Author Archives: Nathaniel Zelinsky

Last night, Yalies on campus and Americans across the country watched the State of the Union Address. Commentators predicted a speech that would turn around Obama’s presidency, already on the upswing after an emotional address in Tucson, Arizona. Some had hopes that the President would provide dignified leadership for a struggling nation, while others looked »

In a series of columns in the fall, I criticized the New Haven Promise scholarship program, calling it a Band-Aid solution to larger problems in our city’s failing schools. While Yale funds this program with the best of intentions, the University is not subsidizing true educational reform. Defenders of the initiative responded that Promise represents »

On November 14, Mayor John DeStefano Jr. will deliver a Chubb Fellowship lecture in the Yale Law School Auditorium. He will likely speak about his long-term plans for New Haven, including the new “Promise” scholarships recently announced by the University. The New Haven Promise program has received national attention, with the media heralding DeStefano as »

On Wednesday, I criticized Yale’s well-intended but poorly-designed scholarship program, New Haven Promise (“An empty Promise,” Nov. 10). I argued that this program does not address the fundamental problems of the New Haven public schools — namely, the poor performance of many unionized teachers. Instead, the Promise is an ill-disguised Band-Aid which fails to address »

On Tuesday, the City of New Haven and Yale announced New Haven Promise, a joint program to provide college scholarships to New Haven high school graduates. While this plan is well-intentioned, it will actually end up hurting the very high school students it seeks to help. New Haven Promise is a poorly disguised Band-Aid which »