A friend of India set to take over as Yale president
Peter Salovey, provost and chief academicofficer of Yale University, who has played a key role in building the IvyLeague institution's linkages to India, will become the university's nextpresident in June 2013.
Salovey, whose appointment was announced by the New Haven,Connecticut based university Friday, has been a critical figure of the YaleIndia Initiative and has been instrumental in deploying institutional resourcesin support of the India Initiative. He succeeds Richard C. Levin, another Indiafriend who assumed the Yale Presidency in 1993 and announced his intention tostep down earlier this year.
Chris Argyris Professor of Psychology Salovey's academicwork has involved collaborations with Indian researchers and institutions.
He and investigators at the the National AIDS ResearchInstitute in Pune, for example, carried out studies on issues of stigma anddiscrimination in health care settings in India.
The studies aimed to identify the forms of stigma anddiscrimination and its effects in health care settings in urban, industrial andrural populations. This work was started in 2002 and continued several years.
Announcing Salovey's unanimous selection by the YaleCorporation, the University's governing board, Senior Corporation Fellow EdwardP. Bass noted: "Peter brings a profound understanding of Yale, and greatambitions for advancing the University in the years ahead."
Salovey came to Yale as a graduate student in 1981 and hashad three decades of academic and administrative experience at the University.
He is the only president in the history of Yale who hasserved as the chair of an academic department, as dean of the Graduate Schoolof Arts and Sciences, as dean of Yale College, and as provost.
He is also the latest in a series of Yale provosts who havebeen selected to lead major universities; his immediate three predecessors wenton to head Cambridge, MIT, and Oxford.
Salovey's research focuses on the ways that human moods andemotions affect behaviour and decision-making. With John D. Mayer, he developeda broad framework known as "emotional intelligence" to describe howpeople understand, manage and use their emotions.
Since the launch of Yale India Initiative in 2008, Yale hascommitted significant financial resources to position itself among the world'spre-eminent institutions for the study of and engagement with India and SouthAsia.
Yale also launched the India-Yale Parliamentary LeadershipProgramme in 2007 and the India-Yale Higher Education Leadership Programme in2011 to build the leadership capacity in Indian higher education.