You may wish to consider the explanation of  a Yale Law School graduate in the column entitled, Why Yale Law Is So Good at Producing Reactionaries Like JD Vance, and ask whether these graduates are reactionaries, to what extent did the School generate the approach described, and if they should be criticized as Prof. Feldman does.

Albert, Noah's not my favorite.   He asks an important question thought.  But he gives the wrong answer.  My dad was a NYC police officer, so we were working class until my brother got very ill, insurance ran out, and we existed as not-the-poorest but poor.  For the first 5 years of my life I lived in a rundown tenement in the Williamsburg, Brooklyn that used to be a slum.  Then we moved to subsidized housing.  I lived there thru college as I could not afford to live in a dorm and I worked 3 days a week 9 to 5 for all 3 1/2 years I was in college, graduating early to save a semester's tuition, and I worked full time from graduation January until I started at Yale to save up some money.

I felt out of place at Yale, hving gone to one of the wrost hight schools in NYC, now closed for its poor performance, had not read the right books, did not have preppie clothes, knew nothing of which tableware was which or even what a top sheet was on a bed.  I smoked (still do), drank hard liquor, wore makeup and cursed up a storm, just like all poor and blue collar kids do.  And I felt as out of place at Yale as any of the poeple mentioned by Feldman.  That does not, hwover, make you turn into a reactionary.  His thesis is crap.  It is rather how much they wanted to be in the "elite," wanted to yield power over others, wanted to be stinking rich, not the poor-me-the-outsider that is the salient point.  

I am not rich.  I am still as blue-collar in my persona as one can be.  I didn't want to be someting other than who I am.  And I'm as left-wing as they come to this day.  

Having said that, I think Yale takes too few "regular folks" into the law school.  And I believe it is much more likely to take in a "down and out" conservative leaning soul than someone who might turn out to be a radical leftie.  They did take me but I believe that's for 2 reasons, at least one of which they regret.  The first (not Yale's cause for regret) was that my application reported that I had had a drug problem at a very young age, went to Phoenix House in Coney Island and was drug-free (not counting cigarettes) by the time I was 15.  That made me interesting.  The second (the one I believe Yale regretted almost at once) was my essay.  I wrote about coming up to New Haven to see Yale before applying with 2 of my buddies, neither of whom went to college -- few in my neighborhood did.  Having looked up what state Yale was in (and Harvard too, where we also went prior to my applying), we got train tickets and came up to attned  mixer at the college.  We had never met anyone like the people there, stuck up, socially awkward, condescending .... .  We left and went to a neighborhood bar and met some townies and had a great night.  I told that story in my essay applying to the law school, ending with you need someone street wise and regular at your school like me.  

I hope you are well Albert.  

Thaks for giivng me the chance to vent.

Thanks Susan and Albert for your contributions to this forum.  

As to why there ae so many conservatives out of Yale, one thing I remember is that Professor Ralph Winter once told me that he, Bork and Bowman figured that if they took very conservative stands the Libs would be shamed into giving them tenure.  Ralph had a wicked sense of humor and I wasn't sure if he was joking but I will let others decide for themselves!!

Much of what Susan says really resonates with me.  I was a working class kid from a state school that had only seen two graduates admitted to the hallowed halls of the Sterling Buildings.  I didn't think I had a chance in hell of being admitted so I wrote an essay about how to throw a beer blast for 900 undergraduates at my school making the point that this demonstrated that I paid close attention to details, wasn't afraid of hard work and that someone in my school's administration must have found me trustworthy.  I submitted my recent photo with my hair down to my shoulders. 

Let's just say I was shocked to be accepted and really enjoyed attending a school with such a wide variety of opinions and such wonderful classmates.  At first I was awed and intimidated to be there but  my classmates made me feel welcome and that I belonged  I was profesor Winter's summer intern and was fascinated by his conservative views, but having climbed part way up the right wing mountain I came back down the mountain.  What I took away is that the law is nothing more than a tool that could be used for good or evil depending upon who wielded that tool.  So I grabbed my Yale Law tool box when I left New Haven and decided to use those tools to help my family to live a  more prosperous life than I had and to try to use those tools in a way that would do no harm and maybe some good.

My conclusion is that Yale Law students are whom they are well before they pass under the stone frescoes and YLS just does a good job at training leaders who can effectively use the tools YLS provides -- how its alums choose to use the blessings of a Yale Law education is the result of the choices its alums make and not the result of some indoctrination by its professors.

I enjoyed your thoughts on this topic and your willingness to share your journey.  I was also comforted to know someone else wrote a way-out essay in the Yale admission process.  

I agree with you that "indoctrination" by professors is not the problem.  But the professors being so of-a-kind right or left is what made me feel so disparaged by them, not Bob Clark, not Bob Cover and not Geoffrey Hazard, but the rest, including Ralph despite our bantering back and forth for 3 years.

I was, I believe, the only Yalie to graduate without a job, and I don't just mean in our class, but for my guess is many many years before and after.  I did not want to go to a big law firm, or a little one for that matter.  Interviewed mostly for govt and public interest jobs but my Susan-ness turned all those folks off.  (I will get to my reference to Ralph in a moment.)  So everyone left New Haven and there I sat.  While I was very close to Geoff and Bob Cover (Clark had left for Harvard by then); I had not asked either for references or help, not wanting to impinge on our friendship.  I thought I had more "common sense" than almost everyone, but did not think of myself as "smart" in the way you-all were smart.  Book smart.  But finally desperate I asked for Bob Cover's help and he sent me to interview at a small lefty law firm in NY, which represented Cuba among other lefty clients.  They asked what organizations I belonged to at Yale and I said I thought the question inappropriate, delving into my political associations.  I said if they wanted to know if I would have trouble representing Cuba or any other lefty client, they should ask.  They did not hire me.  Then I went to Ralph and he sent me to Cleary Gottlieb.  I got into the partner's gigantic corner office and he said "Ralph says you're a crazy women, whom I'd get a kick out of.  So show me, just how crazy are you."  Obviously no job offer out of that no-real-interview.  Mid-summer Harry Wellington, also no fan of mine, called to say Chris Dodd wanted a Yale Law to work with him on the newly formed House Assassinations Committee and he'd recommended me, never telling Chris that I was the only Yalie left.  So I got my first job.

I had won a writing competition for the job of Asst to the President of the ABA but Leonard Janofshy wanted me to fly out to Calif, meet his partners befoer offering me the job.  I went, his partners were appalled and before leaving Calif Leonard told me he could not hire me because 1) he was Jewish and so was I and the ABA was a Southern based org and he could not risk their thinking he was turning it into some Jewish cabal; and 2) that I was a woman and people would think we were having an affair. I wet to Getman my labor law teacher on returning from L.A. and said I wanted to sue him and the ABA and Jules wisely told me that if I started my career suing the Pres of the ABA I'd never work again.  

Years later when Geoff went on leave the professors at Yale refused to let me teach his class as a guest lecutrere, not a visitor mind you.  That was when I was in New Haven writing the textbook Geoff and I published.  Years later when I was offered a visiting professorship at Yale's Management School, again the law school professors refused to let me do a "guest" course on ethiss at the law school and when the Management School wanted to hire me, some of the professors you all so admire wrote bad letters about me.  I know because I had by then good friends at the Managment School, where I visited for 2 years.  Most notably, then -Sterling Professor of Economics Steve Ross, who told me.  I was offered that job anyway.  But did not want to teach in a management school so turned it down.

I did teach at the law school one semester in those 2 years.  Because the stuents heard me give a lecture and held a protest to make the law school let me teach there.  YLS gave in as it does to its students, not me, mind you, but most.

I end by sayiing that almost all our classmates did make me feel welcome, no matter that one went to Ralph and said he could not learn with me in the class and a few other such complaints.  But overall I felt embraced by you all, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for that.

Dear Susan and Carl,

I am glad that you both felt welcomed by our classmates and continue to contribute to our class activities.  Prof. Feldman ascribed the presence of “reactionaries,” like J. D. Vance among an admitted small proportion our alumni, in large part to the alienation of those students at the YLS.

I share Susan and Carl’s skepticism about the cause and effect results of such alienation. It also seems clear that most of the class members who did not come from elite backgrounds have, like Susan and Carl, adopted progressive views as alumni. On the other hand, some conservative members of our class have stated to me that they felt treated as outsiders while at the YLS because of their political beliefs. I thus think it is a legitimate to ask whether our students and faculty should do more to make students with such beliefs and/or from non-elite backgrounds more welcomed, particularly if this may not make many of them less “reactionary,” and may even result in more “reactionary” graduates.

Best wishes,

Albert

You may be right Albert.  And I tried.  Not just going out of my way to befreind, for example, Wendell, to stand next to him he beautifully played the piano and having many long talks with him, but also doing my best to befriend anyone in our class whom I perceived to be most isolated, so they would not feel so alone.  I do not know how our professors treated those with a conservative bent, maybe it was less welcomng, I don't know but my gut says it was not worse than they treated those with a blue-collar sheen that Yale did not wear off.  Thomas' wore off, perhaps with the exception of his fear about his accent; Vance's too.  (I hasten to add, race is another matter entirely.)  But as for their socio-economic backgrounds I believe while they were at Yale that gloss had already wore off, given where they'd already been.  And today nothing about them except their story telling makes it noticeably that either was poor or from working folk.  My background is as evident as ever.  Maybe because of my odd brain formation, which now has a name by the way, 1q 44 duplication syndrome, a very rare genetic mutation about which not much is known, except that it affects brain function. Maybe because as a plump, clumsy chld who didn't fit in because my head would not do things others found easy, like adding or being neat, or grammar or any sport activity, save dancing,and that's just a partial list,  I grew up knowing what it felt to be "other."  But to close out my indulgent rambling, I thought Feldman's essay was vacuus.  Yes, I know, that bluntness if just what makes me so "difficut,' and the nakedness of this note and all my writing is yet another "problem."  Oh, well.