Name	Yale University
Latin name	Universitas Yalensis
Image name	Yale University Shield 1.svg
Motto	אורים ותמים (Hebrew) (Urim V'Tumim)Lux et veritas (Latin)
Mottoeng	Oracle
Mottoeng	Light and truth
Established	1701
Type	Private
Calendar	Semester
Endowment	US $16.7 billion
President	Richard C. Levin
Faculty	3,619
Students	11,593
Undergrad	5,275
Postgrad	6,318
City	New Haven
State	Connecticut
Country	U.S.A.
Campus	Urban, including Yale Golf Course
Athletics	NCAA Division I (FCS Football) Ivy League
Former names	''Collegiate School'' (1701-1718)''Yale College'' (1718-1887)
Colors	Yale Blue since 1894; prior color, green
Nickname	Bulldogs, Elis, Yalies
Mascot	Handsome Dan
Affiliations	Ivy LeagueAAUIARU
Website	yale.edu
Logo	80px}}

Yale University is a private Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States. Yale Law School is consistently ranked as the top law school in the United States while the university is ranked among the top universities in the world.

Incorporated as the ''Collegiate School'', the institution traces its roots to 17th-century clergymen who sought to establish a college to train clergy and political leaders for the colony. In 1718, the College was renamed ''Yale College'' to honor a gift from Elihu Yale, a governor of the British East India Company. In 1861, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences became the first U.S. school to award the Ph.D. Yale became a founding member of the Association of American Universities in 1900. Yale College was transformed, beginning in the 1930s, through the establishment of residential colleges: 12 now exist and two more are planned. Yale employs over 1,100 faculty to teach and advise about 5,300 undergraduate and 6,100 graduate and professional students. Almost all tenured professors teach undergraduate courses, more than 2,000 of which are offered annually.

The University's assets include a US$16.7 billion endowment, the second-largest of any academic institution, as well as the second-largest academic library in the world, with some 12.5 million volumes held in more than two dozen libraries. 49 Nobel Laureates have been affiliated with the University as students, faculty, and staff. Yale has produced many notable alumni, including five U.S. Presidents, 19 U.S. Supreme Court Justices, and several foreign heads of state.

Yalies compete intercollegiately as the Yale Bulldogs in the NCAA Division I Ivy League. Yale and Harvard University share a strong athletic rivalry, which traditionally culminates in ''The Game'' and the Harvard-Yale Regatta. The official color of the university and its athletic teams is Yale Blue.

History

The President and Fellows of Yale College, also known as the Yale Corporation, is the governing board of the University.

Origins

Yale traces its beginnings to "An Act for Liberty to Erect a Collegiate School", passed by the General Court of the Colony of Connecticut on October 9, 1701 in an effort to create an institution to train ministers and lay leadership for Connecticut. Soon thereafter, a group of ten Congregationalist ministers: Samuel Andrew, Thomas Buckingham, Israel Chauncy, Samuel Mather, James Noyes, James Pierpont, Abraham Pierson, Noadiah Russell, Joseph Webb and Timothy Woodbridge, all of whom were alumni of Harvard, met in the study of Reverend Samuel Russell in Branford, Connecticut, to pool their books to form the school's first library. The group, led by James Pierpont, is now known as "The Founders".

Originally called the ''Collegiate School'', the institution opened in the home of its first rector, Abraham Pierson, in Killingworth (now Clinton). The school moved to Saybrook, and then Wethersfield. In 1718, the college moved to New Haven, Connecticut. Meanwhile, a rift was forming at Harvard between its sixth president Increase Mather and the rest of the Harvard clergy, whom Mather viewed as increasingly liberal, ecclesiastically lax, and overly broad in Church polity. The feud caused the Mathers to champion the success of the Collegiate School in the hope that it would maintain the Puritan religious orthodoxy in a way that Harvard had not.

In 1718, at the behest of either Rector Samuel Andrew or the colony's Governor Gurdon Saltonstall, Cotton Mather contacted a successful businessman in Wales named Elihu Yale to ask him for financial help in constructing a new building for the college. Yale, who had made a fortune through trade while living in India as a representative of the East India Company, donated nine bales of goods, which were sold for more than £560, a substantial sum at the time. Yale also donated 417 books and a portrait of King George I. Cotton Mather suggested that the school change its name to ''Yale College'' in gratitude to its benefactor, and to increase the chances that he would give the college another large donation or bequest. Elihu Yale was away in India when the news of the school's name change reached his home in Wrexham, Wales, a trip from which he never returned. While he did ultimately leave his fortunes to the ''"Collegiate School within His Majesties Colony of Connecticot"'', the institution was never able to successfully lay claim to it.

Curriculum

Yale was swept up by the great intellectual movements of the period—the Great Awakening and the Enlightenment—thanks to the religious and scientific interests of presidents Thomas Clap and Ezra Stiles. They were both instrumental in developing the scientific curriculum at Yale, while dealing with wars, student tumults, graffiti, "irrelevance" of curricula, desperate need for endowment, and fights with the Connecticut legislature.

Serious American students of theology and divinity, particularly in New England, regarded Hebrew as a classical language, along with Greek and Latin, and essential for study of the Old Testament in the original words. The Reverend Ezra Stiles, president of the College from 1778 to 1795, brought with him his interest in the Hebrew language as a vehicle for studying ancient Biblical texts in their original language (as was common in other schools), requiring all freshmen to study Hebrew (in contrast to Harvard, where only upperclassmen were required to study the language) and is responsible for the Hebrew words "Urim" and "Thummim" on the Yale seal. Stiles' greatest challenge occurred in July 1779 when hostile British forces occupied New Haven and threatened to raze the College. Fortunately, Yale graduate Edmund Fanning, Secretary to the British General in command of the occupation, interceded and the College was saved. Fanning later was granted an honorary degree LL.D., at 1803, for his efforts.

The Directed Studies program was founded for 125 first-year students as an interdisciplinary course encompassing great works of Western thought.

Students

As the only college in Connecticut, Yale educated the sons of the elite. Offenses for which students were punished included cardplaying, tavern-going, destruction of college property, and acts of disobedience to college authorities. During the period, Harvard was distinctive for the stability and maturity of its tutor corps, while Yale had youth and zeal on its side.

The emphasis on classics gave rise to a number of private student societies, open only by invitation, which arose primarily as forums for discussions of modern scholarship, literature and politics. The first such organizations were debating societies: Crotonia in 1738, Linonia in 1753, and Brothers in Unity in 1768.

19th century

The Yale Report of 1828 was a dogmatic defense of the Latin and Greek curriculum against critics who wanted more courses in modern languages, mathematics, and science. Unlike higher education in Europe, there was no national curriculum for colleges and universities in the United States. In the competition for students and financial support, college leaders strove to keep current with demands for innovation. At the same time, they realized that a significant portion of their students and prospective students demanded a classical background. The Yale report meant the classics would not be abandoned. At the same time, all institutions experimented with changes in the curriculum, often resulting in a dual track. In the decentralized environment of higher education in the United States, balancing change with tradition was a common challenge because no one could afford to be completely modern or completely classical. At the same time a group of professors at Yale and New Haven Congregationalist ministers articulated a conservative response to the changes brought about by the Victorian culture. They concentrated on developing a whole man possessed of religious values sufficiently strong to resist temptations from within, yet flexible enough to adjust to the 'isms' (professionalism, materialism, individualism, and consumerism) tempting him from without. Perhaps the most well-remembered teacher was William Graham Sumner, professor from 1872 to 1909. He taught in the emerging disciplines of economics and sociology to overflowing classrooms. He bested President Noah Porter, who disliked social science and wanted Yale to lock into its traditions of classical education, 1879-81. Porter objected to Sumner's use of a textbook by Herbert Spencer that espoused agnostic materialism because it might intellectually, morally, and religiously harm students.

Sports and debate

The Revolutionary War hero Nathan Hale (Yale 1773) was the prototype of the Yale ideal in the early 19th century: a manly yet aristocratic scholar, equally well-versed in knowledge and sports, and a patriot who regretted he had but one life to lose for his country. Western painter Frederic Remington (Yale 1900) was an artist whose heroes gloried in combat and tests of strength in the Wild West. The fictional, turn-of-the-20th-century Yale man Frank Merriwell embodied the heroic ideal without racial prejudice, and his fictional successor Frank Stover in the novel ''Stover at Yale'' (1911) questioned the business mentality that had become prevalent at the school. Increasingly the students turned to athletic stars as their heroes, especially since winning the big game became the goal of the student body, and the alumni, as well as the team itself.

Along with Harvard and Princeton, Yale students rejected elite British concepts about 'amateurism' in sports and constructed athletic programs that were uniquely American, such as football. The Harvard–Yale football rivalry began in 1875. Between 1892, when Harvard and Yale met in the first intercollegiate debate, and 1909, the year of the first Triangular Debate of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, the rhetoric, symbolism, and metaphors used in athletics were used to frame these early debates. Debates were covered on front pages of college newspapers and emphasized in yearbooks, and team members even received the equivalent of athletic letters for their jackets. There even were rallies sending off the debating teams to matches. Yet, the debates never attained the broad appeal that athletics enjoyed. One reason may be that debates do not have a clear winner, as is the case in sports, and that scoring is subjective. In addition, with late 19th-century concerns about the impact of modern life on the human body, athletics offered hope that neither the individual nor the society was coming apart.

In 1909-10, football faced a crisis resulting from the failure of the previous reforms of 1905-06 to solve the problem of serious injuries. There was a mood of alarm and mistrust, and, while the crisis was developing, the presidents of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton developed a project to reform the sport and forestall possible radical changes forced by government upon the sport. President Arthur Hadley of Yale, A. Lawrence Lowell of Harvard, and Woodrow Wilson of Princeton worked to develop moderate changes to reduce injuries. Their attempts, however, were reduced by rebellion against the rules committee and formation of the Intercollegiate Athletic Association. The big three had tried to operate independently of the majority, but changes did reduce injuries.

Expansion

Yale expanded gradually, establishing the Yale School of Medicine (1810), Yale Divinity School (1822), Yale Law School (1843), Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (1847), the Sheffield Scientific School (1847), and the Yale School of Fine Arts (1869). In 1887, as the college continued to grow under the presidency of Timothy Dwight V, ''Yale College'' was renamed ''Yale University''. The university would later add the Yale School of Music (1894), Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (founded by Gifford Pinchot in 1901) , Yale School of Public Health (1915), Yale School of Nursing (1923), Yale School of Drama (1955), Yale Physician Associate Program (1973), and Yale School of Management (1976). It would also reorganize its relationship with the Sheffield Scientific School.

Expansion caused controversy about Yale's new roles. Noah Porter, moral philosopher, was president from 1871 to 1886. During an age of tremendous expansion in higher education, Porter resisted the rise of the new research university, claiming that an eager embrace of its ideals would corrupt undergraduate education. Many of Porter's contemporaries criticized his administration, and historians since have disparaged his leadership. Levesque argues Porter was not a simple-minded reactionary, uncritically committed to tradition, but a principled and selective conservative. He did not endorse everything old or reject everything new; rather, he sought to apply long-established ethical and pedagogical principles to a rapidly changing culture. He may have misunderstood some of the challenges of his time, but he correctly anticipated the enduring tensions that have accompanied the emergence and growth of the modern university.

20th century

Behavioral sciences

Between 1925 and 1940, philanthropic foundations, especially ones connected with the Rockefellers, contributed about $7 million to support the Yale Institute of Human Relations and the affiliated Yerkes Laboratories of Primate Biology. The money went toward behavioral science research, which was supported by foundation officers who aimed to "improve mankind" under an informal, loosely defined human engineering effort. The behavioral scientists at Yale, led by President James R. Angell and psychobiologist Robert M. Yerkes, tapped into foundation largesse by crafting research programs aimed to investigate, then suggest, ways to control, sexual and social behavior. For example, Yerkes analyzed chimpanzee sexual behavior in hopes of illuminating the evolutionary underpinnings of human development and providing information that could ameliorate dysfunction. Ultimately, the behavioral-science results disappointed foundation officers, who shifted their human-engineering funds toward biological sciences.

Biology

Slack (2003) compares three groups that conducted biological research at Yale during overlapping periods between 1910 and 1970. Yale proved important as a site for this research. The leaders of these groups were Ross Granville Harrison, Grace E. Pickford, and G. Evelyn Hutchinson, and their members included both graduate students and more experienced scientists. All produced innovative research, including the opening of new subfields in embryology, endocrinology, and ecology, respectively, over a long period of time. Harrison's group is shown to have been a classic research school; Pickford's and Hutchinson's were not. Pickford's group was successful in spite of her lack of departmental or institutional position or power. Hutchinson and his graduate and postgraduate students were extremely productive, but in diverse areas of ecology rather than one focused area of research or the use of one set of research tools. Hutchinson's example shows that new models for research groups are needed, especially for those that include extensive field research.

Medicine

Milton Winternitz led Yale Medical School as its dean from 1920 to 1935. An innovative, even maverick, leader, he not only kept the school from going under but also turned it into a first-class research institution. Dedicated to the new scientific medicine established in Germany, he was equally fervent about "social medicine" and the study of humans in their culture and environment. He established the "Yale System" of teaching, with few lectures and fewer exams, and strengthened the full-time faculty system; he also created the graduate-level Yale School of Nursing and the Psychiatry Department, built numerous new buildings, and accomplished much more. Progress toward his plans for an Institute of Human Relations, envisioned as a refuge where social scientists would collaborate with biological scientists in a holistic study of humankind, unfortunately lasted for only a few years before the opposition of resentful anti-Semitic colleagues drove him to resign.

Faculty

Before World War II, most elite university faculties counted among their numbers few, if any, Jews, blacks, women, or other minorities; Yale was no exception. By 1980, this condition had been altered dramatically, as numerous members of those groups held faculty positions.

History and American Studies

The American studies program reflected the worldwide anti-Communist ideological struggle. Norman Holmes Pearson, who worked for the Office of Strategic Studies in London during World War II, returned to Yale and headed the new American studies program, in which scholarship quickly became an instrument of promoting liberty. Popular among undergraduates, the program sought to instruct them in the fundamentals of American civilization and thereby instill a sense of nationalism and national purpose. Also during the 1940s and 1950s, Wyoming millionaire William R. Coe made large contributions to the American studies programs at Yale University and at the University of Wyoming. Coe was concerned to celebrate the 'values' of the Western United States in order to meet the "threat of communism."

Women

Women studied at Yale University as early as 1876, in graduate-level programs at the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

In 1966, Yale began discussions with its sister school Vassar College about merging to foster coeducation at the undergraduate level. Vassar, then all-female, declined the invitation. Both schools introduced coeducation independently in 1969. Amy Solomon was the first woman to register as a Yale undergraduate; she was also the first woman at Yale to join an undergraduate society, St. Anthony Hall.

A decade into co-education, rampant student assault and harassment by faculty became the impetus for the trailblazing lawsuit Alexander v. Yale. While unsuccessful in the courts, the legal reasoning behind the case changed the landscape of sex discrimination law and resulted in the establishment of Yale's Grievance Board and the Yale Women's Center. In March 2011 a Title IX suit was filed against Yale.

Class

Yale, like other Ivy League schools, instituted policies in the early 20th century designed artificially to increase the proportion of white Protestants of notable families in the student body (see ''numerus clausus''), and was one of the last of the Ivies to eliminate such preferences, beginning with the class of 1970.

Town-gown relations

Yale has a complicated relationship with its home city; for example, thousands of students volunteer every year in a myriad of community organizations, but city officials, who decry Yale's exemption from local property taxes, have long pressed the university to do more to help. Under President Levin, Yale has financially supported many of New Haven's efforts to reinvigorate the city. Evidence suggests that the town and gown relationships are mutually beneficial. Still, the economic power of the university increased dramatically with its financial success amid a decline in the local economy.

Yale in the 21st century

In 2007, Yale President Rick Levin characterized Yale's institutional priorities: "First, among the nation's finest research universities, Yale is distinctively committed to excellence in undergraduate education. Second, in our graduate and professional schools, as well as in Yale College, we are committed to the education of leaders."

''The Boston Globe'' wrote that "if there's one school that can lay claim to educating the nation's top national leaders over the past three decades, it's Yale." Yale alumni were represented on the Democratic or Republican ticket in every U.S. Presidential election between 1972 and 2004. Yale-educated Presidents since the end of the Vietnam War include Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, and major-party nominees during this period include John Kerry (2004), Joseph Lieberman (Vice President, 2000), and Sargent Shriver (Vice President, 1972). Other Yale alumni who made serious bids for the Presidency during this period include Hillary Rodham Clinton (2008), Howard Dean (2004), Gary Hart (1984 and 1988), Paul Tsongas (1992), Pat Robertson (1988) and Jerry Brown (1976, 1980, 1992).

Several explanations have been offered for Yale’s representation in national elections since the end of the Vietnam War. Various sources note the spirit of campus activism that has existed at Yale since the 1960s, and the intellectual influence of Reverend William Sloane Coffin on many of the future candidates. Yale President Richard Levin attributes the run to Yale’s focus on creating "a laboratory for future leaders," an institutional priority that began during the tenure of Yale Presidents Alfred Whitney Griswold and Kingman Brewster. Richard H. Brodhead, former dean of Yale College and now president of Duke University, stated: "We do give very significant attention to orientation to the community in our admissions, and there is a very strong tradition of volunteerism at Yale." Yale historian Gaddis Smith notes "an ethos of organized activity" at Yale during the 20th century that led John Kerry to lead the Yale Political Union's Liberal Party, George Pataki the Conservative Party, and Joseph Lieberman to manage the ''Yale Daily News''. Camille Paglia points to a history of networking and elitism: "It has to do with a web of friendships and affiliations built up in school." CNN suggests that George W. Bush benefited from preferential admissions policies for the "son and grandson of alumni," and for a "member of a politically influential family." ''New York Times'' correspondent Elisabeth Bumiller and ''The Atlantic Monthly'' correspondent James Fallows credit the culture of community and cooperation that exists between students, faculty, and administration, which downplays self-interest and reinforces commitment to others.

During the 1988 presidential election, George H. W. Bush (Yale '48) derided Michael Dukakis for having "foreign-policy views born in Harvard Yard's boutique." When challenged on the distinction between Dukakis's Harvard connection and his own Yale background, he said that, unlike Harvard, Yale's reputation was "so diffuse, there isn't a symbol, I don't think, in the Yale situation, any symbolism in it" and said Yale did not share Harvard's reputation for "liberalism and elitism". In 2004, Howard Dean stated, "In some ways, I consider myself separate from the other three (Yale) candidates of 2004. Yale changed so much between the class of '68 and the class of '71. My class was the first class to have women in it; it was the first class to have a significant effort to recruit African Americans. It was an extraordinary time, and in that span of time is the change of an entire generation".

In 2009, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair picked Yale as one location — the others are Britain's Durham University and National University of Singapore — for the Tony Blair Faith Foundation's United States Faith and Globalization Initiative. As of 2009, former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo is the director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization and teaches an undergraduate seminar, "Debating Globalization". As of 2009, former presidential candidate and DNC chair Howard Dean teaches a residential college seminar, "Understanding Politics and Politicians." Also, in 2009, an alliance was formed between Yale, University College London and both schools’ affiliated hospital complexes to conduct research focused on the direct improvement of patient care—a growing field known as translational medicine. President Richard Levin noted that Yale has hundreds of other partnerships across the world, but "no existing collaboration matches the scale of the new partnership with UCL."

Administration and organization

Yale's president Richard C. Levin is one of the highest paid university presidents in the United States with a 2008 salary of $1.5 million.

The Yale Provost's Office has launched several women into prominent university presidencies. In 1977, Hanna Holborn Gray was appointed acting President of Yale from this position, and went on to become President of the University of Chicago, the first woman to be full president of a major university. In 1994, Yale Provost Judith Rodin became the first female president of an Ivy League institution at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2002, Provost Alison Richard became the Vice Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. In 2004, Provost Susan Hockfield became the President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2007, Deputy Provost Kim Bottomly was named President of Wellesley College.

In 2008, Provost Andrew Hamilton was confirmed to be the Vice Chancellor of the University of Oxford. Former Dean of Yale College Richard H. Brodhead serves as the President of Duke University.

Staff and labor unions

Much of Yale University's staff, including most maintenance staff, dining hall employees, and administrative staff, are unionized. Clerical and technical employees are represented by Local 34 of Unite Here and service and maintenance workers by Local 35 of the same international. Together with the Graduate Employees and Students Organization (GESO), an unrecognized union of graduate employees, Locals 34 and 35 make up the Federation of Hospital and University Employees. Also included in FHUE are the dietary workers at Yale-New Haven Hospital, who are members of 1199 SEIU. In addition to these unions, officers of the Yale University Police Department are members of the Yale Police Benevolent Association, which affiliated in 2005 with the Connecticut Organization for Public Safety Employees. Finally, Yale security officers voted to join the International Union of Security, Police and Fire Professionals of America in fall 2010 after the National Labor Relations Board ruled they could not join AFSCME; the Yale administration contested the election.

Yale has a history of difficult and prolonged labor negotiations, often culminating in strikes. There have been at least eight strikes since 1968, and ''The New York Times'' wrote that Yale has a reputation as having the worst record of labor tension of any university in the U.S. Yale's unusually large endowment exacerbates the tension over wages. Moreover, Yale has been accused of failing to treat workers with respect. In a 2003 strike, however, the university claimed that more union employees were working than striking. Professor David Graeber was 'retired' after he came to the defense of a student who was involved in campus labor issues.

Campus

Yale's central campus in downtown New Haven covers . An additional 500 acres (2 km²) includes the Yale golf course and nature preserves in rural Connecticut and Horse Island.

Yale is noted for its largely Collegiate Gothic campus as well as for several iconic modern buildings commonly discussed in architectural history survey courses: Louis Kahn's Yale Art Gallery and Center for British Art, Eero Saarinen's Ingalls Rink and Ezra Stiles and Morse Colleges, and Paul Rudolph's Art & Architecture Building. Yale also owns and has restored many noteworthy 19th-century mansions along Hillhouse Avenue, which was considered the most beautiful street in America by Charles Dickens when he visited the United States in the 1840s.

Many of Yale's buildings were constructed in the Collegiate Gothic architecture style from 1917 to 1931, financed largely by Edward S. Harkness Stone sculpture built into the walls of the buildings portray contemporary college personalities such as a writer, an athlete, a tea-drinking socialite, and a student who has fallen asleep while reading. Similarly, the decorative friezes on the buildings depict contemporary scenes such as policemen chasing a robber and arresting a prostitute (on the wall of the Law School), or a student relaxing with a mug of beer and a cigarette. The architect, James Gamble Rogers, faux-aged these buildings by splashing the walls with acid, deliberately breaking their leaded glass windows and repairing them in the style of the Middle Ages, and creating niches for decorative statuary but leaving them empty to simulate loss or theft over the ages. In fact, the buildings merely simulate Middle Ages architecture, for though they appear to be constructed of solid stone blocks in the authentic manner, most actually have steel framing as was commonly used in 1930. One exception is Harkness Tower, tall, which was originally a free-standing stone structure. It was reinforced in 1964 to allow the installation of the Yale Memorial Carillon.

Other examples of the Gothic (also called neo-Gothic and collegiate Gothic) style are on Old Campus by such architects as Henry Austin, Charles C. Haight and Russell Sturgis. Several are associated with members of the Vanderbilt family, including Vanderbilt Hall, Phelps Hall, St. Anthony Hall (a commission for member Frederick William Vanderbilt), the Mason, Sloane and Osborn laboratories, dormitories for the Sheffield Scientific School (the engineering and sciences school at Yale until 1956) and elements of Silliman College, the largest residential college.

The oldest building on campus, Connecticut Hall (built in 1750), is in the Georgian style. Georgian-style buildings erected from 1929 to 1933 include Timothy Dwight College, Pierson College, and Davenport College, except the latter's east, York Street façade, which was constructed in the Gothic style.

The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, designed by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, is one of the largest buildings in the world reserved exclusively for the preservation of rare books and manuscripts. It is located near the center of the University in Hewitt Quadrangle, which is now more commonly referred to as "Beinecke Plaza".

The library's six-story above-ground tower of book stacks is surrounded by a windowless rectangular building with walls made of translucent Vermont marble, which transmit subdued lighting to the interior and provide protection from direct light, while glowing from within after dark.

The sculptures in the sunken courtyard by Isamu Noguchi are said to represent time (the pyramid), the sun (the circle), and chance (the cube).

Alumnus Eero Saarinen, Finnish-American architect of such notable structures as the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Washington Dulles International Airport main terminal, Bell Labs Holmdel Complex and the CBS Building in Manhattan, designed Ingalls Rink at Yale and the newest residential colleges of Ezra Stiles and Morse. These latter were modelled after the medieval Italian hilltown of San Gimignano — a prototype chosen for the town's pedestrian-friendly milieu and fortress-like stone towers. These tower forms at Yale act in counterpoint to the college's many Gothic spires and Georgian cupolas.

Yale's Office of Sustainability develops and implements sustainability practices at Yale. Yale is committed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 10% below 1990 levels by the year 2020. As part of this commitment, the university allocates renewable energy credits to offset some of the energy used by residential colleges. Eleven campus buildings are candidates for LEED design and certification. Yale Sustainable Food Project initiated the introduction of local, organic vegetables, fruits, and beef to all residential college dining halls. Yale was listed as a Campus Sustainability Leader on the Sustainable Endowments Institute’s College Sustainability Report Card 2008, and received a “B+” grade overall.

Grove Street Cemetery, New Haven

Marsh Botanical Garden

Yale Sustainable Food Project Farm

Notable nonresidential campus buildings

Notable nonresidential campus buildings and landmarks include Battell Chapel, Beinecke Rare Book Library, Harkness Tower, Ingalls Rink, Kline Biology Tower, Osborne Memorial Laboratories, Payne Whitney Gymnasium, Peabody Museum of Natural History, Sterling Hall of Medicine, Sterling Law Buildings, Sterling Memorial Library, Woolsey Hall, Yale Center for British Art, Yale University Art Gallery, and Yale Art & Architecture Building.

Yale's secret society buildings (some of which are called "tombs") were built both to be private yet unmistakeable. A diversity of architectural styles is represented: Berzelius, Don Barber in an austere cube with classical detailing (erected in 1908 or 1910); Book and Snake, Louis R. Metcalfe in a Greek Ionic style (erected in 1901); Elihu, architect unknown but built in a Colonial style (constructed on an early 17th century foundation although the building is from the 18th century); Mace and Chain, in a late colonial, early Victorian style (built in 1823). Interior moulding is said to have belonged to Benedict Arnold; Manuscript Society, King Lui-Wu with Dan Kniley responsible for landscaping and Josef Albers for the brickwork intaglio mural. Building constructed in a mid-century modern style; Scroll and Key, Richard Morris Hunt in a Moorish- or Islamic-inspired Beaux-Arts style (erected 1869–70); Skull and Bones, possibly Alexander Jackson Davis or Henry Austin in an Egypto-Doric style utilizing Brownstone (in 1856 the first wing was completed, in 1903 the second wing, 1911 the Neo-Gothic towers in rear garden were completed); St. Elmo, (former tomb) Kenneth M. Murchison, 1912, designs inspired by Elizabethan manor. Current location, brick colonial; and Wolf's Head, Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue (erected 1923-4).

Campus safety

In addition to the Yale University Police Department, founded in 1894, a variety of safety services are available including blue phones, a safety escort, and a shuttle service.

In the 1970s and 1980s, poverty and violent crime rose in New Haven, dampening Yale's student and faculty recruiting efforts. Between 1990 and 2006, New Haven's crime rate fell by half, helped by a community policing strategy by the New Haven police and Yale's campus became the safest among the Ivy League and other peer schools. Nonetheless, across the board, the city of New Haven has retained the highest levels of crime of any Ivy League city for more than a decade.

In 2002–04, Yale reported 14 violent crimes (homicide, aggravated assault, or sex offenses), when Harvard reported 83 such incidents, Princeton 24, and Stanford 54. The incidence of nonviolent crime (burglary, arson, and motor vehicle theft) was also lower than most of its peer schools.

In 2004, a national non-profit watchdog group called Security on Campus filed a complaint with the Department of Education, accusing Yale of under-reporting rape and sexual assaults.

Academics

Admissions

For the Class of 2015, Yale accepted 2,006 students out of a record 27,283 total applications, hitting a University record-low acceptance of 7.35%.

The university is one of only seven institutions of higher education in the world that is need blind and full-need to all of its applicants, including international students. Through its program of need-based financial aid, Yale commits to meet the full demonstrated financial need of all applicants, and more than 50% of Yale students receive financial assistance. Most financial aid is in the form of grants and scholarships that do not need to be paid back to the university, and the average scholarship for the 2011–2012 school year was $35,400. More than 750 students in Yale College are expected to have $0 parental contribution.

Half of all Yale undergraduates are women, more than 30% are minorities, and 8% are international students. Fifty-five percent attended public schools and 45% attended private, religious, or international schools. In addition, Yale College admits a small group of nontraditional students each year, through the Eli Whitney Students Program.

Collections

Yale University Library, which holds over 12 million volumes, is the second-largest university collection in the United States. The main library, Sterling Memorial Library, contains about four million volumes, and other holdings are dispersed at subject libraries.

Rare books are found in a number of Yale collections. The Beinecke Rare Book Library has a large collection of rare books and manuscripts. The Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library includes important historical medical texts, including an impressive collection of rare books, as well as historical medical instruments. The Lewis Walpole Library contains the largest collection of 18th-century British literary works. The Elizabethan Club, technically a private organization, makes its Elizabethan folios and first editions available to qualified researchers through Yale.

Yale's museum collections are also of international stature. The Yale University Art Gallery is the country's first university-affiliated art museum. It contains more than 180,000 works, including old masters and important collections of modern art, in the Swartout and Kahn buildings. The latter, Louis Kahn's first large-scale American work (1953), was renovated and reopened in December 2006. The Yale Center for British Art, the largest collection of British art outside of the UK, grew from a gift of Paul Mellon and is housed in another Kahn-designed building.

The Peabody Museum of Natural History in New Haven is used by school children and contains research collections in anthropology, archaeology, and the natural environment. The Yale University Collection of Musical Instruments, affiliated with the Yale School of Music, is perhaps the least well-known of Yale's collections, because its hours of opening are restricted.

The museums also house the artifacts brought to the United States from Peru by Yale history professor Hiram Bingham in his expedition to Machu Picchu in 1912 - when the removal of such artifacts was legal. Peru would now like to have the items returned; Yale has so far declined.

University rankings

arwu w	11
arwu n	9
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Yale is consistently ranked as one of the leading universities in the world. The 'U.S. News & World Report' ranked Yale third among national universities in 2011. In 2010 it was ranked third in the QS World University Rankings and tenth in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. (In 2010 Times Higher Education World University Rankings and QS World University Rankings parted ways to produce separate rankings.) Yale had featured in the top five for each of the past four years. The same ranking also named Yale as the fifth best university in the world for arts and humanities. Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Academic Ranking of World Universities, placed Yale at 11 in 2010. ARWU also ranked Yale 25th in Natural Sciences and Mathematics, 76-100th in Engineering/Technology and Computer Sciences, 9th in Life and Agriculture Sciences, 21st in Clinical Medicine and Pharmacy and 8th in Social Sciences worldwide.

Faculty, research, and intellectual traditions

The college is, after normalization for institution size, the tenth-largest baccalaureate source of doctoral degree recipients in the United States, and the largest such source within the Ivy League.

Yale's English and Comparative Literature departments were part of the New Criticism movement. Of the New Critics, Robert Penn Warren, W.K. Wimsatt, and Cleanth Brooks were all Yale faculty. Later, the Yale Comparative literature department became a center of American deconstruction. Jacques Derrida, the father of deconstruction, taught at the Department of Comparative Literature from the late seventies to mid-1980s. Several other Yale faculty members were also associated with deconstruction, forming the so-called "Yale School". These included Paul de Man who taught in the Departments of Comparative Literature and French, J. Hillis Miller, Geoffrey Hartman (both taught in the Departments of English and Comparative Literature), and Harold Bloom (English), whose theoretical position was always somewhat specific, and who ultimately took a very different path from the rest of this group. Yale's history department has also originated important intellectual trends. Historians C. Vann Woodward and David Brion Davis are credited with beginning in the 1960s and 70s an important stream of southern historians; likewise, David Montgomery, a labor historian, advised many of the current generation of labor historians in the country. Yale's Music School and Department fostered the growth of Music Theory in the latter half of the 20th century. The ''Journal of Music Theory'' was founded there in 1957; Allen Forte and David Lewin were influential teachers and scholars.

Since summer 2010, Yale has also been host to Yale Publishing Course.

Campus life

Yale is a medium-sized research university, most of whose students are in the graduate and professional schools. Undergraduates, or Yale College students, come from a variety of ethnic, national, and socio-economic backgrounds. Of the 2006-07 freshman class, 9% are non-U.S. citizens, while 54% went to public high schools. Yale is also an open campus for the gay community. Its active LGBT community first received wide publicity in the late 1980s, when Yale obtained a reputation as the "gay Ivy," due largely to a 1987 ''Wall Street Journal'' article written by Julie V. Iovine, an alumna and the spouse of a Yale faculty member. During the same year, the University hosted a national conference on gay and lesbian studies and established the Lesbian and Gay Studies Center. The slogan "One in Four, Maybe More" was coined by the campus gay community. While the community in the 1980s and early 1990s was very activist, today most LGBT events have become part of the general campus social scene. For example, the annual LGBT Co-op Dance attracts straight as well as gay students.

Residential colleges

Yale has a system of 12 residential colleges, instituted in 1933 through a grant by Yale graduate Edward S. Harkness, who admired the college systems at Oxford and Cambridge. Each college has a Dean, Master, affiliated faculty, and resident Fellows. Each college also features distinctive architecture, secluded courtyards, a commons room, meeting rooms/classrooms, and a dining hall; in addition some have chapels, libraries, squash courts, pool tables, short order dining counters, cafes, or darkrooms. While each college at Yale offers its own seminars, social events, and Master's Teas, most of them are open to students from other residential colleges. There is, however a major difference. Oxbridge colleges are more than residential; they are separate legal, self-governing institutions with own endowment and possessions in their own right: together they make up a federal or collegiate university. Yale is not a federal university, but unitary. Undergraduate admission to Cambridge and Oxford comes from a college which one belongs to for life; undergraduate education is partially the preserve of colleges; graduate education, research, and academic degrees are university.

All of Yale's 2,000 undergraduate courses are open to members of any college.

The dominant architecture of the residential colleges is Neo-Gothic, in line with the characteristic architecture of the university. Several colleges have other period architecture, such as Georgian and Federal, and the two most recent (Morse and Ezra Stiles) have modernist concrete exteriors.

Students are assigned to a residential college for their freshman year. Only two residential colleges house freshmen. The majority of on-campus freshmen live on the "Old Campus", an extensive quadrangle formed by older buildings. Each residential college has its own dining hall, but students are permitted to eat in any residential college dining hall or the large dining facility called "Commons."

Residential colleges are named for important figures or places in university history or notable alumni.

List of residential colleges

This is a list of residential colleges at Yale. # Berkeley College, named for the Rt. Rev. George Berkeley (1685–1753), early benefactor of Yale. # Branford College, named for Branford, Connecticut, where Yale was briefly located. # Calhoun College, named for John C. Calhoun, vice-president and influential member of Congress of the United States. # Davenport College, named for Rev. John Davenport, the founder of New Haven. Often called "D'port". # Ezra Stiles College, named for the Rev. Ezra Stiles, a president of Yale. Generally called "Stiles," despite an early-1990s crusade by then-master Traugott Lawler to preserve the use of the full name in everyday speech. Its buildings were designed by Eero Saarinen. # Jonathan Edwards College, named for theologian, Yale alumnus, and Princeton co-founder Jonathan Edwards. Generally called "J.E." The oldest of the residential colleges, J.E. is the only college with an independent endowment, the Jonathan Edwards Trust. # Morse College, named for Samuel F. B. Morse, inventor of Morse code and the telegraph. Also designed by Eero Saarinen. # Pierson College, named for Yale's first rector, Abraham Pierson. # Saybrook College, named for Old Saybrook, Connecticut, the town in which Yale was founded. # Silliman College, named for noted scientist and Yale professor Benjamin Silliman. About half of its structures were originally part of the Sheffield Scientific School. # Timothy Dwight College, named for the two Yale presidents of that name, Timothy Dwight IV and Timothy Dwight V. Often abbreviated "T.D." # Trumbull College, named for Jonathan Trumbull, first Governor of Connecticut. In 1998, Yale launched a series of extensive renovations to the older residential buildings, which in many decades of existence had seen only routine maintenance and incremental improvements to plumbing, heating, and electrical and network wiring. Many of these renovations have now been completed, and among other improvements, renovated colleges feature newly built basement facilities including restaurants, game rooms, theaters, athletic facilities, and music practice rooms.

In June 2008, President Levin announced that the Yale Corporation had authorized the construction of two new residential colleges, scheduled to open in 2013. The additional colleges, to be built in the northern part of the campus, will allow for expanded admission and a reduction of crowding in the existing residential colleges. Designs have been released, and some public controversy has surfaced over Yale's decision to demolish a number of historic buildings on the site, including a recently constructed library, in order to clear it for the $600 million new structures.

Student organizations

The Yale Political Union is often the largest organization on campus, and is advised by alumni political leaders such as John Kerry and George Pataki. The Yale International Relations Association is often cited as the second-largest organization, as it reaches out to over 2,000 members of the Yale community and functions as the umbrella organization for the top-ranked Model UN team.

The university hosts a variety of student journals, magazines, and newspapers. The latter categories include the ''Yale Daily News'', which was first published in 1878, the weekly ''Yale Herald'', published since 1986, and ''The Yale Record'', which was established in 1872 and is America's oldest college humor magazine. Dwight Hall, an independent, non-profit community service organization, oversees more than 2,000 Yale undergraduates working on more than 70 community service initiatives in New Haven. The Yale College Council runs several agencies that oversee campus wide activities and student services. The Yale Dramatic Association and Bulldog Productions cater to the theater and film communities, respectively. In addition, the Yale Drama Coalition serves to coordinate between and provide resources for the various Sudler Fund sponsored theater productions which run each weekend.

The campus also includes several fraternities and sororities. The campus features at least 18 ''a cappella'' groups, the most famous of which is The Whiffenpoofs, who are unusual among college singing groups in being made up solely of senior men.

Yale's secret societies include Skull and Bones, Scroll and Key, Wolf's Head, Book and Snake, Elihu, Berzelius, St. Elmo, Manuscript, and Mace and Chain. The two oldest existing honor societies are the Aurelian (1910) and the Torch Honor Society (1916).

The Elizabethan Club, a social club, has a membership of undergraduates, graduates, faculty and staff with literary or artistic interests. Membership is by invitation. Members and their guests may enter the "Lizzie's" premises for conversation and tea. The club owns first editions of a Shakespeare Folio, several Shakespeare Quartos, a first edition of Milton's Paradise Lost, among other important literary texts.

Traditions

Yale seniors at graduation smash clay pipes underfoot to symbolize passage from their "bright college years". ("Bright College Years," the University's alma mater, was penned in 1881 by Henry Durand, Class of 1881, to the tune of ''Die Wacht am Rhein''.) Yale's student tour guides tell visitors that students consider it good luck to rub the toe of the statue of Theodore Dwight Woolsey on Old Campus. Actual students rarely do so.

Athletics

Yale supports 35 varsity athletic teams that compete in the Ivy League Conference, the Eastern College Athletic Conference, the New England Intercollegiate Sailing Association. Yale athletic teams compete intercollegiately at the NCAA Division I level. Like other members of the Ivy League, Yale does not offer athletic scholarships.

Yale has numerous athletic facilities, including the Yale Bowl (the nation's first natural "bowl" stadium, and prototype for such stadiums as the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and the Rose Bowl), located at The Walter Camp Field athletic complex, and the Payne Whitney Gymnasium, the second-largest indoor athletic complex in the world. October 21, 2000 marked the dedication of Yale's fourth new boathouse in 157 years of collegiate rowing. The Richard Gilder Boathouse is named to honor former Olympic rower Virginia Gilder '79 and her father Richard Gilder '54, who gave $4 million towards the $7.5 million project. Yale also maintains the Gales Ferry site where the heavyweight men's team trains for the prestigious Yale-Harvard Boat Race.

Yale crew is the oldest collegiate athletic team in America, and won Olympic Games Gold Medal for men's eights in 1924 and 1956. The Yale Corinthian Yacht Club, founded in 1881, is the oldest collegiate sailing club in the world.

In 1896, Yale and Johns Hopkins played the first known ice hockey game in the United States. Since 2006, the school's ice hockey clubs have played a commemorative game.

For kicks, between 1954 and 1982, residential college teams and student organizations played bladderball.

Yale students claim to have invented Frisbee, by tossing empty Frisbie Pie Company tins.

Song

Notable among the songs commonly played and sung at events such as commencement, convocation, alumni gatherings, and athletic games are the alma mater, "Bright College Years", and the Yale fight song, "Down the Field."

Two other fight songs, "Bulldog, Bulldog" and "Bingo Eli Yale", written by Cole Porter during his undergraduate days, are still sung at football games. Another fight song sung at games is "Boola Boola". According to “College Fight Songs: An Annotated Anthology” published in 1998, “Down the Field” ranks as the fourth-greatest fight song of all time.

Mascot

The school mascot is "Handsome Dan", the known Yale bulldog, and the Yale fight song (written by Cole Porter while he was a student at Yale) contains the refrain, "Bulldog, bulldog, bow wow wow." The school color is Yale Blue. Yale's Handsome Dan is believed to be the first college mascot in America, having been established in 1889.

Yale athletics are supported by the Yale Precision Marching Band. ''Precision'' is used here ironically; the band is a scatter-style band that runs wildly between formations rather than actually marching. The band attends every home football game and many away, as well as most hockey and basketball games throughout the winter.

Yale intramural sports are also a significant aspect of student life. Students compete for their respective residential colleges, fostering a friendly rivalry. The year is divided into fall, winter, and spring seasons, each of which includes about ten different sports. About half the sports are coeducational. At the end of the year, the residential college with the most points (not all sports count equally) wins the Tyng Cup.

Notable people

Benefactors

Yale has had many financial supporters, but some stand out by the magnitude or timeliness of their contributions. Among those who have made large donations commemorated at the university are: Elihu Yale; Jeremiah Dummer; the Harkness family (Edward, Anna, and William); the Beinecke family (Edwin, Frederick, and Walter); John William Sterling; Payne Whitney; Joseph E. Sheffield, Paul Mellon, Charles B. G. Murphy and William K. Lanman. The Yale Class of 1954, led by Richard Gilder, donated $70 million in commemoration of their 50th reunion.

Notable alumni and faculty

Yale has produced alumni distinguished in their respective fields. Among the best-known are U.S. Presidents William Howard Taft, Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush; current Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas; U.S. Secretaries of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Dean Acheson; Democratic Presidential nominee John Kerry; authors Sinclair Lewis, and Tom Wolfe; lexicographer Noah Webster; inventors Samuel F.B. Morse and Eli Whitney; patriot and "first spy" Nathan Hale; theologian Jonathan Edwards; Academy Award winners Paul Newman, Vincent Price, Meryl Streep, and Jodie Foster; "Father of American football" Walter Camp; composers Charles Ives and Cole Porter; Peace Corps founder Sargent Shriver; child psychologist Benjamin Spock; sculptor Richard Serra; film critic Gene Siskel; television commentators Dick Cavett and Anderson Cooper; pundits William F. Buckley, Jr., and Fareed Zakaria; Time Magazine co-founder Henry Luce; former President of Mexico Ernesto Zedillo; former President of the Federal Republic of Germany Karl Carstens; former Philippines President José Paciano Laurel; Nobel Laureate in Economics and popular book author Paul Krugman; inventor of the cyclotron and Nobel Laureate in Physics, Ernest Lawrence; two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Stephen Vincent Benét; director of the Human Genome Project, Francis S. Collins; economist Irving Fischer, "The Father of Monetarism"; mathematician and chemist Josiah Willard Gibbs; video game producer Jordan Mechner; Turing Award winner Ronald Rivest; former Coca-Cola CEO Roberto Goizueta; Pepsi CEO Indra Krishnamurthy Nooyi; Morgan Stanley founder Harold Stanley; Boeing CEO James McNerney; FedEx founder Frederick W. Smith; former Turkish prime minister Tansu Çiller; Time Warner president Jeffrey Bewkes; Electronic Arts co-founder Bing Gordon; whistleblower advocate Jesselyn Radack; anthropologist David Graeber; and CBS News and Food Network president Eric Ober.

Yale in fiction and popular culture

Yale University, one of the oldest universities in the United States, is a cultural referent as an institution that produces some of the most elite members of society.

Owen Johnson's novel, ''Stover at Yale'', follows the college career of Dink Stover.

Yale appears in F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel ''The Great Gatsby'' and indirectly in ''Tender Is the Night'', as well as his short stories "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" and "Bernice Bobs Her Hair."

Frank Merriwell, the model for all later juvenile sports fiction, plays football, baseball, crew, and track at Yale while solving mysteries and righting wrongs.

Mary Mazzio's 1999 documentary film, ''A Hero for Daisy'', chronicles the 1976 demonstration at Yale in which the women's rowing team demanded equal athletic facilities.

In the show ''Gilmore Girls'', Logan Huntzberger, Rory Gilmore, Richard Gilmore, and Paris Geller all went to Yale. Rory Gilmore and Paris Geller also served as editors of the Yale Daily News.

Allusions to Yale occur frequently in the writings of Tom Wolfe, who earned a Ph.D at Yale. In his novel ''The Bonfire of the Vanities'', bond trader Sherman McCoy is described as having a "Yale chin." A character in ''A Man in Full'' carries the middle name "Ahlstrom," which he was said to have been given in honor of religious historian Sidney Ahlstrom; this is an allusion to Sydney E. Ahlstrom, who was an historian of religion on the Yale faculty from 1954 to 1984.

In Sylvia Plath's classic novel ''The Bell Jar'', the protagonist's "hypocritical" boyfriend Buddy Willard is described as being a Yale man.

Aaron Sorkin characters Josh Lyman (''The West Wing'') and Simon Stiles (''Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip'') attended Yale Law School and Yale Drama School, respectively. An episode of ''The West Wing'' was framed around a Whiffenpoofs performance at the White House.

A chase scene in ''Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull'' was filmed at Yale in 2007 and prominently features a number of campus locations. The scene ends with Harrison Ford and Shia LaBeouf crashing a motorcycle into what is portrayed as a study room of Sterling Memorial Library, actually filmed in Commons dining hall. Yale alumnus and professor Hiram Bingham III, discoverer of Machu Picchu, has been cited as a potential inspiration for the Indiana Jones character.

C. Montgomery Burns, the owner of the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant on ''The Simpsons'', is a Yale alumnus.

In Disney's The Suite Life on Deck, Cody Martin and Bailey Pickett dreams to attend Yale though only Bailey is accepted to Yale.

Notes and references

Further reading

Bagg, Lyman H. ''Four Years at Yale'', New Haven, 1891.

Blum, John Morton. ''A life with history'' (2004) 283pp, memoir of history professor and advisor to the president

Brown, Chandos Michael. ''Benjamin Silliman: A Life in the Young Republic.'' (1989). 377 pp.

Buckley, William F., Jr. ''God and Man at Yale'', 1951.

Dana, Arnold G. ''Yale Old and New'', 78 vols. personal scrapbook, 1942.

Deming, Clarence. ''Yale Yesterdays'', New Haven, Yale University Press, 1915.

Dexter, Franklin Bowditch. ''Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Yale: Yale College with Annals of the College History, 6 vols. New York, 1885–1912.''

__________. (1901). ''Documentary History of Yale University: Under the Original Charter of the Collegiate School of Connecticut, 1701–1745.'' New Haven: Yale University Press

Fitzmier, John R. ''New England's Moral Legislator: Timothy Dwight, 1752-1817'' (1998). 261 pp.

French, Robert Dudley. ''The Memorial Quadrangle'', New Haven, Yale University Press, 1929.

Furniss, Edgar S. ''The Graduate School of Yale'', New Haven, 1965.

Gilpen, Toni, et al. ''On Strike For Respect,'' (updated edition: University of Illinois Press, 1995,)

Holden, Reuben A. ''Yale: A Pictorial History'', New Haven, Yale University Press, 1967.

Kabaservice, Geoffrey. ''The Guardians: Kingman Brewster, His Circle, and the Rise of the Liberal Establishment,'' (2004). 573 pp.

Kalman, Laura. ''Legal Realism at Yale, 1927-1960'' (1986). 314pp.

Kelley, Brooks Mather. ''Yale: A History.'' New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999. 10-ISBN 0-300-07843-9: 13-ISBN 978-0-300-07843-5; OCLC 810552

Kingsley, William L. ''Yale College. A Sketch of its History'', 2 vols. New York, 1879.

Mendenhall, Thomas C. ''The Harvard-Yale Boat Race, 1852–1924, and the Coming of Sport to the American College.'' (1993). 371 pp.

Nelson, Cary. ''Will Teach for Food: Academic Labor in Crisis,'' Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1997.

Nissenbaum, Stephen, ed. ''The Great Awakening at Yale College'' (1972). 263 pp.

Oren, Dan A. ''Joining the Club: A History of Jews and Yale,'' New Haven, Yale University Press, 1985.* Oviatt, Edwin. ''The Beginnings of Yale (1701–1726)'', New Haven, Yale University Press, 1916.

Pierson, George Wilson. ''Yale College, An Educational History (1871–1921)'', New Haven, Yale University Press, 1952.

__________, ''The Founding of Yale: The Legend of the Forty Folios'', New Haven, Yale University Press, 1988.

Pinnell, Patrick L. ''The Campus Guide: Yale University'', Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1999.

Stevenson, Louise L. ''Scholarly Means to Evangelical Ends: The New Haven Scholars and the Transformation of Higher Learning in America, 1830-1890'' (1986). 221 pp.

Scully, Vincent et al, eds. ''Yale in New Haven: Architecture and Urbanism''. New Haven: Yale University, 2004.

Stokes, Anson Phelps. ''Memorials of Eminent Yale Men'', 2 vols. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1914.

Synnott, Marcia Graham. ''The Half-Opened Door: Discrimination and Admissions at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, 1900-1970'' (1979). 310 pp.

Tucker, Louis Leonard. ''Connecticut's Seminary of Sedition: Yale College.'' Chester, Conn.: Pequot, 1973. 78 pp.

Warch, Richard. ''School of the Prophets: Yale College, 1701-1740.'' (1973). 339 pp.

Welch, Lewis Sheldon, and Walter Camp. ''Yale, her campus, class-rooms, and athletics'' (1900). online

Whitehead, John S. ''The Separation of College and State: Columbia, Dartmouth, Harvard, and Yale, 1776-1876'' (1973). 262 pp.

Wilson, Leonard G., ed. ''Benjamin Silliman and His Circle: Studies on the Influence of Benjamin Silliman on Science in

America'' (1979). 228 pp.

''Yale, The University College (1921–1937)'', New Haven, Yale University Press, 1955.

Secret societies

Robbins, Alexandra, ''Secrets of the Tomb: Skull and Bones, the Ivy League, and the Hidden Paths of Power'', Little Brown & Co., 2002; ISBN 0-316-73561-2 (paper edition).

Millegan, Kris (ed.), ''Fleshing Out Skull & Bones'', TrineDay, 2003. ISBN 0-9752906-0-6 (paper edition).

External links

Official website

Campus map from Yale University website

Home page in EduRoute university ranking

Category:Association of American Universities Category:New England Association of Schools and Colleges Category:Colonial Colleges Category:Ivy League Category:Universities and colleges in Connecticut Category:Educational institutions established in the 1700s Category:1701 establishments Category:National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities members Category:Non-profit organizations based in the United States Category:Buildings and structures in New Haven, Connecticut Category:Education in New Haven, Connecticut Category:Universities and colleges in New Haven County, Connecticut Category:Visitor attractions in New Haven, Connecticut

af:Yale-universiteit ar:ييل ast:Yale az:Yel Universiteti bn:ইয়েল বিশ্ববিদ্যালয় be-x-old:Ельскі ўнівэрсытэт bg:Йейлски университет ca:Universitat de Yale cs:Yale University da:Yale de:Yale University et:Yale'i Ülikool el:Πανεπιστήμιο Γέιλ es:Universidad Yale eo:Universitato Yale eu:Yale Unibertsitatea fa:دانشگاه ییل fr:Université Yale gd:Oilthigh Yale hak:Yâ-lû Thai-ho̍k ko:예일 대학교 hi:येल विश्वविद्यालय hr:Sveučilište Yale id:Universitas Yale is:Yale-háskóli it:Università di Yale he:אוניברסיטת ייל hu:Yale Egyetem ka:იელის უნივერსიტეტი sw:Chuo Kikuu cha Yale la:Universitas Yalensis lv:Jēlas universitāte lt:Jeilio universitetas my:ယေးလ်တက္ကသိုလ် nl:Yale-universiteit ja:イェール大学 no:Yale University nn:Yale University pnb:ییل یونیورسٹی pl:Yale University pt:Universidade Yale ro:Universitatea Yale qu:Yale Yachay Suntur ru:Йельский университет simple:Yale University sk:Yalova univerzita sl:Univerza Yale sr:Jejl fi:Yalen yliopisto sv:Yale University ta:யேல் பல்கலைக்கழகம் tt:Yale universitetı th:มหาวิทยาลัยเยล tr:Yale Üniversitesi uk:Єльський університет ug:يالې ئۇنىۋېرسىتېتى vi:Đại học Yale zh:耶鲁大学

Yale College was the official name of Yale University from 1718 to 1887. The name now refers to the undergraduate part of the university. Each undergraduate student is assigned to one of 12 residential colleges.

Residential colleges

The current residential college system was instituted in 1933 through a grant by Yale graduate Edward S. Harkness, who admired the college systems at Oxford University and Cambridge University. Each college consists of a dormitory building or buildings, surrounding a quadrangle or courtyard. Each college includes a dining hall; student facilities, ranging from libraries to squash courts to darkrooms; and a few faculty, including a Dean, a Master, and two or more Resident Fellows. Most college buildings also features distinctive architecture, and each has developed a different flavor or area of emphasis. Although Yale students take part in academic and social programs across the university, and all of Yale's 2,000 courses are open to undergraduates from any college, each college has a carefully constructed academic and social structure for its students, including seminars, social events, and Master's Teas with notable guests from around the world.

In 1990, Yale launched a series of massive overhauls to the older residential buildings, whose decades of existence had seen only routine maintenance and incremental improvements to plumbing, heating, and electrical and network wiring. Berkeley College was the first to undergo complete renovation. Various unwieldy schemes were used to house displaced students during the yearlong projects, but complaints finally moved Yale to build a new residence hall between the gym and the power plant. It is commonly called "Swing Space" by the students; its official name, Boyd Hall, is unused.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Yale created plans to create a thirteenth college, whose concrete facade would have broken with the campus' more prevalent Gothic and Georgian architecture. The plans were scrapped, after the city of New Haven put up substantial financial barriers, and the proposed site was eventually filled with condominiums and shops (Whitney Grove Square, among others).

In June 2008, Yale announced plans to build two new residential colleges, bringing the total to fourteen. The colleges would allow the school to increase enrollment by about 15 percent to approximately 6,000. The schools, which were expected to be completed by 2013, are to be built north of Grove Street Cemetery and are being designed by the Dean of the Yale School of Architecture, Robert A. M. Stern.

List of residential colleges

Residential colleges are named for important figures or places in university history or notable alumni; they are deliberately not named for benefactors.

#Berkeley College – named for the Rt. Rev. George Berkeley (1685–1753), early benefactor of Yale. #Branford College – named for Branford, Connecticut, where Yale was briefly located. #Calhoun College – named for John C. Calhoun, vice-president of the United States. The smallest college. #Davenport College – named for Rev. John Davenport, the founder of New Haven. Often called "D'port". #Ezra Stiles College – named for the Rev. Ezra Stiles, a president of Yale. Generally called "Stiles," despite an early-1990s crusade by then-master Traugott Lawler to preserve the use of the full name in everyday speech. Its buildings were designed by Eero Saarinen. #Jonathan Edwards College – named for theologian, Yale alumnus, and Princeton co-founder Jonathan Edwards. Generally called "J.E." The oldest of the residential colleges, J.E. is the only college with an independent endowment, the Jonathan Edwards Trust. #Morse College – named for Samuel Morse, inventor of Morse Code. Also designed by Eero Saarinen. #Pierson College – named for Yale's first rector, Abraham Pierson. #Saybrook College – named for Old Saybrook, Connecticut, the town in which Yale was founded. #Silliman College – named for a noted scientist and Yale professor Benjamin Silliman. About half of its structures were originally part of the Sheffield Scientific School, #Timothy Dwight College – named for the two Yale presidents of that name, Timothy Dwight IV and Timothy Dwight V. Usually called "T.D." #Trumbull College – named for Jonathan Trumbull, or the governor of Connecticut.

In popular culture

The anti-Tom novel ''Aunt Phillis's Cabin'' by Mary Henderson Eastman is partially set in Yale College in the 1850s.

In the American TV series ''Gilmore Girls'', Rory Gilmore attended Yale College, choosing it over Harvard.

Further reading

Holden, Reuben A. ''Yale: A Pictorial History'' (1967).

Kabaservice, Geoffrey. ''The Guardians: Kingman Brewster, His Circle, and the Rise of the Liberal Establishment,'' (2004). 573 pp.

Kelley, Brooks Mather. ''Yale: A History.'' (1999). 10-ISBN 0-300-07843-9: 13-ISBN 978-0-300-07843-5; OCLC 810552

Pierson, George Wilson. ''Yale College, An Educational History (1871–1921)'' (1952).

Welch, Lewis Sheldon, and Walter Camp. ''Yale, her campus, class-rooms, and athletics‎'' (1900). online

References

External links

Official Website of Yale College

The Yung Wing Project hosts the memoir of the first Chinese-American graduate of an American university (Yale 1854).

College *

de:Yale College zh:耶鲁学院

birth name	Thomas Jeffrey Hanks
birth date	July 09, 1956
birth place	Concord, California, U.S.
years active	1979–present
occupation	Actor, producer, director, voice over artist, writer, speaker
spouse	Samantha Lewes(m. 1978–1987; divorced)Rita Wilson (m. 1988–present)
children	Colin, Elizabeth, Chester, Truman }}

Thomas Jeffrey "Tom" Hanks (born July 9, 1956) is an American actor, producer, writer, and director. Hanks worked in television and family-friendly comedies, gaining wide notice in 1988's ''Big'', before achieving success as a dramatic actor in several notable roles, including Andrew Beckett in ''Philadelphia'', the title role in ''Forrest Gump'', Commander Jim Lovell in ''Apollo 13'', Captain John H. Miller in ''Saving Private Ryan'', Joe Fox in ''You've Got Mail'', Chuck Noland in ''Cast Away'', and voicing the character Woody in the ''Toy Story series''. Hanks won consecutive Best Actor Academy Awards, in 1993 for ''Philadelphia'' and in 1994 for ''Forrest Gump''. U.S. domestic box office totals for his films exceed US$4.0 billion. He is the father of actor Colin Hanks.

Early life

Hanks was born in Concord, California. His father, Amos Mefford Hanks (born in Glenn County, California, on March 9, 1924 – died in Alameda, California, on January 31, 1992), was a distant relative of President Abraham Lincoln, through Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks. His mother, Janet Marylyn (née Frager; born in Alameda County, California, on January 18, 1932), was a hospital worker; she is of Portuguese ancestry. Hanks's parents divorced in 1960. The family's three oldest children, Sandra (now Sandra Hanks Benoiton, a writer), Larry (now Lawrence M. Hanks, PhD, an entomology professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and Tom, went with their father, while the youngest, Jim, now an actor and film maker, remained with his mother in Red Bluff, California. Afterwards, both parents remarried. Hanks's first stepmother came to the marriage with five children of her own. Hanks once told ''Rolling Stone'': "Everybody in my family likes each other. But there were always about 50 people at the house. I didn't exactly feel like an outsider, but I was sort of outside it." That marriage ended in divorce after two years.

Amos Hanks became a single parent, working long hours and often leaving the children to fend for themselves, an exercise in self-reliance that served the siblings well. In addition to having a family history of Catholicism and Mormonism, Hanks was a "Bible-toting evangelical teenager" for several years. In school, Hanks was unpopular with students and teachers alike, later telling ''Rolling Stone'' magazine: "I was a geek, a spaz. I was horribly, painfully, terribly shy. At the same time, I was the guy who'd yell out funny captions during filmstrips. But I didn't get into trouble. I was always a real good kid and pretty responsible." In 1965, Amos Hanks married Frances Wong, a San Francisco native of Chinese descent. Frances had three children, two of whom lived with Tom during his high school years. Tom acted in school plays, including ''South Pacific'', while attending Skyline High School in Oakland, California.

Hanks studied theater at Chabot College in Hayward, California, and after two years, transferred to California State University, Sacramento. Hanks told ''The New York Times'': "Acting classes looked like the best place for a guy who liked to make a lot of noise and be rather flamboyant. I spent a lot of time going to plays. I wouldn't take dates with me. I'd just drive to a theater, buy myself a ticket, sit in the seat, and read the program, and then get into the play completely. I spent a lot of time like that, seeing Bertolt Brecht, Tennessee Williams, Henrik Ibsen, and all that, and now look at me, acting is my job. I wouldn't have it any other way."

During his years studying theater, Hanks met Vincent Dowling, head of the Great Lakes Theater Festival in Cleveland, Ohio. At Dowling's suggestion, Hanks became an intern at the Festival. His internship stretched into a three-year experience that covered most aspects of theater production, including lighting, set design, and stage management, all of which caused Hanks to drop out of college. During the same time, Hanks won the Cleveland Critics Circle Award for Best Actor for his 1978 performance as Proteus in Shakespeare's ''The Two Gentlemen of Verona'', one of the few times he played a villain.

Career

Early career

In 1979, Hanks moved to New York City, where he made his film debut in the low-budget slasher film ''He Knows You're Alone'' and got a part in the television movie ''Mazes and Monsters''. Early in 1979, Hanks was cast in the lead role of Callimaco in the Riverside Shakespeare Company's production of Niccolò Machiavelli's ''The Mandrake'', directed by Daniel Southern. This remains Hanks's only New York stage performance to date; as a high profile Off Off Broadway showcase, the production helped Tom land an agent, Joe Ohla with the J. Michael Bloom Agency. The next year Hanks landed a lead role on the ABC television pilot of ''Bosom Buddies'', playing the role of Kip Wilson. Hanks moved to Los Angeles, where he and Peter Scolari played a pair of young advertising men forced to dress as women so they could live in an inexpensive all-female hotel. Hanks had previously partnered with Scolari in the 1970s game show ''Make Me Laugh''. ''Bosom Buddies'' ran for two seasons, and, although the ratings were never strong, television critics gave the program high marks. "The first day I saw him on the set," co-producer Ian Praiser told ''Rolling Stone'', "I thought, 'Too bad he won't be in television for long.' I knew he'd be a movie star in two years." But if Praiser knew it, he was not able to convince Hanks. "The television show had come out of nowhere," best friend Tom Lizzio told ''Rolling Stone''. "Then out of nowhere it got canceled. He figured he'd be back to pulling ropes and hanging lights in a theater."

''Bosom Buddies'' and a guest appearance on a 1982 episode of ''Happy Days'' ("A Case of Revenge," where he played a disgruntled former classmate of The Fonz) prompted director Ron Howard to contact Hanks. Howard was working on ''Splash'' (1984), a romantic comedy fantasy about a mermaid who falls in love with a human. At first, Howard considered Hanks for the role of the main character's wisecracking brother, a role that eventually went to John Candy. Instead, Hanks got the lead role and a career boost from ''Splash'', which went on to become a box office hit, grossing more than US$69 million. He also had a sizable hit with the sex comedy ''Bachelor Party'', also in 1984.

In 1983–84, Hanks made three guest appearances on ''Family Ties'' as Elyse Keaton's alcoholic brother, Ned Donnelly.

Period of successes and failures

With ''Nothing in Common'' (1986) – about a young man alienated from his parents who must re-establish a relationship with his father, played by Jackie Gleason – Hanks began to establish the credentials of not only a comic actor but of someone who could carry a serious role. "It changed my desires about working in movies," Hanks told ''Rolling Stone''. "Part of it was the nature of the material, what we were trying to say. But besides that, it focused on people's relationships. The story was about a guy and his father, unlike, say, ''The Money Pit'', where the story is really about a guy and his house."

After a few more flops and a moderate success with ''Dragnet'', Hanks succeeded with the film ''Big'' (1988), both at the box office and within the industry. The film established Hanks as a major Hollywood talent. It was followed later that year by ''Punchline'', in which he and Sally Field co-star as struggling comedians. Hanks's character, Steven Gold, a failing medical student trying to break into stand-up, was somewhat edgy and complex. Hanks' portrayal of Gold offered a glimpse of the far more dramatic roles Hanks would master in films to come. Hanks then suffered a pile of box-office failures: ''The 'Burbs'' (1989), ''Joe Versus the Volcano'' (1990), and ''The Bonfire of the Vanities'' (1990), as a greedy Wall Street type who gets enmeshed in a hit-and-run accident. Only the 1989 movie ''Turner & Hooch'' brought success for Hanks during this time. In a 1993 issue of ''Disney Adventures'', Hanks said, "I saw ''Turner & Hooch'' the other day in the SAC store and couldn't help but be reminiscent. I cried like a baby." He did admit to making a couple of "bum tickers," however, and blamed his "...deductive reasoning and decision making skills."

Progression into dramatic roles

Hanks climbed back to the top again with his portrayal of a washed-up baseball star turned manager in ''A League of Their Own'' (1992). Hanks admits that his acting in earlier roles was not great and that he has improved. In an interview with ''Vanity Fair'', Hanks noted his ''"modern era of moviemaking ... because enough self-discovery has gone on.... My work has become less pretentiously fake and over the top"''. This "modern era" began in 1993 for Hanks, first with ''Sleepless in Seattle'' and then with ''Philadelphia''. The former was a blockbuster success about a widower who finds true love over the airwaves. Richard Schickel of ''TIME'' called his performance "charming," and most critics agreed that Hanks' portrayal ensured him a place among the premier romantic-comedy stars of his generation.

In ''Philadelphia'', he played a gay lawyer with AIDS who sues his firm for discrimination. Hanks lost thirty-five pounds and thinned his hair in order to appear sickly for the role. In a review for ''People'', Leah Rozen stated "Above all, credit for ''Philadelphia'''s success belongs to Hanks, who makes sure that he plays a character, not a saint. He is flat-out terrific, giving a deeply felt, carefully nuanced performance that deserves an Oscar." Hanks won the 1993 Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in ''Philadelphia''. During his acceptance speech he revealed that his high school drama teacher Rawley Farnsworth and former classmate John Gilkerson, two people with whom he was close, were gay. The revelation inspired the 1997 film ''In & Out'', starring Kevin Kline as an English Literature teacher who is outed by a former student in a similar way.

Hanks followed ''Philadelphia'' with the 1994 summer hit ''Forrest Gump''. Of the film, Hanks has remarked: "When I read the script for ''Gump'', I saw it as one of those kind of grand, hopeful movies that the audience can go to and feel ... some hope for their lot and their position in life... I got that from the movies a hundred million times when I was a kid. I still do." Hanks won his second Best Actor Academy Award for his role in ''Forrest Gump'', becoming only the second actor to have accomplished the feat of winning consecutive Best Actor Oscars. (Spencer Tracy was the first, winning in 1937–38. Hanks and Tracy were the same age at the time they received their Academy Awards: 37 for the first and 38 for the second.)

Hanks' next role—astronaut and commander Jim Lovell, in the 1995 movie ''Apollo 13''--reunited him with Ron Howard. Critics generally applauded the film and the performances of the entire cast, which included actors Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinise, Ed Harris, and Kathleen Quinlan. The movie also earned nine Academy Award nominations, winning two. The same year, Hanks starred in the animated blockbuster ''Toy Story'' as the voice of the toy Sheriff Woody.

1996 – present: Directing, producing and acting

Hanks turned to directing with his 1996 film ''That Thing You Do!'' about a 1960s pop group, also playing the role of a music producer. Hanks and producer Gary Goetzman went on to create Playtone, a record and film production company named for the record company in the film.

Hanks executive produced, co-wrote, and co-directed the HBO docudrama ''From the Earth to the Moon''. The twelve-part series chronicles the space program from its inception, through the familiar flights of Neil Armstrong and Jim Lovell, to the personal feelings surrounding the reality of moon landings. The Emmy Award-winning project was, at US$68 million, one of the most expensive ventures taken for television.

Hanks's next project was no less expensive. For ''Saving Private Ryan'' he teamed up with Steven Spielberg to make a film about a search through war-torn France after D-Day to bring back a soldier who has a ticket home. It earned the praise and respect of the film community, critics, and the general public. It was labeled one of the finest war films ever made and earned Spielberg his second Academy Award for direction, and Hanks another Best Actor nomination. Later in 1998, Hanks re-teamed with his ''Sleepless in Seattle'' co-star Meg Ryan for ''You've Got Mail'', a remake of 1940's ''The Shop Around the Corner''.

In 1999, Hanks starred in an adaptation of the Stephen King novel ''The Green Mile''. He also returned as the voice of Woody in ''Toy Story 2.'' The following year he won a Golden Globe for Best Actor and an Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of a marooned FedEx systems analyst in Robert Zemeckis's ''Cast Away''. In 2001, Hanks helped direct and produce the acclaimed HBO mini-series ''Band of Brothers''. He also appeared in the September 11 television special ''America: A Tribute to Heroes'' and the documentary ''Rescued From the Closet''.

Next he teamed up with ''American Beauty'' director Sam Mendes for the adaptation of Max Allan Collins's and Richard Piers Rayner's graphic novel ''Road to Perdition'', in which he played an anti-hero role as a hitman on the run with his son. That same year, Hanks collaborated with director Spielberg again, starring opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in the hit crime comedy ''Catch Me if You Can'', based on the true story of Frank Abagnale, Jr. The same year, Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson produced the hit movie ''My Big Fat Greek Wedding''. In August 2007, he along with co-producers Rita Wilson and Gary Goetzman, and writer and star Nia Vardalos, initiated a legal action against the production company Gold Circle Films for their share of profits from the movie. At the age of 45, he became the youngest ever recipient of the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award on June 12, 2002.

In 2004, he appeared in three films: The Coen Brothers' ''The Ladykillers'', another Spielberg film, ''The Terminal'', and ''The Polar Express'', a family film from Robert Zemeckis. In a ''USA Weekend'' interview, Hanks talked about how he chooses projects: "[Since] ''A League of Their Own'', it can't be just another movie for me. It has to get me going somehow.... There has to be some all-encompassing desire or feeling about wanting to do that particular movie. I'd like to assume that I'm willing to go down any avenue in order to do it right". In August 2005, Hanks was voted in as vice president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Hanks next starred in the highly anticipated film ''The Da Vinci Code'', based on the bestselling novel by Dan Brown. The film was released May 19, 2006 in the US and grossed over US$750 million worldwide. He followed the film with Ken Burns's 2007 documentary ''The War''. For the documentary, Hanks did voice work, reading excerpts from World War II-era columns by Al McIntosh. In 2006, Hanks topped a 1,500-strong list of 'most trusted celebrities' compiled by ''Forbes'' magazine. Hanks next appeared in a cameo role as himself in ''The Simpsons Movie'', in which he appeared in an advertisement claiming that the US government has lost its credibility and is hence buying some of his. He also made an appearance in the credits, expressing a desire to be left alone when he is out in public. Later in 2006, Hanks produced the British film ''Starter for Ten'', a comedy based on working class students attempting to win ''University Challenge''.

In 2007, Hanks starred in Mike Nichols's film ''Charlie Wilson's War'' (written by screenwriter Aaron Sorkin) in which he plays Democratic Texas Congressman Charles Wilson. The film opened on December 21, 2007 and Hanks received a Golden Globe nomination.

In 2008's ''The Great Buck Howard'', Hanks played the on-screen father of a young man (Hanks' real-life son, Colin Hanks) who chooses to follow in the footsteps of a fading magician (John Malkovich). Tom Hanks's character was less than thrilled about his son's career decision.

Hanks's next endeavor, released on May 15, 2009, was a film adaptation of ''Angels & Demons'', based on the novel of the same name by Dan Brown. Its April 11, 2007 announcement revealed that Hanks would reprise his role as Robert Langdon, and that he would reportedly receive the highest salary ever for an actor. The following day he made his 10th appearance on NBC's ''Saturday Night Live'', impersonating himself for the ''Celebrity Jeopardy'' sketch.

Hanks is producer of the Spike Jonze film ''Where The Wild Things Are'', based on the children's book by Maurice Sendak.

In 2010, Hanks reprised his role as Sheriff Woody in the third film in the Toy Story franchise, ''Toy Story 3'', after he, Tim Allen, and John Ratzenberger were invited to a movie theater to see a complete story reel of the movie.

In 2011, he directed and starred opposite Julia Roberts in the title role in the romantic comedy ''Larry Crowne''. The movie has received generally bad reviews with only 35% of the 175 Rotten Tomatoes reviews giving it high ratings.

Hanks is ranked the highest all time box office star with over $3.639 billion total box office gross, an average of $107 million per film. He has been involved with seventeen films that grossed over $100 million at the worldwide box office, the highest grossing of which was 2010's ''Toy Story 3''.

Personal life

Hanks was married to American actress Samantha Lewes (née Susan Jane Dillingham) from 1978 to 1987. The couple had two children, son Colin Hanks (also an actor) and daughter Elizabeth Ann.

In 1988, Hanks married actress Rita Wilson. The two first met on the set of Hanks's television show ''Bosom Buddies'' but later developed a romantic interest while working on the film ''Volunteers''. They have two sons: Chester, or "Chet" (who has a small part as a student in ''Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull'' and released a rap single in 2011), and Truman.

Hanks became a grandfather when his son Colin and daughter-in-law Samantha gave birth to granddaughter Olivia Jane Hanks on February 1, 2011.

Regarding his religious views, Hanks has said, "I must say that when I go to church – and I do go to church – I ponder the mystery. I meditate on the 'why?' of 'Why people are as they are' and 'Why bad things happen to good people,' and 'Why good things happen to bad people'... The mystery is what I think it is, almost, the grand unifying theory of mankind."

Politics

Hanks has made donations to many Democratic politicians and has been open about his support for same-sex marriage, environmental causes and alternative fuels. Hanks made public his presidential candidate choice in the 2008 election when he uploaded a video to his MySpace account in which he announced his endorsement of Barack Obama.

A proponent of environmentalism, Hanks is an investor in electric vehicles and owns both a Toyota RAV4 EV and the first production AC Propulsion eBox. Hanks was a lessee of an EV1 before it was recalled, as chronicled in the documentary ''Who Killed the Electric Car?'' He is on the waiting list for an Aptera 2 Series.

Hanks was extremely outspoken about his opposition to Proposition 8, an amendment to the California constitution that defined marriage as a union only between a man and a woman. Hanks and others who were in opposition to the proposition raised over US$44 million in contrast to the supporters' $39 million, but Proposition 8 passed with 52% of the vote.

While premiering a TV series in January 2009, Hanks called supporters of Proposition 8 "un-American" and attacked the LDS (Mormon) church members, who were major proponents of the bill, for their views on marriage and their role in supporting the bill. About a week later, Hanks apologized for the remark, saying that nothing is more American than voting one's conscience.

Other activities

A supporter of NASA's manned space program, Hanks has said that he originally wanted to be an astronaut but "didn't have the math." Hanks is a member of the National Space Society, serving on the Board of Governors of the nonprofit educational space advocacy organization founded by Dr. Wernher Von Braun. He also produced the HBO miniseries ''From the Earth to the Moon'' about the Apollo program to send astronauts to the moon. In addition, Hanks co-wrote and co-produced ''Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon 3D'', an IMAX film about the moon landings. Hanks also provided the voice over for the premiere of the show ''Passport to the Universe'' at the Rose Center for Earth and Space in the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

In 2006, the Space Foundation awarded Hanks the Douglas S. Morrow Public Outreach Award. The award is given annually to an individual or organization that has made significant contributions to public awareness of space programs.

In June 2006 Hanks was inducted as an honorary member of the United States Army Rangers Hall of Fame for his accurate portrayal of a Captain in the movie ''Saving Private Ryan''; Hanks, who was unable to attend the induction ceremony, was the first actor to receive such an honor. In addition to his role in ''Saving Private Ryan'', Hanks was cited for serving as the national spokesperson for the World War II Memorial Campaign, for being the honorary chairperson of the D-Day Museum Capital Campaign, and for his role in writing and helping to produce the Emmy Award-winning miniseries, ''Band of Brothers''.

Hanks is one of several celebrities who frequently participates in planned comedy bits on Conan O'Brien's talk shows, including ''Late Night'', ''The Tonight Show'', and ''Conan'' while a guest. On one visit, Hanks asked Conan to join his run for president on the "Bad Haircut Party" ticket, with confetti and balloons and a hand held sign with the slogan "You'd be stupid to vote for us". On another episode, O'Brien, noting that Hanks was missing Christmas on his promotional tour, brought the season to him, including a gift (the skeleton of Hooch), and a mass of snow burying them both. On yet another episode, Conan gave Hanks a painting he had commissioned reflecting two of his interests: Astronauts landing on the beach at Normandy. On March 10, 2008, Hanks was on hand at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame to induct sixties band The Dave Clark Five. Asteroid 12818 Tomhanks is named for him.

Filmography

+ List of film credits
! Year	! Title	! Role	Notes
1980	''He Knows You're Alone''	Elliot
1982	''Mazes and Monsters''	Robbie Wheeling	Made for television
1984		Allen Bauer
1984		Rick Gassko
1985	''''	Richard Harlan Drew
1985		Lawrence Whatley Bourne III
1986	''''	Walter Fielding, Jr.
1986	''Nothing in Common''	David Basner
1986		David Bradley
1987		Pep Streebeck
1988	''Big''	Adult Josh Baskin
1988		Steven Gold
1989	''Turner & Hooch''	Detective Scott Turner
1989	''''	Ray Peterson
1990	''Joe Versus the Volcano''	Joe Banks
1990	''''	Sherman McCoy
1992	''''	Jimmy Dugan
1992		Older Mike	(uncredited)
1993	''Sleepless in Seattle''	Sam Baldwin
1993		Andrew Beckett
1994
1995		Jim Lovell
1995	''Toy Story''		(voice)
1996	''That Thing You Do!''	Mr. White	(writer and director)
1998	''Saving Private Ryan''	Captain John H. Miller
1998	''You've Got Mail''	Joe Fox
1999	''Toy Story 2''	Woody	(voice)
1999	''''	Paul Edgecomb
2000	''Cast Away''	Chuck Noland
2002	''Road to Perdition''	Michael Sullivan, Sr.
2002	''Catch Me If You Can''	FBI Agent Carl Hanratty
2004	''''	Viktor Navorski
2004	''''	Professor G.H. Dorr
2004		Mailbox Elvis	(cameo)
2004	''''
2006	''''
2006		Woody Car	(voice)
2007	''''	Himself	(voice)
2007	''Charlie Wilson's War''		Nominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
2008	''''	Mr. Gable
2008			(producer)
2009		Professor Robert Langdon
2009	''''	Various historical figures	(voice)
2009			(producer)
2010	''Toy Story 3''	Woody
2011	''Larry Crowne''	Larry Crowne	(director, producer, writer)
2011	''Hawaiian Vacation''	Woody	(voice)
2012			Filming

+ List of television credits
! Year	! Title	! Role	Notes
1980	''''	Rick Martin	TV series, episode: "Friends and Lovers/Sergeant Bull/Miss Mother"
1980–1982	''Bosom Buddies''	Kip Wilson
1982		Gordon
1982	''Mazes and Monsters''	Robbie Wheeling
1982	''Happy Days''	Dr. Dwayne Twitchell	TV series, episode: "A Case of Revenge"
1983	''Family Ties''	Ned	Elyse Keaton's brother
1994	''Vault of Horror I''	Director
1998		Narrator (also executive producer/director/writer)	Miniseries
2001		Producer, director, writer	Miniseries
2002	''''	Interviewee
2006–2011	''Big Love''	Executive producer	TV series
2008		Executive producer	Miniseries
2010	''''	Executive producer/Narrator	Miniseries
2011	''Saturday Night Live''	Guest cast member

Other accolades

+ List of accolades and awards won
! Organization	! Year	! Award
Hollywood Women's Press Club	1988	Golden Apple Award
Hasty Pudding Theatricals	1995
American Film Institute	2002	AFI Life Achievement Award
Hollywood Film Festival	2002	Actor of the Year
	2004	Britannia Award for Excellence in Film
	2004	Bambi for Film – International
Film Society of Lincoln Center	2009	Gala Tribute

References

Further reading

Gardner, David, ''Tom Hanks: The Unauthorized Biography'', London, England 1999

Gardner, David, ''Tom Hanks: Enigma'' 2007

Pfeiffer, Lee, ''The Films of Tom Hanks'', Secaucus, New Jersey, 1996

Salamon, Julie, ''The Devil's Candy: The Bonfire of the Vanities Goes to Hollywood'', Boston, 1991

Trakin, Roy, ''Tom Hanks: Journey to Stardom'', 1987; rev. ed.1995

Wallner, Rosemary, ''Tom Hanks: Academy Award-Winning Actor'', Edina, Minnesota, 1994

External links

Tom Hanks' Facebook Page

Tom Hanks's thoughts on Earth Day 2006

Interview from 1989 issue of ''Film Comment''

Tom Hanks's films of the 1980s

Category:Actors from California Category:American film actors Category:American film directors Category:American people of Portuguese descent Category:American television actors Category:American voice actors Category:Best Actor Academy Award winners Category:Best Drama Actor Golden Globe (film) winners Category:Best Musical or Comedy Actor Golden Globe (film) winners Category:California Democrats Category:California State University, Sacramento alumni Category:Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture Screen Actors Guild Award winners Category:People from Concord, California Category:People from Oakland, California Category:Space advocacy Category:1956 births Category:Living people

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Honorific-prefix	The Right Honourable
Name	Tony Blair
Alt	A photograph of a man with greying hair speaking into a microphone and gesturing with his left hand
Office	Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Monarch	Elizabeth II
Deputy	John Prescott
Term start	2 May 1997
Term end	27 June 2007
Predecessor	John Major
Successor	Gordon Brown
Office2	Leader of the Opposition
Monarch2	Elizabeth II
Primeminister2	John Major
Term start2	21 July 1994
Term end2	2 May 1997
Predecessor2	Margaret Beckett
Successor2	John Major
Office3	Leader of the Labour Party
Term start3	21 July 1994
Term end3	24 June 2007
Deputy3	John Prescott
Predecessor3	Margaret Beckett
Successor3	Gordon Brown
Office4	Shadow Home Secretary
Leader4	John Smith
Term start4	19 July 1992
Term end4	21 July 1994
Predecessor4	Roy Hattersley
Successor4	Jack Straw
Office5	Shadow Secretary of State for Employment
Leader5	Neil Kinnock
Term start5	13 May 1989
Term end5	19 July 1992
Predecessor5	Michael Meacher
Successor5	Frank Dobson
Office6	Shadow Secretary of State for Energy
Leader6	Neil Kinnock
Term start6	7 June 1988
Term end6	13 May 1989
Predecessor6	John Prescott
Successor6	Frank Dobson
Office7	Shadow Minister of State for Trade
Leader7	Neil Kinnock
Term start7	14 May 1987
Term end7	7 June 1988
Predecessor7	Bryan Gould
Successor7	Robin Cook
Office8	Member of Parliament for Sedgefield
Majority8	18,449 (44.5%)
Term start8	9 June 1983
Term end8	27 June 2007
Predecessor8	Constituency Created
Successor8	Phil Wilson
Birth date	May 06, 1953
Birth place	Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
Birthname	Anthony Charles Lynton Blair
Party	Labour
Spouse	Cherie Booth(m. 1980–present, 4 children)
Relations	Leo Blair (father)William Blair (brother)
Children	Euan, Nicky, Kathryn, Leo
Residence	Connaught Square
Alma mater	St John's College, Oxford
Occupation	Envoy
Profession	Lawyer
Networth	£3 million est.
Religion	Roman Catholic (2007–present)
Website	Tony Blair Office }}

Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born 6 May 1953) is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. He resigned from all of these positions in June 2007.

Blair was elected Leader of the Labour Party in the leadership election of July 1994, following the sudden death of his predecessor, John Smith. Under his leadership, the party adopted the term "New Labour" and moved away from its traditional left wing position towards the centre ground. Blair subsequently led Labour to a landslide victory in the 1997 general election. At 43 years old, he became the youngest Prime Minister since Lord Liverpool in 1812. In the first years of the New Labour government, Blair's government implemented a number of 1997 manifesto pledges, introducing the minimum wage, Human Rights Act and Freedom of Information Act, and carrying out devolution, establishing the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales, and the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Blair's role as Prime Minister was particularly visible in foreign and security policy, including in Northern Ireland, where he was involved in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. From the start of the War on Terror in 2001, Blair strongly supported the foreign policy of US President George W. Bush, notably by participating in the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and 2003 invasion of Iraq. Blair is the Labour Party's longest-serving Prime Minister, the only person to have led the Labour Party to three consecutive general election victories, and the only Labour Prime Minister to serve consecutive terms more than one of which was at least four years long.

He was succeeded as Leader of the Labour Party on 24 June 2007 and as Prime Minister on 27 June 2007 by Gordon Brown. On the day he resigned as Prime Minister, he was appointed the official Envoy of the Quartet on the Middle East. In May 2008, Blair launched his Tony Blair Faith Foundation. This was followed in July 2009 by the launching of the ''Faith and Globalisation Initiative'' with Yale University in the USA, Durham University in the UK and the National University of Singapore in Asia to deliver a postgraduate programme in partnership with the Foundation.

Background and family life

Blair was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on 6 May 1953, the second son of Leo and Hazel Blair (''née'' Corscadden). Leo Blair, the illegitimate son of two English actors, had been adopted as a baby by Glasgow shipyard worker James Blair and his wife, Mary. Hazel Corscadden was the daughter of George Corscadden, a butcher and Orangeman who moved to Glasgow in 1916 but returned to (and later died in) Ballyshannon in 1923, where his wife, Sarah Margaret (née Lipsett), gave birth to Blair's mother, Hazel, above her family's grocery shop. George Corscadden was from a family of Protestant farmers in County Donegal, Ireland, who descended from Ulster-Scots settlers who took their family name from Garscadden, now part of Glasgow.

Life as a child

Blair has one elder brother, Sir William Blair, a High Court judge, and a younger sister, Sarah. Blair spent the first 19 months of his life at the family home in Paisley Terrace in the Willowbrae area of Edinburgh. During this period, his father worked as a junior tax inspector whilst also studying for a law degree from the University of Edinburgh. In the 1950s, his family spent three and a half years in Adelaide, Australia, where his father was a lecturer in law at the University of Adelaide. The Blairs lived close to the university, in the suburb of Dulwich. The family returned to the UK in the late 1950s, living for a time with Hazel Blair's stepfather, William McClay, and her mother at their home in Stepps, near Glasgow. He spent the remainder of his childhood in Durham, England, where his father lectured at Durham University.

Education

After attending The Chorister School in Durham from 1961 to 1966, Blair boarded at Fettes College, a prestigious independent school in Edinburgh, during which time he met Charlie Falconer (a pupil at the rival Edinburgh Academy), whom he later appointed Lord Chancellor. He reportedly modelled himself on Mick Jagger. His teachers were unimpressed with him, his biographer John Rentoul, reported that "All the teachers I spoke to when researching the book said he was a complete pain in the backside and they were very glad to see the back of him." Blair was arrested at Fettes, having been mistaken for a burglar as he climbed into his dormitory using a ladder after having been out late.

After Fettes, Blair spent a year in London, where he attempted to find fame as a rock music promoter before reading jurisprudence at St John's College, Oxford. As a student, he played guitar and sang in a rock band called Ugly Rumours. During this time, he dated future ''American Psycho'' director Mary Harron.

He was influenced by fellow student and Anglican priest Peter Thomson, who awakened within Blair a deep concern for religious faith and left-wing politics. While Blair was at Oxford, his mother Hazel died of cancer, which greatly affected him. After graduating from Oxford in 1975 with a Second Class Honours BA in Jurisprudence, Blair became a member of Lincoln's Inn, enrolled as a pupil barrister, and met his future wife, Cherie Booth (daughter of the actor Tony Booth) at the law chambers founded by Derry Irvine (who was to be Blair's first Lord Chancellor), 11 King's Bench Walk Chambers. He appears in a number of reported cases, for example as in ''Nethermere (St Neots) Ltd v Gardiner'' where he represented employers unsuccessfully in an attempt to deny female factory workers holiday pay.

Marriage and children

Blair married Cherie Booth, a Roman Catholic and future Queen's Counsel, on 29 March 1980. They have four children: Euan, Nicholas, Kathryn, and Leo. Leo was the first legitimate child born to a serving Prime Minister in over 150 years—since Francis Russell was born to Lord John Russell on 11 July 1849. Blair was criticised when it was discovered that one child had received private tuition from staff at Westminster School. All four children have Irish passports, by virtue of Blair's mother Hazel.

Personal health

Blair suffered from chest pains on Sunday 19 October 2003 and underwent a cardioversion at Hammersmith Hospital.

Religious faith

In an interview with Michael Parkinson broadcast on ITV1 on 4 March 2006, Blair referred to the role of his Christian faith in his decision to go to war in Iraq, stating that he had prayed about the issue, and saying that God would judge him for his decision: "I think if you have faith about these things, you realise that judgement is made by other people … and if you believe in God, it's made by God as well."

A longer exploration of his faith can be found in an interview with ''Third Way Magazine''. There he says that "I was brought up as [a Christian], but I was not in any real sense a practising one until I went to Oxford. There was an Australian priest at the same college as me who got me interested again. In a sense, it was a rediscovery of religion as something living, that was about the world around me rather than some sort of special one-to-one relationship with a remote Being on high. Suddenly I began to see its social relevance. I began to make sense of the world".

At one point Alastair Campbell, Blair's director of strategy and communications, intervened in an interview, preventing the Prime Minister from answering a question about his Christianity, explaining, "We don't do God".

Cherie Blair's friend and "spiritual guru" Carole Caplin is credited with introducing her and her husband to various New Age symbols and beliefs, including "magic pendants" known as "BioElectric Shields". The most controversial of the Blairs' New Age practices occurred when on holiday in Mexico. The couple, wearing only bathing costumes, took part in a rebirthing procedure, which involved smearing mud and fruit over each others' bodies while sitting in a steam bath.

Later on, Blair questioned the Pope's attitude towards homosexuality, arguing that religious leaders must start "rethinking" the issue. He was later rebuked by Vincent Nichols, the new archbishop of Westminster, who said that Catholic thinking was 'rather different' from the kind promoted by the former prime minister.

On 22 December 2007, it was disclosed that Blair, who in 1996, had been reprimanded by Cardinal Basil Hume for receiving Holy Communion at Mass despite not being a Catholic, in contravention of canon law, had converted to the Catholic faith, and that it was "a private matter". He had informed Pope Benedict XVI on 23 June 2007 that he wanted to become a Catholic. The Pope and his advisors criticised some of Blair's political actions, but followed up with a reportedly unprecedented red-carpet welcome, which included Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, who would be responsible for Blair's Catholic instruction.

On 14 January 2009, Blair, upon a visit to the British Embassy in Washington, D.C., described, in the guest book, his home as being 'Jerusalem'. This was followed shortly after, on the occasion of his addressing of the National Prayer Breakfast, by his discussion of the issue of religion in the world and the Middle East peace process in his address and how he spends so much of his time in the Holy Land and in the Holy City. He reported his Palestinian guide as bemoaning the fate of his nation looking to heaven and saying “Moses, Jesus, Mohammed: why did they all have to come here?" For Blair the Holy City is "a good place to reflect on religion: a source of so much inspiration; an excuse for so much evil."

According to Alastair Campbell's diary, Blair often read the Bible before taking any important decisions. He states that Blair had a "wobble" and considered changing his mind on the eve of the bombing of Iraq in 1998.

Early political career

Blair joined the Labour Party shortly after graduating from Oxford in 1975. During the early 1980s, he was involved in Labour politics in Hackney South and Shoreditch, where he aligned himself with the "soft left" of the party. He unsuccessfully attempted to secure selection as a candidate for Hackney London Borough Council. Through his father-in-law, Tony Booth, he contacted Labour MP Tom Pendry to ask for help in pursuing a Parliamentary career. Pendry gave him a tour of the House of Commons and advised him to stand for selection as a candidate in a forthcoming by-election in the safe Conservative seat of Beaconsfield, where Pendry knew a senior member of the local party. Blair was chosen as the candidate; at the Beaconsfield by-election, he won only 10% of the vote and lost his deposit, but he impressed Labour Party leader Michael Foot and acquired a profile within the party. In contrast to his later centrism, Blair made it clear in a letter he wrote to Foot in July 1982, that he had "come to Socialism through Marxism" and considered himself on the left. The letter was eventually published in June 2006.

In 1983, Blair found the newly created constituency of Sedgefield, a notionally safe Labour seat near where he had grown up in Durham. The branch had not made a nomination, and Blair visited them. Several sitting MPs displaced by boundary changes were interested in securing selection to fight the seat. With the crucial support of John Burton, Blair won their endorsement; at the last minute, he was added to the short list and won the selection over Les Huckfield. Burton later became Blair's agent and one of his most trusted and longest-standing allies.

Blair's election literature in the 1983 UK general election endorsed left-wing policies that Labour advocated in the early 1980s. He called for Britain to leave the EEC, though he had told his selection conference that he personally favoured continuing membership. He also supported unilateral nuclear disarmament as a member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Blair was helped on the campaign trail by soap opera actress Pat Phoenix, his father-in-law's girlfriend. Blair was elected as MP for Sedgefield despite the party's landslide defeat in the general election.

In his maiden speech in the House of Commons on 6 July 1983, Blair stated, "I am a socialist not through reading a textbook that has caught my intellectual fancy, nor through unthinking tradition, but because I believe that, at its best, socialism corresponds most closely to an existence that is both rational and moral. It stands for cooperation, not confrontation; for fellowship, not fear. It stands for equality." The Labour Party is declared in its constitution to be a democratic socialist party rather than a social democratic party; Blair himself organised this declaration of Labour to be a socialist party when he dealt with the change to the party's Clause IV in their constitution.

Once elected, Blair's political ascent was rapid. He received his first front-bench appointment in 1984 as assistant Treasury spokesman. In May 1985, he appeared on BBC's Question Time, arguing that the Conservative Government's Public Order White Paper was a threat to civil liberties. Blair demanded an inquiry into the Bank of England's decision to rescue the collapsed Johnson Matthey Bank in October 1985 and embarrassed the government by finding a EEC report critical of British economic policy that had been countersigned by a member of the Conservative government. By this time, Blair was aligned with the reforming tendencies in the party (headed by leader Neil Kinnock) and was promoted after the 1987 election to the shadow Trade and Industry team as spokesman on the City of London. In 1987, he stood for election to the Shadow Cabinet, receiving 71 votes.

Blair became Shadow Home Secretary under John Smith. John Smith died suddenly in 1994 of a heart attack. Blair beat John Prescott and Margaret Beckett in the subsequent leadership election and became Leader of the Opposition. As is customary for the holder of that office, Blair was appointed a Privy Councillor.

Leader of the Labour Party

Blair announced at the end of his speech at the 1994 Labour Party conference that he intended to replace Clause IV of the party's constitution with a new statement of aims and values. This involved the deletion of the party's stated commitment to "the common ownership of the means of production and exchange", which was widely interpreted as referring to wholesale nationalisation. At a special conference in April 1995, the clause was replaced by a statement that the party is 'democratic socialist'. in spite of the continuing economic recovery and fall in unemployment that the Conservative government (led by John Major) had overseen since the end of the 1990–92 recession.

At the 1996 Labour Party conference, Blair stated that his three top priorities on coming to office were "education, education, and education".

Aided by the unpopularity of John Major's Conservative government (itself deeply divided over the European Union), "New Labour" won a landslide victory in the 1997 general election, ending 18 years of Conservative Party government, with the heaviest Conservative defeat since 1832.

During Smith's leadership of the Labour Party, there were discussions with Paddy Ashdown, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, about forming a coalition government if the next general election resulted in a hung parliament. After Blair became leader, these talks continued – despite virtually every opinion poll since late 1992 having shown Labour with enough support to form a majority. However, the scale of the Labour victory meant that there was ultimately never any need for a coalition.

Prime Minister

Blair became the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on 2 May 1997, serving concurrently as First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service and Leader of the Labour Party. The 43-year old Blair became the youngest person to become Prime Minister since Lord Liverpool in 1812, at the age of 42. With victories in 1997, 2001, and 2005, Blair was the Labour Party's longest-serving prime minister, the only person to lead the party to three consecutive general election victories.

Northern Ireland

His contribution towards assisting the Northern Ireland Peace Process by helping to negotiate the Good Friday Agreement (after 30 years of conflict) was widely recognised. Following the Omagh Bombing on 15 August 1998, by members of the Real IRA opposed to the peace process, which killed 29 people and wounded hundreds, Blair visited the County Tyrone town and met with victims at Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast.

War on Terror

In his first six years in office Blair ordered British troops into battle five times, more than any other prime minister in British history. This included Iraq in both 1998 and 2003; Kosovo (1999); Sierra Leone (2000) and Afghanistan (2001).

From the start of the War on Terror in 2001, Blair strongly supported the foreign policy of George W. Bush, participating in the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and 2003 invasion of Iraq. The invasion of Iraq was particularly controversial, as it attracted widespread public opposition and 139 of Blair's MPs opposed it. As a result, he faced criticism over the policy itself and the circumstances in which it was decided upon. Alastair Campbell described Blair's statement that the intelligence on WMDs was "beyond doubt" as his "assessment of the assessment that was given to him." In 2009, Blair stated that he would have supported removing Saddam Hussein from power even in the face of proof that he had no such weapons. Playwright Harold Pinter and former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad accused Blair of war crimes. Testifying before the Iraq Inquiry on 29 January 2010, Blair said Saddam was a "monster and I believe he threatened not just the region but the world." Blair said that British and American attitude towards Saddam Hussein had "changed dramatically" after 11 September attacks. Blair denied that he would have supported the invasion of Iraq even if he had thought Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction. He said he believed the world was safer as a result of the invasion. He also said that there was "no real difference between wanting regime change and wanting Iraq to disarm: regime change was US policy because Iraq was in breach of its UN obligations."

Relationship with Parliament

One of his first acts as Prime Minister was to replace the then twice-weekly 15-minute sessions of Prime Minister's Questions held on Tuesdays and Thursdays with a single 30-minute session on Wednesdays. In addition to PMQs, Blair held monthly press conferences at which he fielded questions from journalists and – from 2002 – broke precedent by agreeing to give evidence twice yearly before the most senior Commons select committee, The Liaison Committee. Blair was sometimes perceived as paying insufficient attention both to the views of his own Cabinet colleagues and to those of the House of Commons. His style was sometimes criticised as not that of a prime minister and head of government, which he was, but of a president and head of state—which he was not. Blair was accused of excessive reliance on spin. He is the first British Prime Minister to have been formally questioned by police, though not under caution, while still in office.

Events prior to resignation

As the casualties of the Iraq War mounted, Blair was accused of misleading Parliament, and his popularity dropped dramatically. The Labour party's overall majority in the 2005 general election was reduced to 66. As a combined result of the Blair-Brown pact, Iraq war and low approval ratings, pressure built up within the Labour party for Blair to resign. On 7 September 2006, Blair publicly stated he would step down as party leader by the time of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) conference held 10–13 September 2007, having promised to serve a full term during the previous general election campaign. On 10 May 2007, during a speech at the Trimdon Labour Club, Blair announced his intention to resign as both Labour Party leader and Prime Minister. At a special party conference in Manchester on 24 June 2007, he formally handed over the leadership of the Labour Party to Gordon Brown, who had been Chancellor of the Exchequer. The resulting Sedgefield by-election was won by Labour's candidate, Phil Wilson. Blair decided not to issue a list of Resignation Honours, making him the first Prime Minister of the modern era not to do so.

Policies

In 2001, Blair said, "We are a left of centre party, pursuing economic prosperity and social justice as partners and not as opposites". Blair has rarely applied such labels to himself, but he promised before the 1997 election that New Labour would govern "from the radical centre", and according to one lifelong Labour Party member, has always described himself as a social democrat. However, Labour Party backbenchers and other left wing critics typically place Blair to the right of centre. A YouGov opinion poll in 2005 also found that a small majority of British voters, including many New Labour supporters, place Blair on the right of the political spectrum. The ''Financial Times'' on the other hand has argued that Blair is not conservative, but instead a populist. The new Clause IV of the Labour Party's constitution defines the party as "Democratic Socialist".

Critics and admirers tend to agree that Blair's electoral success was based on his ability to occupy the centre ground and appeal to voters across the political spectrum, to the extent that he has been fundamentally at odds with traditional Labour Party values. Some left wing critics have argued that Blair has overseen the final stage of a long term shift of the Labour Party to the right, and that very little now remains of a Labour Left. There is also evidence that Blair's long term dominance of the centre has forced his Conservative opponents to shift a long distance to the left, in order to challenge his hegemony there.

Blair has raised taxes (but did not increase income tax for high-earners); introduced a minimum wage and some new employment rights (while keeping Margaret Thatcher's anti-trade union legislation); introduced significant constitutional reforms; promoted new rights for gay people in the Civil Partnership Act 2004; and signed treaties integrating Britain more closely with the EU. He introduced substantial market-based reforms in the education and health sectors; introduced student tuition fees; sought to reduce certain categories of welfare payments, and introduced tough anti-terrorism and identity card legislation. Under Blair's government the amount of new legislation increased which attracted criticism. Blair increased police powers by adding to the number of arrestable offences, compulsory DNA recording and the use of dispersal orders.

Environmental record

Blair has criticised other governments for not doing enough to solve global climate change. In a 1997 visit to the United States, he made a comment on "great industrialised nations" that fail to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Again in 2003, Blair went before the United States Congress and said that climate change "cannot be ignored", insisting "we need to go beyond even Kyoto." His record at home tends to say something different. Blair and his party have promised a 20% reduction in carbon dioxide but during his term the emissions rose. The Labour Party also claimed that by 2010 10% of the energy would come from renewable resources but in fact only 3% currently does.

In 2000 Blair "flagged up" 100 million euros for green policies and urged environmentalists and businesses to work together.

Foreign policy

Relationship with the United States

Along with enjoying a close relationship with Bill Clinton, Blair formed a strong political alliance with George W. Bush, particularly in the area of foreign policy. At one point, Nelson Mandela described Blair as "the U.S. foreign minister". Blair has also often openly been referred to as "Bush's poodle". Kendall Myers, a senior analyst at the State Department, reportedly said that he felt "a little ashamed" of Bush's treatment of the Prime Minister and that his attempts to influence U.S. policy were typically ignored: "It was a done deal from the beginning, it was a one-sided relationship that was entered into with open eyes... There was nothing, no payback, no sense of reciprocity".

For his part, Bush lauded Blair and the UK. In his post-11 September speech, for example, he stated that "America has no truer friend than Great Britain".

The alliance between Bush and Blair seriously damaged Blair's standing in the eyes of many British people. Blair argued it is in Britain's interest to "protect and strengthen the bond" with the United States regardless of who is in the White House. However, a perception of one-sided compromising personal and political closeness led to serious discussion of the term "Poodle-ism" in the UK media, to describe the "Special Relationship" of the UK government and Prime Minister with the US White House and President. A revealing conversation between Bush and Blair, with the former addressing the latter as "Yo, Blair" was recorded when they did not know a microphone was live at the G8 conference in Russia in 2006.

Middle East policy and links with Israel

According to comments in the book, ''Blair'', written by Anthony Seldon, Blair had a deep feeling for Israel, born in part from his faith. Blair has been a long time member of the pro-Israel lobby group Labour Friends of Israel.

In 1994, Blair met Michael Levy, later Lord Levy, a pop music mogul and fundraiser. Blair and Levy became close friends and tennis partners.

During his first visit to Israel, Blair thought the Israelis bugged him in his car. He also went on to claim that the Israeli prime minister was merely an "armour-plated bullshitter".

Levy ran the Labour Leader's Office Fund to finance Blair's campaign before the 1997 General Election and raised £12m towards Labour’s landslide victory, Levy was rewarded with a peerage, and in 2002, Blair appointed Levy as his personal envoy to the Middle East. Levy praised Blair for his 'solid and committed support of the State of Israel'. Tam Dalyell, while Father of the House of Commons, suggested in 2003 that Blair's foreign policy decisions were unduly influenced by a cabal of Jewish advisers, including Levy and Peter Mandelson.

Blair, on coming to office, had been 'cool towards the right-wing Netanyahu government'. After the election in 1999 of Ehud Barak, with whom Blair forged a close relationship, he became much more sympathetic to Israel. From 2001 Blair also built up a relationship with Barak's successor, Ariel Sharon, and responded positively to Arafat, whom he had met thirteen times since becoming prime minister and regarded as essential to future negotiations. In 2004, 50 former diplomats, including ambassadors to Baghdad and Tel Aviv, stated they had 'watched with deepening concern' at Britain following the U.S. into war in Iraq in 2003. They criticised Blair's support for the Road map for peace which included the retaining of Israeli settlements on the West Bank.

In 2006 Blair was criticised for his failure to immediately call for a ceasefire in the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict. ''The Observer'' newspaper claimed that at a cabinet meeting before Blair left for a summit with Bush on 28 July 2006, a significant number of ministers pressured Blair to publicly criticise Israel over the scale of deaths and destruction in Lebanon. Blair was criticised for his solid stance alongside U.S. President George W. Bush on Middle East policy.

In March 2010 the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments revealed that 14 months after resigning as Prime Minister, Blair had served as a paid business consultant to an oil firm with interests in Iraq. The news raised concerns that he had profited financially from contacts he made during the Iraq war.

Relationship with media

Rupert Murdoch

Blair was reported to have been supported by Rupert Murdoch the founder of the News Corporation organisation. In 1995, while leader of the Opposition, Blair disclosed in the Commons register of interests that he was a guest of Murdoch when he flew to meet him in Hayman Island.

Contacts with UK media proprietors

A Cabinet Office freedom of information response, released the day after Blair handed over power to Gordon Brown, documents Blair having various official phone calls and meetings with Rupert Murdoch of News Corporation and Richard Desmond of ''Northern and Shell Media''.

The response includes contacts "clearly of an official nature" in the specified period, but excludes contacts "not clearly of an official nature." No details were given of the subjects discussed. In the period between September 2002 and April 2005, Blair and Murdoch are documented speaking 6 times; three times in the 9 days before the Iraq war, including the eve of the 20 March US and UK invasion, and on 29 January, 25 April and 3 October 2004. Between January 2003 and February 2004, Blair had three meetings with Richard Desmond; on 29 January and 3 September 2003 and 23 February 2004.

The information was disclosed after a three and a half year battle by the Liberal Democrats' Lord Avebury.

After taking office in 1997, Blair gave particular prominence to his press secretary, who became known as the Prime Minister's Official Spokesman (the two roles have since been separated). Blair's first PMOS was Alastair Campbell, who served in that role from May 1997 to 8 June 2001, after which he served as the Prime Minister's Director of Communications and Strategy until his resignation on 29 August 2003 in the aftermath of the Hutton Inquiry.

Relationship with Labour Party

Blair's apparent refusal to set a date for his departure was criticised by the British press and Members of Parliament. It has been reported that a number of cabinet ministers believed that Blair's timely departure from office would be required to be able to win a fourth election. Some ministers viewed Blair's announcement of policy initiatives in September 2006 as an attempt to draw attention away from these issues.

Blair forged friendships with several conservative European leaders, including Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, Angela Merkel of Germany and more recently Nicolas Sarkozy of France.

Gordon Brown

After the death of John Smith in 1994, Blair and his close colleague Gordon Brown (they shared an office at the House of Commons) were both seen as possible candidates for the party leadership. They agreed not to stand against each other, it is said, as part of a supposed Blair-Brown pact. Brown, who considered himself the senior of the two, understood that Blair would give way to him: opinion polls soon indicated, however, that Blair appeared to enjoy greater support among voters. Their relationship in power became so turbulent that (it was reported) the deputy prime minister, John Prescott, often had to act as "marriage guidance counsellor".

During the 2010 election campaign Blair publicly endorsed Gordon Brown's leadership, praising the way he had handled the financial crisis.

Post-Prime Ministerial career

Diplomacy

On 27 June 2007, Blair officially resigned as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom after ten years in office, and he was officially confirmed as Middle East envoy for the United Nations, European Union, United States, and Russia. Blair originally indicated that he would retain his parliamentary seat after his resignation as Prime Minister came into effect; however, on being confirmed for the Middle East role he resigned from the Commons by taking up an office of profit. President George W. Bush had preliminary talks with Blair to ask him to take up the envoy role. White House sources stated that "both Israel and the Palestinians had signed up to the proposal". In May 2008, Blair announced a new plan for peace and for Palestinian rights, based heavily on the ideas of the Peace Valley plan.

During the first nine days of the 2008–2009 Israel-Gaza conflict, Blair was allegedly spotted at the opening of the Armani store at Knightsbridge. Aides said he had been in phone contact with other world leaders since the fighting began.

Private sector

In January 2008, it was confirmed that Blair would be joining investment bank JPMorgan Chase in a "senior advisory capacity" and that he would advise Zurich Financial Services on climate change. Some sources have claimed that his role at JP Morgan will pay more than $1m a year. This additional salary will contribute to annual earnings of over £7m.

Blair also gives lectures and earns up to US$250,000 for a 90-minute speech. Yale University announced on 7 March 2008 that Blair will teach a course on issues of faith and globalisation at the Yale Schools of Management and Divinity as a Howland distinguished fellow during the 2008–09 academic year.

Blair's links with, and receipt of an undisclosed sum from, UI Energy Corporation, a Korean company with oil interests in northern Iraq, have also been subject to media comment in the UK.

Speculation places his personal wealth at £60 million, mostly earned since his tenure as Prime Minister, and owns nine properties around the world. In July 2010 it was reported that his personal security guards claimed £250,000 a year in expenses from the tax payer, Foreign Secretary William Hague said; "we have to make sure that [Blair's security] is as cost-effective as possible, that it doesn't cost any more to the taxpayer than is absolutely necessary".

Tony Blair Associates

Blair has established ''Tony Blair Associates''. This firm will "allow him to provide, in partnership with others, strategic advice on a commercial and ''pro bono'' [free] basis, on political and economic trends and governmental reform."

European Council president speculation

In 2009, there there was speculation in the media that Blair was open to the idea of becoming the first President of the European Council, a post created in the Treaty of Lisbon that would come into force in 2009, if successfully ratified. Gordon Brown added his support, but noted that it was premature to discuss candidates before the treaty was approved. A spokesman for Blair did not rule out him accepting the post, but said that he was concentrating on his current role in the Middle East. Blair was later invited to speak on European issues at a rally of President Sarkozy 's party, the Union for a Popular Movement, on 12 January 2008, which fuelled speculation further.

There was opposition to Blair's candidacy for the job. In the UK, the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats both said they would oppose Blair. In Germany, the leader of the Free Democrats, Guido Westerwelle, said that he preferred a candidate from a smaller European country. The Prime Minister of Luxembourg, Jean-Claude Juncker emerged as a rival to Blair's candidacy and had the backing for many of the smaller European member states. In November 2009, the Belgian PM Herman Van Rompuy was named President of the European Council.

Charity

On 14 November 2007, Blair launched the Tony Blair Sports Foundation, which aims to "increase childhood participation in sports activities, especially in the North East of England, where a larger proportion of children are socially excluded, and to promote overall health and prevent childhood obesity." On 30 May 2008, Blair launched the Tony Blair Faith Foundation as a vehicle for encouraging different faiths to join together in promoting respect and understanding, as well as working to tackle poverty. Reflecting Blair's own faith but not dedicated to any particular religion, the Foundation aims to "show how faith is a powerful force for good in the modern world". "The Foundation will use its profile and resources to encourage people of faith to work together more closely to tackle global poverty and conflict," says its mission statement.

In February 2009, he applied to set up a charity called the Tony Blair Africa Governance Initiative, the application was approved in November 2009.

Memoirs

In March 2010, it was reported that Blair's memoirs, titled ''The Journey'', would be published in September 2010. In July 2010 it was announced the memoirs would be retitled ''A Journey''. It was announced on 16 August 2010 that Blair would give the £4.6 million advance and all royalties from his memoirs to a sports centre for badly injured soldiers. The book was published on 1 September and within hours of its launch had become the fastest-selling autobiography of all time. On 3 September Blair gave his first live interview since publication on ''The Late Late Show'' in Ireland, with protesters lying in wait there for him. On 4 September Blair was confronted by 200 anti-war and hardline Irish nationalist demonstrators before the first book signing of his memoirs at Eason's bookstore on O'Connell Street in Dublin, with angry activists chanting "war criminal" and that he had "blood on his hands", and clashing with Irish Police (Garda Síochána) as they tried to break through a security cordon outside the Eason's store. Blair was pelted with eggs and shoes, and encountered an attempted citizen's arrest for war crimes. Social networking media have been used to protest Blair's policies and legacy of unjustified and criminal war on Iraq

Portrayals and cameo appearances

Appearances

Blair made an animated cameo appearance as himself in ''The Simpsons'' episode, "The Regina Monologues" (2003) He has also appeared himself at the end of the first episode of The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard, a British TV series about an unknown housewife becoming Prime Minister. On 14 March 2007, Blair appeared as a celebrity judge on ''Masterchef goes Large'' after contestants had to prepare a three course meal in the Downing Street kitchens for Blair and Bertie Ahern. On 16 March 2007, Blair featured in a comedy sketch with Catherine Tate, who appeared in the guise of her character Lauren Cooper from ''The Catherine Tate Show''. The sketch was made for the BBC Red Nose Day fundraising programme of 2007. During the sketch, Blair used Lauren's catchphrase "Am I bovvered?".

Portrayals

Michael Sheen has portrayed Blair three times, in the films ''The Deal'' (2003), ''The Queen'' (2006), and ''The Special Relationship'' (2009). Blair was portrayed by Robert Lindsay in the TV programme ''A Very Social Secretary'' (2005), and reprised the role in ''The Trial of Tony Blair'' (2007). He was also portrayed by James Larkin in ''The Government Inspector'' (2005), and by Ioan Gruffudd in ''W.'' (2008).

Blair in fiction and satire

When Blair resigned as Prime Minister, Robert Harris, a former Fleet Street political editor, dropped his other work to write ''The Ghost''. The CIA-influenced British Prime Minister in the book is said to be a thinly disguised version of Blair. In November 2007 it was announced that Roman Polanski was to direct the film version of the novel, and would be writing the script with Harris. The film was released in February 2010 in the US. Polanski's film saw Pierce Brosnan portray former-Prime Minister Adam Lang, and dramatises Blair's relationship with the United States, as well as the possibility of war crime charges.

Titles and honours

Styles from 1983 election

Mr Anthony Charles Lynton Blair MP (1983–1994)

''The Rt Hon'' Anthony Charles Lynton Blair MP (1994–2007)

''The Rt Hon'' Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (2007–present)

Honours

Privy Councillor (1994)

Congressional Gold Medal (2003)

Honorary Doctor of Law (LL.D.) from Queen's University Belfast (2008)

Presidential Medal of Freedom (2009)

Dan David Prize (2009)

Liberty Medal (2010)

In May 2007, before his resignation, it was reported that Blair would be offered a knighthood in the Order of the Thistle, owing to his Scottish connections (rather than the Order of the Garter, which is usually offered to former Prime Ministers). No such move has been made since, and Blair has reportedly indicated that he does not want the traditional knighthood or peerage bestowed on former prime ministers.

On 22 May 2008, Blair received an honorary law doctorate from Queen's University Belfast, alongside former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, for distinction in public service and roles in the Northern Ireland peace process.

On 13 January 2009, Blair was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush. Bush stated that Blair was given the award "in recognition of exemplary achievement and to convey the utmost esteem of the American people" and cited Blair's support for the War on Terror and his role in achieving peace in Northern Ireland as two reasons for justifying his being presented with the award.

On 16 February 2009, Blair was awarded the Dan David Prize by Tel Aviv University for "exceptional leadership and steadfast determination in helping to engineer agreements and forge lasting solutions to areas in conflict". He was awarded the prize in May 2009.

On 13 September 2010, Blair was awarded the Liberty Medal at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was presented by former President Bill Clinton, and is awarded annually to men and women of courage and conviction who strive to secure the blessings of liberty to people around the globe.

Works

Blair, Tony (2010). ''A Journey'' Random House, ISBN 009192555X OCLC Number 657172683 London

Blair, Tony (2002). ''The Courage of Our Convictions'' Fabian Society, ISBN 0-7163-0603-4 London

Blair, Tony (2000). ''Superpower: Not Superstate? (Federal Trust European Essays)'' Federal Trust for Education & Research, ISBN 1-903403-25-1 London

Blair, Tony (1998). ''The Third Way: New Politics for the New Century'' Fabian Society, ISBN 0-7163-0588-7 London

Blair, Tony (1998). ''Leading the Way: New Vision for Local Government'' Institute for Public Policy Research, ISBN 1-86030-075-8 London

Blair, Tony (1997). ''New Britain: My Vision of a Young Country'' Basic Books, ISBN 0-8133-3338-5 New York

Blair, Tony (1995). ''Let Us Face the Future'' Fabian Society, ISBN 0-7163-0571-2 London

Blair, Tony (1994). ''What Price Safe Society?'' Fabian Society, ISBN 0-7163-0562-3 London

Blair, Tony (1994). ''Socialism'' Fabian Society, ISBN 0-7163-0565-8 London

See also

Bush-Blair memo

Blair Ministry

Blairism

'Cash for Honours' scandal

Cultural depictions of Tony Blair

Impeach Blair campaign

Labour Party leadership election, 2007

Politics of the United Kingdom

Tony Blair Faith Foundation‎

Electoral history of Tony Blair

Notes

Further reading

Miscellany

Blair, T. (2004) "Blair, The Right Hon. A. C. L." from ''Who's Who'', 156th ed., London: A & C Black

Halsbury's Laws of England (2004), reference to impeachment in volume on Constitutional Law and Human Rights, paragraph 416

''The Queen'' (2006 film)

External links

Tony Blair's post-Downing Street official website

Tony Blair Faith Foundation

A Day in the Life an on-line documentary by Tony Blair on life as Prime Minister, at number-10.gov.uk

at www.pm.gov.uk

The Blair Years—Timeline at ''BBC News''

Special Report – The Blair years 1997–2007 at ''BBC News''

Official video showing Tony Blair celebrating 100 years of the Scout movement at Downing St

Hansard – Prime Ministers Question Time, 27 June 2007 – Official transcript of Tony Blair's final appearance in the Commons containing a mix of day to day business, tributes, quips and light hearted put downs.

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