36 new york | august 5–18, 2019
mother-daughter battle was so intense
that one night, after interrogating Betsy
about why she thought she was so special
that she should go to college, her mother
hit Betsy in the face.
Warren won a full-ride debate scholar-
ship to George Washington University,
where she majored in speech pathology
and audiology so she could teach students
with speech and hearing impairments. But
her mother’s dire view of the world for un-
married women had a deep enough im-
pact on Warren that when her old high-
school boyfriend proposed to her just
before her junior year, she promptly said
yes, dropping out of school and giving up
that scholarship. “For 19 years I had ab-
sorbed the lesson that the best and most
important thing any girl could do was
‘marry well,’ ” Warren has written. “And for
19 years I had also absorbed the message
that I was a pretty iffy case—not very pret-
ty, not very flirty, and definitely not very
good at making boys feel like they were
smarter than I was.”
Warren and her husband settled in
Texas, where she finished her undergradu-
ate degree, then moved to New Jersey,
where she found a job as a special-needs
teacher for public-school students with
speech and learning disabilities. But at the
end of one term, she was visibly pregnant
with her first child, Amelia; the principal
did not ask her back. She enrolled at Rut-
gers University Law School in Newark,
then one of the most diverse and progres-
sive law schools in the nation.
Warren graduated nine months preg-
nant with her son, Alex, and there were no
firms eager to hire a new mom of two.
That’s when one of her Rutgers professors
suggested she might teach a night class at
the school. That first year of teaching law
school, she has recalled, was the second-
grade reading group all over again: “I
watched faces, and it felt like a victory ev-
ery time I saw the click! as a student
grasped a really hard idea.”
From Rutgers, Warren secured a
tenure-track job at the law school at the
University of Houston and taught Sunday
school. She divorced her husband and later
married Bruce Mann, a law professor and
historian whom she had met at a law con-
ference. Warren proposed to Mann in a
classroom after watching him teach a class
in property law. “It was the thing I needed
to know,” she explained to me. “I couldn’t
be married to another teacher if I didn’t
respect his teaching. And watching him
teach, he was good and engaged, and he
cared and he was cute and I was already
pretty crazy about him. But it was really
important for me to know that.” WhatWarren especially appreciated while
watching Mann teach was his clear belief
in his students. “That’s the heart of really
great teaching,” she said. “It’s that I believe
in you. I don’t get up and teach to show
how smart I am. I get up and teach to show
how smart you are, to help you have the
power and the tools so that you can build
what you want to build.”
The pair’s struggle to find double teach-
ing appointments led them from Houston
to the University of Texas at Austin to Penn
and finally to Harvard, where she was
hired in 1995 and where Mann came on as
a professor of law and history in 2006. By
the time she arrived, Harvard Law School
was in the midst of a controversy over di-
versity in hiring; Professor Derrick Bell
had taken an unpaid
leave in protest of the
fact that none of the
school’s 60 tenured pro-
fessors were women of
color (in 1990, only five
were women, all of them
white). And while much
attention has been paid
to the question of whether Warren’s self-
identification as Native American on a va-
riety of forms during her career had any
impact on her hiring trajectory, it is quite
likely that, as a white female law professor
in a massively male-dominated sphere in
the 1980s and ’90s, she did benefit from
affirmative-action policies. White women
have been affirmative action’s dispropor-
tionate beneficiaries.
Warren was an odd duck at Harvard,
not just because she was one of only a
handful of female professors; she was also
among the only faculty whose degree had
been issued by a public university. She be-
gan to speak to the masses in more direct
ways, about the research she was doing on
why families were going into bankruptcy,
on television programs like Dr. Phil and
The Daily Show. She didn’t publish aca-
demic books but ones about bankruptcy
and personal finance co-authored with her
daughter Amelia.
Warren believed that the law and its
remedies should not be simply the do-
main of the already powerful, and her ap-
proach to communicating with her
students—and later, as a more public fig-
ure, with a wider audience—came back to
her drive to make seemingly complicated
concepts available to those who didn’t al-
ready have an expertise, specifically by
decluttering the language she feels is
meant to drive people away from engage-
ment with the policies that shape their
lives, rather than drawing them in and
making them full participants.A perfect example, she told me, was the
lead-up to the financial crash in 2008,
“where the smart boys, as the economy is
tumbling over the edge, only wanted to
talk in terms of reverse double-half- nelson
derivatives and said, in effect, ‘The rest of
you aren’t smart enough to understand
this. We the elite will take care of this.’ And
they were wrong.”
In the wake of that crash, Warren
stepped into her role as America’s teacher,
defying those “smart boys” by explaining
to big audiences what had happened with
a clarity that felt as comforting to some as
Mrs. Lee’s hugs had felt to Warren back in
the second grade. In 2010, Bill Maher told
her, “I just want you to hold me,” before
putting his head in her lap and embracingher. The same year, Jon Stewart took a
hot-for-teacher route, telling her, “I wan-
na make out with you.” In fact, for all the
reasonable concern about how men espe-
cially may rear back from schoolteachers,
the reception Warren has sometimes
earned offers plenty of evidence that some
of them take deep solace, in perilous
times, in the plainspoken educator who
can tell a straight story about how we got
here and where we need to go next. After
her second debate performance last week,
CNN commentator Van Jones told War-
ren, “Y ou make me feel like help is on the
way ... You make me feel good.” What she’s
offering is belief—in her students, the au-
dience, voters.
It’s the same, in Warren’s view, as nudg-
ing people to understand that they can
read: “We can all understand this, and we
can all demand some oversight and ac-
countability and then make some real
changes so it doesn’t happen again.” Con-
veying information; inviting in people who
feel shut out; making stories, syllables, let-
ters clear and legible—this is precisely, War-
ren says, “what a good teacher does.”Chrystin ondersma was a
second-year transfer stu-
dent at Harvard Law
School in the fall of 2005
and did not feel at home.
The working-class daugh-
ter of a waitress and a father who filled
vending machines, she had grown up in
the conservative Dutch Christian Re-“ It was the thing I needed to know
another teacher if I didnTRANSMITTED________ COPY ___ DD ___ AD ___ PD ___ EICTRANSMITTED1619FEA_Elizabeth Warren_lay [Print]_35541956.indd 36 8/2/19 6:38 PM36 newyork| august5–18, 2019
mother-daughter battle was so intense
that one night, after interrogating Betsy
about why she thought she was so special
that she should go to college, her mother
hit Betsy in the face.
Warren won a full-ride debate scholar-
ship to George Washington University,
where she majored in speech pathology
and audiology so she could teach students
with speech and hearing impairments. But
her mother’s dire view of the world for un-
married women had a deep enough im-
pact on Warren that when her old high-
school boyfriend proposed to her just
before her junior year, she promptly said
yes, dropping out of school and giving up
that scholarship. “For 19 years I had ab-
sorbed the lesson that the best and most
important thing any girl could do was
‘marry well,’ ” Warren has written. “And for
19 years I had also absorbed the message
that I was a pretty iffy case—not very pret-
ty, not very flirty, and definitely not very
good at making boys feel like they were
smarter than I was.”
Warren and her husband settled in
Texas, where she finished her undergradu-
ate degree, then moved to New Jersey,
where she found a job as a special-needs
teacher for public-school students with
speech and learning disabilities. But at the
end of one term, she was visibly pregnant
with her first child, Amelia; the principal
did not ask her back. She enrolled at Rut-
gers University Law School in Newark,
then one of the most diverse and progres-
sive law schools in the nation.
Warren graduated nine months preg-
nant with her son, Alex, and there were no
firms eager to hire a new mom of two.
That’s when one of her Rutgers professors
suggested she might teach a night class at
the school. That first year of teaching law
school, she has recalled, was the second-
grade reading group all over again: “I
watched faces, and it felt like a victory ev-
ery time I saw the click! as a student
grasped a really hard idea.”
From Rutgers, Warren secured a
tenure-track job at the law school at the
University of Houston and taught Sunday
school. She divorced her husband and later
married Bruce Mann, a law professor and
historian whom she had met at a law con-
ference. Warren proposed to Mann in a
classroom after watching him teach a class
in property law. “It was the thing I needed
to know,” she explained to me. “I couldn’t
be married to another teacher if I didn’t
respect his teaching. And watching him
teach, he was good and engaged, and he
cared and he was cute and I was already
pretty crazy about him. But it was really
important for me to know that.” What
Warren especially appreciated while
watching Mann teach was his clear belief
in his students. “That’s the heart of really
great teaching,” she said. “It’s that I believe
in you. I don’t get up and teach to show
how smart I am. I get up and teach to show
how smart you are, to help you have the
power and the tools so that you can build
what you want to build.”
The pair’s struggle to find double teach-
ing appointments led them from Houston
to the University of Texas at Austin to Penn
and finally to Harvard, where she was
hired in 1995 and where Mann came on as
a professor of law and history in 2006. By
the time she arrived, Harvard Law School
was in the midst of a controversy over di-
versity in hiring; Professor Derrick Bell
had taken an unpaid
leave in protest of the
fact that none of the
school’s 60 tenured pro-
fessors were women of
color (in 1990, only five
were women, all of them
white). And while much
attention has been paid
to the question of whetherWarren’sself-
identification as Native Americanona va-
riety of forms during hercareerhadany
impact on her hiring trajectory,it is quite
likely that, as a white femalelaw professor
in a massively male-dominatedspherein
the 1980s and ’90s, she didbenefit from
affirmative-action policies.Whitewomen
have been affirmative action’sdispropor-
tionate beneficiaries.
Warren was an odd duckat Harvard,
not just because she wasoneofonlya
handful of female professors;shewasalso
among the only faculty whosedegreehad
been issued by a public university. She be-
gan to speak to the masses in more direct
ways, about the research she was doing on
why families were going into bankruptcy,
on television programs like Dr. Phil and
The Daily Show. She didn’t publish aca-
demic books but ones about bankruptcy
and personal finance co-authored with her
daughter Amelia.
Warren believed that the lawand its
remedies should not be simplythe do-
main of the already powerful, and her ap-
proach to communicating with her
students—and later, as a more public fig-
ure, with a wider audience—came back to
her drive to make seemingly complicated
concepts available to those who didn’t al-
ready have an expertise, specifically by
decluttering the language shefeels is
meant to drive people away from engage-
ment with the policies that shape their
lives, rather than drawing them in and
making them full participants.A perfect example, she told me, was the
lead-up to the financial crash in 2008,
“where the smart boys, as the economy is
tumbling over the edge, only wanted to
talk in terms of reverse double-half- nelson
derivatives and said, in effect, ‘The rest of
you aren’t smart enough to understand
this. We the elite will take care of this.’ And
they were wrong.”
In the wake of that crash, Warren
stepped into her role as America’s teacher,
defying those “smart boys” by explaining
to big audiences what had happened with
a clarity that felt as comforting to some as
Mrs. Lee’s hugs had felt to Warren back in
the second grade. In 2010, Bill Maher told
her, “I just want you to hold me,” before
putting his head in her lap and embracingher.Thesameyear, JonStewarttooka
hot-for-teacherroute,tellingher,“Iwan-
namakeoutwithyou.” In fact, forallthe
reasonableconcernabouthowmenespe-
ciallymayrearbackfromschoolteachers,
the receptionWarren hassometimes
earnedoffersplenty ofevidencethat some
ofthemtakedeepsolace,inperilous
times,intheplainspokeneducatorwho
cantella straightstoryabouthowwegot
hereandwhereweneedtogonext.After
herseconddebateperformancelast week,
CNNcommentatorVanJonestoldWar-
ren,“Y oumake mefeellike helpis onthe
way ... You make me feel good.” What she’s
offering is belief—in her students, the au-
dience, voters.
It’s the same, in Warren’s view, as nudg-
ing people to understand that they can
read: “We can all understand this,and we
can all demand some oversightand ac-
countability and then make some real
changes so it doesn’t happen again.” Con-
veying information; inviting in people who
feel shut out; making stories, syllables, let-
ters clear and legible—this is precisely, War-
ren says, “what a good teacher does.”Chrystin ondersma was a
second-year transfer stu-
dent at Harvard Law
School in the fall of 2005
and did not feel at home.
The working-classdaugh-
ter of a waitress and a father who filled
vending machines, she had grown up in
the conservative Dutch Christian Re-“It was the thing I needed to knowanother teacher if I didn