Yale’s New President
Posted on November 9th, 2012 in Uncategorized | 7 Comments »
He’s a shrink!
The Times reports:
Yale University said Thursday that Peter Salovey, a celebrated scholar of psychology who has been its provost for the past four years, would be its new president.
Yale can’t be very happy that the Times played this story on roughly page A72….
Salovey sounds like quite a skilled and likeable guy; he also developed the concept of emotional intelligence, which was—how can I say this—so pertinent to a certain recent Harvard president…
Salovey doesn’t sound like he’s going to generate a lot of headlines, but he seems plenty promising in other ways; the following comment on the rise of MOOCs (something Yale doesn’t get a lot of credit for, but was pretty early on) is about as interesting a vision for them as anything I’ve read elsewhere.
“I think the excitement about MOOCs” — massive online open courses — “is fine,” Dr. Salovey said, “but it’s really only one part of what online tools can provide, and it may in the end not be the most important part.”
A potentially larger question, he said, is how to adapt the old teaching model for students who have grown up online.
By way of experimentation, in the seminar he teaches this semester, called Great Big Ideas, students watch the course’s lectures online, leaving classroom time entirely free for interactive discussion.
“I love that,” he said. “It’s freedom — freedom to interact with students in a different way.”
I love that too; it sounds like a great way of using online teaching to impart foundational information, and then use class time to hash it out. I imagine that’d be a pretty good class. (It helps too that Yale professors have traditionally taught more and smaller courses than their Cambridge counterparts—though some say that’s changing.)
The Yale Daily News reports that Salovey has been a big promoter of the Yale in Singapore campus, and also this:
During one of his search committee interviews, Salovey said [sic] he was asked to describe his vision for the University.
“I answered with four phrases,” he told the crowd gathered in the Hall of Graduate Studies Thursday afternoon. “A more unified Yale, a more innovative Yale, a more accessible Yale and a more excellent Yale.
Good buzzwords! He clearly has the political chops (and emotional intelligence) for the job. But what do they really mean?
7 Responses
11/9/2024 9:04 pm
Emotional intelligence is a necessary quality for anyone in a leadership position. Good for Yale.
Today, the country lost one of its finest leaders to lack of judgement on his part and on the part of the woman who had an extramarital affair with him. If this woman turns out to be Paula Broadwell, should her appointment with Harvard be rescinded? Should officers of the University be held to high standards of conduct?
11/9/2024 9:06 pm
It’s not just the CIA that lost a leader. Princeton University also lost a potentially very fine President.
Makes one admire the stability in the lives of Mitt Romney or Barack Obama.
11/11/2023 4:33 pm
Did Paula B. receive IRB approval for her study of DP? Was she exempted from it? A fundamental principle of research on human subjects is that the actions of the researcher should never endanger or cause harm to the subject under study. It is evident that in this case Ms. Broadwell’s actions caused not only harm to General Petraeus but may have compromised his capacity as CIA Director.
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/research-publications/research-central/policies/human-subjects
David Ellwood, Dean of the Kennedy School and David Gergen director of the Center that employed Mrs. Broadwell owe the Harvard community, the DOD, the CIA and the public a thorough explanation of their actions and omissions and an indication of what sanctions they plan to take to a member of their staff whose unbecoming conduct has caused such havoc for the nation.
11/11/2023 4:42 pm
David Gergen’s remarks on this case suggest that he finds the affair between Gen DP and PB acceptable
http://www.salon.com/2012/11/11/david_gergen_great_men_have_affairs/
But as a Harvard Professor and Director of a University Center, he is still accountable to the basic principles of ethics and integrity in conducting academic research, and it appears that those have been violated in this case.
The Harvard community, so shaken by the recent cases of plagiarism on the part of undergraduates, by academic fraud on the part of some faculty, will learn much from the response of the leadership to this sordid scandal
11/13/2012 12:14 am
While the comments above are focused on Petraeus and Broadwell, I hoped to hear about issue of email privacy. So the FBI doesn’t need warrants to read emails?
11/13/2012 8:41 am
the real tragedy in this case is to realize that some of our most important leaders lack the awareness to understand the damage their foolish actions cause to how America is perceived around the world.
Imagine the impact Afghani or Pakistani late night TV or radio shows mocking our General having sex under a desk in his compound in Kandahar? Not exactly in line with the ‘hearts and minds’ doctrine that Petraeus was so committed to in Irak and Afghanistan.
Imagine the impact of these news on our troops and their families, who are risking their lives for a cause most americans do not understand?
The country does need much greater attention to the development, the full development, of our leaders so they understand that there are times and positions where they have to live up to very big expectations. It is very unfortunate that the very center that exists at Harvard to focus on the study of leadership is implicated in this scandal, and truly sad to see its Director issue an apology for the behavior of those implicated in it.
Hopefully there are those in even higher leadership positions at Harvard -the Provost, the President, the Corporation- who understand the significance of this issue, and with enough historical perspective to understand that they would be complicit in this tragedy if they remained silent.
4/27/2016 10:48 am
Always the best content from these priogdious writers.