In their latest exercise in dumb, HuffPo published an article in which a Yale student who interviewed for a clerkship under Brett Kavanaugh claims she was warned the judge had a penchant for hiring females with a “certain look.” Several paragraphs later, she admits he treated her cordially; she gave no rumors of sexual impropriety.
The gigantic nothingburger of an article begins with the anonymous Yale student recalling how her two professors warned that Kavanaugh hired a certain type of female as she was applying for a position under him. Neither professor accused him of sexually harassing women nor said they heard rumors of him sexually harassing women. And yet, the student found their warning rather “off-putting.”
“Though neither said the judge did anything untoward regarding the women he worked with, the student found their counsel off-putting,” the article states.
The anonymous student called this warning a “yellow flag.”
“I had mixed feelings,” she said. “On the one hand, it’s a yellow flag; on the other hand, phew, I hadn’t heard anything else.”
According to the student, her professors also warned about Judge Alex Kozinski, who was a rumored sexual harasser at the time; he retired in December amid accusations of harassment. She saw this as indicative of something nefarious.
“He did not say what the ‘certain look’ was. I did not ask,” the woman said. “It was very clear to me that he was talking about physical appearance, because it was phrased as a warning ― and because it came after the warning about Judge Kozinski.”
After processing all of this, the student declined an interview with Kozinski and went on to interview with Kavanaugh. Guess what: everything went fine.
“In the end, the law student interviewed with Kavanaugh and said nothing unusual happened, but she wound up clerking for another judge,” the article concludes.
Further adding to the confusion as to why this article ever made it to print is the fact that one of the professors who apparently “warned” this student, praised Kavanaugh in a statement to HuffPo.
“For the more than ten years I’ve known him, Judge Kavanaugh’s first and only litmus test in hiring has been excellence,” said Professor Amy Chua, a.k.a the “Tiger Mom,” in a statement. “He has also been an exceptional mentor to his female clerks among my proudest moments as a parent was the day I learned our daughter would join those ranks.”
Chua also praised Kavanaugh for hiring a “diverse” group of people.