Yale News

Tamar Gendler, inaugural dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, told the News that she was a top contender for the Yale presidency. She hypothesized that University President Maurie McInnis was the final pick because McInnis has media training from her time at previous universities. 

Meanwhile, Gendler believes that she herself was passed over because she is uninhibited in her public speaking.

Gendler explained that she thinks trustees, who led the presidential search process, wanted a president who would know how to carefully engage with a second Donald Trump administration, which might be hostile toward universities. Trump has characterized universities as overrun by “Marxist maniacs” and has proposed expanding taxes on university endowments, slashing diversity efforts and privatizing student loans.

“If you’re trying to do a bet-hedging, risk-averse response to a possible hostile administration, you might not want somebody who is particularly public in the world, who’s particularly outgoing,” Gendler said. “I would say I have lots of things in my background that make me, in an abstract sense, the ideal leader. … [McInnis] knows how to interact with the media.”

Gendler also told the News that she is interested in becoming president of one of the four other Ivy League universities that do not currently have permanent presidents. She named Cornell, Harvard, Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania.

“Right now, none of them is headed by somebody whose life is academic in their free time,” Gendler said. She explained that she is able to spend more of her time thinking about academics compared to her colleagues who are university presidents. “Right now, in my free time, I download Max Weber on my Libby app and listen to The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism while I go for a walk. I find nothing more stimulating than ideas. I don’t think that’s necessarily true of many of the leaders of institutions.”

She said she sees her strengths as being intellectually interested and interacting with faculty and students, and sees her weakness as her lack of experience working with legislatures.

University presidents have been under scrutiny since several were called to testify before Congress last year about campus antisemitism. Three presidents resigned after making controversial statements at the hearings, and the House Republican who championed the hearings, Elise Stefanik, was nominated by Trump to serve as the next U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations after the hearings catapulted her into the national spotlight.

Before Yale, McInnis worked as an administrator at three public universities where she worked with state legislatures: as president of Stony Brook University, provost of the University of Texas at Austin and vice provost for academics at the University of Virginia.

During a previous interview on Aug. 28, McInnis said that when she was at Stony Book, she had to balance her hopes with the financial constraints of the state of New York, which controlled the university’s tuition, negotiated union contracts and made appropriations for the school.

“A lot of the work that I did there was to build support from the legislature,” McInnis said.

Gendler will step down on Dec. 31 from her position as FAS dean, one of Yale’s most powerful administrative roles, in which she oversees the structure and hiring of the faculty. She said she planned to step down after her second five-year term regardless of whether she was chosen as president because fifteen years in the same role would be too long.

After her term ends, she will head to Palo Alto, California, for a sabbatical before eventually returning to Yale to continue research.

“I felt disappointment. I’m sad this didn’t happen,” Gendler said about being Yale’s president. “I would have had a fantastic time being president, and I will have a fantastic time not being president, and that’s what life is like.”

As other possible career moves, she floated the ideas of starting a podcast with Professor of Psychology Laurie Santos or giving talks at the Aspen Institute, “and then maybe, or maybe not, having fancy words on my gravestone.”

In a Sept. 17 email to FAS department chairs announcing that she would not seek a third term as FAS dean, Gendler expressed gratitude toward her colleagues and enthusiasm for continued work at Yale after her sabbatical.

“I expect to return to Yale filled with questions and ideas and ambitions that I will be excited to explore with you,” she wrote. “There is no community that I love more than the one we have built here in New Haven, and nowhere I would rather be a scholar and teacher and university citizen.”

Santos said that Gendler led Yale’s faculty with imagination and dedication.

“I think Tamar will do amazing work in any role or institution that’s lucky enough to attract her,” she said.

McInnis was announced as president on May 29.