Dean's Courses at Yale.

US News and World Report has done a expose entitled Yale Men, disclosing the college backgrounds of the presidential hopefuls that were Elis. This little tidbit turned up on Dean:

"I had a strong feeling about social justice," he says. "But politics was discredited in my eyes because of Nixon."

Dean also avoided campus organizations, which were widely seen as too "establishment." He'd been active in prep school extracurriculars, and, while he played intramural football at Yale, he reveled in his freedom. He got decent grades without trying too hard. "After Howard had the formula down for getting through, he went into a period of introspection," says a former roommate, Ralph Dawson. While not politically active, Dean was a political science major with a predilection for courses in revolutionary movements. A college transcript obtained by U.S. News shows Dean took classes on international communism, Chinese politics, Soviet history, and Marxist existentialism.

I realize that in college you take a lot of crap (Intro to Visual Arts was my favorite), and as a political science major at Yale Dean probably delved into courses that may not be available at other schools, but these courses are a little beyond "social justice." Last time I checked, Marxism and Stalinism weren't high on the list for doling out social justice. Then again, that's nothing new in the democrat party.

As for the Nixon comment, I believe much of the left's disdain for Nixon occurred as a result of Watergate, long after Dean graduated from Yale.