2015
December 4 Harvard Club End of Year Party: The Harvard Club and their distinguished guest, Giandomenico Magliano, Ambassador of Italy to France, celebrated the (old) year at the sumptuous Salon Haute Couture of the newly-renovated Plaza Athénée.
November 24 American University Clubs Thanksgiving dinner: AUC hosted a Thanksgiving dinner at Joe Allen.
November 23 Ivy Plus European Leaders Thanksgiving Dinner: France-Amériques hosted a champagne cocktail reception with live music and a seated dinner in the presence of Mrs. Jane D. Hartley, the U.S. Ambassador to France.
November 21 Harvard-Yale Game Viewing: The Game was streamed live on big screens reserved for the Harvard and Yale Clubs. Yale lost due to interference from the noise at the Moose Bar.
November 18 American University Clubs Cocktail party at Le Fouquet’s: University alumni met for an exquisite drink at the prestigious Marta bar, the latest Napoleon III and art deco addition to Le Fouquet’s. The bar was reserved exclusively for the event and offered specially-crafted cocktails.
October 20 Reception for the Yale University Art Gallery in the Art in Embassies program: Over 20 Yalies showed up at the U.S. Ambassador’s residence to admire three works of contemporary art loaned by Yale to the U.S. Embassy as part of the Art in Embassies Program.
September 30 Talk on Climate Change by Yale Alumus Nat Keohane: More than 40 people turned out from both the Yale and Harvard clubs to hear Nat Koehane (Yale College ’93), Vice President of the Environmental Defense Fund, talk about the current state of politics concerning global climate change and the chances for success of the upcoming summit in Paris.
September 13 Walking Tour — The Lost Generation: Montparnasse and Beyond: This walk featured the great days of Anglophone literary expatriation in the 1920s, with resident and inveterate café-goer Ernest Hemingway as the central figure. We visited places he wrote about in The Sun Also Rises and A Moveable Feast. The walk continued with the expatriate story in the 1930s. The cafés that prominent writers frequented — the Dôme, the Rotonde, the Sélect, La Coupole, and the Closerie des Lilas — were sampled in moderation.
September 5 Annual Ivy Clubs Mixer on the Seine: The festivities were held aboard the péniche « Concorde Atlantique ». The 20th edition of this mixer gathered alumni and friends from a wide range of U.S. and international schools.
June 29 Yale Club of France Annual Meeting: Our annual meeting fulfilled our legal obligation as an « Association 1901 ». It included the approval of last year’s minutes, the President’s review of events, the Treasurer’s report and election of Club officers. The current year’s officers are listed here.
June 22 AUC Annual Reception: The American University Clubs of France held their annual reception in the presence of a distinguished guest at the Hotel de Talleyrand.
June 3 Yale Book Award Reception: At this annual reception, Yale conferred awards to three promising high school juniors and our friends from Harvard bestowed scholarships to a number of incoming students. The reception was held at the residence of the U.S. Ambassador to France, Jane Hartley.
May 31 Yale Schola Cantorum Concert: The Yale Schola Cantorum and the Juilliard 415 orchestral ensemble, under the direction of David Hill and with Daniel Roth on organ, performed at a free concert featuring works by Palestrina, Mozart, Mr. Roth, and Beethoven.
May 30 Yale Day of Service: Yale joined members of the Harvard and Stanford clubs at a nursing home to engage with the residents and their families. This event was facilitated by the non-profit organization « Benenova ».
May 27 Dinner with the Yale Club — Professor John Merriman:Professor John Merriman spoke to us of his many books: The Dynamite Club: How a Bombing in Fin-de-Siècle Paris Ignited the Age of Modern Terror, the classic History of Modern Europe, and his most recent Massacre: the Life and Death of the Paris Commune of 1871.
April 21 Lecture by visiting Yale Law Professor Emmanuel Gaillard: A lecture by Prof. Emmanuel Gaillard, head of the International Arbitration group at Shearman & Sterling, was organized with the Harvard Club. Mr. Gaillard talked about his recent victory in the Yukos case, which secured the largest arbitration award in history.
April 16 Book launch with Gerald Shea: We celebrated the launch by Albin Michel of « La Vie Malentendue », the French edition of Gerry’s excellent book about his life with partial deafness, diagnosed at age 34. The English edition, “Song Without Words,”, was published in 2013 and was nominated for the National Book Critic Circle’s John Leonard Award.
April 14 Arts Arena Yale School of Music Recital: The piano recital was performed by Yevgeny Yontov, winner of the gold medal and the William Peyton Shehee and Virginia Kilpatrick Shehee Award at the 63rd Wideman International Piano Competition. Born in 1989 in Odessa, Ukraine, Yevgeny emigrated to Israel with his family in 1990. At Yale, he now studies with Professor Boris Berman. Mr. Yontov has performed internationally as a solo artist with symphonies and as a chamber musician.
April 4 Coffee with Professor William Flesch: William Flesch, Brandeis professor of English and Comparative Literature and Yale College ’78 alum, talked about his work on the evolutionary psychology of literary experience — providing an account from a Darwinian perspective of how human beings could have evolved to be so emotionally interested and absorbed in stories we know are fiction.
April Admissions: For September 2015 matriculation (class of 2019), we had six students admitted to Yale College (four regular and two early) and two were waitlisted. Applications from France numbered 45, which reflects an outstanding admit rate of 13%, double Yale’s average. Many thanks to our interviewers who managed to meet all but two of the applicants.
March 31 Yale Arts Arena Lecture — Robert Storr: Dean of the Yale School of Art, curator, artist, and author, Robert Storr delivered his seventh annual Yale Arts Arena Lecture.
March 28 Leonard Lauder’s Cubist Collection: Dr. Rebecca Rabinow (Smith ’88), the Leonard A. Lauder curator of Modern Art and the Curator-in-Charge of the Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art at the Metropolitan Museum of New York, spoke about Leonard Lauder’s Cubist collection, a promised gift to the Met.
February 20 Concert by Bryce Dessner: Respected equally in the worlds of indie rock and classical music, American composer and guitarist Bryce Dessner (alumnus of the Yale Music School) of the Grammy Award-nominated group The National performed his new classical compositions during an exclusive concert. French quartet Zaïde supported Dessner’s richly-imagined kaleidoscopic musical arrangements. A cocktail reception with the musicians followed the program.
February 11 Paris Feb Club Party: The Yale Club of France participated in this winter Yale tradition, which is now global. Drinks and good cheer abounded.
January 28 Dinner with the Yale Club — Marc Choate: We talked with Mark Choate, a historian of Europe from the 19th century to the present, with particular emphasis on Italy, France, and Germany. Mark is a professor at Brigham Young University since September 2001, teaching graduate and undergraduate students in courses on Europe-since-1914, Fascism, migration, colonialism, contemporary Italy, and world civilizations in the modern era.
