Thomas Breen file photo
Yale Prez Peter Salovey celebrating town-gown deal in 2021.
Peter Salovey will be stepping down from the helm of Yale University at the end of the academic year.
In an email on Thursday morning, Salovey announced plans to retire from his role as the university’s president after over a decade on the job.
“Yale should be more accessible, more innovative, more unified, and even more excellent,” Salovey wrote. “Observing the university today, I believe we have advanced significantly in pursuit of these goals.”
A psychology professor who helped pave an understanding of emotional intelligence in his field, Salovey wrote that he plans to return to teaching, research, and fundraising after the spring 2024 semester. He said that he may stay in the role longer if the university’s board needs more time to search for a replacement.
Salovey has been the top administrator at Yale since July 2013. He has overseen numerous capital projects including two new residential colleges, a revamped student life building (known as the Schwarzman Center), and multiple academic hubs.
During Salovey’s tenure, students, faculty, and community members alike pressed the administration on racial justice at the university, particularly after a number of controversial events — including the renaming of a dorm formerly known as Calhoun College, the Yale and Hamden Police shooting of Stephanie Washington and Paul Witherspoon, and the firing of Corey Menafee after he smashed a stained glass window depicting African American enslaved people.
After the Black Lives Matter protests across the country in 2020, Salovey announced a Yale and Slavery Working Group to research the university’s role in enslaving Black Americans.
He also led the university through the Covid-19 pandemic with an intensive viral testing program and a harm-reduction-inspired approach to social distancing.
A Yale News article on Thursday touted the university endowment’s enormous growth under Salovey’s leadership from $20.8 billion in June 2013 to $41.4 billion in June 2022.
The article noted that the university’s current capital campaign, ambitiously called “For Humanity,” has garnered donations surpassing $5 billion.
In a separate email press release, Mayor Justin Elicker celebrated Yale’s recent $10 million-a-year increase to its annual contributions to New Haven.
“The history and future of New Haven and Yale University are inextricably linked, and it is a link that has been strengthened and a future that is brighter thanks to President Salovey’s partnership and leadership,” Elicker is quoted as saying in the press release. “I look forward to continuing to work together as he concludes his tenure as Yale’s president this year and as he continues to be a proud New Haven resident for years to come.”
In his last year, among other issues, Salovey will contend with the ramifications of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to ban affirmative action in college admissions.
Salovey's work has been amazing for Yale and for the city's economy, but the local view may be a bit more nuanced, especially for families whose rent payments have doubled.
Raising close to $30,000,000,000 over the past decade translates to a tsunami of thousands of additional Yale faculty, staff, and students who have moved, and will be moving, to New Haven.
You can see some of the effects of this already, but it will take another few years for this influx of billions of dollars to translate into new jobs/classes/etc. Yale's enormous new PSEB tower will open on Edwards Street in 2028, for example.
During this time, Yale has built almost no new housing. Yale should be using a few hundred million dollars to buy up properties around New Haven for high-rise student and faculty housing, before the local housing market gets even more out of control.