Feldman: Why Yale Law Is So Good At Producing Reactionaries Like JD Vance

Bloomberg Op-Ed:  Why Yale Law Is So Good at Producing Reactionaries Like JD Vance, by Noah Feldman (Harvard):

JD Vance’s Yale Law School pedigree came up at least a dozen times at the Republican National Convention. His degree from the institution gives the inexperienced Vance more legitimacy and validates his Horatio Alger story.

The use of elite educational credentials by populist critics of elite education isn’t new. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who went to Yale College and Harvard Law School, did a version of the same thing when he was running for president. Senator Josh Hawley, he of the raised fist on Jan. 6, graduated from Yale Law in 2006. Representative Elise Stefanik, who spent much of the past year grilling college presidents on Capitol Hill, graduated from Harvard College. And Trump himself likes to brag about his bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School (although at the time, over half of applicants were accepted). ...

The law school is small to begin with, graduating only around 200 students a year, meaning there are about 600 law students at a time. And while there’s no official count, the number of those who identify as conservative is not likely to be much greater than 10% — and might be smaller. Consider: The photo on the homepage of the Yale Federalist Society chapter features just 20 students. Their rarity is doubtless one reason Yale Law conservatives ascend so quickly. ...

On the one hand, having gone there proves one is now a member of the elite. On the other, being exposed to Yale elites confirms one’s belief that populist conservatism is the right way to see the world.

Vance benefited enormously from Yale, making the connections that helped him to find a top-tier literary agent and launch his career in Silicon Valley. And it’s in part in hopes of providing this kind of elevator for working class students that elite institutions like Yale believe in the value of admitting students from a wide range of backgrounds. I believe in it myself.

But one result is the inevitable emergence of people who use their elite experience to become proponents of anti-elitism. That’s their right.

I would venture to suggest, however, that elite institutions can and should do better in being aware of and trying to minimize the alienation associated with being any kind of an outsider there — whether based on social class, race, religion, or conservative politics. Some culture shock is inevitable so long as elite educational institutions draw so heavily on the children of economic and educational elites. Yet we can teach our students, from day one through graduation, to think harder about the experiences of others, and to take some of the moralizing out of their encounters with people who think differently. The real-world effects might give us more thoughtful graduates and fewer reactionaries.