NEW HAVEN, Conn.—On most Monday mornings, the main corridor at Yale Law School bustles with students. Thirty years ago, a young Brett Kavanaugh was one of them.
On this Monday morning, as the Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington, D.C., wrestled with new allegations against Kavanaugh, everything here was still.
More than 300 demonstrators dressed in black gathered at around 9:30 a.m. for a silent sit-in to protest Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court and to support the two women who have accused him of sexual misconduct: Christine Blasey Ford, who knew Kavanaugh in high school, and Deborah Ramirez, a Yale classmate whose allegations first appeared in The New Yorker on Sunday night. Some professors canceled classes on Monday to allow students to attend the demonstration or to travel to Washington, to protest outside the Supreme Court.
The assault allegations against Kavanaugh have sent shock waves through the law school, where a number of prominent professors initially supported his nomination. Ford, 51, a research psychologist, claims Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her and tried to remove her clothing when he was 17 and she was 15. Ramirez, 53, who studied sociology and psychology, alleges that Kavanaugh exposed himself to her and thrust his genitals in her face when both had been drinking heavily at a dorm party in Lawrence Hall when they were freshmen. Kavanaugh has categorically denied both allegations.