Yale students are headed back to school amid an atmosphere of tension. The Trump administration has been investigating the school over its admissions practices. Activists are rallying to tell Yale not to settle with the administration.
Hundreds of students, faculty, alumni and others rallied in front of Yale’s Sterling Library at a gathering that wasn’t exactly sanctioned by the administration. They didn’t even ask permission to gather on the green — and they say that could be risky in the Trump era, which has brought new restrictions on some college campuses like Yale.
“This is, albeit, a small act of civil disobedience," student body president Alex Chen said. “But I think it's important to show students that pre-2024, pre the promulgation of all these new restrictions, this is what college campuses looked like. This is what Yale's looked like, going back to the 60s. If you go through all of the most righteous, most famous student assemblies, none of that would be, you know, allowed today.”
“There is a bottom line to this, and it is: do not give way to a bully," said actor Sam Waterston, a Yale alum. “The lesson couldn’t be simpler. It’s a basic instinct that predates politics and sits at the center of peaceful community, society, and democracy itself. It's as old as the schoolyard, as old as the Bible, and I won't forget my father saying, never give in to a bully.”
Earlier this summer, the New York Times reported Yale leadership offered to settle with the Department of Justice.
“So just because here at Yale we have yet to see a signed settlement does not mean that university leadership isn't folding as we speak, as we have this teach-in," Marisol Orihuela said, a professor at Yale Law School, one of three schools at the university under investigation. “What happens at Yale will impact higher ed institutions around the country. We have an opportunity and responsibility to demand that our university leadership stands behind Yale’s lawful and appropriate admissions practices, to demand no settlement with an outcome-driven DOJ.”
Across campus, other students were at a mandatory first-year event called ‘The University and Democracy.’ Katherine Profeta is an alumni organizer. She said the university should be defending democracy more vocally.
“Yale chose to lobby in secret to try and protect itself," Profeta said. It chose not to make public statements. It chose not to show any great leadership in this crisis, at least not in an outward way, which could inspire and aid other institutions to, you know, join forces.”
Profeta said that’s only one of several problems activists hope to address—stemming from the Trump administration’s pressure.
“The effect is absolutely chilling on student speech, and we need them to turn that around," she said. "So that's one. There's also this settlement with the DOJ where we want them to say no and take the settlement that they've offered off the table and just say we'll see you in court. We would love the Yale Board of Trustees to be elected in a more representative fashion. That is completely not democracy, and they're really at the heart of the problem right now in terms of us having any input to how these negotiations with the DOJ should or shouldn't go forward.”
The university said it’s Yale’s longstanding practice not to discuss the specifics of ongoing legal matters. Yale President Maurie McInnis said in July that the university is "talking and listening" with the Trump administration. And she said they’ll safeguard academic freedom.
Speaker David Blight is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, and he’s the mentor of Chen. He said he doesn’t want students to lose sight of the real danger; it’s not the university.
“The greatest threat to your futures, students, is not on the corner of Prospect and Grove; it’s on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington," he says. "And a thousand other places in this country where an autocratic regime is taking away the democracy as we speak.”
And Blight said it goes without saying that the university should not settle with the Trump administration.
