number of slots] is an embarrassment,” WGSS professor Inderpal Grewal said. “WGSS has been here for a while, but it is Yale’s attitude towards women and gender studies that leads to the program getting very little attention and respect. This attitude is not a reflection of society at large.”

Before student protests last fall surrounding structural racism on campus, the ER&M program, which first offered undergraduate majors in 1998, had virtually no say in faculty recruitment. Even Yale’s African American Studies Department — one of the leading departments in the country — only has one full faculty appointment and thus has to rely heavily on joint appointments or pool slots.

“Since we’ve been here for 50 years and we are one of the leading programs in the world, why not give us the permanent resources to maintain that stature?” African American Studies Department Chair Jacqueline Goldsby GRD ’98 said.

(Sam Laing, Production & Design Staff)

Gendler said department chairs can submit proposals to turn pool slots into departmental slots, although she has not received such a proposal in the past. Goldsby said she is currently in the process of submitting one for Af-Am Studies.

“Units that promote emerging fields of study are best off, for the long run, being shaped by departmental lines that remain in that unit’s permanent control,” Goldsby said. “Pressing for — and winning — that policy change is a crucial area for administrative activism, so far as I’m concerned.”

Some faculty members said they are worried that the new $50 million initiative will not resolve the paucity of slots for departments that study and attract diversity.

“My big hope would be that the initiative really puts the funds toward departments where minority scholars are: Af-Am, ER&M and WGSS,” said Marcus Hunter, a former assistant professor in the Sociology Department who is now at UCLA. “That is where diversity is really happening. But it’s the last place that gets that kind of attention when efforts come around to support diversity.”

Alexander said the competitive structure of the initiative may unfairly put historically diverse departments on the same footing as “other departments who have mostly only hired white people for decades.”

Gendler said she does not differentiate by department when submitting names of candidates to the provost for consideration for the initiative.

ASSESSING ACCOUNTABILITY

While the onus to diversify faculty often falls upon individual departments themselves, some professors noted that certain departments simply have not made diversity a priority. And the administration, they said, has not held these departments accountable for this — a failing that may dilute the efficacy of the new initiative.

Several professors pointed to the Political Science Department as a prime example of a lack of motivation and accountability in addressing diversity.

Over the past four years, the department has turned down the opportunity to hire four black male professors. Additionally, a recent informal list of 70 potential faculty hires in the department had five women and no underrepresented minorities, according to a faculty member in the social sciences who requested to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the subject.

The Political Science Department’s hiring strategy exhibits a pattern that undermines or completely ignores diversity, the professor said.

“People just give lip service. They don’t actually value the kinds of approaches and research minority faculty tend to do,” the professor said. “In political science, black faculty tend to contribute to racial inequality and racial power. If you do not consider these [research areas] as legitimate or important, when you have a general search, black faculty are competing on unequal terrain.”

One of the black candidates who was ultimately turned down, the professor said, was a renowned scholar who had an accomplished resume but gave a weak talk during his interview process. Rather than giving him another opportunity, the department decided not to hire him.

“I think more eyebrows should have been raised,” the professor said. “Shouldn’t we have lingered on this longer, given that we have zero black men? We are effectively scuttling any opportunity to hire a black man. It’s been really demoralizing.”

Political Science Department Chair Steven Wilkinson said the department already has some of the nation’s leading political scientists working on gender, race and the concept of difference. But he admitted that it needs to do more to recruit top minority scholars. Hiring another scholar who works on issues of immigration and diversity is a departmental priority, he said.

Other departments have taken broader, more concrete approaches to increasing diversity. Yale’s English Department has become very “forward-looking” and recognizes that the field can no longer just be Euro-centric, Goldsby, also a professor in the English Department, said. And in the Anthropology Department, Kelly said, the search committees look beyond American universities to create a diverse candidate pool. If the search is done correctly, there should be no conflicts between the best faculty and diverse faculty, Kelly said.

Some have pointed to the varying successes of different departments as evidence that the administration has not systematically held all department leaders and senior faculty accountable for promoting diversity.

Economics and Af-Am Studies professor Gerald Jaynes, who led a review of faculty diversity in 1991, said the administration needs to be proactive in changing the attitude of certain departments that have not approached diversity with the appropriate alacrity.

“At this stage in 2016, if a field of knowledge is not attracting a diverse set of people, one should have serious questions about that field and the leadership,” American Studies professor Michael Denning said. “The leadership and senior faculty in a lot of fields are not setting any examples. The real question is how the University should hold the different disciplines and departments accountable to how well they are attracting diversity.”

Gendler said there are already incentives and checks in place for departments to engage in building diversity. For example, departmental search committees must have an internal diversity officer, who makes sure the candidate pool is diverse.

“We presume that departments are doing work in good faith,” she said. “Departments that do not make concerted efforts for diversity are not in a good position to ask for pool slots for any hirings.”

Still, concerns about accountability persist, and several professors are worried that there will be no mechanism within the new $50 million initiative to ensure that departments participate.

“At this stage in 2016, if a field of knowledge is not attracting a diverse set of people, one should have serious questions about that field and the leadership.”

—American Studies professor Michael Denning

Grewal said departments have control of the kind of searches they make, and the diversity initiative would not have much effect if departments already have a particular vision for their work that does not include a diverse faculty.

Gendler said the initiative does not change the process of faculty searches and hires but simply allows her office to craft more competitive salaries and research-related packages when offers are made. There is no extra incentive and accountability to ensure that departments participate in the initiative, she said.

“A robust diversity program must hold [departments] accountable … Provost Polak and Dean Gendler control faculty hiring slots and search authorizations and can use that power as diversity management tools,” Gilmore said. “In my opinion, neither seemed to realize that they would have to develop a structure to hold departments accountable for diversity.”

RETENTION WOES

Even when departments do succeed in recruiting underrepresented minority scholars, keeping them at Yale can present a more significant challenge.

Those who have worked to promote faculty diversity at Yale say the University’s problems with retention are well known and entrenched, and partially a product of Yale’s unique tenure system. When Jaynes authored the 1991 faculty diversity report, its recommendations pointed out retention issues. But in the ensuing 25 years, the University has still not done a good job of retaining minority faculty, he said.

“If we had been able to retain even half of the minority faculty we recruited, we would have pretty good statistics,” Jaynes said.

In 2006, Yale launched a faculty diversity initiative that aimed to hire at least 30 new professors from minority backgrounds and another 30 female professors. Between the start of the initiative and November 2011, Yale successfully hired an additional 56 minority and 30 female faculty members. But after a series of departures, Yale ultimately only retained 40 of those new hires — fewer than half.

Several of Yale's faculty of color have left the University for other institutions, including Columbia. (Courtesy of Columbia Spectator)

The new $50 million initiative similarly does not propose an explicit plan for retention, although part of the budget may be used for retention efforts at the dean’s discretion, according to Gendler.

Retention issues have particularly plagued the Anthropology Department, which over the last five years has lost eight faculty members — seven of whom were female or underrepresented minority professors. But that department’s retention woes are not unique, and three high-profile departures in the Af-Am Studies Department this past year brought the issue of minority faculty retention to the fore of discussions about diversity at Yale.

Bribiescas acknowledged that retention is a challenge but suggested that the issue is not systemic.

“When it comes to retention cases, every case is personal and unique and every case is a challenge,” Bribiescas said. “The faculty needs to be aware that in addition to some retention cases where faculty members leave, there are numerous cases where we successfully retain faculty. But these are not publicized because the details are confidential.”

Bribiescas and other administrators have often said that faculty members’ decisions to leave Yale may involve a personal dimension, such as a preference to raise young children in New York rather than New Haven, or job opportunities for faculty spouses. But in many cases — such as Nakamura’s — they seem to relate more to Yale’s climate and culture.

And Yale’s unusual tenure system only exacerbates the problem.

Yale has an unusually long tenure clock, which means that professors are often not reviewed for tenure until their eighth year. Assistant professors who are promoted to the associate level often do not receive tenure. At most of Yale’s peer institutions, the tenure clock is typically 6 to 8 years, and associate professors receive tenure as they work toward a full professorship.

For young, midcareer faculty members, the prospect of job security elsewhere is often too appealing to pass up.

“You are asking people who are top scholars in their fields to accept the unknown here,” Asian American Studies specialist Mary Lui said. “That is truly difficult.”

Junior faculty members of color are especially likely to be poached, Jacobson said, due to the high demand for excellent scholars who also bring diversity to institutions.

“Other institutions roll out the red carpet,” said a minority faculty member who asked to remain anonymous.

Gendler is leading a faculty committee to re-examine the decade-old tenure process, with particular attention toward the loss of minority faculty members. She said she hopes the faculty will consider revisions to the system to address the problems with the mismatch between the tenure clock at Yale and other institutions.

Still, some faculty members have suggested that challenges with retention stem primarily not from the tenure clock, but from more systemic biases, such as the devaluing of minority scholars and their scholarship and mentorship work.

When American Studies assistant professor Birgit Rasmussen, who specializes in Native American literature, was denied promotion by the Humanities Tenure and Promotion Committee in 2014, several faculty members in the department raised concerns about scholarship bias.

“If you in an undervalued field — even if you are the most brilliant scholar — you will be undervalued,” Jacobson said.

(Sam Laing, Production & Design Staff)

Professors also noted that the tenure review does not place enough emphasis on the mentorship roles of minority faculty, who often take students under their wing. Because of Yale’s low number of minority scholars, the service and mentorship burdens disproportionately fall on a small number of women faculty and faculty of color.

“Everyone says it’s good when you help the undocumented student who came to you in the middle of the night, but that sort of mentorship and service is not taken into account in promotions,” a minority professor said. “I am called on to do everything — I am not going to turn down a promising black student who needs a senior advisor. That is the biggest area of frustration for being a woman and minority faculty member.”

Amy Hungerford, divisional director for the humanities, said the committee is careful to ask many questions about service during the review process, but noted that the committee is currently taking steps to make these discussions more concrete.

But for all their work mentoring others, minority faculty themselves often lack mentorship.

A 2014 diversity summit report, which was conducted by outside experts and scholars, noted that there is too little accountability among department chairs and deans at Yale for mentoring junior faculty. The report noted that this deficit can affect the general climate for minority faculty, and it suggested that the University develop more concrete mentorship strategies.

“You have to be more concerned about whether junior faculty are happy,” Jaynes said. “You have to ask what the climate might be for different junior faculty members. We need more concrete mentoring structures in departments.”

Gendler said junior faculty mentoring is a priority of her office and setting up a robust mentorship structure will be one of the first tasks of the new deputy dean of diversity in her office, when the position is finalized.

But despite these efforts, some faculty members who recently left Yale said the administration simply seems indifferent to diverse faculty departures.

“The Yale senior administration does not feel any special urgency to retain the faculty who bring diversity to it,” said a senior professor of color who left the University within the last year. “It’s telling that none of the faculty who left that I have talked to received exit interviews from the senior administration. The assumption appears to be that our leaving is just part of the natural process of faculty coming and going, and that there is no need to examine the process by which faculty are retained and promoted at Yale.”

Five former faculty members interviewed had differing accounts of the seriousness of the administration’s efforts to retain them. Gendler said the FAS addresses competing offers for junior faculty by considering early promotion and crafting “strong retention packages” that may include salary, research and programming support. But these packages only seem to materialize in some cases.

“In my case, tremendous effort was taken to retain me,” a recently departed minority faculty member said. “Part of the problem is that I was able to watch the ways in which little effort was taken to retain others. The fact that some efforts to retain minority faculty are not taken as seriously as others matters.”

Former professors said the University relies too much on its reputation in its retention efforts. Two professors no longer at Yale said even though they received offers from leading departments at other institutions, the administration maintained that they should be “honored” to be at Yale.

Alexander said that while she was proud of the work of the Af-Am Studies Department and her role as department chair during her time at Yale, she left because of imaginative new opportunities at Columbia and at the Ford Foundation. She also said she had a sense of frustration about the broader project of diversity building at the University.

“Did I feel that along with my colleagues devoted to these issues that I was not made a true partner in positive change? Yes. Did I leave because of a series of absolutely wonderful opportunities that I was recruited to … after 15 great years at Yale? Yes,” she said. “I went away not angry, but feeling that it was not the right moment for me to build further at this university. I hope that now is the moment for bold chance at the University I love so much.”

Although none of the $50 million from the new diversity initiative is specifically earmarked for retention, Gendler said the additional funding will give her more flexibility to provide competitive retention packages.

STACKING UP

While Yale professors have pointed out the ways in which the new diversity initiative may fail to address the University’s myriad issues with hiring, retention and climate, they have also identified the scale and strategies of Columbia’s and Brown’s initiatives as potential models.

Both other initiatives have much more funding, for one. Columbia’s consists of $85 million over the past decade, and Brown’s is worth $165 million — more than twice the cost of Yale’s initiative, even though Brown’s endowment is less than an eighth of Yale’s.

Yale’s initiative, Homans noted, really only consists of $25 million, since the other $25 million is coming from the schools themselves. Other professors said they were unsure how much of the budget would go toward hiring FAS faculty, as opposed to professors at the professional schools.

“My view is that it’s a start. Brown University’s commitment is much larger, of course, so Yale’s has been overshadowed,” Grewal said. “But of course if it’s $50 million for the entire university, including the professional schools, it may not be enough. We wait to see what the share of FAS will be.”

(Sam Laing, Production & Design Staff)

Columbia’s and Brown’s initiatives exceed Yale’s not only in price, but in planning and scope as well.

Columbia’s diversity initiative consists of five different investments over the past decade, each of which is earmarked for a specific area of the university. The initiative, which has won awards such as the 2015 Higher Education Excellence in Diversity Award from a higher education magazine, has also focused its attention on specific kinds of diversity at different points in time. For example, the university announced an LGBTQ initiative — the first of its kind among peer institutions — this past January.

Columbia Vice Provost for Faculty Diversity and Inclusion Dennis Mitchell, who oversees the diversity initiatives there, suggested that an institution must go beyond monetary commitments in order to build a diverse faculty. It must pay close attention to creating and nurturing an inclusive climate, which includes a critical mass of faculty from historically underrepresented groups, Mitchell said.

Brown’s initiative is much newer — the finalized plan was announced three months after Yale’s — but the university has already provided a detailed and concrete plan in the form of a 67-page document. $100 million of the $165 million allocation, for example, will go toward creating 25 new endowed professorships. According to Liza Cariaga-Lo, Brown’s vice president for academic development, diversity and inclusion, the university aims to double its underrepresented minority faculty within five years.

The initiative also includes emphasis on departmental accountability, a defined numerical goal for faculty diversity and a specific structure for faculty mentorship.

“We strongly believe that we can make pronouncements and set goals, but the intentional work to hire professors is really done in the departments,” Cariaga-Lo said. “Our plan aims to increase deliberate accountability within departments.”

She added that each department at Brown is required to submit individual diversity inclusion plans by June. If they do not do so, the university will not approve its faculty hiring plans.

Jacobson said in order for Yale’s initiative to make lasting change, it must similarly reimagine the University’s intellectual culture.

“The natural momentum of the place is very conservative,” he said. “To disrupt that, you have to go against the grain.”

Correction, March 30: A previous version of this article incorrectly calculated that Columbia’s minority faculty make up 23.5 percent of tenured or tenure-track faculty members, and stated that with international faculty members added, the number increases to 38 percent. In fact, the accurate percentage is 19.2 percent minority faculty, which increases to 26.7 percent with international faculty included. 

Yale nearly makes history — again — in 71–64 loss to Duke

By Jacob Mitchell, Maya Sweedler

Published on March 19, 2016

The 2015–16 season of the Yale men’s basketball team featured the end of the second-longest tournament drought in the NCAA, a new record for consecutive field goals made and an upset victory over Baylor that marked the Yale program’s first ever NCAA Tournament win.

And during the second half of Saturday afternoon’s matchup with No. 4-seeded Duke, the No. 12-seeded Bulldogs had much of the nation wondering if they might add another historic landmark to that list.

Over a 22-minute stretch that began in the first half, Yale (23–7, 13–1 Ivy) cut a 27-point Duke (25–10, 11–7 ACC) advantage to just three with 40.1 seconds left, putting itself in position to potentially break the record of 25 points for the largest comeback in NCAA Tournament history. The Bulldogs, spurred by a 15–0 run and the energy of an electric Yale-heavy crowd in Providence, had a berth to the Sweet 16 — and the defending national champions — within striking distance.

But stories must end at some point, and the story of this Eli team was finally sealed with less than 10 seconds remaining in the game. Yale point guard Makai Mason ’18, fresh off a heroic 31-point outing versus Baylor, heaved a desperation three that never hit the rim, leading Yale to foul point guard Grayson Allen after the ensuing rebound.

With 8.2 seconds and a 69–64 advantage for the No. 4-seeded Blue Devils showing on the scoreboard, Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski turned to the Blue Devil crowd behind him and repeatedly yelled “Yes!” — celebrating his own team’s triumph while simultaneously marking the end of a historic run for Yale.

When the final buzzer sounded, Duke had earned a 71–64 victory over the Bulldogs.

“I thought we took some ill-advised shots, but we got it back in the second half, and our guys fought,” Yale head coach James Jones said. “I couldn’t be more proud of what they did … And I told these guys in the locker room, there are 351 teams that play Division I basketball. We made it down to the final 32, and we’re three possessions away from the being in the final 16.”

For all coverage of the Yale men's basketball team's trip to March Madness, click here.

In many ways, Yale executed as it had hoped. The Bulldogs relentlessly attacked the glass at both ends of the floor, outrebounding Duke 42–28 while grabbing 20 offensive rebounds to Duke’s five.

That effort resulted in a dramatic Yale advantage in second-chance points. The Elis translated those additional opportunities into 21 points while Duke scored just two on second chances.

“That’s what we hang our hat on, offensive rebounding,” forward Justin Sears ’16 said. “We have that advantage. I think we did pound the glass very hard and very well, and that’s what led to our comeback. I think we strayed away from going inside. They were doubling us, and we really didn’t take advantage of our interior offense and our post presence in this game.”

Additionally, the discrepancy between the two teams’ shooting from three-point range proved too much for Yale to overcome.

Twenty-one seconds into the game, Duke’s freshman phenom Brandon Ingram nailed a three from the left wing that wound up being an unfortunate sign of things to come for Yale.

The Blue Devils shot 63 percent from the field in the first half, including a remarkable 9–15 performance from beyond the arc. Meanwhile, Yale made just 11 field goals total in the frame, hindered by a 1–11 effort from deep.

“It was one of those halves where everything we shot went in,” Krzyzewski said. They had open looks. I think they were 1–11 from three in the first half … at halftime, I said, you know, we have kind of like fool’s gold a little bit, in that we think we’re playing better defense than we are. Because their two wings [Mason and guard Nick Victor ’16] are 40 percent three-point shooters, and they didn’t hit a shot, and in the second half they did.”

Yale could not find an answer for Duke point guard Grayson Allen, who nailed four of six three-pointers en route to 22 points in the opening period. At one point in the half, Allen had outscored Yale by himself, 22–19.

Duke point guard Grayson Allen.

The sophomore guard finished with a game-high 29 points on 10–15 shooting — including 5–7 from beyond the arc — from the floor.

The Bulldogs, meanwhile, turned the ball over five times in the first half, leading to 13 points for the Blue Devils. Yale’s leading scorers on the season, Mason and Sears, were kept in check in that first frame, as Mason scored six points while Sears was held scoreless. Sears, the two-time Ivy League Player of the Year, struggled to operate effectively against the length of Duke’s frontline, led by the 6-foot-9 Ingram.

The Blue Devils’ dominant first half included a 17–0 run, as the Bulldogs went scoreless for a stretch of 5:38 that allowed Duke’s lead to swell to 46–19 with less than three minutes remaining in the period.

Tasked with a 48–25 halftime deficit to overcome, Yale began to rewrite the game’s story with a 18–2 run early in the second half to cut Duke’s lead to seven with 11 and a half minutes to play.

“Allen as well as Ingram hit some tough shots, and all you could do was throw your hands up and say, okay, next play,” Sears said. “Coach told us at halftime eventually they’ll start missing, go cold, and that’s what happened the second half. We played a little harder, got in their faces a little more, and eventually the shots stopped falling.”

Consecutive three-pointers from guards Anthony Dallier ’17 and Victor moved the score to 54–38 with 14:43 remaining. The Bulldogs then tacked on nine more unanswered points, five of which forward Brandon Sherrod ’16 contributed.

In that time, Duke missed eight consecutive shots.

Dallier turned in one of the best games he has played all season. The junior tied his season-high scoring total with twelve points in the contest, including two three-pointers, and collected five rebounds.

An emphatic slam from Sears with 12:36 left brought the deficit to single digits for the first time in more than 17 minutes. A Sherrod lay-in capped the game-changing run, which captivated and enthralled much of the 12,000-plus crowd at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center. Sherrod wound up pacing the Elis with 22 points on 10–17 shooting.

The two teams then traded baskets with the Duke lead stabilizing at nine with exactly six minutes remaining. For the next 2:26, neither team was able to score until Ingram snapped the drought with a three-pointer that pushed the lead back to double-digits.

Down 65–53 with just a few minutes possibly remaining in their historic season, the Bulldogs put together one of their best two-and-a-half minute stretches of basketball all season long. Sears, who tallied seven offensive rebounds, tipped in a Victor miss. Sherrod blocked an Ingram layup attempt and converted that into another two Yale points.

“I just tried to do what I could for my team,” Sherrod said. “We had the home fans. It felt like a home game, and I was feeding off the energy from the crowd as well. We wanted to give them what they bought their tickets for, wanted to give them their money’s worth with the effort that we put in in the second half.”

Victor and Sherrod then stole the ball on consecutive possessions, flustering the Blue Devils and creating opportunities for the Bulldogs to get to the line. Dallier and Sears combined to go 4–4 from the line in a 28-second span, allowing Yale to cut Duke’s lead to 65–61 with 1:08 to play.

Coming out of its final timeout and up by five with 0:52 on the clock, Duke fouled Sherrod under the basket. The senior drained the first but the second rimmed out, and Blue Devil center Marshall Plumlee inadvertently tipped in the missed free throw. The two points were awarded to Sears, who finished with 12 points and 11 rebounds — his sixth double-double of the season.

Thanks to the tip-in, the Elis were down by a single possession with 0:39 seconds remaining as Duke clung to a 67–64 lead.

But ultimately, Yale failed to fully close the gap, as Ingram knocked down a clutch pair of foul shots to extend the lead. On the following possession, Sherrod missed a layup in traffic, forcing Yale to foul again.

This time, Ingram missed the front end of a one-and-one with 16 seconds left, giving Yale one more chance to cut into the lead. At that point, however, Mason missed a contested three from well beyond the three-point line. Allen secured the rebound and then scored the final two points of the game from the foul line to seal the 71–64 win.

“We have played in games where teams have kind of creeped back in, and that is exactly what Yale did,” guard Luke Kennard, who scored 13 points in the contest, said. “We just have to figure out the way to keep that lead and keep that momentum our way. But hats off to Yale. They placed a great game. They have senior leadership and great players.”

The Bulldogs finished their historic year with the most wins in a season since the 1906–07 team, which finished 30–7–1.

Duke, meanwhile, moves on to play next Thursday in Anaheim against the winner of Sunday’s matchup between No. 1-seeded Oregon and No. 8-seeded Saint Joseph’s.

Underdog Yale meets storied Duke in Second Round showdown

By Jacob Mitchell, Maya Sweedler

Published on

Yale’s James Jones is the longest-tenured head coach in the Ivy League, currently in his 17th year at the helm of the Elis’ program. Though Jones has guided the Bulldogs to three Ivy League titles, this year marks his first trip to the NCAA Tournament as well as Yale’s first chance to dance since 1962.

Meanwhile, legendary Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski was hired 36 years ago Friday. During that period, the Blue Devils have gone to the NCAA Tournament 33 times and won five national championships, with the fifth coming just a year ago.

But come today, none of that matters. This afternoon, No. 12-seeded Yale (23–6, 13–1 Ivy) will take the court against No. 4-seeded Duke (24–10, 11–7 ACC) in a win-or-go-home contest for a berth in the Sweet 16.

“Duke is a storied program, and it would wrong for us to go into this game not thinking about that,” forward Brandon Sherrod ’16 said. “But obviously, like [Justin Sears ’16] said before, it’s March, and anything can happen, and we’re just looking to go in and compete and play hard.”

The Bulldogs are coming off their first NCAA Tournament win in program history, a 79–75 upset over No. 5-seeded Baylor in which point guard Makai Mason ’18 scored a career-high 31 points. Yale’s win came just a few hours after the reigning national champion Duke walked off the floor at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center with a win of its own. The Blue Devils ultimately dispatched No. 13 UNC-Wilmington, 93–85, in a tight contest that saw Duke trailing by three at the halftime break.

In addition to outshooting Baylor by nine percentage points from the field, Yale won the battle of the boards against the Bears in a matchup of two of the premiere rebounding teams in the country. The Bulldogs’ prolific ability to attack the glass is no coincidence, as Sears noted the emphasis Jones puts on rebounding, often having the team practice the skill two to three times per practice.

The Elis currently rank top-10 in the nation in both rebounding margin and offensive rebounding, and three players — Sears, Sherrod and guard Nick Victor ’16 — each average seven or more rebounds per game.

In Thursday’s contest, the Elis outrebounded Baylor 36–32 as Yale received a big contribution from forward Sam Downey ’17, who came off the bench to add eight points and a team-high seven rebounds.

“If someone doesn’t run in for a rebound, [if] Brandon [Sherrod] is just in there watching, the coaches are going to yell at them, I’m going to yell at them, and Makai [Mason] is going to yell at them,” Sears said. “Our goal is to get every offensive rebound, get a second chance, a third chance, maybe even a fourth chance to put the ball in the basket. It’s just the team’s mindset when you go out there.”

Sears and Sherrod will match up against a lengthy Blue Devils frontline that includes seven-foot center Marshall Plumlee and six-foot-nine swingman Brandon Ingram. In Thursday’s Duke victory, Plumlee shot 9–10 from the floor, including eight dunks, en route to a career-high 23 points.

Prior to the NCAA Tournament, Plumlee averaged 8.3 points per game, but the 23-year-old graduate student noted on Friday that he is playing with a “sense of urgency” in what will be his final trip in March Madness.

In Yale’s 19-point November loss at Cameron Indoor Stadium, Plumlee scored five points and Ingram added 15 points, second-most on the team. However, the freshman — who tallied 20 points in Duke’s first-round win over UNC-Wilmington — did not start against Yale. Forward Amile Jefferson, a senior, was starting until he broke his right foot on Dec. 12.

Despite a slow start, Ingram has put together a very strong freshman season that likely will be his only year in Durham, North Carolina before he enters the NBA draft. In the absence of Jefferson, Ingram has stepped up, averaging 16.9 points per game entering Saturday.

However, it was Jefferson’s contributions on the glass that have been most been missed, as he averaged 10.3 rebounds per game in his nine starts, including a 12-board outing against Yale. Without Jefferson, the Duke rotation is down to seven players, something to which Krzyzewski said his starters have acclimated.

“They’ve [played in a short rotation] since [Jefferson] has been out, so they’re accustomed to it,” Krzyzewski said. “I think one of the very best things that can happen to a player is that he knows he’s going to play, and he knows when he’s going to play and how he’s going to be used and who he’ll be on the court with … Our starters know that they could play 40 minutes, and they like that.”

Though Duke’s starters have plenty of game-time experience, only one — co-captain and guard Matt Jones — had started in an NCAA Tournament game prior to Thursday.

Star point guard Grayson Allen was second on the team with 16 points in last season’s national championship game against Wisconsin, but he did not start in any tournament games last year. Still, after electing to forgo the NBA draft and return for his sophomore season, Allen has flourished as a starter and leads the Blue Devils in almost every offensive statistic.

His 21.6 points per game average rank 15th in the nation, and his 83 made three-pointers rank third in the ACC. Stopping Allen, who has scored in double figures in 23 consecutive games, will be one of Yale’s biggest challenges.

With Allen and two freshmen — Ingram and guard Luke Kennard — in the starting lineup for Duke, the Blue Devils are significantly younger than the Bulldogs’ starters, which features three seniors in Sears, Sherrod and Victor.

“They’re a smart team,” Duke guard Matt Jones said of Yale. “They’re very experienced, and you can’t put a price tag on experience. They’ve been together for a while, so they’re comfortable playing with each other.”

Sears has started for the Bulldogs for three years, while Sherrod and Victor, who both took a post-graduate year out of high school, have a combined 112 starts between them during their Yale careers.

Sears has been the Ivy League Player of the Year for the past two seasons. He and Sherrod both earned First-Team All-Ivy honors for their play this past season, with Victor picking up an Honorable Mention nod.

“Justin Sears is unique,” James Jones said. “There is no one like him on the planet. I assure you of that. If you watch us closely, he will never roll the right way. He will go off the wrong foot to shoot a lay-up like I was taught when I was in fourth grade. But he is uniquely good.”

But the frontcourt is not Yale’s only strength. Mason has come into his own over the last few months, and his 31-point explosion against Baylor firmly pushed him ahead of Sears for the highest scoring average on the team at 16.9 points per game.

Mason is one of three Bulldogs averaging double-digit scoring. Sears, at 15.9 points per game, and Sherrod, who averages 12.4, round out the trio.

“[Mason’s] doing a great job of handling the bulk of point guard responsibilities, creating for other guys,” Allen said of his counterpart. “But at the same time, he’s doing a great job of pulling up and finding his own shot within their offense … He makes tough shots and he’s really crafty with the ball, whereas it’s going to be tough to keep him in front one-on-one.”

Duke does not necessarily have to play Yale man-to-man, as the Blue Devils’ 1–3–1 zone defense stymied the Bulldogs in the November meeting. While the Elis attempted to break down the defense, Duke’s offense — third-most efficient in the country, according to KenPom — put up 42 second-half points.

The two rosters have changed significantly since Yale and Duke squared off in November. On Duke’s side, the loss of Jefferson has made way for Ingram’s game to further develop. Meanwhile the expulsion of former Yale captain Jack Montague on Feb. 10 has forced the Bulldogs to play their last nine games with Anthony Dallier ’17 in the starting shooting guard role. Yale has not missed a beat, going 8–1 while adjusting to a modified rotation.

WIth just a day of rest between the games on Thursday and Saturday, Yale and Duke are two teams prepared to handle the short turnaround. Duke has routinely played games on Saturday and Monday throughout the season, primarily due to the national TV schedule, while Yale’s Ivy League schedule kept the Bulldogs busy with Friday-Saturday back-to-back weekends for the final 12 games of conference play.

The Elis, who finished 13–1 in the 14-game tournament, have now won six games in a row and 18 of their last 19.

“[The day off provides] a great turnaround for us, and at this time of the year there’s so much energy going around, so much adrenaline, it doesn’t much matter,” Jones said. “The ball is going to get thrown up, our guys are going to get ready to go. We’re just looking forward to it.”

The game, scheduled to tip off at approximately 2:40 p.m., will take place following the opening contest in Providence on Saturday between No. 3 Miami and No. 11 Wichita State.

Scouting Duke ahead of the NCAA Tournament Second Round

By Maya Sweedler

Published on

Two days after upsetting No. 5 Baylor in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, the No. 12 Yale men’s basketball team gets a second crack at No. 4 Duke. The Blue Devils handed the Bulldogs an 80–61 defeat in Durham, North Carolina back in November, but with both teams’ seasons on the line, this March rematch appears to be a completely different game.

Here are a few things to know about the Bulldogs’ next opponent:

Coach K recruits some of the most talented players in the country.

As impressive as Duke’s current lineup is, the reigning national champion Blue Devils’ true star is head coach Mike Krzyzewski, a gifted recruiter who has turned his program into an undisputed powerhouse during his 36 years in Durham. Duke has been to the last 21 NCAA Tournaments, the second-longest active streak in the nation, and advanced to the Final Four a dozen times, winning five national championships under Coach K.

Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski and his staff.

Therefore, it is unsurprising that the Blue Devils often feature some of the best talent in the nation. In recent years, this has increasingly meant a cadre of so-called “one-and-done players,” student-athletes who play for one year before electing to enter the NBA draft. Last year, three players from Duke’s championship squad — Jahlil Okafor, Justise Winslow and Tyus Jones — were selected in the first round of the 2015 NBA draft.

This year, small forward Brandon Ingram, a 2015 McDonald’s All-American, will look to join the ranks of Okafor, Jabari Parker and Kyrie Irving, all three of whom were top-three picks after a single season at Duke.

While Yale has put together strong recruiting classes in its own right, few programs nationally can match Duke’s basketball pedigree. On Saturday, Ingram will take the court alongside four other McDonald’s All-Americans: Marshall Plumlee (2011), Matt Jones (2013), Grayson Allen (2014) and Luke Kennard (2015).

Gaudy offensive statistics mask a less impressive Duke defense.

Currently 121st in the country in adjusted defensive efficiency, according to KenPom, the Blue Devils have struggled on that end of the court. The team, which switches between man-to-man and a 1–3–1 zone defense, ceded an average of 72.1 points to its regular-season opponents, 11th-best in the 15-team ACC.

When the Bulldogs and Blue Devils faced off in November, Duke came out of halftime in that 1–3–1 defensive zone and turned a two-point advantage into a 19-point victory. Stymied by the new defensive style, Yale finished with 61 points on 25–63 shooting from the field, including just nine made shots on 30 attempts in the second period.

“We’re not going to kid ourselves into thinking they’re not getting ready for that 1–3–1 [zone defense] but at the same time, we’re a man-oriented team,” Duke guard and captain Matt Jones said. “Whatever Coach [Krzyzewski] sees fit throughout the game, we’ll make adjustments.”

However, neither team looks as it did in November. Since then, Duke has struggled to consistently contest opponents’ shots. Its opponents shot an average of 44.5 percent from the field, which puts the team’s overall field goal percentage against at 240th out of 351 Division I men’s basketball teams. Yale, conversely, has the 45th-best overall field goal percentage against, holding the opposition to a 40.7 percent shooting clip.

One of the few defensive statistics in which Duke ranks higher than Yale is in steals per possession. With a 0.092 steals per possession average, the Blue Devils are 114th in the nation, while Yale comes in at 217th with 0.082 steals per possession.

Statistics indicate Yale will win the battle on the boards, but that does not guarantee an upset.

With a plus-11.1 average rebounding margin, second-best in the country, the Bulldogs have consistently proven formidable on the glass.

“We work on rebounding every day,” Yale head coach James Jones said. “It’s what we do. It’s part of our DNA.”

That strength did not go unnoticed by Duke, a team that has not particularly distinguished itself on the boards. Despite an impressive frontcourt featuring seven-foot Plumlee and six-foot-nine swingman Ingram, the Blue Devils are 199th in the nation, having been outrebounded by 0.2 boards per game.

However, Duke has proven it can win even if the team loses the battle on the glass. The Blue Devils were outrebounded eleven times this season, nine times in conference play, but went 5–6 in those games. When Yale traveled down to Durham and sustained a 19-point loss, the two teams were even on the boards, tallying 37 rebounds each.

The biggest separation between the two teams comes on the defensive glass: while the Bulldogs’ defensive rebounding percentage is at 75.6, Duke’s is almost 10 full percentage points lower at 65.7 percent. Given Yale’s proficient offensive rebounding — the team is rated seventh in the nation in that area — the Bulldogs will look to exploit the Blue Devils’ defensive rebounding and potentially take advantage of second-chance opportunities.