Snapshots

As Brett Kavanaugh heads to the Supreme Court, his legacy looms over Yale’s campus.

Illustration by Sam Oldshue. The decorations in the suite on the first floor of entryway B in Lawrance Hall are relatively sparse. When Barbara Mola, Emma Lewer, Macrina Wang, Sofia Ortega-Guerrero, and Kara O’Rourke, all first-years in Ezra Stiles College, moved into their dorm at the end of August, the tall white walls were drab and unassuming. The suitemates have since added some decor: string lights, a fruit bowl, a gray rug that occasionally doubles as a yoga mat, and a tapestry depicting the New. . . Read more

Northwest of New Haven, the first museum in the Americas dedicated to Palestinian art has opened its doors.

Photograph by Margaret Olin, as part of “Making Time,” her series of images from the Dheisheh Refugee Camp, just south of Bethlehem. Woodbridge, Connecticut, a sleepy suburb fifteen minutes northwest of downtown New Haven, is an unlikely home for Palestine Museum U.S.—the first and only museum in the Americas dedicated solely to Palestinian history, culture, and art. Woodbridge has a sizable Jewish population: two Jewish community centers and three synagogues flank the museum. It’s exactly the kind of place where one might expect a museum. . . Read more

Women are at the center of a revolution in Yale’s comedy scene.

Five women strut onto a makeshift stage with a smug swagger. The audience that fills the auditorium in Yale’s Linsly-Chittenden Hall is already laughing. With their baseball caps tilted sideways on their heads—and scratching their nether regions—the performers lumber to a line of chairs. “Do we really think it’s a good idea to be taking ‘men’ out of ‘comedy’?” asks Ned, played by Raffi Donatich, in an aggressively deep voice. “Then it would just be ‘Cody’,” Fred, played by Sarah Al-Shalash, replies, screwing up her. . . Read more

What will an expansion of the Port of New Haven mean for the workers down at the docks?

Photo by Vivek Suri. Michael Vasaturo leads me through maritime fog that covers the Port of New Haven one cool March morning. The cranes of the bulk freighter Cyrenaica G. loom in the blurry distance. As the short, gold-necklaced Vasaturo and I walk along the wharf of New Haven Terminal (NHT), the shipping company where he serves as executive director, he describes a project poised to change the future of the local shipping industry. “The biggest thing that’s going on right now is trying to. . . Read more

A group of undergrads is working overtime to get Yale to take jazz seriously.

Illustration by Felicia Chang. The Saybrook Underbrook, a performance space in the basement of the college, is unusually packed. The crowd spills over from rows of chairs and onto the stairs. They’re all waiting for New York Times-featured saxophonist Steve Wilson featured with his pianist and friend Pete Malinverni. Whispers of anticipation fill the room as the performers explain that they will play whatever music speaks to them. Malinverni’s feet zealously tap to the beat as his fingers dance around the keys. Wilson carries the. . . Read more

The stakes are high for Native American Yalies fighting to learn their own languages.

Photo by Robbie Short. As the golden sun begins to tumble down the horizon, the Native American Cultural Center, or NACC, comes to life. The lights in the conference room buzz on, illuminating wooden tables accented with a dotting of pastel chairs: sky blue, lavender, mint. It’s Monday night, and I’m attending a class in Lakȟóta, a Native American language spoken by around two thousand people in North and South Dakota.  There are five students in class tonight. While each belongs to the Lakȟóta nation,. . . Read more