Campus Clips

A Committee on Institutional Voice, appointed by President Maurie McInnis ’96PhD, held ten listening sessions for faculty, students, and staff in September and October. The committee is charged with considering the “when Yale, as an institution, speaks on issues of the day,” as McInnis put it in a message to the university community. Several universities, including Harvard and Stanford, have adopted a position of institutional neutrality in recent months; Princeton’s president said in September that his administration was not considering such a policy. Yale’s committee, which consists of seven faculty members, plans to complete its work by the end of the fall semester.

The university will spend more than $150 million over the next five years to expand its engagement with artificial intelligence. The money will go to buy high-powered computers for running complex AI tools, fund new positions for faculty who study AI technology, provide seed grants for schools and departments to review the use of AI in their curricula, and establish a chatbot powered by ChatGPT within a walled-off environment limited to faculty, staff, and students.

Former British prime minister Theresa May will be the first senior fellow of the Blue Center for Global Strategic Assessment, a new teaching and research center within the Jackson School of Global Affairs. Named for donor Neal Blue ’57, the center focuses on how leaders gather and analyze data to make strategic decisions. May will be on campus for the spring 2025 semester.

The John B. Pierce Laboratory, a Yale-affiliated nonprofit that has conducted physiological and health research in New Haven since 1933, will wind down its activities next year. Its parent organization, the John B. Pierce Foundation, will transfer $20 million of its assets to Yale over the next two years to fund four or five new professorships and some graduate fellowships. The Pierce professorships may be allocated to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the schools of medicine, public health, architecture, environment, and engineering, in accordance with its founder’s interest in making the built world healthier for people.

What’s in a name? Ask the people at the Yale LGBTQ Center, which until this past summer was called the Yale Office of LGBTQ Resources. The new name better reflects the organization’s community-center model for providing a space for LGBTQ+ students. The center is located at Prospect and Sachem Streets, in a building once occupied by the School of Management.