In 1965, Rodham enrolled at
Wellesley College, where she majored in
political science.
[16] During her
freshman year, she served as president of the Wellesley
Young Republicans;
[17][18] with this
Rockefeller Republican-oriented group,
[19] she supported the elections of
John Lindsay and
Edward Brooke.
[20] She later stepped down from this position, as her views changed regarding the
American Civil Rights Movement and the
Vietnam War.
[17]
Rodham organized a two-day student strike and worked with Wellesley's black students to recruit more black students and faculty.
[23] In early 1968, she was elected president of the Wellesley College Government Association and served through early 1969;
[22][24] she was instrumental in keeping Wellesley from being embroiled in the student disruptions common to other colleges.
To help her better understand her changing political views, Professor
Alan Schechter assigned Rodham to intern at the
House Republican Conference, and she attended the "Wellesley in Washington" summer program.
In 1969, she graduated with a
Bachelor of Arts,
[26] with departmental honors in political science.
Rodham then entered
Yale Law School, where she served on the editorial board of the
Yale Review of Law and Social Action.
[33] During her second year, she worked at the
Yale Child Study Center,
[34] learning about new research on early childhood brain development and working as a research assistant on the seminal work,
Beyond the Best Interests of the Child (1973)
In the summer of 1970, she was awarded a grant to work at
Marian Wright Edelman's Washington Research Project, where she was assigned to Senator
Walter Mondale's
Subcommittee on Migratory Labor. There she researched
migrant workers' problems in housing, sanitation, health and education.
[37] Edelman later became a significant mentor.
[38] Rodham was recruited by political advisor
Anne Wexler to work on the 1970 campaign of Connecticut U.S. Senate candidate
Joseph Duffey, with Rodham later crediting Wexler with providing her first job in politics
In the late spring of 1971, she began dating
Bill Clinton, also a law student at Yale. That summer, she interned at the
Oakland, California, law firm of
Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein.
[40] The firm was well known for its support of
constitutional rights,
civil liberties, and
radical causes
The following summer, Rodham and Clinton campaigned in
Texas for unsuccessful
1972 Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern.
[43] She received a
Juris Doctor degree from Yale in 1973,
[26] having stayed on an extra year to be with Clinton.
Rodham began a year of
postgraduate study on children and medicine at the Yale Child Study Center.
[45] Her first scholarly article, "Children Under the Law", was published in the
Harvard Educational Review in late 1973.
