The university’s law school has been buffeted by the allegations against the Supreme Court nominee, an alumnus, as politically charged students question its values.
Students and faculty members from Yale Law School packed the campus’s largest church on Tuesday for a hastily arranged town hall, where they spoke about the sexual assault allegations swirling around the Supreme Court nominee, Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, a 1990 graduate of the school.
That was after a campus sit-in that prompted the cancellation of many classes, and protests in Washington, D. C., where two of their colleagues were arrested, and a blistering email that a group of students sent out to their classmates and faculty that said that the Kavanaugh nomination had exposed “our entire school’s culture of legal elitism and fixation on proximity to power.”
It was an abrupt shift on campus. In the days after Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination in June, the school’s website boasted that, if confirmed, he would be the fourth sitting member of the Supreme Court who had gone to Yale. The school’s dean, Heather K. Gerken, called him “a longtime friend to many of us in the Yale Law School community.” Other professors praised him.
Now, in the wake of recent troubling allegations linked to the school, the authors of the email said many students felt even more “alienated, disillusioned, and frustrated with the ambivalence and moral abdication of this institution, its faculty, and its administration.”
The furor over the nomination was “a moment of reckoning for all of us.”
Yale Law School, long regarded as one of the best in the country, has always stood out as an intimate, largely liberal bastion with a nonpareil track record in propelling graduates to prestigious court clerkships and white-shoe law firms. And the pinnacle of accomplishment, arguably, is a seat on the Supreme Court, where a Justice Kavanaugh would join the Yale alumni Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., and Sonia Sotomayor.
But these days, Yale is experiencing an unusually intense bout of existential hand-wringing, buffeted by the allegations against Judge Kavanaugh, the paroxysms of the #MeToo movement, and a more diverse, politicized student body uncomfortable with the privilege of an Ivy League pedigree, even as it actively pursues it. The school, student activists now say, has been overly obsessed with burnishing credentials, turning a blind eye to concerns about the behavior of its alumni and faculty.
What has compounded the tensions, students and faculty say, is the confluence of other sex and status controversies swirling around the school. Last week, the Guardian reported that Amy Chua, one of the school’s star professors, had told female students they needed to have a “certain look” in order to clerk for Judge Kavanaugh, a charge she has denied.
Her husband, Jed Rubenfeld, also a star professor, said he is under investigation by Yale, though he said he did not know why and the school would not comment. And critics have said the school should have known about Alex Kozinski, a prominent federal judge who abruptly resigned last year after multiple women accused him of sexual harassment, for whom Yale students often clerked.
The school’s administration said that its initial reaction to Judge Kavanaugh’s choice was in keeping with its response to other high-profile nominations involving alumni, including that of Justice Sotomayor, a liberal on the court, and that it was meant to be nonpartisan. Among faculty members who praised him was Professor Akhil Reed Amar, a liberal constitutional scholar, who later wrote a New York Times opinion article arguing in favor of the appointment. (Mr. Amar has subsequently said that he had second thoughts in the wake of the sexual assault allegations .)
At the time, there was a muted reaction from the faculty on campus, though a group of students and alumni signed an open letter denouncing what they perceived as the school’s endorsement, arguing against Judge Kavanaugh, a conservative, on political grounds, saying that he “is a threat to the most vulnerable.”
Alyssa Peterson, a third-year law student, was among those who signed it. The law school, she said, “has a lot of internal reckoning to do.”
But as the fall semester began and the accusations against Judge Kavanaugh, first lodged by Christine Blasey Ford, and then by a member of his Yale undergraduate class, Deborah Ramirez, emerged, the anger at the school boiled over. Many invoked comparisons to Justice Thomas’s confirmation hearings in 1991, when another Yale Law graduate, Anita Hill, accused him of sexual harassment. Justice Thomas is also conservative in his views.
When asked about students’ concerns, Dean Gerken said in a statement that “this conversation has been a long time coming.”
She continued: “Our students are calling upon the best values of this institution, and we are listening carefully. This is a moment of reflection for this institution, and we will do our best to answer our students’ call and work in partnership to make sure we live up to those values.”
The momentum has shifted so much that law students at Yale who describe themselves as conservatives and who signed a petition supporting Judge Kavanaugh say that they dare not speak out publicly, for fear of being ostracized.
“It would just be a total land mine explosion to speak about this publicly,” a second-year student said, speaking anonymously because of fear of what he said was a “culture of intimidation.” “If you don’t believe Dr. Ford, then you are sexist. You’re just an evil person.”
At the center of the debate has been the issue of clerkships, prestigious appointments to work with judges that burnish a young lawyer’s resume and can help propel them to the legal profession’s heights. Clerkships have become even more prized by prospective law students in recent years, especially after the legal profession was jolted by the financial crisis of 2008, said Asha Rangappa, a former associate dean and graduate of the law school, who is now a senior lecturer and director of admissions at Yale’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs.
Judge Kavanaugh was among those who had clerked for Judge Kozinski, and Judge Kavanaugh has said that he did not notice anything amiss.
Last week as Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination was caught up in the sexual assault allegations, some students became upset at comments by Douglas Kysar, a deputy dean. Mr. Kysar said Yale had known for years about boorish behavior by Judge Kozinski, a federal appellate judge in California. The students, however, interpreted his comments to mean Yale had known about sexual harassment complaints. Mr. Kysar later said that “I always wish I had done more.”
That strained credulity with one student, Dana Bolger, who tweeted: “Do More Now.”
The school has also worked to widen the pool of those who become clerks, and Ms. Chua, who is also the author of the parenting book,“The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” has been one of the most effective mentors for women and students of color, Ms. Rangappa said.
The Guardian, quoting anonymous students, said that Ms.
