Dr. Maurie McInnis
President
&
Members of the Yale Corporation
Yale University
3 Prospect Street
New Haven, CT 06511

Dear President McInnis and Members of the Yale Corporation:

The YLS Alumni Strengthening Democracy Network is a group of Yale Law School alumni and affiliated individuals who have united to protect against threats to rule of law, and to ensure that the bedrock principles of a functioning democracy remain vital and intact. Although formally affiliated with neither the law school nor Yale University, our members are proud of Yale Law School’s values and we seek to ensure their continued salience, especially now.

The undersigned Network members, all signing in their individual capacities, write to urge you not to capitulate to the Trump administration’s threats to the University. And we urge you, throughout the University’s engagement with the administration, to consult closely with Yale Law School leadership and faculty—and to heed the law school’s guidance. These are professors and leaders on whom, for decades, the country, our courts, and many administrations have relied for legal and ethical expertise.

The law-school faculty includes internationally renowned experts on academic freedom, the First Amendment, anti-discrimination law, and the meaning of constitutional due-process protections. The University needs to look no further than its own backyard for the world’s experts on these topics—and we urge it to do so.

These issues are so important in this context because the Trump administration has deviated entirely from the freedom of speech and anti-discrimination laws and norms governing investigations of universities. The experience of higher-education institutions across America shows that the fundamental principles of providing notice and due process, conducting thorough investigations, applying clear and consistent legal standards, ensuring equality of opportunity, and respecting prior agency precedent and practice no longer exist under this administration.

Capitulating to the administration’s demands will not only fail to insulate the University from further attacks by this administration, but it will also inflict incalculable damage to the University's academic mission, reputation, and integrity. This administration’s actions over the past 18 months have shown that acceding to its demands can still subject a university to further lawless demands. The path to preserving the University's values is to insist on full legal compliance, reject demands that the University knows to be unlawful, and defend the actions the University knows to be lawful.

In this environment, the University cannot enter into any binding agreement(s) with the administration as though it is negotiating with a good-faith partner committed to the rule of law and reasonably resolving different perspectives. Any concession, experience shows, will result in further assaults on academic independence. Look no further than the experiences of the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, and Brown University. All signed agreements—and all became further targets of the administration. The damage to their reputations has been incalculable, and will be difficult to repair.

Yale should feel confident, and indeed proud, of its practices that result from judicious deliberation, sound reasoning, and a long history of success. The University is best served to use available legal processes to defend those practices, and not to agree to demands by this administration that seek to dictate Yale’s actions contrary to the school’s fundamental mission.

Please do not underestimate the long-term damage that capitulation will do to academic freedom, the search for truth, reliance on verifiable facts, and academia’s role in educating the public. Undermining those values will cripple alumni relations and donations; years of trust building among diverse communities and constituencies; faculty and student recruitment; the University’s values, ethos, and reputation; and the role the University and its schools play as engines for equality of opportunity and social mobility.

Yale immersed us all in timeless academic values. For many of us, Yale opened doors. This administration unmistakably seeks to destroy those values and close those doors.

Yale has been looked to as a beacon of excellence not only nationally, but globally. Yale nurtures future national and international leaders and provides them with the fundamentals of critical inquiry, ethical judgment, intellectual courage, and public responsibility that are essential to sustaining a free and democratic society and world.

As graduates and affiliates of this institution, we recognize these as the foundational values that first drew us to the Yale Law School, that sustained us throughout our time within those walls, and that continue to be a point of pride and distinction for our community.

We urge you to remain steadfast in Yale’s values—Lux et Veritas—light and truth, and prove that they have not become ornamental. Rather, our values have always been a charge and a responsibility to pursue truth openly, to defend these values courageously, and refuse to yield to intimidation or lawlessness. There is a vast network of Yale graduates and affiliates who are not only watching but standing by Yale’s side to protect these values.

Sincerely yours,
Members of the Yale Law School Alumni Strengthening Democracy Network