Hundreds of members of the Yale University community gathered on campus in New Haven on Tuesday to demand administrators stop negotiating a settlement with the Trump administration over admissions policies.
“Yale is setting a dangerous precedent: conceding the Trump administration’s racist and profoundly unsupported premise that Black and Latine students are undeserving of their place at Yale,” said Yale College Council Organizing Chair Basma Elbagory.
Students, faculty members, staff members and alumni gathered on the university’s Cross Campus to listen to speakers.
As the event was beginning, Yale public affairs staffers Fred Mamoun and Bess Connolly told reporters, including those from Connecticut Public, Hearst Connecticut Media Group, and the Chronicle of Higher Education, that they were not allowed to cover the event on campus. The reporters were told to leave university property.
After the conclusion of the programming, speakers gave interviews to the press on a public sidewalk off campus property.
David Blight, a Yale history professor, said Yale should not, “under any circumstances,” enter into a settlement with the Department of Justice under President Donald Trump.
“The timing is on the side of universities right now,” Blight said. “Trump's been losing in court. Make him lose again.”
Alumnus Sam Waterston, the television and film actor, said he was motivated to attend the demonstration because he did not want his alma mater to “give in to a bully.”
“This [presidential] administration has been getting us all acquainted with what it feels like to live in an authoritarian society,” Waterston said. “The great lesson of World War II was ‘never give in to a bully.’ And that's what's happening now, and then you can't but be afraid of where that might lead, because there are examples.”
Alex Chen, Yale’s student body president, said he and his classmates want Yale to “uphold its values.”
“We also want to learn from faculty who are comfortable in their classrooms teaching, that don't have to hide away from their publishing, their teaching, their lecturing, their public engagement,” Chen said. “And we want a university that isn't about to concede its autonomy in regards to admissions and defending our student body in the moment.”
In a statement, a Yale spokesperson said the university maintains a “longstanding dedication to academic freedom, free expression, and constructive dialogue across differences.”
“Regarding investigations by the Department of Justice (DOJ) into the admissions processes of Yale School of Medicine, Yale College, and Yale Law School, it is Yale’s longstanding practice not to discuss the specifics of any ongoing legal matter,” the spokesperson continued. “That said, we stand firm in the university’s commitment to students’ free expression, academic freedom, and Yale’s ability to determine who is admitted in accordance with the law.”
Tuesday’s demonstration was meant to coincide with a mandatory program for new Yale students titled “The University and Democracy.” Demonstration organizers said that was intentional.
“We thought that it was quite ironic that the university was going to be lecturing, in a very sterile environment, to the first-years who are just entering this campus about what democracy looks like, when for years at this point administrators and our trustees have been sticking their heads in the sand in response to student demands,” said Isabel Matos, a member of the Yale Endowment Justice Collective. “We wanted to offer an alternative vision of what democracy can look like on college campuses.”
Marah Rigaud, co-president of the Black Student Alliance at Yale, said students are “experiencing sentiments of not belonging or taking up space that they weren't qualified to take up.”
“We wanted to participate in this event to give our students more hope for the future, and to say that the fight isn't over,” Rigaud said. “Just because we're having backlash from this administration or from the greater Department of Justice doesn't mean we give up on that fight.”
