The Yale Corporation, officially The President and Fellows of Yale College, is the governing body of
Yale University
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the w ...
in
New Haven, Connecticut
New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134 ...
.
Assembly of corporation
The Corporation comprises 19 members:
* Three
ex officio
An ''ex officio'' member is a member of a body (notably a board, committee, council) who is part of it by virtue of holding another office. The term '' ex officio'' is Latin, meaning literally 'from the office', and the sense intended is 'by right ...
members: the President of the University and the Governor and the Lieutenant Governor of the
State of Connecticut.
* Ten "Successor Trustees" who elect their own successors.
* Six Alumni Fellows who are elected by the body of Yale alumni.
While Article 8 Section 3 of the Constitution of the State of Connecticut recognizes a 1792 Act of the Connecticut General Assembly, which established the governor, lieutenant governor, and six members of the State Senate as ex officio members of the Corporation, an 1871 act of the Connecticut Legislature gave Yale alumni the right to elect the six posts formerly occupied by state senators. As explained by 20th-century Yale historian
George Pierson:
In the 1750s President Clap did cause or engineer two great breaks: the separation of the College from the churches by the setting up of an independent college church, and separation of the College from the state by the refusal of inspection and termination of colony support. But the second separation proved unsuccessful. So Stiles and his trustees had to bring political authorities back into the management of the College by adding the governor, lieutenant governor, and six senior assistants to the Fellows of the Corporation in return for some monies and for the confirmation of the colonial charter. So, whatever the traditions or later assumptions, Yale College would not find itself operationally free from political supervision until 1872, when by law six alumni fellows or trustees were allowed to be substituted for the six senior senators of the Corporation.
In the late nineteenth century, it became a point of debate whether the Successor Trustees needed to remain Connecticut ministers. In 1905, the trustees selected their first non-minister successor, Payson Merrill.
By 1917, half the Successor Trustees were laypersons.
List of corporation members
The Members of the Yale Corporation were the following and had the following roles as of May 2021, according to the Yale University webpages concerning the Corporation:
Notes
References
* Pierson, George Wilson. (1988). ''The Founding of Yale: the Legend of the Forty Folios.'' New Haven: Yale University Press.
OCLC 17872942
External links
{{Authority control
Yale University
Governing bodies of universities and colleges in the United States