School Notes: Faculty of Arts & Sciences
November/December 2019

Yale Science Building opens

Located in the footprint of the former J. W. Gibbs Laboratory building on Science Hill, the newly opened Yale Science Building (YSB) offers faculty and students seven stories and 280,300 square feet—including the 500-seat O. C. Marsh Lecture Hall—of newly finished space in which to answer some of the most important scientific questions of the twenty-first century. “It represents the first time in the basic biosciences that we have state-of-the-art facilities for all of our faculty, with the express purpose of making breakthroughs for decades to come in a space that is reliable and innovative,” said Anna Pyle, Sterling Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, and chair of the YSB building committee. “We’ll have a critical mass of people who share the same research tools and interests, which will lead to better science.” Faculty members say it is the casual commingling of colleagues that is YSB’s secret strength. They say it will spark insights and innovation that ultimately will lead to important scientific breakthroughs.

Faculty address national legislative bodies

For a Yale faculty member, writing an acclaimed book can open many doors, including those to the corridors of power, where legislative leaders seek to draw on faculty knowledge and wisdom. Class of 1954 Professor of American History Joanne Freeman’s recent book The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War prompted an invitation from the US Capitol Historical Society to speak at a July celebration in honor of the 116th Congress, in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol, where she shared the podium with the Speaker of the House of Representatives. The success of Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy Jason Stanley’s recent book, How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, brought him in April before the Foreign Affairs Committee of Canadian Parliament. During that session, he was joined via video conference from Vienna by Timothy Snyder, the Richard C. Levin Professor of History, who recently authored two widely discussed books: The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, Americaand On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.