An email sent to academics recently said that Yale had committed $10 million to a project aimed at fortifying its links with historically black colleges and universities.
Yale will dedicate $2 million a year for the next five years to form the Alliance for Scholarship, Collaboration, Engagement, Networking and Development, or ASCEND. The program aims to increase the number of HBCU graduates enrolled in Yale’s current programs and will facilitate research collaborations between Yale faculty members and those at historically Black colleges and universities, or HBCUs.
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The announcement was made two weeks after senior trustee of the Yale Corporation Joshua Bekenstein ’80 and university president Peter Salovey both delivered official apologies for Yale’s involvement in slavery. In addition to announcing a proposal to increase research fellowships with historically Black colleges and institutions and releasing the results of the Yale and Slavery Research Project simultaneously, the university also mentioned that it will be announcing some “significant” new investments in the coming weeks.
However, the announcement on March 5, 2024, also follows harsh criticism directed against the University’s apology on February 16 by the NAACP Connecticut State Conference.
Connecticut NAACP President Scot X. Esdaile primarily criticized Yale’s copyright ownership of David Blight’s book “Yale and Slavery: A History” in a statement he sent to the News on February 29. The book was released concurrently with Yale’s admission of regret. Esdaile also took issue with Blight’s book for omitting details on Yale’s past involvement in eugenics.
“This is a whitewashed version of the story, and I think that Black historians, Black civil rights activists, Black leaders, and Black educators need to come together and tell the real story,” Esdaile stated in a news interview. “I’m not trying to disrespect, but I think that the constructive criticism should be there … by putting in $10 million for students to come back to Yale, how does that help our community?”
Faculty at Yale and HBCU who establish “joint course experiences” or “collaborative teaching arrangements” will be eligible for teaching fellowships and faculty cooperation grants, according to the recently announced ASCEND project. Faculty members from HBCUs who want to explore research opportunities at Yale will also be eligible to apply for faculty research scholarships sponsored by the project.
The University also intends to increase the number of participants in its eight-week Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship program, which is intended to help HBCU undergraduate students learn more about earning doctorates. The statement states that Yale will expand the proportion of HBCU alums enrolled in its post-baccalaureate programs.
Esdaile mentioned the unsuccessful attempt in 1831 by New Haveners to found what would have been America’s first Black institution when questioned about Yale’s commitment to a recent announcement.
“We were supposed to have our own HBCU that benefited Black people … making Yale a more powerful institution doesn’t help our community,” Esdaile noted. “This is a step in the right direction, but I think that [Yale] has so much more that it needs to do.”
Additionally, Esdaile stated that the University is upholding copyright ownership of Blight’s book “executing a power dynamic that benefits the institution at the expense of marginalized communities.”
An official from Yale University addressed Esdaile’s worries over the “motives and intentions” of Yale’s copyright ownership, stating that the book’s sales will support upcoming initiatives at the Yale Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition. The University has also contributed copies of the book to nearby libraries, and it is also freely accessible online, the spokeswoman continued.
Concerns were also expressed by Esdaile over the book’s omission of any discussion of Yale’s past involvement with eugenics. Irving Fisher, a Yale professor of economics, created the American Eugenics Society in 1926 at 185 Church St. The organization was predominately administered by Yale academics.
In his statement from February 29, Esdaile stated that the book does not include this background and “undermines any real efforts toward reconciliation and real justice.”
Blight had earlier informed the News that he chose to wrap up the novel in 1915 with the Civil War Memorial’s dedication since the memorial was “the end of the concern over slavery directly.” The memorial, located between the Schwarzman Center and Woolsey Hall, honors the lives of soldiers on both sides of the Civil War but makes no mention of slavery.
The Yale and Slavery Working Group, according to Blight, had “great plans” to carry on the story until the 1930s, but “the book got too long.”
On the day of the book’s publication, Esdaile told the News that Blight informed him that eugenics was left out of the book because his colleague “was sick.”
Blight stated in an email to the News on Tuesday that he had informed Esdaile that the book was originally intended to be published during the 1930s and “therefore cover the eugenics story fully” Nonetheless, the principal investigator for that undertaking “had an illness and we ran into fierce deadlines.” Blight stated that if published, a follow-up book may “indeed” address eugenics.
Now, the university collaborates with five historically black colleges: Tuskegee University, Hampton University, Morgan State University, North Carolina A&T State University, and Claflin University.
