Salovey steps down, presidential search still underway
Despite University President Peter Salovey’s August announcement that he would be stepping down, the Yale Corporation has not yet made their decision for Yale’s 24th president.
Tim Tai, Senior Photographer
At the beginning of the 2023-2024 academic year, University President Peter Salovey announced that he would be stepping down from his role at the university. Nine months later, the presidential search committee — which has since been tasked with finding Yale’s next president — has not yet named Salovey’s successor.
In August, Salovey announced that this will be his 11th and final year as Yale’s president and that he would be departing on June 30. The announcement was met with various insights from students and University faculty, as well as the ongoing search for the next president.
“I’ve been in higher administration — dean, provost and president — for 21 years, and at a personal level, it just felt that the time was right,” Salovey said in an interview with the News in advance of the announcement’s release. “I very much want to finish my career at Yale, and I wanted to finish the way it started. I started as a graduate student and then as a professor, teaching and writing, doing research. I want to come full circle.”
Students and faculty expressed generally positive feelings about Salovey’s tenure as president.
Yale College Council President Julian Suh-Toma ’25 said in an interview with YTV that he felt “surprise” when Salovey announced his departure.
“We do want to honor the legacy that President Salovey has left. I think that he has done a lot of great things in a lot of different areas,” Suh-Toma said.
In September, history professor Jay Gitlin ’71 MUS ’74 GRD ’82 GRD ’02 praised Salovey, lauding the “positive spirit” he brought to the job.
Gitlin told the News that he would like to see Yale preserve Pierson’s vision for the University as “a company of scholars, a society of friends,” quoting the historian George W. Pierson — whom Salovey himself quoted at the time he accepted the presidency.
“I hope the next president continues the Salovey soft touch – letting committees help make important decisions,” English professor Leslie Brisman wrote to the News in September.
Since Salovey’s announcement in August, the search for a new University president has been underway.
The Presidential Search Committee is chaired by Corporation senior trustee Joshua Bekenstein ’80 and consists of seven additional Corporation members: Catharine Bond Hill GRD ’85 and William Kennard LAW ’81, who serve as vice chairs to the committee, as well as five others — Ann Miura-Ko ’98, Joshua Steiner ’87, David Sze ’88, Marta Tellado GRD ’02 and Michael Warren ’90.
In September, four faculty members — Steven Berry, Daniel Colón Ramos, Jacqueline Goldsby and Anjelica Gonzalez GRD ’98 — were appointed to the committee.
During the first month of the search, students had no official input in the committee’s deliberations. However, after widespread student demand for student representation, the Corporation agreed to incorporate a Student Advisory Council to the search. The SAC is separate from the Presidential Search Committee, but would produce a report synthesizing the student body’s input on the qualities they sought in Yale’s next president to be used with committee members in their deliberations.
The report — which the News obtained in late January — summarized data from over 1,800 student respondents in a survey and named student mental health as the top student concern Yale’s 24th president will face.
In September, the News compiled a non-exhaustive list of possible candidates using the shared qualifications of former Yale Presidents.
The list named Tamar Gendler ’87, Pericles Lewis, Scott Strobel, Elizabeth Alexander ’84, Jonathan Holloway GRD ’95, Jennifer Martinez ’93, Elizabeth Bradley GRD ’96 and James Ryan ’88 as potential candidates.
All eight candidates identified by the News in September had current or prior affiliations with Yale. Of these, only Gendler, Lewis and Strobel currently hold positions at the University.
In April, the News also investigated whether Yale Corporation members Maurie McInnis GRD ’90 GRD ’96 and David Thomas ’78 GRD ’86, who currently serve as the presidents of Stony Brook University and Morehouse College, respectively, could be candidates for the presidency as both have backgrounds in university leadership and affiliations with Yale.
On April 20, the Yale Corporation — the group that oversees the search for Yale’s 24th president by selecting members on the presidential search committee — met in New Haven. The Corporation has not shared when the successor decision would be made and no further information was revealed about the presidential search following the meeting.
As of May 16, the Yale Corporation has released no new information on their decisions, and the search remains ongoing.
The last Corporation meeting of the school year will take place on June 8, following Commencement.