Why Tim Kaine became disillusioned at Harvard Law School
Tim Kaine.
Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine experienced some “bumpy years” at Harvard Law School, according to a newspaper account of his years there.
Kaine was the son of a metal shop owner and a graduate of a Jesuit boys’ school in Kansas City, the Boston Globe reports. When he entered law school in 1979, he had a commitment to his faith and social justice issues.
“It didn’t take long,” the Globe reports, “for him to lose faith in his chosen field on the cutthroat campus of career-minded law students.”
Kaine told C-SPAN about his first impressions of the school. “I had never set foot on campus till the day I showed up for the first day of classes,” he said. “It was a bit of a culture shock going from the Midwest—where I had spent my life and I hadn’t done very much traveling at all—to go to law school in Cambridge.”
Kaine joined the Harvard Prison Legal Assistance Project to provide pro bono help for inmates, but by the end of his first year he was disillusioned. “I remember thinking two things: Why am I rushing? Life is long,” he told C-SPAN. “And also, I don’t really know what I want to do with my life, and everybody else seems so sure.”
As he completed his first year of school, he decided he wanted to take a break to travel to Honduras to work with a Jesuit mission. He returned to Harvard after nine months in Honduras.
At Harvard, Kaine rejoined the prison project, opposed the reinstatement of capital punishment in Massachusetts, and organized a phone bank to ask summer associates to donate part of their salary to students who worked for nonprofits.
Hat tip to Bloomberg Big Law Business.
See also:
ABAJournal.com: “Hillary Clinton’s VP pick once litigated fair-housing cases and won a record $100M verdict”
Wrong word in headline corrected at 11:55 a.m.
