April 2025
Dear President McInnis, Provost Strobel, and Members of the Yale Board of Trustees:
We stand together at a crossroads. American universities are facing extraordinary attacks that threaten the bedrock principles of a democratic society, including rights of free expression, association, and academic freedom. We write as one faculty, to ask you to stand with us now.
We urge you to:
- Defend the values and ideals of higher education, and Yale’s specific mission of “improving the world through outstanding research and scholarship, education, preservation, and practice.”
- Resist and legally challenge any unlawful demands that threaten academic freedom and university self-governance.
- Commit that no department, program, or structure of shared governance will be reorganized or eliminated in response to political threats.
- Protect science and other research at Yale from funding cutoffs, by providing legal and financial support to affected scholars and research units, mobilizing extraordinary resources as necessary.
- Defend the rights to free speech on campus recognized in the Woodward Report, including by assisting community members at risk of government infringement on this right, whether through immigration action or other means.
- Work purposefully and proactively with other colleges and universities in collective defense.
We stand united, asking for your courageous leadership. We look forward to standing alongside you in this work.
Signed,
[Yale faculty of all ranks can sign this letter here.]
Facing MAGA 