Osler's Razor

I'm devoting Wednesdays on the blog to profiling my intriguing classmates in the Yale Law class of 1990. It has been quite a voyage of discovery!

People often assume that Yale Law is a bastion of liberalism, but the reality is that many influential conservatives (beyond Brett Kavanaugh) come from the school. For some of them, it was pretty easy to see when we were in school, others less so. Over time, too, I have found myself collaborating with some of them on projects where our interests overlap. It is odd, though, that conservatives condemn the school as liberal even while so many of their most successful fellow travelers (including representatives of very different strands of conservatism, such as John Bolton and Pat Robertson) were formed by the place.

Peter Berkowitz is one of those conservative Yale Law grads; he currently serves as the Director of Policy Planning under Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Berkowitz came to Yale Law from undergrad at Swarthmore and after obtaining a Masters in Philosophy from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In 1990 he not only got a JD from Yale but a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University (which is pretty impressive-- I can't imagine doing both at the same time).  He went straight from Yale to Harvard, where he taught in the Government Department until 1999.

From there, he transitioned to teaching at George Mason's law school (now named after Justice Scalia), where he taught until 2007.

At that point, he headed west and became a Senior Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution. From there, he was chosen for his current post at the State Department.

He is a critic of progressive politics and the "social justice agenda," and regularly writes on issues relating to education and political philosophy.