Yale Loses the Capitulation Bowl

The president of Yale, Maurie McInnis, got caught trying to make a deal with the Trump administration to change its admission procedures as a way to settle an administration investigation of Yale and the threat of sanctions. The administration contended that Yale favored Black and Hispanic applicants.

But instead of a deal, the secret negotiations have produced massive protests by faculty, students, and alums, including several alums in the Connecticut legislature who have threatened to take away Yale’s special tax treatment if Yale capitulates to administration blackmail. Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal (a Yale Law School graduate), after meeting with McInnis, joined the protestors and warned McInnis not to cave.

The dean of Yale Law School has privately lobbied administrators against a deal. A newly formed alumni group called Stand Up For Yale and Yale’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors have excoriated McInnis.

In their letter to McInnis, eight Connecticut lawmakers wrote, “Capitulating now would constitute a serious abandonment of Yale’s values, be a severe strategic miscalculation, and could jeopardize Yale’s relationship with the State of Connecticut—including state-granted privileges the University has long taken for granted.”

As courts have sided with universities and blocked the administration’s attempts to withhold funds from universities that fail to make deals, McInnis’s timing is odd. Last September, a federal district court granted Harvard summary judgment, overturning the administration’s freeze of more than $2 billion in research funding. The Court found that this was retaliation for protected First Amendment activity. 

The protestors are also incensed that Yale has retained the law firm of McGuireWoods, which negotiated a disastrous agreement with the University of Virginia that subjected that university to long-term federal monitoring and quarterly compliance reporting and certification. The deal did not prevent the administration from forcing out the university president just a few months after it was signed. 

As the Connecticut legislators wrote in their letter to McInnis, the agreement “put UVA to greater legal peril than if it had done nothing at all: the Government remains free to open new inquiries at any time and to investigate noncompliance with the agreement itself.”

Yale’s efforts to give in to Trump blackmail are in striking contrast to the evolution of negotiations between the administration and Harvard. A year ago, Harvard President Alan Garber was looking for a way to make a deal with Trump. But the administration kept upping the ante. In the meantime, students, faculty, and alumni organized Crimson Courage to keep the heat on Garber not to cave. Recently, our longtime Prospect board member, Miles Rapoport, the co-chair of Crimson Courage, joined Sen. Blumenthal at Yale urging students and faculty to keep the pressure on President McInnis.

Ironically, last January 27, McInnis presented Garber with the Yale School of Management’s “Legend in Leadership” Award. The citation by event organizer, Professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, declared: “President Garber’s momentous April 2025 declaration that ‘no government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue’ made Harvard the first university to publicly defy the administration’s demands for control over academic decision-making.”