Dwight Hall at Yale

Volunteer at Sunrise Cafe!
2025-10-08 06:00 - 09:00, 2025-10-15 06:00 - 09:00, 2025-10-22 06:00 - 09:00 (America/New_York)
Register here!

Start your morning off on a great note! Join Dwight Hall on Wednesday mornings to volunteer at Sunrise Cafe. Volunteers will meet in front of Dwight Hall at 6:00am, walk together to Sunrise Cafe, and will return to campus by 9:00am.

Volunteers are strongly encouraged to wear N95 masks during service.

Sunrise Cafe has been serving breakfast without charge to New Haven’s homeless and hungry since 2015. Each weekday morning, the Cafe welcomes guests to the undercroft of St. Paul and St. James, near Wooster Square and three blocks south of the New Haven Green with white tablecloths, flowers and a rotating menu of fresh, warm, nutritious home-cooked food. Your generosity opens our doors.

Cheerful volunteers take each order individually, deliver the breakfast to our guest and help our paid chef in the kitchen. Thelma Ragsdale, Operations Manager, and our volunteers ensure every guest is warmly welcomed.

Sunrise Cafe is uniquely welcoming and secure, based on trust and mutual respect, and the rapport built between the volunteer servers and our guests. With a warm welcome and just two rules – no drugs on the premises and no arguments – Sunrise has become a community center for the homeless, a place to come every weekday morning and gather with friends.

Hungry friends come for the home-cooked, nourishing breakfast and stay for simple medical services offered by the Cornell Scott Health Center and access to support from social services to find housing.

Sunrise provides a unique opportunity to bridge New Haven’s inequalities that separate us from one another. Volunteers come once and become regulars. Guests and volunteers become friends and greet one another on the street.

Exile & Emergence: 7 Leadership Lessons from the Hijra
2025-10-08 18:30 - 20:00 | Humanities Quadrangle, 320 York Street, New Haven, Connecticut, 06511, United States
Register here!

This year marks 1,500 lunar years since the birth of the Prophet Muhammad.

Among the most defining moments of his life and mission was the Hijra—the flight from Mecca to Medina. It was a journey of refuge under threat, yet also one of profound leadership and transformation.

In this talk, Dr. Bilal Hassam will guide us through seven leadership lessons that emerged from the Hijra: how the Prophet navigated danger, built alliances, and transformed exile into the foundation of a new community. These lessons, rooted in faith, resilience, and vision, continue to speak to the challenges of leadership in our time..

Why come?

•⁠ ⁠Unpack unlikely leadership moves from the Hijrah: navigating risk, forging alliances, building resilient institutions.

•⁠ ⁠Practical takeaways for campus, community work, and professional life.

•⁠ ⁠Marking 1,500 lunar years since the birth of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ.

All welcome. Arrive early for an HHC dinner. Please share widely.

About Dr. Bilal Hassam:

Dr. Bilal Hassam is a writer, cultural commentator, and consultant at TheMuslimAgency.com, exploring the intersections of Muslim identity, politics, and culture. A former doctor, he works on storytelling, representation, and advocacy within communities worldwide. He has part of a team of researchers, scholars and storytellers who are rewriting the history of the Hijrah – a pivotal moment in early Islamic history.

Food Provided (Special Catering from HHC!)

Dwight Hall Summer Fellows Celebration
2025-10-09 18:00 - 19:30
Register here!

Join current students, alumni, and friends of the Dwight Hall Summer Fellows program for a festive gathering celebrating 58 years of public service and social justice fellowships on Thursday, October 9th, 2025, from 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM.

Guests in the Dwight Hall Library will be joined by Summer Fellows nationwide who will virtually connect to the program beginning at 6:30 pm ET. Come to Dwight Hall to learn more about the Summer Fellows program, and see how you can engage!

Food from Havenly and refreshments will be provided.

Trash to Fashion Workshop & Ball
2025-10-11 17:30 - 22:00
Join one of Dwight Hall’s emerging projects, Trash to Fashion, a project dedicated to upcycling clothing with flair to refashion our environment, at their workshop and ball.

At the event, you can learn from designers Tea Montgomery, Donald Carter, and Saks stylist Lauren Sprague, creative reuse specialist Lisa Spetrini and trashion artist Rebekah Fraser, the founder of Trash to Fashion. You can also practice making trashion in community and celebrate at the ball!

Learn more and register for the event here: https://events.humanitix.com/trash-to-fashion-workshop-and-ball

Gilder Lehrman Center Film Screening and Panel Discussion: "My Father’s Name," a film by Susanna Styron
2025-10-22 16:30 - 19:30 | Luce Hall, 34 Hillhouse Avenue, New Haven, Connecticut, 06511, United States
Join Gilder Lehrman Center Director David W. Blight (Sterling Professor of History, Yale) in conversation with the film’s director, Susanna Styron YC ’76, Crystal Feimster (Associate Professor of Black Studies and American Studies, Yale University), and Willie James Jennings (Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Systematic Theology and Africana Studies Yale University Divinity School)

About the film: https://myfathersname.com/

Years after Lee Ed Frazier’s death, his daughter Jan made a shocking discovery: as a young man her father had participated in a lynching. As she attempts to uncover the truth about what happened, Jan learns that this specific lynching was iconic in American history, because photos of it were the first ever to be published in a national publication. Both Time and Life magazines carried the story and the photos as they reported on the anti-lynching bill that was before Congress at that very moment.

Additionally, she realizes that no names of the lynchers were ever published. Even the photographer was protected by a cloak of agreed-upon anonymity. Shaken by this stark reflection of white privilege and the brutality it sought to minimize, Jan must now reckon with deeply conflicted feelings about the father she loved, find a way to hold her family accountable and face the dawning awareness of her own unconscious racism.

Learn more and register for the event here: https://macmillan.yale.edu/glc/events/2025-10-22/gilder-lehrman-center-film-screening-and-panel-discussion-my-fathers-name-2

Ask OCS at Dwight Hall with Jorimel Zaldivar
2025-11-07 14:00 - 16:00 | Dwight Hall at Yale, 67 High St, New Haven, CT, 06511, United States
Join us for Ask OCS at Dwight Hall office hours of the semester on November 7th from 2:00 – 4:00 PM.

Ask questions about summer internships, mentorship, and more through individual counseling with Jorimel Zaldivar, Senior Associate Director for Common Good Careers at the Office of Career Strategy, to further your commitment to lifelong change.

Gain insights and advice on topics such as career exploration, composing resumes and cover letters, interview preparation, networking, and more!

A GLC Symposium: "Public History in Authoritarian Times"
2025-11-08 10:00 - 14:30
Register here!

“Promote, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it should be enlightened.”

President George Washington, Farewell Address, September 19, 1796

Since the 1970s, public history has become an important dimension of the historical profession. For decades, worldwide scholars, museum staff, community organizations, and others have worked together to make historical education accessible and relevant to broad publics. By emphasizing the experiences and perspectives of previously underrepresented people, public history research and programming offers nuanced and rich interpretations of dominant historical narratives of the past.

The work of public history combines traditional archival research with attention to objects, untold stories of place, memory, multiple points of view, community traditions and oral testimony. The field of public history provides possibilities for diverse and democratic understandings of the past. This is especially crucial for efforts to come to terms with the most challenging aspects of history.

Increasingly, recent efforts to accurately and honestly grapple with historical complexity in classrooms and cultural institutions are under attack. These attacks on public education, and on the independence and integrity of key institutions such as the National Park Service and the Smithsonian, demonstrate that the current presidential administration in the United States is waging war against historical and critical truth-telling. In exchange, they support uncritical “patriotic” education, which emphasizes American nationalism and exceptionalism. Never before has the executive branch of government, with its enormous resources, waged such a battle against the practice of history and the diffusion of knowledge.

Long committed to public historical education in its many forms, the Gilder Lehrman Center seeks to provide a forum to discuss these alarming trends. Scholars and supporters will offer comparative perspectives on historical reckonings with authoritarianism, while analyzing current realities with an eye toward building strong public history foundations for the future. We invite you to join us in November for respectful engagement with these topics.

Keynote Speaker Event: An Evening with Josiah Brown and James Jeter
2025-11-13 17:30 - 19:00 | Dwight Hall Library, 67 High St, New Haven, Connecticut, 06511, United States
RSVP here!

Ever find yourself wondering how people land careers in public service and social justice? Ever find yourself wondering how state and local politics are shifting now?

Join James Jeter, the director of the Full Citizens Coalition, and Josiah Brown, the executive director of Connecticut CASA, on November 13th, 2025 from 5:30 PM – 7:00 PM for a moderated keynote speaker event dedicated to their careers and what local innovation means during these tumultuous times in public service. This event will allow you to hear from key members of the Connecticut community who are enthusiastic about mentorship and sharing their experiences with students and alumni.

Pizza and refreshments will be provided. There will be both an in-person option in the Dwight Hall Library as well as a virtual way to join the conversation. The Zoom will start promptly at 5:45 PM.

Cross-Sector Careers in Public Service Fireside Chat Event
2025-12-05 12:00 - 13:30 | Dwight Hall Library, 67 High St, New Haven, Connecticut, 06511, United States
RSVP here!

Curious how leaders move between the public and private sectors or how public service can appear in multiple forms like policy work or consulting?

Join Tom Freedman, CEO and co-founder of Freedman Consulting, and Preeta Nayak, Partner and Head of Leadership & Community Services at The Bridgespan Group, for a fireside chat on December 5th, 2025, from 12:00–1:15 PM. Together, they’ll reflect on their pathways between different sectors and share their insights on navigating public service in both the private and public sectors. This is a great opportunity to network and learn from leaders committed to public service.

Sushi and refreshments will be provided. There will be both an in-person option in the Dwight Hall Library as well as a virtual way to join the conversation.

Link to Zoom: https://yale.zoom.us/j/99816222826

Ask OCS at Dwight Hall with Jorimel Zaldivar
2025-12-05 14:00 - 16:00 | Dwight Hall at Yale, 67 High St, New Haven, CT, 06511, United States
Join us for the last Ask OCS at Dwight Hall office hours of the semester on December 5th from 2:00 – 4:00 PM.

Ask questions about summer internships, mentorship, and more through individual counseling with Jorimel Zaldivar, Senior Associate Director for Common Good Careers at the Office of Career Strategy, to further your commitment to lifelong change.

Gain insights and advice on topics such as career exploration, composing resumes and cover letters, interview preparation, networking, and more!

NHTI Training Session
2025-12-07 13:00 - 15:00
The New Haven Tutoring Initiative (NHTI) — a city-wide effort to boost literacy and math skills for K–8 students through meaningful mentorship — is currently recruiting Yale students to become tutors!

With just one training session, you’ll be ready to tutor at any New Haven Reads or New Haven Counts partner site and begin building supportive, one-on-one relationships with New Haven students. No prior tutoring experience needed.

📅 Training: December 7, 1–3 PM📍 Location: Dwight Hall

This is one of the easiest, most rewarding ways to get involved beyond campus and create lasting impact in the lives of young learners. All students interested in service and connecting with New Haven should reach out and attend! Please register on Yale Connect if attending!

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to Emma Qiao (emma.qiao@yale.edu)!
