Whereas in the E.U., universities
do not have their own private police departments because the state governments
hold the police power, the situation in the U.S. has devolved from such
democratic accountability such that even small colleges (and even hospitals!)
typically have their own “police departments.” This presents the unwitting American
public with a potentially problem of conflict of interest: in disputes between
a college or university administration, which is not democratically elected,
and stakeholders, including students and the general public, the organizational
police forces take orders from one side. This is especially problematic in
cases, such as at Yale, in which the organizational police employees patrol off
campus—off the university’s own “territory”—and arrest people who are
unaffiliated with Yale and have not even been on the campus. Such a usurpation of
the prerogative of the city of New Haven comes with the loss of democratic accountability.
When I was back at Yale as an alumnus during the Spring, 2025 term to conduct academic research, a local resident who worked at a local New Haven hospital told me that Yale police employees arrest local residents coming out of bars, presumably when those Yale employees assume that “a local” could potentially menace Yale students. That the university “police” employees have been given the power by Connecticut to arrest people beyond Yale’s property does not imply authority to go on routine patrols outside of Yale.
I suspect that the power to make arrests off-campus was premised on the assumption that such arrests stemmed from an incident on the campus. If so, then the statement of Yale’s “police department” that it would also investigate a Palestinian flag that a protester had placed on a Jewish symbol in New Haven’s central park, which is called New Haven Green, rather than leave the matter to New Haven’s police department represents just the sort of overreaching that such a slippery slope enables, especially when a thirst for more power is present.
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, an academic
administrator in Yale’s School of Management, defended the overreach by stating
that Yale needed to “defend its truth.” I contend that for a non-governmental
private organization to bring up truth in connection to having
police-power is dangerous. Put another way, for Yale to use its police-power to
enforce the administration’s ideological conception of truth itself on city
property is such a blatant over-reach that the very notion of a university “police
department” can be flagged as inappropriate in a republic. From the European
students in the U.S. whom I’ve met, the notion itself is nothing short of
strange. Today, in early 2026, I would be tempted to suggest to such students that
U.S. President Trump use Yale’s “police force” to invade Greenland because Yale’s
guns have invaded New Haven rather than restrain themselves to Yale (while of
course being able to chase culprits off-campus and arrest them).
So it is more than disconcerting that although a city ordinance enacted in 2019 required the Civilian Review Board of New Haven’s police department to “’develop a memorandum of understanding’ with the Yale Police Department” so the city could be made aware of complaints registered by local residents and Yale students against Yale “police” employees, Yale Daily News reports that “progress on the agreement was slow-moving.”[1] It would not be until January 1, 2026, interestingly just after the departures of the chiefs of the New Haven and Yale police departments, that an agreement went into effect such that “all policing agencies that are operating within city boundaries have some kind of citizen-led review process for complaints.”[2] The Yale Police Advisory Board, which was “meant to review civilian complaints against the Yale Police Department,” had even been “discontinued without an announcement to the city or University” in 2024.[3] “Its successor, the Public Safety Advisory Board, took shape in the fall of 2025 . . . The newly formed board’s charter does not mention civilian complaints.”[4] So the agreement commencing at the start of 2026 may be more about communicating with the city than any realization on the part of the university’s administration that using its police-power to defend Yale’s truth on local streets and parks might result in complaints not only from students, but also from local residents who have nothing to do with the university. Although Alyson Heimer, formerly with the Civilian Review Board, confirmed that as of January 1, 2026, “all policing agencies that are operating within city boundaries have some kind of citizen-led review process for complaints,” she also said, “We should be really proud that we actually have something in [sic] paper, a written agreement, to have reporting and transparency between the agencies. I think it’s really important.”[5]
I suspect that as Yale is a private (non-profit) organization, Yale’s core administrators would not have been excited about local residents being able to complain about a Yale department, and as for the students, the outgoing director of Yale’s “police department” referred in an email to students who were protesting for human rights in Gaza as “losers and criminals.” He quickly accepted the invitation of the FBI to train Yale’s “police” employees in counter-terrorism tactics that could be used on Yale students. Fortunately, the university did not, at least as far as I know, charge the students more tuition to cover the added service—the response from students could be, Thank you; hit me again, Sir.
I agree with the typical
European reaction that I have encountered against universities, whether state-related or private (non-profit or for-profit),
being lawfully able to have their own “police departments.” I contend that police
power is an inalienable, and thus non-transferrable, power of a public government.
In the E.U. and U.S., there can be both federal and state (including municipal)
police, either of which can be enhanced rather than such a core governmental
power being “subcontracted” out to organizations. Unless the American electorates
object to the existence of organizational “police departments” and insist that organizations
stick with security guards (who should not be dressed like police so as
to mislead “civilians”), more organizations—even companies including grocery
stores—could receive authority from a government (after some well-placed
political-campaign contributions) to have their own so-called police departments.
Police could be everywhere, using constant intimidation itself as a
deterrent, which was the case at Yale at least as of 2023.
At the very least, electorates
would benefit from being shown the institutional conflict of interest that
exists when an organization’s management has “police” employees who can do the
management’s bidding in disputes with stakeholders, including students and
local residents.[6] When
Yale’s “police” employees were busy arresting 47 students for being in tents on
Beinecke Plaza on campus to protest against the genocide taking place in Gaza
with impunity, it is telling that Yale students protesting the university’s
draconian action went to a nearby intersection because then those students
would be under the jurisdiction of New Haven’s police, who did not arrest any
students—and they promptly cleared the intersection at 5pm for rush hour as
requested by the New Haven police. Meanwhile, Yale’s “police” employees on the
scene were falsely claiming that their jurisdiction did not include city
streets—even though Yale’s “police” cars could be regularly seen on patrols on
city streets even at a distance (i.e., blocks) from Yale’s property, which, by
the way, I witnessed as I walked along Howe Street in 2025. It is interesting,
in other words, that Yale’s “police department” claims to keep to Yale’s campus
when the public eye is on, while on weekend evenings employees of that same
department patrol city streets and even arrest local residents coming out of
bars. Similarly, I suspect that any public statements by Yale’s administrators
that complaints from “civilians” would be taken seriously, as per the agreement
with the city would actually be lies meant to mislead the public eye.
Yale police conduct surveillance of undergraduate Yalies relaxing on May 1, 2025 on Cross-Campus lawn a day before the final exams began. If the students were being watched and intimidated by a Yale police-employee in a "lit-up" police car because the administration or its "police chief" feared spontaneous pro-Gaza protests on the day before finals, then the administration/police knew nothing about how seriously Yalies take final exams.
Being both loyal and yet
critical (of conscience) to an alma mater is a difficult balance to achieve,
especially after having encountered so many nasty administrators and arrogant
faculty-employees on campus. Maybe the Crimson at Harvard will get to share in
the fun of being critical by conscience of their university’s police-power once
Campbell, who headed Yale’s department, gets settled in at Harvard in 2026. As stated
by Yale Daily News, Campbell, the protestant minister who had described human-rights
students at Yale as “losers and criminals” in 2025, “decamped” to Harvard at
the end of that year.[7]
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. In my book, Institutional Conflicts of Interest, I argue that given the inevitable susceptibility of temptation felt by humans to exploit such a conflict of interest, the very existence of an institutional conflict of interest is unethical, even before exploitation occurs.
7. Adele Haeg, “New Haven, Yale Reached Accord on Police Oversight before Chiefs Left,” Yale Daily News, January 15, 2026.
