Yale University’s name will be removed from a joint venture in Singapore that has stirred controversy due to the policies of Singapore’s authoritarian government.
Yale-NUS College will be merged with Singapore’s University Scholars Program in 2025 and drop Yale’s name in 2025, Yale President Peter Salovey announced Thursday. The joint venture was Yale’s first new college since its founding in 1701.
“National University of Singapore President Tan Eng Chye informed me of NUS’s intention,” Salovey said in a statement. “Yale takes great pride in the accomplishments of Yale-NUS College — a pioneering partnership between two leading universities to create a residentially based liberal arts college.”
The college’s current governing board will continue until the merger to provide current students “with the full Yale-NUS experience and the financial assistance they were promised,” Salovey said. “The college’s policy on academic freedom will remain in place through 2025 as well as the various provisions in the faculty handbook,” he added.
Yale-NUS was founded in 2011 as Yale’s first new college since its founding amid criticism of Singapore’s harsh policies on freedom of speech and assembly.
The joint venture was subject to Singapore’s laws and drew attention when it canceled a course titled “Dialogue and Dissent in Singapore” in 2019, citing the risk of “breaking the law and incurring legal liabilities,” according to the Washington Post.
Students at Yale-NUS were anxious about the merger plans and disappointed by the move, the Singapore Straits Times reported Friday.
Contact Liese Klein at lklein@newhavenbiz.com.
