Editing Ezra Stiles (section)

==Yale presidency==
[[File:Reuben_Moulthrop_-_Ezra_Stiles_(1727-1795),_B.A.1746,_M.A.1749_-_1833.1_-_Yale_University_Art_Gallery.jpg|thumb|[[Reuben Moulthrop]] painted this portrait of Stiles in 1794, while he was serving as President of Yale College.]]
In 1778, Stiles was appointed president of Yale, a post he held until his death. He freed his slave Newport on June 9, 1778, as he prepared to move to [[New Haven, Connecticut|New Haven]]; he would in 1782 hire his former slave for $20 a year and indentured Newport's two-year-old son until age 24.<ref>Saillant, John, ''Black Puritan, Black Republican: The Life and Thought of Lemuel Haynes, 1753–1833'', Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 131</ref> As president of Yale, Stiles became its first professor of [[Semitic studies|Semitics]], and required all students to study Hebrew (as [[Harvard]] students already did); his first [[Commencement speech|commencement address]] in September 1781 (no ceremonies having been held during the [[American Revolutionary War]]) was delivered in Hebrew, [[Aramaic]], and [[Arabic language|Arabic]]. By 1790, however, he was forced to face failure in instilling an interest in the language in the student body, writing

<blockquote>From my first accession to the Presidency ... I have obliged all the Freshmen to study Hebrew. This has proved very disagreeable to a Number of the Students. This year I have determined to instruct only those who offer themselves voluntarily.</blockquote>

The [[valedictorian]]s of 1785 and 1792, however, did deliver their speeches in Hebrew.<ref>{{Cite web |title=How Hebrew Came to Yale {{!}} Yale University Library |url=https://web.library.yale.edu/cataloging/hebraica/hebrew-at-yale |access-date=2024-06-25 |website=web.library.yale.edu}}</ref>

Stiles was an amateur scientist who corresponded with [[Thomas Jefferson]] and [[Benjamin Franklin]] about scientific discoveries. Using equipment donated to the college by Franklin, Stiles conducted the electrical experiments in [[New England]], continuing a practice first begun by his predecessor, President [[Thomas Clap]]. He charged a glass tube with static electricity and used it to "excite the wonder and admiration of an audience".<ref name=":3">Morgan, Edmund, ''The Gentle Puritan: A Life of Ezra Stiles, 1727–1795'', University of North Carolina Press, 2014, p. 91</ref> He shocked 52 people at once, fired spirits of wine and rum, and caused counterfeit spiders to move about as if they were alive. These were all experiments that had been performed before, and "Stiles seems to have had little genius for pushing back the frontiers of knowledge" and his observations "disclosed nothing new".<ref name=":3" /> He was more a learner and teacher than an experimenter. Nevertheless, he was elected a Fellow of the [[American Academy of Arts and Sciences]] in 1781.<ref name=AAAS>{{cite web|title=Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter S|url=http://www.amacad.org/publications/BookofMembers/ChapterS.pdf|publisher=American Academy of Arts and Sciences|access-date=July 28, 2014}}</ref>

His book ''[[The United States elevated to Glory and Honor]]'' was printed in 1783.<ref>{{cite journal|url=http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/etas/41/ |title=The United States Elevated to Glory and Honor|journal=Electronic Texts in American Studies |date=January 1783 |last1=Stiles |first1=Ezra |last2=Smolinski |first2=Reiner }}</ref> The book is a transcript of a sermon given to the [[Connecticut General Assembly]], on May 8, 1783. The sermon draws parallels between the United States and the Biblical nation of [[Israel (Bible)|Israel]]. Stiles refers to the US as an "American Israel, high above all nations which He hath made, in numbers, and in praise, and in name, and in honor", suggesting that the [[White Americans]] are like the [[Chosen People]] of Israel. He opined that "in God’s good providence" [[Native Americans in the United States|Indians]] and [[African American|Africans]] "may gradually vanish", thus ensuring that "an unrighteous SLAVERY may at length, in God’s good providence, be abolished and cease in the land of LIBERTY."<ref name="Guyatt">{{cite book |last1=Guyatt |first1=Nicholas |title=Providence and the Invention of the United States, 1607-1876 |date=2007 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=Cambridge |isbn=978-0-521-86788-7 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nCV7XjWY5nwC |language=en}}</ref>

===Death and legacy at Yale===
[[File:Ezra_Stiles_College_Courtyard.jpg|thumb|[[Ezra Stiles College]] at Yale]]Stiles died in New Haven in 1795, while serving as president.

It is false that Stiles is responsible for the addition of the Hebrew words [[Urim and Thummim|"Urim" and "Thummim"]] ({{Langx|he|אורים ותמים}}) to the Yale seal. Indeed, the Hebrew on the Yale seal appears on Stiles' own master's degree diploma from Yale in 1749, decades before he became president of Yale College.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=O-uOQgAACAAJ&q=dan+oren Oren, Dan A. (2001) Joining the Club: A History of Jews and Yale, Revised edition, p. 347.]</ref>

In 1961, Yale named a new residential college in his honor: [[Ezra Stiles College]]. The college is noted for its design by modernist architect [[Eero Saarinen]].

Stiles' upholstered armchair is currently in the [[Yale University Art Gallery]] in [[New Haven, Connecticut]]. The chair was made in [[Newport, Rhode Island]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Upholdtered armchair, RIF5502 |url=https://rifa.art.yale.edu/detail.htm?id=168671&type=0 |website=The Rhode Island Furniture Archive at the Yale University Art Gallery |access-date=4 February 2020}}</ref>