The Yale Corporation , officially The President and Fellows of Yale College , is the governing body of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut .
10-893: The Corporation comprises 19 members: While Article 8 Section 3 of the Constitution of the State of Connecticut recognizes a 1792 Act of the Connecticut General Assembly, which established the governor, lieutenant governor, and six members of the State Senate as ex officio members of the Corporation, an 1871 act of the Connecticut Legislature gave Yale alumni the right to elect the six posts formerly occupied by state senators. As explained by 20th-century Yale historian George Pierson : In
20-469: The 1750s President Clap did cause or engineer two great breaks: the separation of the College from the churches by the setting up of an independent college church, and separation of the College from the state by the refusal of inspection and termination of colony support. But the second separation proved unsuccessful. So Stiles and his trustees had to bring political authorities back into the management of
30-468: The College by adding the governor, lieutenant governor, and six senior assistants to the Fellows of the Corporation in return for some monies and for the confirmation of the colonial charter. So, whatever the traditions or later assumptions, Yale College would not find itself operationally free from political supervision until 1872, when by law six alumni fellows or trustees were allowed to be substituted for
40-849: The United States. It won the distinguished John Addison Porter Prize from the university for best work of scholarship that year. Pierson's entire academic career unfolded at Yale, beginning in 1926. As an assistant professor in the Department of History in 1938, Pierson translated and quoted from several of the letters in a book he wrote about Tocqueville in America; but he viewed them as primary source documents rather than as an epistolary accomplishment. The value of this early scholarship assumed greater importance as general public interest in Tocqueville's writing has evolved. Pierson
50-588: The Yale University webpages concerning the Corporation: George Wilson Pierson George Wilson Pierson (October 22, 1904 – October 12, 1993) was an American academic, historian, author and Learned Professor of History at Yale University . He was the first official historian of the university. Pierson was a descendant of Yale's first rector, Abraham Pierson , and he was related to
60-454: The college's first student. He was the son of Charles Wheeler Pierson, a New York lawyer who had been valedictorian of the Class of 1886. Like his father, Pierson was at the top of his undergraduate class in 1926. In 1936, he brought a new bride to New Haven. In the early 1960s, he and his wife celebrated the marriage of two daughters, Laetitia and Nora. According to a granddaughter, he
70-622: The six senior senators of the Corporation. In the late nineteenth century, it became a point of debate whether the Successor Trustees needed to remain Connecticut ministers. In 1905, the trustees selected their first non-minister successor, Payson Merrill. By 1917, half the Successor Trustees were laypersons. The Members of the Yale Corporation were the following and had the following roles as of May 2021, according to
80-493: Was a man "with glittering eyes and a sly sense of humor." Pierson attained his B.A. from Yale in 1926 and was awarded the Warren Memorial High Scholarship prize for the "highest standing in scholarship." He earned his Ph.D. in history from Yale in 1933. His dissertation was "Two Frenchmen in America, 1831–1832," a study of the experiences of Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in
90-408: Was a strong opponent to Yale's initial attempt at some form of coordinate or co-education with Vassar College. In a statement made to the "Vassar Miscellany News", Pierson said women "have never been celebrated in any work I know for their originality, their Imagination, their rebelliousness or constructiveness of thought." In the foreword to Yale: A Short History , Pierson described Yale as "at once
100-513: Was named to an endowed professorship in 1946. He remained active in teaching and as an administrator until his retirement in 1973. Pierson had climbed the academic ladder to become the chairman of the History Department in the late-1950s and early-1960s. Among his achievements was recruiting noted historians Arthur F. Wright and Mary C. Wright to teach Chinese history and John Whitney Hall to teach Japanese history. Pierson
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