Yale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States. It is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution.
Yale was established as the Collegiate School in 1701 by Congregationalist clergy of the Connecticut Colony. Originally focused on theology and sacred languages, the school's curriculum expanded to include humanities and sciences by the time of the American Revolution. In the 19th century, the college expanded to include graduate and professional instruction, awarding the first PhD in the United States in 1861 and organizing as a university in 1887. It is one of the founding members of the Association of American Universities. Yale's faculty and student populations grew rapidly after 1890 due to the expansion of the physical campus and its scientific research programs.
Yale is organized into fifteen constituent schools, including the original undergraduate college, the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and Yale Law School. While the university is governed by the Yale Corporation, each school's faculty oversees its curriculum and degree programs. In addition to a central campus in downtown New Haven, the university owns athletic facilities in western New Haven, a campus in West Haven, and forests and nature preserves throughout New England. As of 2025, Yale's endowment was valued at $44.1 billion, making it the second-largest among all educational institutions and the second-largest among private universities. The Yale University Library, serving all constituent schools, holds more than 15 million volumes and is the third-largest academic library in the United States. Student athletes compete in intercollegiate sports as the Yale Bulldogs in the NCAA Division I Ivy League conference.
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As of October 2025, 72 Nobel laureates, 5 Fields medalists, 4 Abel Prize laureates, and 3 Turing Award winners have been affiliated with Yale University. Yale alumni include 5 U.S. presidents, 10 Founding Fathers, 19 U.S. Supreme Court justices, 31 living billionaires, 54 college founders and presidents, as well as numerous heads of state, cabinet members, and governors. The university’s community also includes hundreds of members of Congress, U.S. diplomats, 99 MacArthur Fellows, 263 Rhodes Scholars, 123 Marshall Scholars, 81 Gates Cambridge Scholars, 102 Guggenheim Fellows, and 9 Mitchell Scholars. Current Yale faculty include 73 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 55 members of the National Academy of Medicine, 8 members of the National Academy of Engineering, and 200 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The university is also one of the largest producers of Oscar, Emmy, and Grammy winners. Over 200 Yale alumni have competed in the Olympic games and have won over 110 medals (including 55 gold).
History
Early history of Yale College
Origins
Yale traces its beginnings to "An Act for Liberty to Erect a Collegiate School", a would-be charter passed in New Haven by the General Court of the Colony of Connecticut on October 9, 1701. The act aimed to establish an institution for the education of ministers and lay leaders. Soon after, a group of ten Congregational ministers, Samuel Andrew, Thomas Buckingham, Israel Chauncy, Samuel Mather (nephew of Increase Mather), Rev. James Noyes II (son of James Noyes), James Pierpont, Abraham Pierson, Noadiah Russell, Joseph Webb, and Timothy Woodbridge, all Harvard alumni, met in the study of Reverend Samuel Russell, in Branford, to donate books to form the school's library. The group, led by James Pierpont, is now known as the "Founders".
Known from its origin as the "Collegiate School", the institution opened in the home of its first rector, Abraham Pierson, who is considered Yale's first president. Pierson lived in Killingworth. The school moved to Saybrook in 1703, when the first treasurer of Yale, Nathaniel Lynde, donated land and a building. In 1716, it moved to New Haven.
Meanwhile, there was a rift forming at Harvard between its sixth president, Increase Mather, and the rest of the Harvard clergy, whom Mather viewed as increasingly liberal, ecclesiastically lax, and overly broad in Church polity. The feud caused the Mathers to champion the Collegiate School in the hope it would maintain the Puritan religious orthodoxy in a way Harvard had not. Reverend Jason Haven, minister at the First Church and Parish in Dedham, Massachusetts, had been considered for the presidency on account of his orthodox theology and "Neatness dignity and purity of Style [which] surpass those of all that have been mentioned", but was passed over due to his "very Valetudinary and infirm State of Health".
Naming and development
In 1718, at the behest of either Rector Samuel Andrew or the colony's Governor Gurdon Saltonstall, Cotton Mather contacted the Boston-born businessman Elihu Yale to ask for money to construct a new building for the college. Through the persuasion of Jeremiah Dummer, Yale, who had made a fortune in Madras while working for the East India Company as the first president of Fort St. George, donated nine bales of goods, which were sold for more than £560, a substantial sum of money. Cotton Mather suggested the school change its name to "Yale College".
Meanwhile, a Harvard graduate working in England convinced 180 prominent intellectuals to donate books to Yale. The 1714 shipment of 500 books represented the best of modern English literature, science, philosophy and theology. It had a profound effect on intellectuals at Yale. Undergraduate Jonathan Edwards discovered John Locke's works and developed his "new divinity". In 1722, the rector and six friends, who had a study group to discuss the new ideas, announced they had given up Calvinism, become Arminians, and joined the Church of England. They were ordained in England and returned to the colonies as missionaries for the Anglican faith. Thomas Clapp became president in 1745, and while he attempted to return the college to Calvinist orthodoxy, did not close the library. Other students found Deist books in the library.
Yale College undergraduates follow a liberal arts curriculum with departmental majors and is organized into a social system of residential colleges.
Yale was swept up by the great intellectual movements of the period—the Great Awakening and Enlightenment—due to the religious and scientific interests of presidents Thomas Clap and Ezra Stiles. They were instrumental in developing the scientific curriculum while dealing with wars, student tumults, graffiti, "irrelevance" of curricula, desperate need for endowment and disagreements with the Connecticut legislature.
Serious American students of theology and divinity, particularly in New England, regarded Hebrew as a classical language, along with Greek and Latin, and essential for study of the Old Testament in the original. Reverend Stiles, president from 1778 to 1795, brought with him his interest in Hebrew as a vehicle for studying ancient Biblical texts in their original language, requiring all freshmen to study Hebrew (in contrast to Harvard, where only upperclassmen were required to study it) and is responsible for the Hebrew phrase אורים ותמים (Urim and Thummim) on the Yale seal. A 1746 graduate of Yale, Stiles came to the college with experience in education, having played an integral role in founding Brown University. Stiles' greatest challenge occurred in 1779 when British forces occupied New Haven and threatened to raze the college. However, Yale graduate Edmund Fanning, secretary to the British general in command of the occupation, intervened and the college was saved. In 1803, Fanning was granted an honorary degree LL.D.
As the only college in Connecticut from 1701 to 1823, Yale educated the sons of the elite. Punishable offenses included cardplaying, tavern-going, destruction of college property, and acts of disobedience. Harvard was distinctive for the stability and maturity of its tutor corps, while Yale had youth and zeal.
The emphasis on classics gave rise to private student societies, open only by invitation, which arose as forums for discussions of scholarship, literature and politics. The first were debating societies: Crotonia in 1738, Linonia in 1753 and Brothers in Unity in 1768. Linonia and Brothers in Unity continue to exist; commemorations to them can be found with names given to campus structures, like Brothers in Unity Courtyard in Branford College.
19th century
The Yale Report of 1828 was a dogmatic defense of the Latin and Greek curriculum against critics who wanted more courses in modern languages, math and science. Unlike higher education in Europe, there was no national curriculum for U.S. colleges and universities. In the competition for students and financial support, college leaders strove to keep current with demands for innovation. At the same time, they realized a significant portion of students and prospective students demanded a classical background. The report meant the classics would not be abandoned. During this period, institutions experimented with changes in the curriculum, often resulting in a dual-track curriculum. In the decentralized environment of U.S. higher education, balancing change with tradition was a common challenge. A group of professors at Yale and New Haven Congregationalist ministers articulated a conservative response to the changes brought by Victorian culture. They concentrated on developing a person possessed of religious values strong enough to sufficiently resist temptations from within, yet flexible enough to adjust to the "isms" (professionalism, materialism, individualism, and consumerism) tempting them from without. William Graham Sumner, professor from 1872 to 1909, taught in the emerging disciplines of economics and sociology to overflowing classrooms. Sumner bested President Noah Porter, who disliked the social sciences and wanted Yale to lock into its traditions of classical education. Porter objected to Sumner's use of a textbook by Herbert Spencer that espoused agnostic materialism because it might harm students.
Until 1887, the legal name of the university was "The President and Fellows of Yale College, in New Haven". In 1887, under an act passed by the Connecticut General Assembly, Yale was renamed "Yale University".
Sports and debate
The Revolutionary War soldier Nathan Hale (Yale 1773) was the archetype of the Yale ideal in the early 19th century: a manly yet aristocratic scholar, well-versed in knowledge and sports, and a patriot who "regretted" that he "had but one life to lose" for his country. Western painter Frederic Remington (Yale 1900) was an artist whose heroes gloried in the combat and tests of strength in the Wild West. The fictional, turn-of-the-20th-century Yale man Frank Merriwell embodied this same heroic ideal without racial prejudice, and his fictional successor Dink Stover in the novel Stover at Yale (1912) questioned the business mentality that had become prevalent at the school. Increasingly students turned to athletic stars as their heroes, especially since winning the big game became the goal of the student body, the alumni, and the team itself.
Along with Harvard and Princeton, Yale students rejected British concepts about 'amateurism' and constructed athletic programs that were uniquely American. The Harvard–Yale football rivalry began in 1875. Between 1892, when Harvard and Yale met in one of the first intercollegiate debates, and in 1909 (year of the first Triangular Debate of Harvard/Yale/Princeton) the rhetoric, symbolism, and metaphors used in athletics were used to frame these debates. Debates were covered on front pages of college newspapers and emphasized in yearbooks, and team members received the equivalent of athletic letters for their jackets. There were rallies to send off teams to matches, but they never attained the broad appeal athletics enjoyed. One reason may be that debates do not have a clear winner, because scoring is subjective. With late 19th-century concerns about the impact of modern life on the body, athletics offered hope that neither the individual nor society was coming apart.
In 1909–10, football faced a crisis resulting from the failure of the reforms of 1905–06, which sought to solve the problem of serious injuries. There was a mood of alarm and mistrust, and, while the crisis was developing, the presidents of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton developed a project to reform the sport and forestall possible radical changes forced by government. Presidents Arthur Hadley of Yale, A. Lawrence Lowell of Harvard, and Woodrow Wilson of Princeton worked to develop moderate reforms to reduce injuries. Their attempts, however, were reduced by rebellion against the rules committee and formation of the Intercollegiate Athletic Association. While the big three had attempted to operate independently of the majority, the changes pushed did reduce injuries.
Expansion
Starting with the addition of the Yale School of Medicine in 1810, the college expanded gradually, establishing the Yale Divinity School in 1822, Yale Law School in 1822, the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 1847, the now-defunct Sheffield Scientific School in 1847, and the Yale School of Fine Arts in 1869. In 1887, under the presidency of Timothy Dwight V, Yale College was renamed to Yale University, and the former name was applied only to the undergraduate college. The university continued to expand into the 20th and 21st centuries, adding the Yale School of Music in 1894, the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies in 1900, the Yale School of Public Health in 1915, the Yale School of Architecture in 1916, the Yale School of Nursing 1923, the Yale School of Drama in 1955, the Yale School of Management in 1976, and the Jackson School of Global Affairs in 2022. The Sheffield Scientific School would also reorganize its relationship with the university to teach only undergraduate courses.
Expansion caused controversy about Yale's new roles. Noah Porter, a moral philosopher, was president from 1871 to 1886. During an age of expansion in higher education, Porter resisted the rise of the new research university, claiming an eager embrace of its ideals would corrupt undergraduate education. Historian George Levesque argues Porter was not a simple-minded reactionary, uncritically committed to tradition, but a principled and selective conservative. Levesque says he did not endorse everything old or reject everything new; rather, he sought to apply long-established ethical and pedagogical principles to a changing culture. Levesque concludes, noting he may have misunderstood some of the challenges, but he correctly anticipated the enduring tensions that have accompanied the emergence of the modern university.
20th century
Medicine
Milton Winternitz led the Yale School of Medicine as its dean from 1920 to 1935. Dedicated to the new scientific medicine established in Germany, he was equally fervent about "social medicine" and the study of humans in their environment. He established the "Yale System" of teaching, with few lectures and fewer exams, and strengthened the full-time faculty system; he created the graduate-level Yale School of Nursing and the psychiatry department and built new buildings. Progress toward his plans for an Institute of Human Relations, envisioned as a refuge where social scientists would collaborate with biological scientists in a holistic study of humankind, lasted only a few years before resentful antisemitic colleagues drove him to resign.
Faculty
Before World War II, most elite university faculties counted among their numbers few, if any, Jews, blacks, women, or other minorities; Yale was no exception. By 1980, this condition had been altered dramatically, as numerous members of those groups held faculty positions. Almost all members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences—and some members of other faculties—teach undergraduate courses, more than 2,000 of which are offered annually.
Women
In 1793, Lucinda Foote passed the entrance exams for Yale College, but was rejected by the president on the basis of her gender. Women studied at Yale from 1892, in graduate-level programs at the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. The first seven women to earn PhDs received their degrees in 1894: Elizabeth Deering Hanscom, Cornelia H. B. Rogers, Sara Bulkley Rogers, Margaretta Palmer, Mary Augusta Scott, Laura Johnson Wylie, and Charlotte Fitch Roberts. There is a portrait of them in Sterling Memorial Library, painted by Brenda Zlamany.
In 1966, Yale began discussions with its sister school Vassar College about merging to foster coeducation at the undergraduate level. Vassar, then all-female and part of the Seven Sisters—elite higher education schools that served as sister institutions to the Ivy League when nearly all Ivy League institutions still only admitted men—tentatively accepted, but then declined the invitation. Both schools introduced coeducation independently in 1969. Amy Solomon was the first woman to register as a Yale undergraduate; she was the first woman at Yale to join an undergraduate society, St. Anthony Hall. The undergraduate class of 1973 was the first to have women starting from freshman year; all undergraduate women were housed in Vanderbilt Hall.
A decade into co-education, student assault and harassment by faculty became the impetus for the trailblazing lawsuit Alexander v. Yale. In the 1970s, a group of students and a faculty member sued Yale for its failure to curtail sexual harassment, especially by male faculty. The case was partly built from a 1977 report authored by plaintiff Ann Olivarius, "A report to the Yale Corporation from the Yale Undergraduate Women's Caucus". This case was the first to use Title IX to argue and establish that sexual harassment of female students can be considered illegal sex discrimination. The plaintiffs were Olivarius, Ronni Alexander, Margery Reifler, Pamela Price, and Lisa E. Stone. They were joined by Yale classics professor John J. Winkler. The lawsuit, brought partly by Catharine MacKinnon, alleged rape, fondling, and offers of higher grades for sex by faculty, including Keith Brion, professor of flute and director of bands, political science professor Raymond Duvall, English professor Michael Cooke, and coach of the field hockey team, Richard Kentwell. While unsuccessful in the courts, the legal reasoning changed the landscape of sex discrimination law and resulted in the establishment of Yale's Grievance Board and Women's Center. In 2011 a Title IX complaint was filed against Yale by students and graduates, including editors of Yale's feminist magazine Broad Recognition, alleging the university had a hostile sexual climate. In response, the university formed a Title IX steering committee to address complaints of sexual misconduct. Afterwards, universities and colleges throughout the U.S. also established sexual harassment grievance procedures.
Social class
Yale instituted policies in the early 20th century designed to maintain the proportion of white Protestants from notable families in the student body (see numerus clausus) and eliminated such preferences, beginning with the class of 1970.
21st century
In 2006, Yale and Peking University (PKU) established a joint undergraduate program in Beijing, an exchange program allowing Yale students to spend a semester living and studying with PKU honor students. In July 2012, the Yale University-PKU Program ended due to weak participation.
In 2007 outgoing Yale President Rick Levin characterized Yale's institutional priorities: "First, among the nation's finest research universities, Yale is distinctively committed to excellence in undergraduate education. Second, in our graduate and professional schools, as well as in Yale College, we are committed to the education of leaders."
Also in 2007, the university purchased the 137-acre (0.55 km2) former Bayer campus in West Haven and Orange, Connecticut, including 17 buildings. The Yale West Campus focuses on biotechnology, pharmaceuticals and other life sciences research.
In 2009, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair picked Yale as one location—the others being Britain's Durham University and Universiti Teknologi Mara—for the Tony Blair Faith Foundation's United States Faith and Globalization Initiative. As of 2009, former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo was the director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization and teaches an undergraduate seminar, "Debating Globalization". As of 2009, former presidential candidate and DNC chair Howard Dean taught a residential college seminar, "Understanding Politics and Politicians". Also in 2009, an alliance was formed among Yale, University College London, and both schools' affiliated hospital complexes to conduct research focused on the direct improvement of patient care—a field known as translational medicine. President Richard Levin noted that Yale has hundreds of other partnerships across the world, but "no existing collaboration matches the scale of the new partnership with UCL". In August 2013, a new partnership with the National University of Singapore led to the opening of Yale-NUS College in Singapore, a joint effort to create a new liberal arts college in Asia featuring a curriculum including Western and Asian traditions.
In 2017, having been suggested for decades, Yale University renamed Calhoun College, named for slave owner, anti-abolitionist, and white supremacist Vice President John C. Calhoun. It is now Hopper College, after Grace Hopper.
In 2019, Yale was one of several universities involved in the 2019 college admissions bribery scandal.
In 2020, in the wake of the George Floyd protests, the #CancelYale tag was used on social media to demand that Elihu Yale's name be removed from Yale University. Much of the support originated from right-wing pundits such as Mike Cernovich and Ann Coulter, who intended to satirize what they perceived as the excesses of cancel culture. Yale spent most of his professional career in the employ of the East India Company (EIC), serving as the governor of the Presidency of Fort St. George in modern-day Chennai. The EIC, including Yale himself, was involved in the Indian Ocean slave trade, though the extent of Yale's involvement in slavery remains debated. His singularly large donation led critics to argue Yale University relied on money derived from slavery for its first scholarships and endowments.
In 2020, the U.S. Justice Department sued Yale for alleged discrimination against Asian and white candidates, through affirmative action admission policies. In 2021, under the new Biden administration, the Justice Department withdrew the lawsuit. The group, Students for Fair Admissions, later won a similar lawsuit against Harvard.
In April 2024, Yale students joined other campuses across the United States in protests against the Gaza war. The student protestors demanded that Yale University divest from military weapons companies with ties to Israel's war on Gaza. Over 50 people were arrested at protests in and around Beinecke Plaza, and protests continued during the summer and in the new academic year starting September 2024. Undergraduate students "overwhelmingly" voted in a December referendum to call for divestment.
In July 2025 Russian authorities declared Yale University to be an "undesirable" organization, banning its activities in the country. According to the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office, the institution’s activities are aimed at "violating the territorial integrity of Russia" and "destabilizing the socio-economic and political situation".
Alumni in politics
The Boston Globe wrote in 2002 that "if there's one school that can lay claim to educating the nation's top national leaders over the past three decades, it's Yale." Yale alumni were represented on the Democratic or Republican ticket in every U.S. presidential election between 1972 and 2004. Yale-educated presidents since the end of the Vietnam War include Gerald Ford, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, and major-party nominees include Hillary Clinton (2016), John Kerry (2004), Joseph Lieberman (vice president, 2000), and Sargent Shriver (vice president, 1972). Other alumni who have made serious bids for the presidency include Amy Klobuchar (2020), Tom Steyer (2020), Ben Carson (2016), Howard Dean (2004), Gary Hart (1984 and 1988), Paul Tsongas (1992), Pat Robertson (1988) and Jerry Brown (1976, 1980, 1992).
Several explanations have been offered for Yale's representation since the end of the Vietnam War. Sources note the spirit of campus activism that has existed at Yale since the 1960s, and the intellectual influence of Reverend William Sloane Coffin on future candidates. Yale President Levin attributes the run to Yale's focus on creating "a laboratory for future leaders", an institutional priority that began during the tenure of Yale Presidents Alfred Whitney Griswold and Kingman Brewster. Richard H. Brodhead, former dean of Yale College and now president of Duke University, stated: "We do give very significant attention to orientation to the community in our admissions, and there is a very strong tradition of volunteerism at Yale." Yale historian Gaddis Smith notes "an ethos of organized activity" at Yale during the 20th century that led Kerry to lead the Yale Political Union's Liberal Party, George Pataki the Conservative Party, and Lieberman to manage the Yale Daily News. Camille Paglia points to a history of networking and elitism: "It has to do with a web of friendships and affiliations built up in school." CNN suggests that George W. Bush benefited from preferential admissions policies for the "son and grandson of alumni" and for a "member of a politically influential family". Elisabeth Bumiller and James Fallows credit the culture of community that exists between students, faculty, and administration, which downplays self-interest and reinforces commitment to others.
During the 1988 presidential election, George H. W. Bush (Yale '48) derided Michael Dukakis for having "foreign-policy views born in Harvard Yard's boutique". When challenged on the distinction between Dukakis's Harvard connection and his Yale background, he said that, unlike Harvard, Yale's reputation was "so diffuse, there isn't a symbol, I don't think, in the Yale situation, any symbolism in it" and said Yale did not share Harvard's reputation for "liberalism and elitism". In 2004 Howard Dean stated, "In some ways, I consider myself separate from the other three (Yale) candidates of 2004. Yale changed so much between the class of '68 and the class of '71. My class was the first class to have women in it; it was the first class to have a significant effort to recruit African Americans. It was an extraordinary time, and in that span of time is the change of an entire generation."
Administration and organization
Leadership
The President and Fellows of Yale College, also known as the Yale Corporation, or board of trustees, is the governing body of the university and consists of thirteen standing committees with separate responsibilities outlined in the by-laws. The corporation has 19 members: three ex officio members, ten successor trustees, and six elected alumni fellows. The university has three major academic components: Yale College (the undergraduate program), the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the twelve professional schools.
The Yale Provost's Office and similar executive positions have launched several women into prominent university executive positions. In 1977, Provost Hanna Holborn Gray was appointed interim president of Yale and later went on to become president of the University of Chicago, being the first woman to hold either position at each respective school. In 1994, Provost Judith Rodin became the first permanent female president of an Ivy League institution at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2002, Provost Alison Richard became the vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge. In 2003, the dean of the Divinity School, Rebecca Chopp, was appointed president of Colgate University and later went on to serve as the president of Swarthmore College in 2009, and then the first female chancellor of the University of Denver in 2014. In 2004, Provost Dr. Susan Hockfield became the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2004, Dean of the Nursing school, Catherine Gilliss, was appointed the dean of Duke University's School of Nursing and vice chancellor for nursing affairs. In 2007, Deputy Provost H. Kim Bottomly was named president of Wellesley College.
