Yale News

Before the COVID-19 pandemic ever began, Yale had a plan to fight it. 

That plan was a years-old manual on battling a pandemic flu, yet it contained the central principles of the administration’s subsequent two year pandemic response: social distancing, masking and even a detailed plan to convert Payne Whitney Gymnasium into a field hospital. In a December 2019 meeting of senior administrators and experts convened by University President Peter Salovey, that very plan was dug up for the first time, setting in motion what came to be more than two years of policy, planning and research in combating the coronavirus.

In an era defined by unprecedented disruption to the activity of the University, convening this group was the first in a series of pivotal decisions that would significantly alter the Office of the President; its relationship with faculty, students and staff and the University’s partnership with the broader community. Yet, by Salovey’s own telling, his view of the presidency and his vision for Yale’s long term goals have remained remarkably consistent. 

Over the course of two years, Salovey has been pulled in two very different directions. The power of the office has simultaneously been democratized and centralized over the last two years, according to Salovey and those closest to him.

A democratized presidency

As Salovey sees it, the pandemic has required unprecedented levels of cooperation and communication with staff, students and faculty to make decisions. 

The only way the University was going to remain loyal to its purpose through the pandemic was to initiate a “campus-wide effort … essentially mobilizing the whole campus, faculty, students, staff,” Salovey said. 

“Without that all-hands-on-deck approach, we couldn’t have done it,” Salovey said about the University’s response to the pandemic, particularly in its early stages. “I think the pandemic pointed out that a model of genuine partnership, rather than thinking you have all the answers, is going to produce better results. …  Collaboration and teamwork [are] a legacy of the pandemic.”

The faculty involvement was most significant in deploying the expertise of Yale epidemiologists and public health experts in the decision-making process. The Office of the President, in that way, greatly expanded: the number of people providing input and insight at the highest level of University governance rapidly increased. 

Senior leadership among faculty concurred. Professor Valerie Horsley, who serves as the chair of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Senate, told the News that “faculty voices have been instruments” in University decisions related to the pandemic.

As Horsley explained, the relationship between the faculty and administration has evolved over the course of the past few years, specifically the communication between the Office of the Provost and faculty members. That has been a particularly significant relationship, as Salovey charged University Provost Scott Strobel with directing the academic response to the pandemic.

The partnership between faculty and the president has not been universal, however, with some members of the FAS Senate telling the News that they have had “zero interaction with Salovey during the pandemic,” as professor of mechanical engineering and material science Alessandro Gomez wrote. 

Some students have also expressed the same view, finding rejection where Salovey sees communication.

“The administration has not even attempted to pretend that it is listening to students,” Aaron Schorr ’24 said. “This winter … administrators did not bother to consult with students about their decisions regarding the spring term until the [Yale College Council] demanded an audience, and even then it was clear that this was simply humoring the students rather than actually listening to their concerns. The so-called ‘town hall’ in January was not held until after policies had already been determined, which highlights the administration’s blatant disregard for student concerns.”

Centralizing Power

If the pandemic democratized certain aspects of the presidency, it also had the effect of maintaining, if not further concentrating, other powers.

An August 2020 meeting of senior administrators presents the clearest picture of this consolidation, according to two present at the meeting — Strobel and Senior Vice President for Operations Jack Callahan.

At the time, Yale’s peer institutions were announcing more restrictive approaches to the fall semester and “radically rolling back what they would be able to do in terms of the number of students they would bring to campus,” Strobel said. Just one month prior, Yale had announced that three of four classes would be welcomed back to campus for the fall semester, and Salovey was determined to abide by that plan.

“All that was coming into question in mid-August,” Strobel explained. “Do we respond in the same way that the other schools did?” 

The heated debate that ensued among the administrators and experts present at the discussion culminated in an unilateral decision from Salovey: no. 

Yale would abide by its initial announcement, Salovey told the virtual room. 

As Salovey attempted to balance a breadth of input with the need to make swift, unilateral decisions, a parallel balancing act was also being orchestrated: how to balance a long term vision necessary for a successful presidency with daily changes in policy and practice.

Two tracks

In 2016, Salovey articulated his academic goals for his tenure as president, which placed a focus on improving the University’s teaching and research in the sciences and engineering fields. The pandemic complicated these goals by pulling Salovey down from “40,000 feet,” and forcing him to focus on the day-to-day policy changes occurring throughout the University.

This has made focusing on both the short and long term issues easier, Salovey said. 

“We tried to keep ourselves thinking both ways [in the short term and long term] at the same time,” Salovey said. “So the idea was that we’re still going to make progress on our academic strategy and we’re still going to launch our [capital] campaign, but I had a team meeting with me, particularly in the first year of the pandemic, every day talking about how to manage it.”

The ability to manage both was, as Salovey described it, “no great feat of cognitive complexity.” He simply was no longer on the road, an element of the job that previously consumed two thirds of his time. 

The added time has been directed towards thinking more about those long-term goals, Salovey explained, and the elimination of travel allowed for greater insight into the intricacies and nuances of the individual decisions throughout the pandemic. 

And it appears to be paying off. Professor of English Leslie Brisman heaped praise on the University’s leadership throughout the pandemic. 

“Yale has done and is doing an extraordinary job in controlling the pandemic and keeping the University running so well,” Brisman wrote in an email to the News. “I am constantly comparing Yale’s response with that of other schools and am so proud and so grateful for the active leadership and wise decisions that have kept us both safe and operating.”

Salovey likes to say, half jokingly, that the job of the president can be reduced to three main points: articulate a vision for the University, hire a team and raise the requisite funds. The pandemic introduced an entirely new aspect to the job, while also introducing new challenges to the original ones. In a sense, the presidency went from being one role to two.

“There’s no way that COVID put any wind in our back,” he conceded. “But nor do I feel like it represented a blockade in terms of getting things done as president.”

If balancing a vision for the future, while keeping one’s feet firmly planted on the ground was a goal and challenge, so too was finding and following a consistent approach to pandemic policies. The administration’s ability to articulate and abide by that philosophy has, despite Salovey’s unwavering optimism, had a mixed reception.  

Finding a pandemic philosophy

Salovey says his guiding principle was being driven by data — the most significant implication of which was not being “beholden to a specific point of view,” allowing Yale to be “nimble” when it needed to be. 

Yet he is also aware that being nimble is often perceived as inconsistency. Salovey pointed to two specific instances that demonstrate both the devotion to data and perceived inconsistency.

The August 2020 decision to be less cautious than peer institutions by welcoming a majority of students to campus, and the December 2021 decision to adopt the most restrictive policies in the Ivy League were equally determined by the state of the pandemic in the local community, rather than guided by an allegiance to a particular ideology about the pandemic, Salovey said. 

“As a leader, I want to avoid an ideology, an ideology of permissiveness, or an ideology of cautiousness, but rather, let’s look at the data,” he said. 

While Salovey is concerned with the appearance of the data driving the University in various different directions, others describe a different inconsistency altogether: that the University is not consistently following the data in the first place. 

“Over the course of the pandemic, the administration has repeatedly used the highly nebulous idea of ‘data’ — a constantly shifting soup of parameters of statistics — to justify its policy decisions,” Schorr told the News. “Some of these decisions were indeed in line with expert recommendations and scientific consensus, but others were clearly not.”

Attempts at transparency, unfortunately, have done little to dispel claims of inconsistency. For some, the apparent lack of support for the University’s policy among the undergraduate student body reflects the inconsistency of the policy and the inefficiency with which it was communicated. 

“What seems apparent, removing any sort of personal criticisms of Salovey’s administration, is the reality that very few Yale College students feel as though the University’s COVID-19 mitigation policies have been correct in scope,” Justice Harasha ’24 said. 

Harasha explained that students are ostensibly broadly divided into two groups: those that believe the pandemic policies have been too “callous and cavalier” towards immunocompromised students, and those who argue that vaccines and frequent testing should enable a return to full normalcy. 

“When both of these groups exist, without really any group in agreement with University policy, it’s likely safe to assume that there have been inconsistencies throughout Yale’s dealings with the pandemic,” Harasha said. “The nature of those inconsistencies differ widely based on which of the two parties you speak with. Has Salovey failed? No, maybe not. But the administration’s often performative approach to public health regulation has caused gripes from both sides of the aisle.”

Still, from the use of technology in teaching, to the designing of buildings, to job flexibility among staff, to improving the communication structure of the University, Salovey was positive over the potential takeaways from the pandemic. 

Strained Relationships

Yet while the president’s relationship with faculty was broadly positive throughout the pandemic, that optimism was noticeably absent when Salovey described the more challenging partnerships across the community. 

“To implement a pandemic plan required huge numbers of staff to do things that weren’t their job,” Salovey said. 

Yale dining hall workers were asked to staff testing and vaccine centers. Staff who ordinarily organize conferences and events were coordinating isolation housing. And physicians in Yale Health were setting up vaccine distribution systems. 

While the president maintains that the relationship with staff has remained strong throughout the pandemic, he conceded that this significant pivot required a “pause” and a series of negotiations with union leaders. 

Rafi Taherian, Yale’s associate vice president for hospitality, presented a far rosier view of the relationship between staff and administration, stressing that the pandemic only served to improve relations. 

The University continued to pay staff throughout the pandemic, despite significantly decreasing operational activity, and according to Taherian, staff members understood the severity of the moment and the need to support the community beyond their expected roles and willingly volunteered for those positions. Jane Savage, who oversees Yale’s relationships with its labor unions, agreed that the relationship is strong, pointing in particular to the new labor agreements signed in the midst of the pandemic. 

Representatives from Yale’s two largest unions — Local 34 and Local 35 — declined to comment for this story. 

“In the initial phases of COVID, there were so many unknowns as to transmission and risks,” Taherian told the News. “Despite that, many of our employees voluntarily stepped up to the plate alongside other frontline workers, which provided service and care to the campus community.”

Callahan also described how the decision to continue paying staff throughout the pandemic only strengthened their relationship with the administration. However, he pointed to some issues that are only now beginning to emerge: staff, Callahan said, are simply getting “worn out.”

“Staffers are highly committed, but they’re a bit tired,” Callahan said. “And I think Peter [Salovey] and I need to recognize that, reward that and as some of these burdens start to lessen, make people feel good about that.”

Looking Forward

“I plan to [serve as president] as long as I’m healthy, making progress, still have goals to achieve and have the support of the larger Yale community,” Salovey said. 

Enjoying the job no less today than when he entered office in 2013, Salovey expressed a determination not to give up on the broad goals outlined six years ago in the University’s academic priorities. 

Salovey got a Havanese puppy during the pandemic.