I saw how Yale produces radical conservatives
Governor Ron DeSantis. Senator Josh Hawley. Senator J.D. Vance. These days, the new conservative movement — at least its most energetic, populist wing — seems composed largely of Yale graduates. It is a curious phenomenon, one worth a deeper look, because it has something to teach liberals like me.
Senators Hawley and Vance, from Missouri and Ohio, are two of the youngest members of the Senate. Both have Yale Law degrees. DeSantis got his undergraduate degree from Yale. Another presidential candidate, the entrepreneur and author Vivek Ramaswamy, who is polling at 4 percent, also went to Yale Law School.
Over at the Supreme Court, half of the conservative justices — Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Brett Kavanaugh — are Yale Law graduates. (When you include Justice Sonia Sotomayor, we have nearly half the court coming out of Yale.) And at the level where Supreme Court opinions actually get written, Yale’s influence is even starker. Of the 38 Supreme Court clerks privileged enough to work on the decisions that will soon become Law with a capital L, 12 went to Yale. Despite being one of the smallest law schools in America, Yale placed as many clerks last year at the Supreme Court as the University of Chicago, Stanford, and the University of Virginia combined.
Other schools certainly contribute to the conservative movement and to the elite of American politics. But Yale — and Yale Law in particular — plays an oversized role in shaping the intellectual climate in which America’s politics operate. The Federalist Society, the prestigious conservative forum that has shaped generations of American lawyers and politicians, was founded at Yale.
What defines the new brand of Yaleeducated Republicans? They are populist in method and disposition, they are willing to provoke and unsettle the status quo, they are gunning for foundational change, and they believe in the use of state power to enforce traditionalist ends.
Today’s new conservative is actually a radical, shaped by the liberal environment of an elite campus and armed with the intellectual and legal tools to transform America’s politics. Long after Donald Trump is gone, these gilded guerrillas of the New Right will still be with us.
I am a Yale Law graduate myself. I was there in 2015 when the conservative movement mutated, and a small group broke off and began supporting Donald Trump. This group was viewed as an oddity at first by the rest of the law school, even by other conservatives.
I was friendly with some of these students. People warned me that I was wasting my time, or worse, spending it in the company of racists. But in 2015, when everyone was laughing at Trump’s antics and Jeb Bush was supposedly destined to be the GOP nominee, these students were arguing from first principles about the conservative revolution they could unleash. I took the opportunity to hear out their arguments. If a handful of students at one of the top law schools in the world were taking Trump seriously, perhaps there was more to Trump’s candidacy than my liberal bubble assumed?
These insurgent students were dismantling the conservative assumptions of the Bush and Reagan years. Free trade? How about making sure America’s economy benefits ordinary Americans? Immigration reform? How about ending the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship? Detaining and policing certain groups of people? FDR did it. Better relations with China? How about a trade war? The Republican Party, one of these students told me then, had been “a convenient alliance between elite businesspeople and Evangelicals. We’re making it about the average American. No one wants another Bush.”
As for abortion, the vitriolic language from the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision is an echo — down to the wording — of some of these conversations years ago. “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak . . . . ” These new Yale-educated Republicans, supercharged off populism and traditionalism, wanted to destroy the status quo and replace it with their own vision.
There was no more room in New Haven for conservative William F. Buckley’s outdated “God and Man at Yale.” Now it was all about God and Trump at Yale.
Yale was where I heard the term “Overton window” for the first time. When the Yale conservatives invited a speaker to campus who espoused genetic theories about racial differences in IQ, I wanted to know why. No one was going to be persuaded by the talk, no policy change would come of it. People would just get angry. But the point, I was told by a student then, was to alter the boundaries of the debate itself. The very act of inviting the speaker was changing the terms of the discussion — expanding the Overton window of acceptable discourse.
I offered strong challenges and arguments in all these debates, but the conservative students always had retorts and rebuttals. Because Yale’s campus was overwhelmingly liberal, the conservatives had to buttress their arguments with reasoning. Being outnumbered turned out to be an intellectual advantage. When you’re the odd one out on every issue and at every party, you’ll invariably end up refining your arguments, sharpening your points, ultimately improving your arguments and stories in those ever so slight ways that can end up being decisive.
As the Trump campaign gained steam, more students were attracted to the cause. Campuswide, an air of mockery and derision reigned, and students went deeper into their respective silos. It seemed impossible for students to even talk to someone who disagreed, much less be friends with them. Self-defeating progressive campus controversies around Halloween costumes and pronouns aggravated tensions. Hardly anyone around me was paying much attention to those controversies, but when they were magnified by right-wing media, the Trumpian conservatives got a shot of adrenaline. The once-fringe group at the law school was no longer so fringe. As one liberal student told me, “Conservatives show up to Yale moderate and leave more conservative.”
Rather than allow for open argument, discussion, and debate, the campus energy turned so sour that these people were considered enemies by most. They were driven underground, where they organized and bided their time. Now they did not hear the liberal arguments at all but had fuel poured over their philosophy. Most of their discussions were now in secret. The conservatives had become radicals — and Yale, in large part, had radicalized them.
This New Right is infused with the bitter, reactionary attitude of a person who has been shunned. Except now that person has won power and soon might win some more. These elite conservative functionaries and lawyers are becoming like a Leninist vanguard, claiming to speak on behalf of the disaffected masses, willing to rattle the consensus for attentional space and policy momentum. One of them could be president in the very near future.
The lesson in all this for me is that liberals must reinvigorate our own intellectual and political project. We liberals often forget that the work of democracy is one of organization and persuasion — of literally bringing people to our side. And the growing urge, on campus and elsewhere, to deride and censor others is a recipe for a permanent failure of the liberal project. An unwillingness to engage the other side eventually leads to an inability to communicate with people not already in agreement with us.
Only by returning to first principles, building a better narrative, and boldly laying out good arguments (rather than just our feelings) will we win this coming battle for democracy. Under no circumstances should American history be conceded, but rather the longer story of America as a multiracial republic should be championed.
We need less scolding and more dreaming. This means putting forth a concrete, substantive, affirmative vision of the progressive project, one that will materially improve the lives of ordinary working-class Americans. It means genuinely fighting for social justice rather than just posting about it on social media. It means reestablishing a spirit of open debate.
And it all begins by getting out of our bubbles and doing the democratic work of convincing people of our vision. It ends by winning power. In this respect, the conservatives may have something to teach us.