The initiative is a collaborative effort between Mobarak and two European academics including Niccolò Meriggi, postdoctoral research fellow in economics at Oxford University, and Maarten Voors, associate professor at the Development Economics Group at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. The initiative’s efforts began in 2022 when the three economists visited remote villages in Sierra Leone to study reasons for low COVID-19 vaccination rates and found that it was not vaccine hesitancy but rather transportation issues that posed the greatest challenge to vaccine accessibility in these regions.

“For the average Sierra Leonean early in the pandemic, it was taking, according to their own reports, about three and a half hours each way to get to the nearest vaccination center just because [vaccines] were not widely being widely distributed,” Mobarak told the News. “There was really a problem about access, and it was obviously the biggest problem in most remote places.”

Mobarak, Meriggi and Voors’ initiative attempted to solve this problem. According to them, delivering COVID-19 vaccines to these remote communities by motorbikes and boats increased vaccination rates from between nine people and 55 people per village.

The researchers are collaborating with the Ministry of Health in Sierra Leone to discuss how this approach can address more healthcare priorities in remote villages.

“This model is not to be seen as a substitute to clinics but rather as a complement to make access easier and for people to gain more confidence in the services that clinics can provide,” Meriggi told the News.

The new grant, given to Wageningen University will now be used to expand the initiative and increase access to more healthcare services in Sierra Leone.

One idea the researchers mentioned is bundling vaccines and other essential medications to be delivered to remote regions for a more comprehensive, cost-effective approach.

“So we’re now working to extend beyond just vaccine access to other health products,” Voors told the News. “So think about vitamins or think about minerals, zinc … all these things that have a cost of access issue.”

Mobarak is also working on health intervention projects in Bangladesh and Nepal focused on incentivizing the adoption of technologies that improve health.

Mobarak, Meriggi and Voors further highlighted potential global applications of their vaccine delivery project. 

“Globally, this approach works in places where health infrastructure is missing,” Voors said. “So that is the larger point that we wanted to make that extends way beyond COVID itself.”
According to a 2017 report from the World Bank and World Health Organization, at least half of the world’s population is not able to obtain essential health services.

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Logvynyuk is not alone. 

In February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine as a continuation of its invasion of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014. Three students spoke with the News about how the war has impacted them. 

“The war has taught me a great deal about resilience,” Logvynyuk, co-director of events at the Ukraine House, told the News. “Following the story of individual people putting their whole lives on pause to become soldiers or volunteers, because they have an understanding that they are fighting for something bigger than them, has been very impactful.”

War inspires urgency, takes toll on students

Logvynyuk said that since the start of the war, it has been difficult “making peace” with the fact that she gets to continue her studies as normal while students in Ukraine have to continue their education in the midst of violence or pause it altogether. 

This has caused her to reflect on the value of her education, she said, and has motivated her studies as she hopes to use her degree in the future to contribute to her country. 

“Someone will have to be working to rebuild various parts of the country,” she said. “Whether that is economically or literally working on urban landscapes, there is going to be so much work to do and there will need to be an educated young generation to do that.”

Oleksii Antoniuk ’24, the founder and former president of the Ukraine House, described the war as an “all-encompassing” issue.

He said that it creates a sense of urgency in his goals to support Ukraine now and in the future. 

“Back in the day, I would have entertained the thought of staying [in the United States] for a few years, getting an American experience and then coming back home,” he told the News. “Now, after graduation this May, I’m planning to go back home right away. And the war, even though it hasn’t changed the general direction of my thinking, it has given it urgency.”

President of the Ukraine House Daria Valska ’26 emphasized that every Ukrainian student at Yale is affected by the war, in various ways.

She said that, although it remains under-discussed, the war has taken a “huge” toll on student mental health. 

“The war has also changed my life in the sense that I became even more involved in everything Ukraine-related,” Valska added. “This added to the motivation of working to help Ukraine in any way I can.”

Ukraine House organizes events, fundraising for war

Since the beginning of the war, the Ukraine House has been organizing talks with leaders, social events and cultural events, as well as holding vigils and rallies to raise awareness of the brutality of the war.

“Our main goal with event planning is to amplify Ukrainian voices, who are working actively in various spheres to contribute to war efforts and to keep the student body active and informed,” Logvynyuk told the News.

She said that because the war has been going on for more than two years, some people are becoming “desensitized” to it. Valska characterized this as a product of war fatigue, in which people are becoming “numb to the emotional suffering.”

This forces the Ukraine House to actively come up with creative ways of maintaining attention among students on campus, according to Logvynyuk.

Leaders of the group have also been leading fundraising efforts to support Ukraine in the war. 

Antoniuk told the News that the Ukraine House has been fundraising for Ukraine since the beginning of the war, including technical support for soldiers, such as surveillance to allow soldiers to see deeper into the battlefield, as well as medical assistance and humanitarian assistance.

“Sometimes it is harder to attract people’s attention to the fundraiser but people have not stopped donating or donating less,” Valska told the News. “Support is still pretty strong among the student community.”

Antoniuk also mentioned that the Ukraine House has been lobbying the University on policies that are important for the Ukrainian community.

He said that specifically, students have been lobbying Yale admissions to increase the number of Ukrainian students admitted to the school.

Per Antoniuk, prior to 2022, there were two to three Ukrainian students per class admitted, but in last year’s cycle, there were approximately 10 Ukrainians admitted. 

The Ukraine House has also been lobbying for a Ukrainian language program on campus.

“The program has finally gotten traction and has started, and there is a Ukrainian language professor at Yale,” Antoniuk added. “I hope we helped at least a little bit to push it in this direction.”

Valska said that there are many ways students at Yale can support Ukraine House and its war efforts. 

She mentioned one way is to reach out to local representatives and advocate for Ukraine to show politicians that people are still engaged.

“Please try to stay as engaged as you can,” Valska said, referring to the student body. “Even if it means coming to the speaker events, contributing to the fundraisers, spreading the information on your social media or having conversations with your friends about Ukraine. It all matters.”

Feb. 24 marked the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

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The bill is aimed to provide $160 million worth of grants to help students pay for workforce training programs that align with the “requirements of high-skill, high-wage, or in-demand industry sectors or occupations,” according to a report by the House of Representatives.

“The proposed Bipartisan Workforce Pell Act will have a major and immediate impact on Yale students,” Brittaney Key, the School of the Environment’s senator in the Graduate and Professional Student Senate, wrote to the News. “It forces current students into a financially vulnerable position by cutting off their access to federal loans that many use to afford housing, childcare, food, and other essential but indirect educational expenses.”

The report states that the bill “prohibits an applicable educational institution, that is subject to an excise tax on investment income of private institutions, from awarding a Federal Direct Stafford Loan, a Federal Direct Unsubsidized Stafford loan, or a Federal Direct Plus Loan to any eligible student” to fund the workforce grants.

With an endowment that exceeds $40 billion, Yale will be among the many schools affected by the Workforce Pell Act. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the bill’s funding will prohibit students at 35 institutions from accessing federal loans, including those studying at Harvard, Princeton and Columbia.

The CBO also reported that in 2022, students at these 35 institutions have applied for $1.4 billion worth of federal student loans, with about 80 percent of it going to graduate students.

“Ultimately, we would like to get this legislation changed so that they get a different funding,” Chrishan Fernando, the president of the Graduate and Professional Student Senate, told the News. “We do not want to kill the bill. We agree with what is in it but we want to make sure that it does not go forward with the current funding offset because that would really be detrimental to a lot of graduate and professional students, to an extent undergraduate students as well.”

The senate wrote a community letter for students to sign to address the issue.

Alex Rich, GPSS Advocacy Committee Co-chair, wrote to the News that the letter was signed by 361 graduate and professional students as well as 9 graduate and professional student government groups across 14 institutions that would be affected by the bill.

“The goal of this multi-institutional community letter is for Congress to recognize these impacts and to find a different funding offset,” Key wrote to the News. “We are continuing to work together with other affected institutions and to utilize channels available to us to raise awareness and advocate for reform of this bill.”

The letter states that denying federal loans to students at “elite institutions” will put these schools more out of reach for low and middle-class students and their families.

It also says that without federal loans, students will have to face an “uncertain landscape” for acquiring student loans and rely on private and institutional loans instead.

“We sent the letter on Wednesday morning to Chairwoman Foxx and Ranking Member Scott as well as all members of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce,” Rich said. 

Azita Emami, Megan Ranney and Jessica Illuzzi — the dean of the School of Nursing, dean of the School of Public Health and deputy dean for education at the School of Medicine respectively —  also addressed their concerns about the bill in an article in the Hartford Courant. 

They explained that the loss of access to federal student loans will present a serious obstacle specifically for students aspiring to healthcare careers, which will make it harder to tackle the shortage of healthcare professionals across the country to meet the demand for healthcare.

“Look up who your representative is, and make sure that you call them and then tell them about this bill,” Fernando told the News. “Tell them that it is going to affect you or people that you know and that you want them to change the funding offset … I think it is especially powerful if it is coming from students who will be directly affected by it or if they know somebody directly affected by it.”

The Bipartisan Workforce Pell Act was proposed by the Committee on Education and the Workforce on Dec. 22, 2023.

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Marcone, who is five months pregnant, said that she hopes the contract provisions Local 33 UNITE HERE, Yale’s graduate and professional worker union, secured in December, will make the choice to become parents easier for Yale’s graduate workers. 

“I will get emotional talking about [the contract],” Marcone, who served on the union’s bargaining committee, said. “I think it’s industry-leading. It’s fantastic … I feel really proud to have been part of the team, and part of a movement that has put together this amazing contract in good faith negotiations. And then I can say that I also did this for my daughter.”

Beyond salary raises that make Yale’s graduate workers the highest paid in the Ivy League, the union’s first contract with the University secures expanded health and dental care, increased protections for international students and guaranteed union recognition until 2031. 

Jake Thrasher GRD ’24, a graduate worker in the Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry Department who also served on the bargaining committee, reiterated the substantial impact the raises will have on his life. Coming from a working-class background, Thrasher said that the raises will ease financial pressure and allow him to concentrate on his research. 

Paul Seltzer GRD ’25, a graduate worker in the history department, told the News that he is most excited about the contract’s free spousal health care. When Seltzer began studying at Yale, his partner underwent sudden medical issues, forcing the two to consider getting married in order to add her as a spouse to his graduate worker health insurance. However, he said that the cost to add her, in the thousands of dollars, was too expensive for the couple. 

“I am really proud that now we have a guarantee for grad workers with spouses that they can be on it for free,” Seltzer said of the insurance. “I think it is going to make living and working at Yale a lot more affordable and accessible.”

Seltzer also pointed to the strength of the national graduate workers organizing movement, noting that the new generation of graduate workers will know what it feels like to be “empowered” at work. 

Benjamin Sanders GRD ’26, a graduate worker in the interdepartmental neuroscience program who organizes with Local 33, told the News that he is “very excited” about the contract’s affordable dental care plan, especially considering that most of the time students are cut off from their parents’ dental insurance at the age of 26.

Marcone also praised the new grievance procedure outlined in the contract, which guarantees a union steward throughout the complaint process. She said that the new procedure will make her feel “safer” if she asks for pregnancy accommodations. 

For Christopher Lindsay GRD ’26 and John Gonzalez GRD ’24, who serve as the Graduate Student Assembly chair and vice chair, respectively, the contract will improve workers’ lives, but also reveals a tension in graduate workers’ simultaneous role as students and workers.

“My most basic feelings on unionization, and what I imagine are the feelings of most Ph.D. students and graduate instructors, are that ‘unionization is good because we get paid more,’” Lindsay wrote in an email to the News. “If I were thinking more about what this means for the future of graduate education at Yale and other universities, I think my feelings, particularly for graduate students doing research, are more complicated.”

Lindsay explained that the role of graduate and doctoral student workers has changed greatly over the past few years. 

He said that he believes there is a “balance” that can be achieved with being both workers and students, but that it will take effort to “figure out what that balance is.”

Lindsay wrote to the News that Ph.D. students have always been both workers and students, but that in previous years this role was more of an “academic apprenticeship,” with the understanding that Ph.D. students go into careers in academia. Nowadays, Lindsay wrote, with graduate school admissions becoming more selective, the students who are admitted to Yale’s doctorate programs are already strong researchers. Instead of focusing on training, Lindsay explained, students focus more on producing research for their advisors, shifting the advisor-student relationship into more of a manager-worker one. 

“In recent years, though, the role of the graduate student as a worker has become more top of mind and through this change, the push for unionization made more and more sense,” Lindsay wrote. 

Gonzalez wrote to the News that he believes the agreement is “a huge step forward” in fair treatment of graduate student workers at the University. 

Gonzalez also acknowledged some concerns with the contract. He said that one graduate student, for example, told him that they were unsure of how much of their time would be considered labor and how much of it would be protected for their student training. Student training, Gonzalez explained, includes working for a teaching certificate and using the office of career services. 

Gonzalez told the News that the GSA plans to discuss such concerns with the union and with deans.

“The biggest lesson for all of us – faculty, administrators, and students – now will be to better understand and give space to the duality of graduate students as students and workers,” Gonzalez wrote.

Local 33 and the University reached an agreement on the contract after nine months of bargaining. 

Correction, Feb. 6: This story has been corrected to reflect that Paul Seltzer is not the co-president of Local 33.

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“We are living through a very profound change in the manner in which computers reason and communicate with us,” Kyle Jensen, a professor of the class and the SOM’s director of entrepreneurial programs, told the News. “It’s likely that this change will have widespread implications in society.”

Titled “Large Language Models: Theory and Application,” the new seminar teaches students the fundamentals of LLMs, which are machine learning models trained with large data sets to perform various tasks. It was first taught in the fall semester and is open to all Yale students — including undergraduates and those from different schools at Yale.

The curriculum is divided between two professors, with Jensen teaching the theory behind LLM technology and K. Sudhir, professor of private enterprise, management and marketing, teaching about the application of LLMs.

“I like endowing students with an understanding of how models like ChatGPT work,” Jensen said. “There is something deeply satisfying about understanding this transformation.”

He also explained the importance of knowing how to build products that incorporate LLMs and AI in students’ working lives, noting its increased use across various professions.

Sudhir added that the applications of LLMs are widespread.

“I want people to not only understand what the technology is, but actually be able to engage with it, use it and understand how the key ingredients work, so that they can mix and match them into applications that they can visualize,” Sudhir told the News.

Second-year master’s candidate Krupa Kadiwala GRD ’24 took the class last semester. She wrote to the News that she enjoyed learning deep technical knowledge while also gaining an understanding of the current limitations of AI. 

Christina Liu GRD ’24, another student who enrolled in the class, expressed similar opinions. 

“I appreciate [that] the course drills down the architecture of generative AI systems, covering not only their capabilities but also current limitations,” she wrote. “[The class] reshaped my mindset to approach the ongoing heated discussion around AI business solutions and relevant stocks.” 

Other students appreciated the course’s final project, in which they developed their own models by applying AI to their unique interests.

Second-year master’s student Adam Mansell GRD ’24 explained that he enrolled in the course to understand how to use AI to enhance user engagement in the entertainment industry. 

He explained that the final project broadened his perspective on integrating AI into business applications, especially product development and marketing.

“I signed up for this course because I’d like to get my hands dirty on some of the latest technologies in LLM,” Haoran Wang SOM ’24 wrote to the News, referring to a language model integration framework called LangChain as an example. “Prior to SOM, I had 5 years of professional experience in AI, but I have been away from hands-on coding for nearly two years. This course provides an ideal opportunity for me to refresh my memories and stay updated on recent advancements in the field.”

Per Forbes, AI’s market size is expected to reach $407 billion by 2027.

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The three victims of the shooting include Hisham Awartani, Kinnan Abdalhamid and Tahseen Ahmed, who are students at Brown University in Rhode Island, Haverford College in Pennsylvania and Trinity College in Connecticut, respectively. The suspected shooter, Jason J. Eaton, was charged with three counts of attempted murder, pled not guilty and was ordered by a judge to remain held without bond. 

Student groups at all eight Ivy League universities — known collectively as the coalition of Ivy League students for Palestine — called on students to wear clothing with the colors of the Palestinian flag and keffiyehs, a scarf worn throughout the Middle East that has increasingly become a symbol of Palestinian identity and resistance — all week following the shooting. Two of the three victims in Vermont were wearing keffiyehs when shot; one of the victims said they were conversing in a mix of Arabic and English when attacked. Police have said that investigators are treating the shooting as a hate-motivated crime. The U.S. Department of Justice is also investigating the shooting.

In a joint Nov. 26 Instagram post between Brown’s Students for Justice in Palestine and Yalies4Palestine, the groups wrote that the coalition of Ivy League students for Palestine is seeking to “reaffirm” the call to their respective administrators to take action against “anti-Palestinian racism.” 

“Three visibly Palestinian students were shot in Vermont last weekend,” Yalies4Palestine wrote in a Nov. 27 statement to the News. “In the past few weeks at Yale, we witnessed doxxing trucks and hate speech calling for the death of Palestine in the residential colleges. Our universities are deeply unsafe for Palestinians and students in solidarity with Palestine—especially for our Black, brown, and Muslim classmates. This has been obvious to us all along; it is time that our administration guarantees our safety before more students are targeted.”

Abdalhamid was shot in the glute, and Ahmed was shot in the chest. Awartani was shot in the spine and is paralyzed from the mid-torso downward according to his mother, as NBC News reported, and it remains unclear whether he will be able to walk again. Both Awartani and Ahmed are still being treated at the UVM Medical Facility, where they are reported to be in stable condition, as of the morning of Nov. 30.

The shooting comes amid rising tensions on college campuses, including rising Islamophobic and antisemitic incidents. Per a report by the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, antisemitic incidents reported nationwide jumped by 388 percent between Oct. 7 and Oct. 23 compared to last year. According to a report by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the organization received 216 percent more reports of Islamophobia and anti-Arab incidents between Oct. 7 and Nov. 4 than it did last year. 

“At this time, quite honestly I feel like no Palestinian is safe anywhere. So it’s really frightening. It’s really traumatizing,” Abdalhamid’s mother told ABC News. She also spoke out against what she called “dehumanizing” rhetoric about Palestinians in the United States.

At Yale, before Thanksgiving break, a “doxxing truck” with billboards displaying the names and faces of Yale students — mostly of color — under the title “Yale’s Leading Antisemites” arrived, later showing both Harvard and Yale students on the day of the Yale-Harvard football game. Doxxing trucks also made visits to both Columbia University and Harvard University, among other schools. 

An undergraduate at Yale wrote anti-Palestine messages on a whiteboard in a Grace Hopper College entryway, including one declaring “Death to Palestine.” Head of Hopper College Julia Adams affirmed that “academic freedom and the expression of views and dissent are rightly protected.” 

“The shooting of three Palestinian university students last weekend in Vermont was horrifying – but not shocking,” Imam Omer Bajwa, director of Muslim life in the Chaplain’s Office, wrote in an email to the News. “It is part of a growing pattern of anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab and Islamophobic rhetoric and violence across the country.”

Bajwa said that many student leaders and activists have warned that violence of this kind was “inevitable” due to “prejudiced rhetoric” amplified in the media. 

He stated that as the director of Muslim life at Yale, his role is to provide support to Muslim students, adding that “the demand [for support] is greater these days.” 

Bajwa noted that his office is in regular conversation with senior administration about how to best support Muslim communities at Yale.

“To be honest, students are deeply concerned,” Bajwa wrote to the News. “This act of violence comes on the back of the ‘doxxing’ truck which brought its toxic message of hate to campus during the Harvard-Yale game. Students are rightfully concerned about being targeted. All students deserve safety and security as a basic right on campus. All students deserve freedom from harassment.”

In a recent Instagram post, the Muslim Students Association wrote that Islamophobia continues to “haunt” the Muslim community at Yale and wrote that since Oct. 7, the date of Hamas’ attack on Israel, there has been a rise in “verbal harassment, doxxing, stalking and repression” toward Muslim and Arab students. 

The group also called on Yale to explicitly denounce the message written in the Grace Hopper entryway.  

“This creates a campus culture in which Muslim students do not feel safe, seen, or heard,” Yale’s MSA wrote in their Instagram post.  

Dean of Yale College Pericles Lewis said that the Yale Police Department is working to ensure there is “good security” on campus amid rising student safety concerns and said he is “horrified” by the recent Islamaphobic violence. 

He recommended that if people on campus have security concerns, they should reach out to their residential college deans, their heads of college, the director of Muslim life in the Chaplain’s Office or the staff at the Asian American Cultural Center, which has peer liaisons and dedicated spaces for Middle Eastern and North African, or MENA, students. 

“It’s just such a horrible thing and my sympathies go out, of course, to the victims themselves and the families of the victims,” Lewis told the News. “I also can only imagine that for many Muslim students or Middle Eastern Arab students, this would be a time of a lot of fear … it is very important to us that our students of all backgrounds feel safe to study on campus.”

The Yale College Council, along with other student groups, has lobbied for a distinct cultural center for MENA students since at least 2018. 

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The truck first appeared on campus on Thursday, Nov. 16, rotating through the names and photos of students whom it deems “leading antisemities” on its digital billboards. By Friday, the truck had targeted at least 15 Yale graduate students, of which at least 12 are students of color, as well as at least two undergraduates. 

By Saturday, the doxxing campaign in New Haven was targeting both Yale and Harvard students — many of whom had likely come to town for The Game. At 11:49 a.m., Accuracy in Media wrote in an X post that they were at annual football showdown to expose “the antisemites at Harvard and Yale.”

“No matter how much we are harassed, students at Harvard and Yale will know who on campus espouses vile antisemitic views,” the post said.

On Friday afternoon, the doxxing truck was involved in a traffic incident on campus. 

A News staff member witnessed the incident and recorded a video of the truck driving next to a car. The video shows the back of the car shaking slightly as the truck drives by and makes a bumping sound. In the video, the unidentified driver shouts “you hit my car!” two times and honks at the truck. The truck continues to drive, and the car follows behind.

On Saturday, Yale Police Chief Anthony Campbell ’95 DIV ’09 told the News that the police department received “third hand information” about the incident and is investigating.

At 5:17 p.m. on Saturday, AIM wrote in a separate X post that its doxxing truck had been vandalized with a rock thrown at one of the digital billboards, damaging the screen. 

In response to the doxxing truck’s arrival on campus, over 100 Yale faculty, staff and community members signed on to an open letter on Nov. 17, where they pledged to protect free speech and nonviolent assembly on campus, amplify students’ “cries for justice” and maintain “curious, critical, open spaces” for students to learn, in and out of the classroom.

They also wrote that if censoring takes place, they are prepared for “nonviolent direct action, up to and including arrest,” to protect students’ free speech.

“We are gravely concerned about the vicious targeting, public shaming, and surveillance of faculty and students of color in particular,” the letter said. “These forms of harassment, along with other efforts to silence dissent to Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza, halt critical thinking on a campus dedicated to ‘light and truth.’ They are unacceptable, and we will do all we can to protect all of our students, especially from outside groups seeking to constrict dialogue on our campus.”

Yale has officially denounced the doxxing incidents, writing in a statement on Nov. 16 that they have reached out to students who appeared on the trucks “to provide support and resources,” the statement reads. The University Registrar emailed students on Nov. 17 with a “Student Directory Opt-out Option,” to inform students of the steps to removing their name from Yale’s directory. While the Nov. 17 email did not at all mention the doxxing campaign, it reflected similar guidance as in one of the resources promoted on Nov. 16. 

The University added that the Yale Police Department is investigating the trucks.

“The university denounces this cowardly act of harassment and attempted intimidation,” Yale said on Nov. 16.

AIM’s trucks have previously been at Harvard University on Oct. 11 and Columbia University on Oct. 25. The group is currently facing litigation for its doxxing campaign by one student who appeared on the truck.

The Yale Bowl is located at 81 Central Ave.

Correction, Nov. 22: A previous version of this article said the described traffic incident took place on Thursday, Nov. 16; it transpired on Friday, Nov. 17, and the piece has been amended accordingly.

Update, Nov. 22: The truck had broadcasted the names and faces of undergraduate students in addition to graduate students by Friday afternoon; the article has been updated accordingly. 

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The truck, which is sponsored by the conservative group Accuracy in Media, is a part of the group’s “Campus Accountability Campaign.” At least six students’ names and faces were displayed on the billboards in an effort to dox — a public shaming tactic by which an unauthorized individual spreads someone else’s personal information.

The appearance of the doxxing truck comes amid increasing student safety concerns and social tensions at college campuses across the country due to the Israel-Hamas war.

“I am a Navajo and Jewish woman who is committed to liberation for all people, including my own communities,” a graduate student who appeared on the truck wrote to the News, on the condition of anonymity due to personal safety concerns. “I am proud to be Jewish, just as I am proud to be Navajo. It is deeply unsettling and violent that Jewish students are being doxxed and called antisemitic.”

The student did not know of the doxxing truck until the News reached out for comment. 

On Friday morning, the University wrote to the News that members of the public safety team and administrators were reaching out to students who were doxxed to provide support and resources. According to the University’s statement, the Yale Police Department is investigating.

“The university denounces this cowardly act of harassment and attempted intimidation,” the statement said. “As President [Peter] Salovey has stated, ‘Antisemitism, Islamophobia, and hatred toward Palestinians and Israelis are emphatically against our values and principles at Yale. Let me also be clear in stating that our forceful rejection of discrimination and prejudice must be matched by our will to act with compassion and civility.’”

The recent conflict and rising tensions surround the Israel-Hamas war, which formally began on Oct. 8 after Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel the previous day, killing at least 1,200 people in Israel and taking more than 230 hostages, per Israel’s Foreign Ministry. Israel responded with a formal declaration of war against Hamas, airstrikes and a ground invasion of Gaza, killing more than 11,180 people in Gaza from Oct. 7 to Nov. 10 and displacing more than two-thirds of the population, the Washington Post reported, citing figures from the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza and from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Five out of the six students who the News could confirm appeared on the truck were graduate students of color. According to reporting by Teen Vogue based on interviews with two Harvard students, the trucks mostly target Black and Brown students.

The truck also appeared outside the Watson Center on Sachem Street at roughly 3:05 p.m. and was near Pauli Murray College on Prospect Street at 3:30 p.m. By roughly 3:50 p.m., the truck was on Broadway; its electronic billboard turned off by approximately 4:45 p.m.

Similar doxxing trucks have appeared at other Ivy League universities, including Harvard University on Oct. 11 and Columbia University on Oct. 25. A student at Columbia filed a lawsuit against Accuracy in Media on Monday.

On Nov. 16, while the doxxing truck was on campus in New Haven, AIM announced its Yale campaign on X, formerly known as Twitter, writing that “our Campus Accountability Campaign is at @Yale today to highlight the rampant antisemitism from radical ‘scholars’ on campus.”

The link in the post leads to a website calling for students to petition the University to “take a stand against the antisemites on campus who issued a statement blaming Israel for the actions of terrorists.” AIM’s post does not explain which “statement” it is referring to.

The Yale Police Department did not immediately respond to request for comment on Thursday night.

The University has 14 graduate and professional schools.

Update, Nov. 17: The article has been updated to include the University’s public statement and response to the doxxing incidents.

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Yale offers various graduate courses across multiple graduate and professional schools that undergraduates can take. Students who want to enroll in these courses usually have to contact instructors, write permission requests and add the course to their registration worksheets once they are admitted. While some courses are competitive for undergraduates, others have been more accessible for students across all years. 

“We had a form called the blue form that you used to have to fill out to make a special request for [graduate courses],” Yale College Dean Pericles Lewis told the News. “We got rid of the blue form because it sort of was unnecessary … We’re trying to take better advantage of the fact that we have these great professional [and graduate] schools and students have a real interest in learning about professional life.”

Lewis explained that without the blue form, the students can access graduate level courses more easily by simply requesting permission from instructors. However, he said that some classes at professional schools like the Law School or the School of Management are not open to undergraduates. 

He explained that one of his strategic goals as the dean of Yale College is to collaborate with the deans of the professional schools to make sure that undergraduate students can access courses relevant to their majors at the professional schools. He explained that the college has a close relationship with the School of Art and the School of Management in working to make sure that undergraduate students can join their classes. 

“But there is a small scheduling challenge,” Lewis explained. “For some of the [graduate and professional schools] like Divinity and a few of the others, they don’t operate on our calendar. Like Medicine starts earlier. Law goes later, I believe. Music starts just a little bit later than we do. So it’s a little bit complicated to take a course in one of those schools.”

David McElfresh ’25, a molecular biophysics & biochemistry major, is planning on taking graduate-level courses because the classes align with his interests and teach research skills he is interested in. Taking these classes would help him complete a combined Bachelor of Science/Master of Science degree in MB&B, for which he is currently applying.

McElfresh has previously taken a graduate level course called Methods and Logic in Interdisciplinary Research and is currently taking Biological Physics. His experiences in graduate-level courses often include analyzing and discussing scientific research papers. 

“[Graduate level courses] seem more application-based rather than theoretical,” McElfresh said.

In his undergraduate biochemistry class, for instance, he is learning about the theories and mechanisms of metabolism. But in his graduate-level courses, he reviews these mechanisms in academic papers and works to understand the applications of these methods in the context of experiments. 

McElfresh recommended contacting the professors teaching graduate-level courses of interest to get a better sense of whether the course is a good fit for the student based on their knowledge and past experience.

“The workload [for graduate-level courses] is bigger but you also get to dive more deeply into the material and really analyze it,” Christina Logvynyuk ’25, who has taken graduate seminars across different schools, told the News. 

Logvynyuk, an economics and Eastern European studies double major, said that she is taking a course on Russian information warfare through the Jackson School and another on the global history of Eastern Europe through the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences this semester. 

She explained that the process to get into these courses differs depending on the school and the course. Getting into the seminar at the GSAS was more straightforward, she explained, while the course she takes through the Jackson School required more work to get departmental approval.

“One of the biggest reasons that I am hoping to continue to take more graduate courses in the future as an undergrad is the commitment to the actual material of the class rather than assignments,” Logvynyuk told the News. “If an undergraduate student has a real interest in a subject area, if they can find a graduate class where they can dive more deeply into the material, I highly recommend it.”

Undergraduate students taking graduate level courses will have these classes recorded on their transcripts with their graduate course numbers.

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The SOM hosted the dialogue, titled “Arab and Israeli Ambassadors’ Perspectives: Yale Middle East Peace Dialogue,” with Israeli ambassador Michael Herzog, United Arab Emirates ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba and former White House Senior Advisor Jared Kushner, all of whom joined the panel through Zoom. The talk focused on cultivating peaceful Israeli-Palestinian relations and rebuilding Gaza after the war. 

The conversation at the SOM opened with an interfaith prayer for peace led by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and Rabbi Herbert Brockman.

The event was organized by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Senior Associate Dean for Leadership Studies and professor in Management Practice at the SOM. 

“The idea was to talk about peace, and how to build bridges after this savage war,” Yale World Fellow and panel attendee Tamim Saad, who is Israeli, wrote to the News. “I felt really included. The message was really how we can get together after this war and work together to rebuild Gaza and also to rebuild trust in the region.”

The panel, organized in response to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, follows Hamas’ Oct. 7 surprise attack against Israel, when they killed at least 1,200 people in Israel and took more than 230 hostages, according to Israel’s Foreign Ministry as reported by the Washington Post. Israel responded with a formal declaration of war against Hamas, airstrikes and a ground invasion of Gaza, killing more than 11,180 people in Gaza from Oct. 7 to Nov. 10 and displacing more than two-thirds of the population, the Post reported, citing figures from the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza and from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Saad explained that he appreciated the diversity of perspectives at the event, especially when the talk opened up to questions from the attendees. 

Roshni Mohandas GRD ’24, another attendee, estimated that hundreds of people attended the panel and that the open discussion with the questions felt “very respectful.”

“I think the purpose of the whole event was to create dialogue,” Mohandas told the News. “And I think all sides and everybody was represented. We had every voice heard on the table. So I think that was a very good start to have these dialogues in academic institutions.”

After the talk, around 80 professors from across Yale’s different schools joined theologians and leaders for a multicultural lunch aimed at further open discussion. Among those who attended the lunch were former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo and Iranian-American journalist Roya Hakakian.

Imam Rauf told the News that he thought the event was “very valuable” and “informative.” He explained that he appreciated the different perspectives brought up during lunch as well, including Hakakian’s comments on the need to include Iran in discussions surrounding peace in the Middle East. 

The absence of formal Palestinian representation on the panel, however, led the Yale Palestine Solidarity coalition to organize a protest in response to the talk. 

“Yale’s decision to support Arab-Israeli normalization by platforming these panelists without a single Palestinian voice is reprehensible and dishonest, especially in this moment of unprecedented Israeli devastation in Gaza,” the Yale Palestine Solidarity coalition wrote in a press release statement emailed to the News. “The people of Connecticut will not tolerate the role of Yale or the United States in these ongoing war crimes.”

The protestors held signs in front of the SOM building with statements such as “end the occupation, stop the genocide” and “ceasefire now.” Their faces were covered with face masks and some of them wore traditional Palestinian scarves.

They handed out flyers titled “No peace without justice: it is not a peace dialogue without Palestinians,” demanding that Yale take a stance against Israel’s attacks in Gaza and divest from all arms manufacturers. 

During a walkout of over 100 students on Oct. 25, student protestors called on the University to divest from arms manufacturers, such as Lockheed Martin. Following the walkout, University President Peter Salovey told the News that the University’s Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility is considering revisiting its policy regarding investments in weapon manufacturing and retail.

After yesterday’s panel and protest, the Yale Palestine Solidarity coalition posted about the group’s demonstration on its Instagram page.

“We reject Yale’s decision to platform Arab-Israeli normalization efforts during Israel’s ongoing devastation of Gaza and attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank,” the Yale Palestine Solidarity coalition wrote in an Instagram caption on Nov. 15.

In a Nov. 15 email to the News, Sonnenfeld wrote that the event’s attendees included people from all over the world, including Palestinians, Emiratis, Kuwaitis and Iraqis, who came prepared to ask questions during the open discussion. Sonnenfeld also noted the presence of UAE ambassador Al Otaiba, who was on the panel, as “one of the most influential voices in the Arab world.”

He added that the SOM had invited the Palestinian representative to the United Nations but did not get a response back.

In their press statement, the Yale Palestine Solidarity coalition criticized the presence of Al Otaiba as a voice for Palestinians, stating that the UAE maintains a close diplomatic relationship with Israel “while sidestepping the question of Palestinian self-determination.”

“People can protest efforts towards Mideast peace, if they want-to do so outside- but, inside we wanted to learn what we can do [to] advance regional harmony, justice, and prosperity,” Sonnenfeld wrote in a Nov. 15 email to the News. “In this non-political educational event, [we] learned from Israelis and Arab government voices.  This should not be Yale’s final event on the region but just one step following the lead of many of our students.  Hopefully a future one would be convenient for the Palestinian representative to the UN.” 

The School of Management was founded in 1976.

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