Yale Book Awards, 2023

This spring YWAA leaders presented the annual Yale Book Awards, which are awarded to outstanding Westchester high school students. The schools select the winners, who are cited for excellence in academics, extracurricular activities and contributions to the community.

A preliminary list of this year's winners is shown below. As more schools announce winners, the list will increase. In most years, awards are granted to students from over 25 Westchester high schools. 

This year's winners include some who have started or led service organizations on campus, been engaged in research in biology, excelled in a broad range of AP courses, starred on sports teams (baseball, wrestling and soccer), and won county honors in band and music (violin and trumpet)

Teachers, counselors and principals help to choose one student for each designated high school. Winners are highlighted at honors programs or school events and receive a selected book from YWAA and a certificate of achievement. 

In years past, the book included such titles as Yale Book of Quotations, Mapping the Heavens: The Radical Scientific Ideals That Reveal the Cosmos, and A Better Planet: Forty Big Ideas for a Sustainable Future. 

Winners, who are often students completing junior years, may consider applying to Yale, but are not required to do so. 

For more about YWAA Book Award presentations since 2014, click YALE-BOOK-AWARDS. 

Click YALE-WESTCHESTER to see a list of winners since 2008, 

Yale Book Awards Winners, 2023 (as of July-2023)

Eastchester High School (Lucy Mortensen)

Edgemont High School (Kathryn Lux Koch)

New Rochelle High School (Eileen Weisner)

Port Chester High School (Frances Nakeysha Fevrier)

Salesian High School (Joseph Roman IV)

Scarsdale High School (Kyle Pidedjian)

School of the Holy Child (Rebecca Weigle)

Tuckahoe High School (Joanne Arana)

Valhalla High School (Sarthak Bagchi)

White Plains High School (Shariya Hasan)

Woodlands High School (Alexander Maiello)

Whipple '75 Discusses Biden in Office

Chris Whipple '75 spoke at the YWAA/Scarsdale Forum event, June 3, 2023 (YWAA photos).

Author Chris Whipple '75 chronicled and reviewed the first half of the Biden presidency at a special lecture in Scarsdale, June 3. His speech was part of the lecture series sponsored by the Scarsdale Forum and the YWAA speaker series, held at the Scarsdale Library.  

Whipple shared details from his latest publication and offered in insider's account of President Biden in office. He later signed copies of the book, The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden's White House.  He is also the author of acclaimed books The Gatekeepers and The Spy Masters.

Whipple is a long-time documentarian and won Emmys as a producer at ABC News and CBS News. To purchase a copy of the new book, click Biden Presidency. 

About 50 people, including Yale alumni and Westchester residents, attended the event.

For more about the YWAA speaker series, click YWAA-Events. 

Author Whipple Will Speak in Scarsdale

Appearing in Scarsdale June 3, Chris Whipple '75 will share observations of the Biden administration from his latest book.

Chris Whipple '75, the author, television producer and documentary filmmaker, will speak about his newly published book The Fight for His Life: Inside Joe Biden's White House at the Scarsdale Library in Scarsdale, Saturday, June 3 at 2 pm. 

The event will be hosted by the Scarsdale Forum, the Scarsdale Library and YWAA. It is also part of the YWAA lecture series, which brings Yale-affiliated speakers to Westchester. Guests can attend the June 3 event in person or register and join online via Zoom. (See below.)

Whipple's latest work chronicles the first two years of President Biden's administration, starting in its early days after the inauguration, when Biden confronted crises ranging from the pandemic to the revolt on Capitol Hill, from the conflict in Afghanistan to demonstrations against racial injustice. 

Whipple, granted access to the inner workings of the White House, provides an insider's account of the first half of the Biden presidency. 

In a review of the book in the New York Times, author John Gans wrote, "Whipple shines when, like the documentarian he is, he lets people talk....Whipple proves adept at getting members of a relatively opaque administration to play the blame game in print." 

He adds, "For any future writer eager to describe Biden's first two years, this will be the book cited first and most often."

In February, Whipple lectured on campus at Yale, sharing his Biden observations at Yale's Jackson School. The event was hosted by the School's International Security Studies program. 

He is also the author of the book The Gatekeepers (2017), which examines the responsibilities and extraordinary burdens of White House Chiefs of Staff. In January, he wrote an opinion essay for the New York Times about the impactful departure of Biden Chief of Staff Ron Klain, who is also a primary source in Whipple's latest book.

Whipple's book The Spy Masters (2021) describes the vast influence of CIA directors on U.S. history. "This book is part oral history and part old-fashioned storytelling," a reviewer for the Yale Alumni Magazine wrote in 2021. 

As a documentarian and producer, he has received Emmy awards and nominations for his work at ABC News, CBS News and Sixty Minutes.  

While at Yale, Whipple participated in the Yale Political Union, wrote for the New Journal, and played ice hockey. He majored in history. 

To register for the event (in person or via Zoom), click the link Scarsdale Library-June 3. To purchase the book online, click the link The Fight of His Life. (The library is located at 54 Olmsted Road.) Copies of the new book will be available for purchase at the event. Whipple will sign copies after he speaks.

In January, the Scarsdale Forum and Library and YWAA hosted Yale Law professor Akhil Reed Amar '80, '84 JD, who spoke about his latest book on the U.S. Constitution The Words That Made Us. Other speakers for the series have included Yale professors Paul Friedman, Laurie Santos, Meg Urry and Joanne Freeman. 

Prof. Amar: "The Words That Made Us"

Yale Law Prof. Akhil Reed Amar '80, '84 JD made a return trip to Scarsdale, Jan. 29, to present his latest book The Words That Made Us and try to convince his audience that understanding the meaning  of the U.S. Constitution was more important than the country's current attention on the results of the Eagles vs. 49ers, an NFL play-off football game that was played while he spoke in Westchester.  

In a lively 60-minute lecture and spirited 30-minute Q-and-A session, he stated his case and shared well-informed opinions on any current political issue or trend on the country's plate in 2023. He stated firmly U.S. citizens have a responsibility to learn and understand the U.S. Constitution. He referred to the U.S. signing of the Constitution in 1787 as the country's "Big Bang" event. 

Prof. Amar, a Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science and an acclaimed scholar on the topic, was a guest lecturer for the Scarsdale Forum and YWAA Speaker Series at the Scarsdale Library.   In 2016, he spoke at a similar YWAA-Scarsdale gathering, presenting his book The Law of the Land: A Grand Tour of the Constitutional Republic. At that time, he focused on the 2016 presidential election. 

At the Scarsdale lecture Jan. 29, Prof. Amar addressed the Constitution's importance and impact in 2023. As the worst of the pandemic disappears, Prof. Amar said he wanted to be the "virus" that infects U.S. citizens to encourage them to read, study and understand sections of the Constitution.  The Words that made the U.S. (the Constitution), he said--pun intended, are "the words that made us."

About 50 community members and Yale alumni attended the lecture in person; another 17 dialed in via Zoom. 

He highlighted the differences in what other popular Yale-graduate historians (Ron Chernow '70 and David McCullough '55) write about (American history) vs. what he teaches and writes about (American history and Constitution Law). 

For the alumni in the audience, he provided data to show the vast influence of Yale graduates in U.S. Government, based on top leadership positions in all three branches today and through history (U.S. Congress, Supreme Court and the U.S. Presidency). Many in those roles today, he appointed out, had been his students at Yale. 

To purchase the book, click The Words That Made Us.

For more about other speakers in the YWAA Lecture Series, click LECTURES.

Yale Law's Amar Returns to Scarsdale

 

Prof. Akhil Reed Amar is scheduled to present a lecture on his area of expertise, the U.S. Constitution, in Scarsdale, Sunday, Jan. 29 (Yale photo)

Yale Law School Professor Akhil Reed Amar '80, '84JD will return to Westchester to speak at the Scarsdale Forum in Scarsdale, N.Y., Sunday, Jan. 29, 2023, at 3 p.m. The event is co-sponsored by the Yale Westchester Alumni Association (YWAA) and is part of the Scarsdale Forum Sunday Speakers Series. 

The Scarsdale Public Library will host the event in its Scott Room (54 Olmsted Road). See link below for those who wish to join via Zoom. 

Prof. Amar, one of the most popular faculty members on campus and one of the most renowned scholars of the U.S. Constitution, has taught at Yale Law School since 1985. He has written numerous books on the Constitution and will discuss his most recent book, The Words That Made Us, his study of "America's constitutional conversation" from 1760-1840.

The event is open to all, including Yale alumni, families and friends, and will be streamed via Zoom.

Mark Spencer, reviewing the book in The Wall Street Journal described it as a "masterly synthesis of history and law." Reviewer Adam Cohen in The New York Times Book Review described the book, published in 2021, as a "deeply probing, highly readable study of America's (Constitution)."

Prof. Amar was also a guest speaker in the lecture series in May, 2016, when he focused on the upcoming presidential election in the U.S. in that year.

In his 2012 book, America's Unwritten Constitution: The Precedents and Principles We Live By, Prof. Amar claimed the Constitution must be read "as a whole rather than as a jumble of discrete clauses." In 2015, he wrote The Law of the Land: A Grand Tour of Our Constitutional Public.

He has written opinion pieces for The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Atlantic.

The YWAA lecture series the past decade has also hosted other prominent Yale professors, including Prof. Paul Freedman who spoke about the culinary and restaurant history in America (2019), Prof. Laurie Santos who outlined keys to happiness as part of her globally popular "Happiness" course at Yale (2019), Prof. Marc Lapadula who announced his list of the top six films that influenced the American film industry (2018), Hugh Price '66L who once led the National Urban League (2017), Prof. Joanne Freeman who chronicled "dirty stories" of American politics in the 1790s (2015), and Prof. Meg Urry who introduced her Westchester audience to the "black holes" of physics (2014).

For more about Prof. Amar's previous lecture and about the YWAA Lecture Series, click on the links below:

YWAA: Prof. Amar, the Constitution and the Presidential Election of 2016

YWAA Lecture Series

To participate via Zoom, click on the link to register:

Amar Zoom registration, Jan-29-2023-3pm