Brett Kavanaugh Belonged To Yale Society Known As ‘Tit And Clit’

On the same day that Palo Alto University Psychologist Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused Brett Kavanaugh of attempting to rape her in the early 1980s, confirmed that she is “prepared to testify” before the Senate Judiciary Committee next week, new details emerged about the Supreme Court nominee’s history with organizations known for their demeaning attitudes toward women. Kavanaugh attended Yale University as an undergraduate, as well as Yale Law School as a law student. On Thursday, a report in the prestigious school’s campus newspaper, The Yale Daily News, reported that Kavanaugh belonged to a fraternity there with a “notorious” reputation for “disrespecting women.” Kavanaugh joined the frat as a freshman, the paper said, publishing a photogaph taken in 1985 showing fraternity “pledges” holding a “flag” made from women’s underwear. According to the paper, “Jennifer Lew ’87, a classmate of Kavanaugh’s, recalled that DKE brothers would ransack women’s rooms while they were in class to collect undergarments. Another alumnus, Julie Klein ’87, described DKE as an ‘animal house.’” Steve Gallo, a Yale alumnus who was a DKE “pledge” in 1985 told the papers that the underwear was “obtained consensually." The frat’s reputation for demeaning and even violent attitudes toward women has continued to the present day. DKE is currently under investigation by the university after reports surfaced of sexual assaults allegedly committed by several members of the fraternity, including a former president of DKE. As a senior at Yale, Kavanaugh also, The Yale Daily News reported, belonged to an all-male “secret society” named "Truth and Courage," open only to men in Yale’s senior class. The group "was known by the nickname ‘Tit and Clit,’” the campus paper reported. Also on Thursday, The Guardian newspaper reported that a top Yale Law School professor who has strongly backed Kavanaugh, Amy Chua, advised her female students who were applying for judicial clerkships with Kavanaugh that they should dress in an “outgoing” manner when they interviewed with him for the jobs because the judge wanted law clerks with “a certain look” and it was “no accident” that his clerks “looked like models.” Chua in July praised Kavanaugh publicly for his record of employing women, going so far as to call the 53-year-old Kavanaugh “a mentor to women,” The Guardian noted. Jed Rubenfeld, a Yale Law professor who is Chua’s husband, has also advised students about the “certain look” favored by Kavanaugh, according to the legal blog Above The Law, which also reported that the law school is currently “conducting an internal investigation into harassment and inappropriate conduct allegations concerning Professor Rubenfeld.” Kavanaugh himself served as a clerk for federal judge Alex Kozinski, who was forced to resign last year over a sexual harassment scandal. At his confirmation hearings earlier in September, as AVN.com reported, Kavanaugh was asked if he was on an email list used by Kozinski to send off-color and inappropriate material. Kavanaugh claimed that he could not remember. Photo via Executive Office of the President of the United States / Wikimedia Commons Public Domain