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Democratize Yale Isn’t Really About Democracy
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Democratize Yale Isn’t Really About Democracy

Leaders of the organization mask their true, far-left ideology behind popular, unoffensive slogans. Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University. (Credit: Buckley Institute) Hannah Owens PierreOpinions Editor, The Buckley Beacon Look at the Democratize Yale website, or their protests, or the custom-made shirts that the group passes out, and you will see a picture of the May Day protests of 1970 that took place on Yale’s campus. Given that the demands of the student coalition are ostensibly for a greater student voice in Yale decision making, you might assume that the May Day protests were based on a similar theme. Perhaps they were about censorship, or academic freedom, or democracy?  Sadly, you’d be wrong. These protests were instead carried out in defense of members o...
Biden DHS Secretary Mayorkas Defends the Power to Deport
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Biden DHS Secretary Mayorkas Defends the Power to Deport

The YPU hosted former DHS secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to debate Resolved: America Needs Deportation. Student speakers on both sides challenged him. Mayorkas addresses the YPU in Sterling-Sheffield-Strathcona Hall. (Credit: Michelle Zheng) Michelle ZhengManaging Editor, The Buckley Beacon Former Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told the Yale Political Union that the United States must keep the power to deport, even as he conceded that “there are unjust deportations.” “To be clear,” Mayorkas told the Union, “today I advocate in support of the proposition that the United States must have the legal authority to deport an individual.”  The resolution before the Union was Resolved: America Needs Deportation. Mayorkas opened in the affirmative by calling it amb...
Housing Lottery Forces Women to Share Bathrooms With Men
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Housing Lottery Forces Women to Share Bathrooms With Men

Yale's $21,600 per year residential colleges force students into uncomfortable, unwanted situations. A gender neutral bathroom in Benjamin Franklin College. (Credit: Michelle Zheng) Michelle ZhengManaging Editor, The Buckley Beacon Yale's housing policy is, on paper, neutral. The lottery is random. The bathroom alternation applies everywhere. Nobody is officially being singled out. This is the story Yale tells itself. It is not the whole story. Eva Rosenberg, a sophomore in Benjamin Franklin College studying electrical engineering and computer science, was strongly opposed to living on a gender-inclusive floor, but a late lottery number left her on one. Eva claims that on the housing form, she set her preference to a women’s only bathroom floor. However, she received a ...
Examination Into the Yale Endowment Justice Collective
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Examination Into the Yale Endowment Justice Collective

The non-registered activist group consistently violates university policies and has built ties to Yale’s student government. Questions remain about its funding, outside affiliations and accountability. Students protest in front of the cardboard sculpture in Beinecke Plaza. (Credit: Jack Olson) Hannah Owens PierreOpinions Editor, The Buckley Beacon On October 1, 2026, hundreds of Yale students gathered for a protest in direct violation of Yale University policies. Planned by the Endowment Justice Collective (EJC), a non-registered organization led by Yale students, the protest featured a broad left-wing coalition of complaints.  One protester accused Yale of “profiting from the genocide in Gaza” and rallied against the free expression policy instituted by Yale. Another d...
Thank You, President McInnis
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Thank You, President McInnis

Maurie McInnis has acted in the interests of Yale at every turn, yet still receives unfounded attacks from the left. President Maurie McInnis outside the Schwarzman Center. (Credit: Yale Office of the President) Hannah Owens PierreOpinions Editor, The Buckley Beacon Over the weekend, Yale’s President Maurie McInnis was taking photographs with parents arriving at Yale for Family Weekend when she was ambushed by a member of the Endowment Justice Collective (EJC), who pretended to take a photo with her before grilling her on her negotiation strategies with the Trump administration.  The next day before a morning panel event, McInnis was caught on a hot mic telling Dean of Yale College Pericles Lewis that she was ambushed by a student who appeared “pissed off,” which to me ...
Emergency Docket Now Defines the Supreme Court, SCOTUSblog’s Amy Howe Tells Buckley Audience
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Emergency Docket Now Defines the Supreme Court, SCOTUSblog’s Amy Howe Tells Buckley Audience

At the Buckley Institute’s annual Supreme Court Review, AEI scholar Adam J. White and SCOTUSblog’s Amy Howe review the Court in the age of Trump. Adam White of the American Enterprise Institute addresses the crowd. (Credit: Buckley Institute) Michelle ZhengManaging Editor, The Buckley Beacon The Supreme Court’s emergency docket, once a sideline of its work, now shapes nearly everything the justices do, SCOTUSblog Co-Founder Amy Howe said during the Buckley Institute's annual Supreme Court Review Thursday evening.  “I think it’s really hard to overstate how much the emergency docket pervades the court’s work right now,” she told the roughly 60-person audience. Howe was joined by Adam J. White, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Rosenfeld Hal...
What is Yale for?
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What is Yale for?

After 325 years of existence, why has it become so difficult for us to agree on the purpose of our university? Campus of Yale University. (Credit: Buckley Institute) Win MordecaiStaff Writer, The Buckley Beacon As the Trump administration continues to investigate Yale for its allegedly discriminatory admissions practices, Yale administrators have employed diplomatic rhetoric to articulate the purpose of the university. Yale President Maurie McInnis, attempting to draw a through-line from Yale’s founding principles to its current mission, said in her 325th anniversary address that “Yale was founded in a spirit of freedom, with the idea that liberal arts education can foster unfettered thinking and learning.” Yale, she continued, initially set out to “prepare students … f...
The Dignity of Sobriety
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The Dignity of Sobriety

Though ostensibly compassionate, when we lower our expectations for people suffering from addiction we fail to recognize their human dignity. Homeless encampment in Los Angeles, California. (Credit: Matt Gush via Canva) Audrey BaeStaff Writer, The Buckley Beacon There is a phrase that has become increasingly common when discussing drug addiction and homelessness: “meet people where they are.” There is a compassionate impulse behind it. Harm-reduction programs, in particular, are responding to a current and brutal reality: people are using drugs, and withholding care does not necessarily mean they will stop. In fact, they may be more likely to die.  But meeting someone where they are at should not mean leaving them there.  Our response to drug addiction increas...
God and Man at Yale at 75
Arts & Culture, Featured, Opinion

God and Man at Yale at 75

What about William F. Buckley Jr.’s first foray into the political scene remains relevant to us today? William F. Buckley Jr. Jack EhlertStaff Writer, The Buckley Beacon Seventy-five years ago, when God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of “Academic Freedom” was first published, its author was barely a year out of Yale College. As a member of Skull and Bones, the Chairman of the Yale Daily News, and a debater in the Yale Political Union and Yale Debate Association, this Yalie was destined to make a splash in the public scene. But no one could have predicted just how immediate and far-reaching that splash would be. The man in question is, of course, none other than William Frank Buckley Jr., YC ‘50, namesake of both this publication and the Buckley Institute. ...
Pericles Lewis Did Nothing Wrong
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Pericles Lewis Did Nothing Wrong

Dean Pericles Lewis, who is up for review this year, is the victim of mob outrage with no basis in the facts. Dean Pericles Lewis speaks to students at a Buckley Institute event in 2024. (Credit: Buckley Institute) Jason CaoStaff Writer, The Buckley Beacon One of my earliest Yale experiences was stepping foot on cross campus as a freshman for the matriculation ceremony. Other than the dramatic collapse of a Berkeley College tree limb, the only part of that ceremony I recall is the speech of the Dean of Yale College, Pericles Lewis. Referencing William Ernest Henley’s poem Invictus, a poem that famously inspired Nelson Mandela in his struggle to end apartheid in South Africa, Dean Lewis exhorted the young minds before him to be “the master of [their] fate” and the...