Dear Herald Readers,
It seems as if another wave of skepticism has washed over us. In a world where our right to question, to interrogate, to connect, and simply to exist is under attack, where the regime in power intends to cull, not cultivate our curiosities, suspicion edges in through every crack in our resolve. To be skeptical, though, of tyranny and of deception, is not an act of fatalism, but an act of courage. It is a reiteration of our commitment to building a new, more dynamic world.
Inside this issue, Herald writers mobilize skepticism to uncover truths and forge new relationships. Dorothea Robertson ’25 questions the potential for protest on culture’s mainstage, examining Kendrick Lamar’s halftime performance at Superbowl LIX. Sophie Lamb ’27 attends a weekly Thursday meeting at the New Haven Ski Club and explores the lives of local skiers whose lives, for decades, have been attuned to the seasonal rhythm of snowfall. Gulam “Oyshi” Monawarah ’28 investigates the lack of transparency surrounding the proposed implementation of an artificial intelligence draft-report writing program within the offices of the New Haven Police Department.
For the cover story of this issue, Bipul Soti ’27 heads from his cell biology laboratory to the archives of Yale’s Institute of Psychology—one of the institutional arms of the American eugenics movement—and interrogates how the afterlives of eugenics are acutely felt in Yale’s science classrooms, one century later. Bipul takes us through student and faculty-led initiatives, such as the Anti-Eugenics Collective at Yale, that are rooted in a method of interrogation, aiming to reform the curriculum of life sciences undergraduate majors.
Like Bipul, we think about how the issues of our university are inherently national. In the wake of the Trump administration’s recent executive orders to freeze funding for the National Institute of Health, ban diversity practices across the federal government, educational institutions, and private companies, and Trump’s own repeated xenophobic rhetoric, we recognize that our ability to interrogate is threatened at a national level.
Between these pages, we hope you find more questions than answers.
Yours most daringly,
Connor Arakaki and Madelyn Dawson