Yale Law School snubs JD Vance – but mentions Taylor Swift

JD Vance, the junior senator from Ohio who was nominated Monday as Donald Trump’s running mate, is a graduate of Yale Law School. But that’s not what you’d expect from Yale. There’s no mention of that affiliation on the Yale Law School website.

An article published Tuesday afternoon describes a “reading group about Taylor Swift” organized by current students. A section titled “In the News” meticulously lists media appearances by alumni – but in recent weeks contains not a single mention of Vance, 49, who graduated from Yale Law School in 2013 and is now just an election victory and a heartbeat away from the Oval Office.

Yale Law School

There is also a telling lack of pride in one of the Republicans’ most promising candidates on Yale’s main page, which features a news article about how “routine violence shaped European empires” but nothing at all about the man who could shape conservative politics for years to come.

At least on Tuesday morning, a school-wide strategy seemed to be in the works. The Yale Law School account on X shared messages about Frank Jimenez (class of ’91), general counsel for GE HealthCare, and Becca Heller (class of ’10), executive director of the International Refugee Assistance Project – but ignored the fact that one of the school’s members might one day sit in the Oval Office.

Vance came to Yale in 2010 after serving in the U.S. Marines and attending Ohio State. He then worked in venture capital and rose to prominence in 2016 with Hillbilly Elegyhis devastating memories of a childhood of cultural and financial poverty. The last time Yale Law School recognized him as one of its own was in a 2017 news story related to a book talk he was scheduled to give on campus.

His political career began soon after, and during his rise he disappointed those who initially saw him as a principled response to Trump-style populism. He would embrace that populism and more.

To secure Trump’s support in his Senate campaign, Vance tried to suppress the memory of the comparison to Adolf Hitler, his roommate at Yale said.

“JD is kissing my ass, he wants my support so badly,” Trump said in 2022 – at a rally for Vance.

A communications representative for Yale Law School did not respond to a request for comment, but numerous Yale alumni – both from the law school and the undergraduate college – expressed their own thoughts.

“Yale Law School should be ashamed. It has now given us JD Vance, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, John Yoo and Alan Dershowitz,” noted Michiko Kakutani, a 1976 Yale graduate and New York Times A former book critic became a Trump critic, referring to several other graduates of the school who became leading conservatives.

She pointed out that Ron DeSantis, the Trump-style governor of Florida who is scheduled to speak at the Republican convention in Milwaukee on Tuesday, is a graduate of Yale College.

One Republican who is openly lobbying to win Vance’s Senate seat if it becomes vacant is Vivek Ramaswamy, another anti-elite fighter who – you guessed it – earned his law degree from Yale University.