Former U.S. Ambassador to Japan, White House Chief of Staff during the first Obama administration, U.S. Congressman (D-IL), and Mayor of Chicago Rahm Emanuel, who is reportedly considering a run for president in 2028, often criticizes the second Trump administration on social media.
On Friday on X, Emanuel — who is Jewish and a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and Northwestern University — amplified the article ‘Looking Back: A Year of Protests on Israel and Palestine at Yale’ which was published by Yale Daily News.
Emanuel wrote: “Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, Northwestern, Brown. Notice Trump has not said a word about Yale, the alma mater of JD Vance, Secretary of Treasury Bessent and Trump donor Stephen Schwarzman. Are we fighting antisemitism or is this political retribution?”
Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, Northwestern, Brown. Notice Trump has not said a word about Yale, the alma mater of JD Vance, Secretary of Treasury Bessent and Trump donor Stephen Schwarzman. Are we fighting antisemitism or is this political retribution? https://t.co/WvUE5eYvK8
— Rahm Emanuel (@RahmEmanuel) April 18, 2025
Billionaire Bessent, who earned a B.A. in political science and graduated in 1984, previously donated to the University and has taught three college seminars at Yale: “Twentieth Century Financial Booms and Busts,” “Hedge Funds: History, Theory and Practice,” and a class about the financial panic between 2007 and 2009.
As an undergrad student, Bessent also served as a News editor at the Yale Daily News, was treasurer for the class of 1984, chairman of the 1984 Alumni Fund and assistant to the director of athletics. He was also awarded the John Proctor Clarke Prize for outstanding service and leadership within Yale College.
Fellow billionaire Schwartzman, the chairman and CEO of the Blackstone Group, was a member of Yale’s legendary society Skull and Bones and graduated in 1969. In 2015, he gifted $150 million to the University’s performing arts center and cultural hub, which is now called the Yale Schwarzman Center (see below).
Yale students will be inspired to greater heights of creative expression in the spectacularly restored Yale University Schwartzman Center, the institution's first campus-wide student center. To learn more ➡️ https://t.co/dhlNTwgfnZ#TYlinConnects #TYLinBuildings pic.twitter.com/JhtKlccNV1
— TYLin (@TYLI_Group) January 28, 2025
In his memoir Hillbilly Elegy, Vice President JD Vance wrote that graduating from Yale (in 2013), where he went to law school, was “the coolest thing” he had ever done, “at least on paper.”
Of course, not all the people in Trump’s orbit have had their universities spared from retribution, as Emanuel implies. Trump’s HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is, like many Kennedy family members, a Harvard grad. Trump donor Mark Zuckerberg attended Harvard, too, before dropping out to focus on Facebook.
Other Harvard alum close to Trump have sided with the administration over the their alma mater — financier Bill Ackman and Congresswoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY) being two of the most prominent.
Notable, perhaps, in considering Emanuel’s assertion is the fact that the two Supreme Court justices who most often align with Trump, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, are — like Vance — both Yale Law School grads — though Alito did his undergraduate work at Princeton, a prestigious institution that is also in Trump’s crosshairs. Trump donor Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder, also graduated from Princeton.
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