Yale prof hired under DEI remains in her post, teaches ‘Socialist, Anti-Imperialist Lens’

Gail Lewis, a Presidential Visiting Fellow in Women’s, Sexuality, and Gender Studies (WSGS) at Yale, was hired as part of a “diversity initiative” yet remains in her post as a “feminist and anti-racist…socialist, anti-imperialist” professor.

As Presidential Visiting Fellow she was “appointed as part of the Faculty Excellence and Diversity Initiative.” “In December 2024, Yale University concluded the Faculty Excellence and Diversity Initiative.”

Lewis currently teaches two courses in the WSGS department: “Black Feminist Theory” and “Subjectivity and its Discontents: Psychosocial Explorations in Black, Feminist, Queer,” according to the school’s course catalog. 

[RELATED: STURGE: Professors denounce Trump’s Compact, want taxpayer money with no strings attached]

“Black Feminist Theory” will teach students “merely a sample of some of the most vibrant ideological and discursive contexts in which black feminism caused certain epistemic transformations.”

“Subjectivity and its Discontents” will teach students how to consider “questions of subjectivity” including “feminist, black, queer scholarship” and “how it links to narratives of experience.” 

The mission statement of the course is to consider “the relation between ‘freedom’ and subjectivity, including the extent to which ‘freedom’ might require rejection of ‘subjectivity’ as a mode of personhood.”

[RELATED: University of Chicago professor arrested outside of ICE facility]

Lewis is also the author of multiple academic publications. One is called “Where Might We Go If We Dare: moving beyond the “thick, suffocating fog of whiteness’ in feminism’, (2019)”

The abstract says the article will explore “the multi-pronged relation between individual and collective haunting and political investments in divergent feminist and queer formations.”

Lewis also is the author of “Birthing Racial Difference: conversations with my mother and others’ (2009).” This article is published in Studies of the Maternal, which describes itself as an “international, peer-reviewed, scholarly online journal.”

In this article, Lewis says her mother taught her “the pain of race, the joy of dancing, the meaning of love, ------ and an acute awareness of just what has to be faced … in the pursuit of social, political and psychic change.” 

The article also says that a mother’s relationships and social experiences can “produce an ambivalence” in the mother toward her own children.

Lewis is honored in the City of Women London Interactive Map. The project rewrites a map of London’s tube system replacing the original stops with feminist names. 

The map asks “What would your daily commute look like if it celebrated remarkable women and non-binary people who have shaped our city?”

Despite the Faculty Excellence and Diversity Initiative ending almost a year ago, Lewis continues teaching. Her most recent article is titled “What does African feminism look like today?”

Campus Reform has contacted Yale and Dr. Lewis for comment. This article will be updated accordingly. 

Follow William Buckley on X at @willdbuckley or @will_the_conservative.