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#jdvance How Yale Propelled J.D. Vance’s Career
The G.O.P. vice-presidential nominee is remembered as a warm and personable student. But some are perplexed by what they see as his shift in ideology.

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A low-angle view of a gothic tower at Yale Law School.
When Yale Law accepted J.D. Vance for the fall of 2010, it offered him a nearly full ride.Credit...Christopher Capozziello for The New York Times
Stephanie Saul
By Stephanie Saul
July 17, 2024
Updated 9:30 a.m. ET
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When J.D. Vance applied to law school, he viewed it as a pathway out of his chaotic upbringing in working-class Middletown, Ohio.

Then he won a spot at his dream school. Yale Law not only accepted him for the fall of 2010, but also offered a nearly full ride.

Over the next three years, Yale dramatically influenced the trajectory of his life, leading to important connections, a job in venture capital and marriage to a classmate.

Even his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” was partly the outgrowth of a paper he wrote in a Yale class. And he leveraged the story, which chronicles his childhood and the alienation of the working class, into a best seller, a movie deal and a political career — winning election to the U.S. Senate in 2022, at age 38.

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Despite Yale’s transformative role in his life, Mr. Vance’s relationship with the school could be summed up as conflicted.

Graduating from Yale was “the coolest thing” he had ever done, “at least on paper,” he wrote in his memoir. But he also portrayed himself as an outsider who flubbed law firm interviews and was baffled when asked whether he preferred chardonnay or sauvignon blanc — he had never heard of either. And his classmates remember his sarcasm and cynicism when discussing what he thought of as the school’s liberal bubble.

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A framed portrait of J.D. Vance hanging against a white wall.
A photograph of J.D. Vance at Yale Law School, which displays portraits of notable graduates.Credit...James Bhandary-Alexander
Recently, he has adopted a more oppositional tone, taking on tax breaks for top universities. “Elite universities have become expensive day care centers for coddled children,” he wrote on social media.

A close look at Mr. Vance’s record at Yale, though, shows that he adapted rapidly, taking advantage of the school’s heady social and academic opportunities. He cooked for charity fund-raisers, organized reading groups, doted on his German shepherd, Casper, and led The Yale Law Journal’s flag football team. He spent a summer working on Capitol Hill.

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Many students and professors remember Mr. Vance as warm, personable and even charismatic. But several also said they were perplexed by what they saw as Mr. Vance’s profound ideological shift. They understood that he was conservative politically, but they viewed him as a Republican in the mold of John McCain or Mitt Romney.

Now, they say that he has abandoned his Never Trumper principles, taking hard lines against immigration and L.G.B.T.Q. rights, positions they believe he would not have previously embraced.

Sofia Nelson, a former classmate who is transgender and was once a close friend of both Mr. Vance and his wife, recalled that Mr. Vance delivered home-baked treats when they underwent top surgery. But years of friendship ended in 2021 over his support for an Arkansas bill opposing transgender care for minors.

“It hurt my feelings when he started saying hateful things about trans people,” they said.

Another classmate, Josh McLaurin, no longer talks to him, either.

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As apartment mates during their first year at Yale, Mr. McLaurin felt an affinity to Mr. Vance because they had both graduated from state schools. But their friendship began to fray, Mr. McLaurin said, after he chafed at what he viewed as Mr. Vance’s cynical and sarcastic jokes aimed at Yale elites.

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A smiling J.D. Vance in a crowd of supporters holding Trump signs.
Mr. Vance at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on Monday, where he was nominated for vice president.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times
Even so, the two stayed in touch after graduating in 2013. As the Republican presidential primaries were underway in February 2016, Mr. Vance discussed his dislike for Mr. Trump in a Facebook message. “I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler,” Mr. Vance wrote.

Mr. McLaurin, disturbed by Mr. Vance’s shift to support Mr. Trump, disclosed that message in 2022, during Mr. Vance’s campaign for U.S. Senate.

“He realized that the only way that he could realize and give effect to his own anger in politics was to identify with the MAGA movement,” said Mr. McLaurin, who is a Democratic state senator in Georgia.

In his memoir, Mr. Vance describes arriving at Yale, feeling like an “awe-struck tourist.”

“Yale Law, with its prestige and privilege, was a culture shock unlike anything I had ever experienced,” he wrote.

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But he developed a cadre of confidantes in a class of about 15 students assigned to remain together through the first semester. In his book, Mr. Vance describes his closest friends in that group as “misfit toys.”

In addition to Sofia Nelson, now a public defender in Detroit, the group included his future wife, Usha Chilukuri, the daughter of Indian immigrants, and Jamil Jivani, a Canadian from a mixed-race family. (Mr. Jivani, now a Conservative member of Canada’s Parliament, remains a close friend to Mr. Vance, but would not comment for this article.)

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Some who observed Mr. Vance in the group recall how he at first struggled with assignments. And his book describes comments he got that first year: “Not good at all,” one professor wrote. And on another paper: “This is a vomit of sentences masquerading as a paragraph. Fix.”

Amy Chua, a professor who taught his first-year contracts class, recalled in an interview that he scored near the top of 100 students on the exam, and that he admitted he had studied extra hard for the test.

It appeared, even to Ms. Chua, she said, that he lacked the intense interest in law exhibited by some students.

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Mr. Vance worked in a highly regarded law clinic for veterans and drove to Washington to negotiate on behalf of a client, but he was not among the most engaged students. By 2011, he had mostly lost interest in practicing law, he would later write.

George L. Priest, a Yale Law professor who has long identified as a Republican, recalled that Mr. Vance was good enough to be hired as his research assistant but not a standout. “He didn’t distinguish himself in any particular way in my view,” Mr. Priest said.

Mr. Vance won a spot on the staff of The Yale Law Journal — a prestigious position that is often a steppingstone to a coveted appellate court clerkship — but not as one of its top editors. He instead worked with a group of editors whose primary job was to check citations.

An avid Ohio State football fan, he was better known for organizing the publication’s flag football team, which played against other law review teams. In a posting to the Wall, a Yale chat group, he tried to recruit other staff members to the team, dangling a trip to Boston to play The Harvard Law Review. Then, he resorted to self-deprecation.

“My name is JD Hamel,” he wrote on the Wall in September 2012, using the surname acquired from his stepfather, one of several paternal figures in his unstable childhood. “Many of you don’t know me. Those who do understand that I’m a little chubby and a lot slow. If I can play flag football, so can you.”

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And in a paragraph that foreshadowed his political ambitions, he wrote: “Football is the most popular sport in America. Twenty years from now, when you’re at the county fair convincing Billy Bob and Gunther to support your fledgling campaign, you damn well better know the difference between offense and defense.”

In 2013, Mr. Vance, again posting as JD Hamel, complained on the Wall that he had filed his taxes in February but hadn’t received a refund by April.

“If I don’t get my refund by the time I graduate and go on vacation, I’ll be left to conclude that the Obama administration targets political enemies through tax laws,” he said, in a remark that appears to have been tongue-in-cheek.

One major influence at Yale, he has said, was a 2011 talk by Peter Thiel, the venture capitalist known for co-founding PayPal and supporting hard-right political candidates.

Mr. Thiel spoke about elite professionals trapped in hypercompetitive but unrewarding jobs while innovation had stalled.

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Mr. Vance would later write that the talk led him to forgo a law career; he would practice for less than two years.

“Peter’s talk remains the most significant moment of my time at Yale Law School,” Mr. Vance wrote. “He articulated a feeling that had until then remained unformed: that I was obsessed with achievement in se — not as an end to something meaningful, but to win a social competition.”

Inspired, Mr. Vance decided to track down the billionaire, according to Dan Driscoll, one of a small group of fellow veterans at Yale Law.

“I remember sitting at the kitchen table,” Mr. Driscoll said. “We Googled ‘Peter Thiel @’ for about two hours.” They finally located a Stanford University email address, and Mr. Vance sent him a note, according to Mr. Driscoll.

“Peter wrote back and said, ‘Stop by my house next time you’re out here,’” said Mr. Driscoll, a businessman who ran for Congress from North Carolina in 2022 as a Republican.

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Mr. Thiel would become a major supporter of both Mr. Vance’s venture capital firm and his Senate campaign.

Professor Chua was another pivotal connection.

Mr. Vance’s contracts class with her coincided with the release of her book about tough-love parenting, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.”

Toward the end of the semester, Mr. Vance, who had read the book, sent her an email, attaching a 20-page piece about growing up with a drug-addicted mother.

“You have a book in you,” she emailed back.

He continued to develop a 60-page manuscript in another class taught by Ms. Chua, international business transactions. Mr. Vance used his family’s story to discuss the ills befalling working-class white people, and infused personal stories with political theory.

“‘This grand theory is not working,’” Ms. Chua said she told him. “‘Turn this into your own memoir.’”

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“I think he took another whole year,” she added. “He kept working on it. He did independent studies with me.”

Then she introduced him to her literary agent, Tina Bennett.

He was off.

Sharon LaFraniere contributed reporting.

Stephanie Saul reports on colleges and universities, with a recent focus on the dramatic changes in college admissions and the debate around diversity, equity and inclusion in higher education. More about Stephanie Saul

See more on: 2024 Elections, J.D. Vance, Donald Trump
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