A new book, Yale and Slavery, impugns many of the university’s founders, among them the donor from whom the American college takes its name, Elihu Yale. Yale was, among other things, a servant of the East India Company in Madras (Chennai) in the late seventeenth century. Using his deep knowledge of the sources, Alistair Parker subjects the new claims that Elihu Yale was a slave trader and slave holder to careful scrutiny and demonstrates that the evidence does not support the assertion that he was either of these things.