Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from Allie Bice. Send tips | Subscribe here| Email Eli | Email Lauren When President JOE BIDEN took office, he vowed to get rid of the buttoned-up, elitist culture that often defines Washington and, more specifically, White House hiring — the “pale, male and Yale” flavor, as the old saying goes. Biden has made progress on the “pale” and “male” fronts, naming an all-female communications team when he first took office and elevating Black and Latino staffers to key decision-making roles. But he can’t seem to shake the Yale part. Or, more specifically, Yale Law School. Out of roughly 140 lawyers in the White House, approximately 36 hold degrees from Yale Law School, more than any other law school, according to a West Wing Playbook analysis. That figure doesn’t include the dozens of Yale Law graduates who have been appointed to agency positions throughout the Biden administration. The density of Yale lawyers on the White House campus has become a bit of a joke among some staffers who say it’s hard to go into a room without bumping into at least one alumni. Yale Law degrees are so prevalent that the shared New Haven experience has also been a way to connect with colleagues, especially earlier in the administration when Covid kept people from working in-person and many staffers were trying to get to know each other over Zoom. It’s not uncommon for grads of top law schools to land prestigious White House positions (there also were plenty of Yale Law alumni in the Obama administration). And it’s not only Democrats who have ties to the institution. Republican lawmakers may bemoan the elitism of Ivy Leaguers but many are, themselves, graduates. The numbers, nevertheless, lay bare the difficulty of Biden’s push to make White House hiring result in “the most diverse administration ever” without a sharper focus on class or educational background. Among the Biden senior staff who went to Yale Law are national security adviser JAKE SULLIVAN, deputy national security adviser JON FINER and senior adviser and staff secretary NEERA TANDEN. White House counsel STUART DELERY also is a Yale Law grad, as was his predecessor DANA REMUS. Recently-departed director of the National Economic Council BRIAN DEESE attended Yale Law, as did NEC deputy director BHARAT RAMAMURTI (both overlapped with Finer at Yale). Interestingly enough, of the approximately 29 total lawyers in the White House counsel’s office specifically, just three appear to have attended Yale Law. It’s not just leadership. Many of the junior staffers also went to Yale Law. The end result isn’t just a White House staff shaped by remarkably similar educational upbringings but a closed-off personnel ecosystem that becomes harder and harder for outsiders to pierce. “There’s a pipeline effect,” said a former Biden White House official and Yale Law grad. “Alumni recruit other Yale Law School alumni.” White House spokesperson ROBYN PATTERSON defended the administration’s hiring. “The state school graduate who sits in the Oval Office and his HBCU-educated Vice President might disagree with the idea that non-Ivy Leaguers are locked out of policy making processes within the most diverse White House in history,” she said. Another current White House official and Yale Law grad meanwhile cautioned not to put too much weight on the credential. “I’ve been in plenty of meetings where the person who went to, like, George Mason Law was sharper than the person who went to Yale Law,” the Yalie said. Current and former administration officials who spoke to West Wing Playbook said they didn’t think there was something unique about Yale Law that prepared them to be better lawyers or policy makers (many joked that you didn’t actually learn the law at Yale). Rather, they said that the high volume of Yale Law degrees in the White House reflect how Ivy League graduates continue to be heavily favored — or, at a minimum, how it has become a quick résumé validator for those doing the hiring. “Ivy league tracking and background of people in general in D.C. policymaking circles is problematic, and making sure that people who have lived experience that represents a diverse range of Americans is really important,” said another former Biden White House official — who also went to Yale Law. Some professors defended the Yale-to-White House pipeline, arguing that Yale Law attracts the type of student who wants to work in public policy and is most likely to do so. “They had an interest in public service to begin with. They came to Yale Law, not Stanford Business School,” said CHUCK MUCKENFUSS, a visiting lecturer at Yale Law who has taught a number of current White House officials. BOB SOLOMON, former director of clinical studies at Yale Law School, said that his former students who are now in the White House are all “smart” and “workaholics.” But he also said that it would be fair for senior White House officials recruiting staffers to ask whether they could “take a chance on someone” who didn’t go to Yale. “It's a network that is merit based. On the other hand, it obviously excludes a lot of people,” said Solomon. CORRECTING THE RECORD: In Tuesday’s newsletter about junk fees, we referred to two pieces of legislation introduced by GOP lawmakers and failed to clarify that they were introduced in past sessions of Congress. They were not, as our phrasing made it seem, responses to Biden’s State of the Union. We regret the mistake. MESSAGE US — Are you A HARVARD LAW SCHOOL GRAD WORKING FOR BIDEN? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous! Email us at westwingtips@politico.com. Did someone forward this email to you? Subscribe here!
| 
