"NEW HAVEN, Connecticut—On most Monday mornings, the main corridor at Yale Law School bustles with students. Thirty years ago, a young Brett Kavanaugh was one of them.
On this Monday morning, as the Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington, D.C., wrestled with new allegations against Kavanaugh, everything here was still.
More than 300 demonstrators dressed in black gathered at around 9:30 a.m. for a silent sit-in to protest Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court and to support the two women who have accused him of sexual misconduct: Christine Blasey Ford, who knew Kavanaugh in high school, and Deborah Ramirez, a Yale classmate whose allegations first appeared in The New Yorker Sunday night. Some professors cancelled classes on Monday to allow students to attend the demonstration or travel to Washington, to protest outside the Supreme Court.
The assault allegations against Kavanaugh have sent shockwaves through the law school, where a number of prominent professors initially supported his nomination. Ford, 51, a research psychologist, claims Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her and tried to remove her clothing when he was 17 and she was 15. Ramirez, 53, who studied sociology and psychology, alleges Kavanaugh exposed himself to her and thrust his genitals in her face when both had been drinking heavily at a dorm party in Lawrence Hall when they were freshmen. Kavanaugh has categorically denied both allegations.
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In July, a law school press release praising Kavanaugh, a 1990 Yale law graduate, as an expert legal mind and an “incomparable mentor” drew criticism from liberal students and faculty members, many of whom signed a petition that called the judge “a threat to the most vulnerable.” Over the last week, that criticism has intensified at the nation’s top ranked law school.
On Thursday, The Guardian reported that two prominent law school faculty members, Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld, had advised female students interviewing for clerkships with Kavanaugh to dress attractively. (Chua denied those allegations in a letter to the law school community.) Then, over the weekend, a majority of law school faculty members—including two former deans, Robert Post and Harold Koh—signed an open letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee calling for a full investigation into the accusations against Kavanaugh.
By that point, a group of about 50 law school students had already begun organizing the sit-in. What began as a discussion about politics in Washington became a reckoning with a culture in New Haven that has divided students and faculty members. “Some people are scared, some people are angry,” said Nick Kilstein, a first-year law student.
“This is going to be a very tense week at the law school,” said John Langford, a faculty member who participated in the sit-in. “It’s certainly one of the more politically fraught moments, which I think reflects things that are internal to the law school, as well as broader political dynamics right now.”
In a courtyard just off the main hallway, students have hung signs criticizing the law school’s institutional culture, as rumors swirl about how much a deputy law school dean knew about allegations of sexual harassment against appellate court judge Alex Kozinski, who resigned last year after multiple allegations by former female staffers and clerks and for whom Kavanaugh clerked in the early 1990s. “Sex Sells @ YLS,” one sign reads. “Is there nothing more important to YLS than its proximity to power and prestige?” another asks."
