From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yale University is a
private Ivy League research university in
New Haven,
Connecticut. Founded in 1701 in
Saybrook Colony as the "Collegiate School," the
university is the
third-oldest institution of
higher education in the
United States. In 1718, the school was renamed "Yale College" in recognition of a gift from
Elihu Yale, a governor of the
British East India Company. Established to train
Congregationalist ministers in theology and
sacred languages,
by 1777 the school's curriculum began to incorporate humanities and
sciences. During the 19th century Yale gradually incorporated graduate
and professional instruction, awarding the first
Ph.D. in the United States in 1861 and organizing as a university in 1887.
[6]
Yale is organized into twelve constituent schools: the original
undergraduate college, the
Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, and ten professional schools. 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, including the
Yale Bowl, a campus in
West Haven, Connecticut,
and forest and nature preserves throughout New England. The
university's assets include an endowment valued at $23.9 billion as of
September 27, 2014, the second largest of any educational institution in
the world.
[1]
Yale College undergraduates follow a
liberal arts curriculum with departmental
majors and are organized into a system of
residential colleges. Almost all faculty teach undergraduate courses, more than 2,000 of which are offered annually.
[7] The
Yale University Library, serving all twelve schools, holds more than 15 million volumes and is the third-largest academic library in the United States.
[8][9] Besides academic studies, students compete intercollegiately as the
Yale Bulldogs in the
NCAA Division I Ivy League.
Yale has graduated many notable alumni, including five
U.S. Presidents, 19
U.S. Supreme Court Justices, 13 living billionaires,
[10]
and many foreign heads of state. In addition, Yale has graduated
hundreds of members of Congress and many high-level U.S. diplomats,
including former U.S. Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton and current Secretary of State
John Kerry.
Fifty-two Nobel laureates have been affiliated with the University as students, faculty, or staff, and 230 Rhodes Scholars graduated from the University.
[11]
History
A Front View of Yale-College and the College Chapel, Daniel Bowen, 1786.
Early history of Yale College
Origins
Yale traces its beginnings to "An Act for Liberty to Erect a Collegiate School," passed by the General Court of the
Colony of Connecticut
on October 9, 1701, while meeting in New Haven. The Act was an effort
to create an institution to train ministers and lay leadership for
Connecticut. Soon thereafter, a group of ten
Congregationalist ministers:
Samuel Andrew, Thomas Buckingham, Israel Chauncy, Samuel Mather,
James Noyes,
James Pierpont, Abraham Pierson,
Noadiah Russell, Joseph Webb and
Timothy Woodbridge, all alumni of
Harvard, met in the study of Reverend
Samuel Russell in
Branford, Connecticut, to pool their books to form the school's library.
[12] The group, led by
James Pierpont, is now known as "The Founders".
Originally known as the "Collegiate School," the institution opened in the home of its first
rector,
Abraham Pierson,
[13] in Killingworth (now
Clinton). The school moved to
Saybrook, and then
Wethersfield. In 1716 the college moved to New Haven, Connecticut.
First diploma awarded by
Yale College, granted to Nathaniel Chauncey, 1702.
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 success of the Collegiate School in the hope that it would maintain the
Puritan religious orthodoxy in a way that Harvard had not.
[14]
In 1718, at the behest of either Rector
Samuel Andrew or the colony's Governor
Gurdon Saltonstall,
Cotton Mather contacted a successful businessman named
Elihu Yale,
who lived in Wales but had been born in Boston and whose father David
had been one of the original settlers in New Haven, to ask him for
financial help in constructing a new building for the college. Through
the persuasion of
Jeremiah Dummer, Yale, who had made a fortune through trade while living in Madras as a representative of the
East India Company,
donated nine bales of goods, which were sold for more than £560, a
substantial sum at the time. Cotton Mather suggested that the school
change its name to Yale College. Meanwhile, a Harvard graduate working
in England convinced some 180 prominent intellectuals that they should
donate books to Yale. The 1714 shipment of 500 books represented the
best of modern English literature, science, philosophy and theology.
[15] It had a profound effect on intellectuals at Yale. Undergraduate
Jonathan Edwards
discovered John Locke's works and developed his original theology known
as the "new divinity". In 1722 the Rector and six of his friends, who
had a study group to discuss the new ideas, announced that 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 struggled to return the college to
Calvinist orthodoxy; but he did not close the library. Other students
found Deist books in the library.
[16]
Curriculum
Yale was swept up by the great intellectual movements of the period—the
Great Awakening and the
Enlightenment—due to the religious and scientific interests of presidents
Thomas Clap and
Ezra Stiles.
They were both instrumental in developing the scientific curriculum at
Yale, while dealing with wars, student tumults, graffiti, "irrelevance"
of curricula, desperate need for endowment, and fights with the
Connecticut legislature.
[17]
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 words. The Reverend
Ezra Stiles,
president of the College from 1778 to 1795, brought with him his
interest in the Hebrew language as a vehicle for studying ancient
Biblical texts
in their original language (as was common in other schools), requiring
all freshmen to study Hebrew (in contrast to Harvard, where only
upperclassmen were required to study the language) and is responsible
for the Hebrew phrase אורים ותמים (
Urim and Thummim)
on the Yale seal. Stiles' greatest challenge occurred in July 1779 when
hostile 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,
interceded and the College was saved. Fanning later was granted an
honorary degree
LL.D., at 1803,
[18] for his efforts.
Students
As the only college in Connecticut, Yale educated the sons of the elite.
[19]
Offenses for which students were punished included cardplaying,
tavern-going, destruction of college property, and acts of disobedience
to college authorities. During the period, Harvard was distinctive for
the stability and maturity of its tutor corps, while Yale had youth and
zeal on its side.
[20]
The emphasis on classics gave rise to a number of private student
societies, open only by invitation, which arose primarily as forums for
discussions of modern scholarship, literature and politics. The first
such organizations were debating societies:
Crotonia in 1738,
Linonia in 1753, and
Brothers in Unity in 1768.
[21]
19th century
Men leaning on the old Yale fence facing Chapel Street, c. 1874.
The Yale Report of 1828 was a dogmatic defense of the Latin and Greek
curriculum against critics who wanted more courses in modern languages,
mathematics, and science. Unlike higher education in Europe, there was
no national curriculum for colleges and universities in the United
States. In the competition for students and financial support, college
leaders strove to keep current with demands for innovation. At the same
time, they realized that a significant portion of their students and
prospective students demanded a classical background. The Yale report
meant the classics would not be abandoned. All institutions experimented
with changes in the curriculum, often resulting in a dual track. In the
decentralized environment of higher education in the United States,
balancing change with tradition was a common challenge because no one
could afford to be completely modern or completely classical.
[22]
A group of professors at Yale and New Haven Congregationalist ministers
articulated a conservative response to the changes brought about by the
Victorian culture.
They concentrated on developing a whole man possessed of religious
values sufficiently strong to resist temptations from within, yet
flexible enough to adjust to the 'isms' (professionalism, materialism,
individualism, and consumerism) tempting him from without.
[23] Perhaps the most well-remembered
[citation needed] teacher was
William Graham Sumner,
professor from 1872 to 1909. He taught in the emerging disciplines of
economics and sociology to overflowing classrooms. He bested President
Noah Porter,
who disliked social science 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.
[24]
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 gained its current, and shorter, name of "Yale University."
[25]
