Clinton's years at Yale

[Alamom]

Belleville News-Democrat
Serving Southwestern Illinois

Clinton's years at Yale Law are key to her political development


BY MATT STEARNS
McClatchy Newspapers
Nov. 22, 2007


NEW HAVEN, Conn. --All that Hillary Rodham Clinton would become -- all that inspires her allies and her enemies alike -- emerged during her years roaming the Gothic buildings of Yale Law School. She helped edit a journal that included cartoon police-pigs and that published a self-aggrandizing essay by a Black Panther who'd been convicted of murder. Yet she also helped calm a politically inflamed campus.

She nurtured an interest in using the law to aid the needy -- especially children -- that remains integral to her politics, but which opponents use to pummel her values. She projected an intelligence that impressed many, but that could be cool and intimidating.

Yale was no typical elite law school stamping out high-dollar associates for white-shoe firms. Small, with a class of about 200 -- perhaps 25 of them women -- the school emphasized using the law for social change. It attracted students "interested in a public service career," said Douglas Eakeley, one of Bill Clinton's roommates.

Rodham gained more prominence the second semester of her first year at Yale Law, when it seemed "the whole place was falling apart ... the most intense year in the history of Yale Law School," said Laura Kalman, who wrote "Yale Law School and the Sixties: Revolt and Reverberations."

Several Black Panthers were on trial for murder in New Haven. The campus, opened to New Left demonstrators associated with the trial, became a circus. Downtown business owners, fearing violence, boarded up their windows. A law library was set afire. The shooting deaths of four student demonstrators at Kent State University in Ohio by National Guardsmen further enraged campuses nationwide.........


more....

http://www.bnd.com/news/politics/story/184195.html

[LaReservaPr]

1. Thank You for posting this

The article was a very good read. K&R

[Adelante]

2. Interesting story, thanks nt

[MADem]

3. A sheepskin coat and a purple Gremlin!!!

Rhodeen remembers Rodham as "a vision in purple. She had on this sheepskin coat ... driving a purple Gremlin, and she had long Gloria Steinem hair and Gloria Steinem glasses"; a typical early '70s look, "only more so." They worked on a child custody case that sparked a deep interest in children's rights.



And you learn something new every day: Clinton was a year behind Rodham. She remained a year after she could have graduated, taking courses in child development.

[journalist3072]

4. Yea...I remember reading in a biography of Sen. Clinton before, that she actually finished Yale

a year earlier than President Clinton, but she wanted to stay with him, so she took an extra year there.

[DCKit]

5. That would imply that she values education.....

No wonder the Rethugs hate her.

[rAVES]

6. "She nurtured an interest in using the law to aid the needy"

We'll see...

[Bucky]

7. Among her fellow students at Yale Law were Robert Reich & Clarence Thomas

Can you imagine being in THAT study group?