August 26, 2024
Dear parents and guardians of Yale College students,
I was so glad to meet many of you who were on campus during move-in weekend for first-year students, and if you will be on campus again for family weekend, from September 27 to 29, I hope to say hello again then.
With classes starting Wednesday, I wrote this morning to students to welcome them to campus and to say more about the themes from the remarks that President McInnis and I made at last week's opening assembly, when we talked about engagement, service, and democracy. I spoke then about Yale's academic community and how it defines itself through free expression and the exchange of ideas, and today I followed up by telling students where they could find policies that support the university's commitment to free expression. My message follows, below.
If you do plan to be on campus for family weekend, you will soon be able to see a calendar of events on the family weekend website. It is still being updated, but for now you can see last year's events, which will give you a good idea of this year's. Pre-registration will be requested for two events on Saturday: a family brunch and an update on university life from President McInnis and me. You will be able to sign up on the family weekend website.
Whether or not you plan to be in New Haven at the end of September, I send you my best wishes from campus.
Sincerely,
Pericles Lewis
Dean of Yale College
Douglas Tracy Smith Professor of Comparative Literature Professor of English
August 26, 2024
Dear students,
It is such a pleasure to welcome you – or welcome you back – to campus. Seeing so many of you at last night's Bulldog Bash was a lot of fun. I am excited about the year ahead, and I hope you are, too.
I also hope that you were able to enjoy the summer. Some of you were wrapping up jobs or internships. Others of you were traveling or completing service projects. Still others were studying abroad or here in the US. However you spent the summer, I hope you were able to watch and cheer, as I was, the Yalies who represented 10 countries at the Olympics, or who will compete at the Paralympics, which start Wednesday.
In these past few months, you have all engaged as citizens – in your communities, nationally, and internationally – just as Timothy Dwight, in 1776, urged Yalies to become "citizens of the world." Citizenship and engagement were also themes of the remarks that President McInnis and I made at last week's opening assembly. President McInnis spoke about engaging with the Yale community, and I spoke about service and democracy. (You can find our remarks here and here, and a podcast in which I discuss these ideas here.)
I also spoke about how a university is a particular kind of community because it defines itself through free expression and the exchange of ideas. Since we are here to search for truth together, we open ourselves up to the full range of opinions, including opinions that challenge and in some cases even offend us. Because we live and learn alongside people of differing faiths and political views and of diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds, we should neither expect nor even want everyone to view even the most fundamental questions through the same lens. But as members of this community, we should and do expect that everyone who belongs to it is free to speak and be heard.
To do this, we abide by ground rules that protect the right of every member of the community to express their views—and the right of every member of the community to hear and assess those views. This is the central principle of the Woodward Report of 1974, one of our foundational documents, which also emphasizes the value of respecting one another as members of this community. You can read more about these values, their practical application, and responses to discrimination and harassment in the August 13 message from Secretary and Vice-President for University Life Kimberly Goff-Crews.
This year has seen many democratic elections around the world. If you are a U.S. citizen, I encourage you to exercise your right to vote. You can learn more about Voting at Yale here. I also encourage you all to consider participating in organizations that promote service and engagement, including political debate. Finally, I invite you to attend one of my Dean's Dialogues at the Schwarzman Center. The dialogues this semester focus on the U.S. presidential election in perspective.
Whether you are a first-year in the class of 2028, a second-semester “24.5” senior, or somewhere in between, I look forward to the opportunity for learning together in this new academic year, and I thank you all for helping to nurture a community of respect.
Sincerely,
Pericles Lewis
Dean of Yale College
Douglas Tracy Smith Professor of Comparative Literature Professor of English