Getting to know Yale Leaders—Judy Schiff, 60 years at Yale

As Yale’s chief research archivist and New Haven’s city historian, Judy has spent her career documenting and teaching Yale and Elm City history while making history herself as the longest-serving staff member in recent memory.

Judy has worked on acquisitions, donor relations, research and reference, and the projects she most loves—exhibits. “My favorites,” she says, “were the milestone anniversaries of Yale women, the 150th birthday of Emily Dickinson, Anne Morrow and Charles Lindbergh’s pioneering environmental work, and retrospectives of Yale and New Haven history.”

In addition to full-time responsibilities, Judy is a member of the team studying Yale and its slavery history, a project announced in 2020 by President Salovey and chaired by David Blight, Gilder Lehrman Center director.

Born in New York City, Judy moved to New Haven when she was four. The family lived in the Westville section, near the Yale Bowl, and she attended Hillhouse High School, which stood where Morse and Stiles colleges are today. After graduating from Barnard College with a B.A. in American history, Judy began working for Cowles Foundation for Economic Research. In six months, she moved to Sterling Memorial Library to catalog the papers of Yale linguist William Dwight Whitney. “I was fascinated,” recalls Judy, “to read the contents of thousands of letters from scholars and scientists all over the world, and to know that I was the first person to open them since the 19th century.”

Judy’s fascination grew when she developed professional relationships with such donors as the Lindberghs; Millicent Todd Bingham, whose mother Mabel Loomis Todd was the first editor of Emily Dickinson’s poetry; writer Walter Lippmann; and renowned scholars. Soon she was studying at night for a master’s in library science at Southern Connecticut State University. Judy also holds a master’s in history from Columbia University.

After Charles Lindbergh’s death, William Jovanovich of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich asked Judy to be coeditor to ready Lindbergh’s unfinished “Autobiography of Values” for publication. This led to a close friendship with Anne Morrow Lindbergh, and Judy’s seminar, “The Lindbergh Experience.” Appointments as visiting lecturer in the American Studies department, Timothy
Dwight College fellow, and History department adviser followed.

The emergence of Judy as Elm City historian was recognized with the publication of New Haven: An Illustrated History in 1981. Her chapter “The Social History” focused on women’s, ethnic, and black history, and on education, health, and the environment. In 1987, she received the Elm Ivy Award for contributing to “increased understanding and cooperation between Yale and the City of New Haven.”

Judy was the inaugural winner of the Edward Bouchet Legacy Award for publicizing the story of this early African American Yale graduate and the first to earn a Ph.D. in the United States. She has also garnered the Linda Lorimer Award for Distinguished Service and the Yale Medal, Yale Alumni Association’s highest honor, for breathing new life into “Old Yale,” her Yale Alumni Magazine column.

Judy’s fascination with archives has not waned in 60 years: “The most rewarding aspect is that my personal interests as a historian—women’s history, Black history, ethnic history, and New Haven history—are important to Yale and its mission.”