Nancy Y. Bekavac is an American academic and former lawyer who served as the sixth president of Scripps College from 1990 to 2007, becoming the first woman to lead the institution. Raised in Clairton, Pennsylvania, she earned her undergraduate degree from Swarthmore College, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1969, and received her law degree from Yale Law School in 1973, where she was a classmate of Hillary Rodham Clinton and Bill Clinton.
Before entering academic leadership, Bekavac practiced law in Los Angeles and later served as Director of the Watson Fellowship and counselor to the president of Dartmouth College.
Jack DiPrimio: Could you tell us about your childhood and how it shaped your political outlook going into college and later law school?
Nancy Bekavac: I grew up in Clairton, Pennsylvania, the town in The Deer Hunter. Everybody’s grandparents or parents spoke what we then called “broken English.” They were all immigrants — from Croatia, Austria, Greece, Syria, Egypt. And it never occurred to me that there was a difference in citizenship among those who had funny accents and funny names like me and those who didn’t.
It was clear that Black people were discriminated against as we grew up in the 1950s, but most people in my orbit thought that was crazy. When the Supreme Court now says you can use skin color as an indicator of whether or not you’re a citizen, it’s hard for me to breathe when I think about that. The last two months have been completely insane.
JD: Could you touch on your undergraduate years — what your college experience was like and how it shaped what you did afterward?
NB: I loved Swarthmore College. I thrived in that environment because the school really rewarded curiosity and broad knowledge. By my senior year, I was captain of the College Bowl team, so trivia and general knowledge were kind of my thing.
My path to Yale, though, was mostly accidental. One of my best friends told me she was going to take the LSAT but didn’t want to be the only woman there. She said if I came with her, she’d pay for the test. I figured I was good at tests, so I went along.
When the form asked what law schools I was applying to, I turned to her and asked where I should apply. She said Yale — her dad had gone there — so I wrote down Yale. That was the only school I applied to.
In some ways, though, Swarthmore did shape that decision. The school encouraged intellectual confidence and a willingness to try things without overthinking them, which is probably why applying to law school that way didn’t seem strange to me at the time.
I won a Watson fellowship to study in India the summer after I graduated. Before returning to the United States, I spent time in Vietnam working as a stringer reporter during the war. Seeing the war up close was deeply unsettling and it made clear how awful and destructive war really is. I came back angry and upset with my country.
JD: What was it like when you got to Yale law school during that time period?
NB: One of my earliest memories from Yale was meeting Bob Reich. In our torts class with Guido Calabresi, we had assigned seats. One day he sat in mine, introduced himself, and when I insisted it was my seat, he jokingly sat in my lap and asked if I’d have lunch with him. That’s how we became friends.
By the end of my first semester, though, I was thinking seriously about leaving law school to study philosophy at Princeton, where I had previously been accepted. I even went down during winter break in 1970 to look around, but the atmosphere there felt cold — especially for a Croatian-American woman interested in philosophy.
At the same time, Yale was an incredibly political place. Many of us were deeply engaged in the anti-Vietnam War movement, often piling into cars to drive to demonstrations in Washington. That combination of intellectual debate and political activism ultimately convinced me to stay.
JD: Do you think Yale at that time was different from Harvard or other law schools? Can you talk a little more about the culture? When you settled into Yale, did you and your classmates see yourselves as revolutionaries trying to change society, or more as people entering the legal profession?
NB: Oh, very different. Harvard was very rote. They were extremely serious, and we used to joke that they all loved the law a little too much. The running line was that at Harvard you were supposed to love the law, but at Yale you were supposed to ask, what is the law? It felt much more questioning, much more intellectual.
Honestly, most of the people I knew were not particularly interested in becoming traditional lawyers. The exceptions were students who felt called to criminal defense work — those people had a real sense of mission. But Yale also felt very connected to politics. It was obvious even then that some classmates were headed into public life — people would talk openly about Bill Clinton’s political ambitions, for example, and Hillary had already built a reputation through her organizing and student leadership before arriving. So alongside the intellectual atmosphere, there was a real sense that some people there were thinking about law as a pathway to national leadership.
JD: A lot of students now — especially Gen Z — came in thinking they wanted a legal career, but the political climate is making them rethink that. What would you tell law students or pre-law students now?
NB: First, the world always needs good lawyers. A good lawyer learns how to argue seriously and rigorously within a framework of rules and evidence. That matters, especially when institutions are under pressure.
And I remember thinking at Yale: “All these people who ‘love the law’ — what does it even mean to love the law?” What I understood later is that the law is a kind of safeguard. There’s a line from A Man for All Seasons about laws being like hedgerows: If you cut them all down, you invite a wind no one can stand against. That’s what it can feel like when norms collapse.
JD: Did Watergate feel like the kind of constitutional crisis we’re living through now?
NB: No. Watergate was ugly, deceitful, and corrosive, but the difference was that Nixon’s own party ultimately turned on him. They told him: “You can’t destroy the Constitution. You have to go.” What we’re seeing now feels different: a party stunned into silence by ambition and fear. Fear of a primary, fear of ads, fear of losing power. And I don’t see nearly as many people as appalled as they should be.
JD: Do you think law schools have a responsibility to instill democratic values more directly?
NB: By the time you reach law school, it’s too late to develop a basic moral code. If you don’t already have values like honesty and integrity, law school won’t teach them. Morality forms early, from parents, community, or faith. The consequences become clear when someone bends reality for power: treating truth as optional and institutions as obstacles. People ask, “How does someone like JD Vance come out of Yale?” But the real question is: What was missing long before law school?
JD: Before we wrap up, I want to zoom out. A lot of Gen Z feels politically exhausted: angry, disillusioned, and constantly told we’re either “too woke” or not doing enough. What would you each tell young people right now?
NB: First, don’t let the word “woke” get weaponized into a substitute for thinking. When I was in law school, we weren’t “woke” — we were waking up. People were moving through changing norms in real time and a lot depended on your circles. But the caricature that young people today are uniquely fragile or uniquely censorious is lazy. What I see now is something darker: a political culture that treats cruelty like a strategy and ignorance like a badge.
I used to feel like even when the country was furious — Vietnam, Watergate — I recognized the sides. I recognized my country. There are movements and figures now that I genuinely do not recognize, and that frightens me.
So my advice is simple: Keep your standards. If your moral framework is intact, you will be harder to manipulate, harder to intimidate, and harder to recruit into someone else’s cynicism. Real courage is showing up, doing the work, and staying decent when it would be easier not to.
*This interview has been edited for length and clarity.