Hillary Clinton decided to go to Yale law school after a Harvard professor told her: 'We don't need any more women at Harvard'

Advertisement
Hillary Clinton decided to go to Yale law school after a Harvard professor told her: 'We don't need any more women at Harvard'

Hillary Clinton

Tyler Mallory/Associated Press

Then First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton is presented with an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Howard University in 1998.

In her new memoir chronicling the 2016 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton described how a Harvard law professor dissuaded her from attending his school, to which she had been accepted as a college senior, because "We don't need any more women at Harvard."

Advertisement

"That's part of why I went to Yale," Clinton wrote.

In a chapter entitled, "On Being a Woman in Politics," Clinton wrote about the sexism and gender-related adversity she has faced and witnessed throughout her life, beginning in elementary school when her classmates made fun of her glasses and the "lack of ankles on my sturdy legs," through sexist treatment she received as the first lady of Arkansas, and throughout her time in Washington.

Getting into law school was also made harder by sexism, Clinton wrote, recalling how men taking the Law School Admissions Test with her in 1968 harassed her and her female friend, telling them, "You don't need to be here" and "Why don't you go home and get married?"

Another told Clinton, "If you take my spot at law school, I'll get drafted, and I'll go to Vietnam, and I'll die."

Advertisement

Clinton said she put her head down and ignored the bullying.