Author Archives: Riley Ford

It’s hard to turn down Teach for America. If you try — as one of my friends recently did when she was given an assignment for which she felt unqualified and unprepared — the comeback is simple and effective: But don’t you want to help the kids? Tough to argue with that, particularly when you’ve »

A week has elapsed since University President Richard Levin and New Haven Mayor John DeStefano Jr. announced the New Haven Promise initiative, and the barbs expected of such a heady declaration have been exchanged on this page and elsewhere. One conclusion has become clear: No matter where the pundits stand on the execution of such »

Three hundred and nine years ago today, the General Assembly of Connecticut approved “An Act for Liberty to Erect a Collegiate School,” which granted a group of Puritan clergymen £120 a year to establish and maintain a school for ministers. Yale’s earliest incarnation was not wholly theological — the act vowed to educate men “for »