How Yale's Outgoing President Made Peace — and Prosperity — With New Haven

New Haven, Connecticut, and its most famous institution of higher learning, Yale, have a long history of not getting along. From all manner of violent and colorful altercations (as the Harvard Crimson gleefully recorded in 1952) to sharp political differences, the city and the university have often treated each other with suspicion, if not outright hostility.

The tradition of loggerheads goes back at least to the Civil War era, but New Haven’s post-war decline made the town-gown contrast painfully obvious. As the industries that had made the city an inter-war boomtown failed or moved away, only one of the city's mid-century power players remained at the table: Yale. The enormously wealthy (and untaxed) university stood – seemingly indifferent – in the middle of one of the country’s poorer urban neighborhoods.