Hillary Clinton, Waxing Nostalgic, Accepts Award at Yale

NEW HAVEN, Conn. â€" Hillary Rodham Clinton accepted an award at her alma mater, Yale Law School, on Saturday. At her 40th reunion, Mrs. Clinton, the former secretary of state, delivered a speech that took the audience down memory lane, highlighted her passion for children’s welfare and largely avoided politics.

Meanwhile, just outside Woolsey Hall, college Democrats handed out Ready for Hillary stickers and signed up students and alumni to support an independent political action committee that would help finance the former first lady’s 2016 presidential ambitions, should she decide to run.

Would Mrs. Clinton, one of the school’s most distinguished alumnae, want to “add one more elusive line to her resume?” asked Robert C. Post, the dean of the Yale Law School.

Both Mrs. Clinton and Bill Clinton graduated from Yale Law 40 years ago. Mr. Clinton (who Mrs. Clinton said looked “like a Viking from Arkansas” when she first met him at Yale) surprised the crowd as he walked into the hall and sat in the front row to watch as his wife accepted the Award of Merit.

“It’s really hard to believe it’s been 40 years,” Mrs. Clinton said. “I was driving a beat-up old car. I had a mattress tied to the roof. I was wearing my bell bottoms,” she said of pulling up at Yale in the summer of 1969, a turbulent political time that she said informed her lifelong worldview.

But mostly, Mrs. Clinton focused on how her time at Yale opened her eyes to child abuse and poverty and the importance of early childhood development. “Because of the government shutdown, nearly nine million women and children will soon be unable to buy healthy food and baby formula,” Mrs. Clinton said.

The speech fit into one of Mrs. Clinton’s main initiatives since leaving the State Department. As part of her family’s Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation, she has devoted much of her time to a joint effort called Too Small to Fail that helps parents get access to resources for early childhood development.

The speech, like many others Mrs. Clinton has delivered as she has racked up awards from professional and academic organizations, gives her the chance to speak substantively about issues she feels are important, on her own terms, largely free from media scrutiny or political rivals.

The United States must “reverse this tide of inequality that is eating away at the social fabric of our country,” Mrs. Clinton said, without wading into specific economic issues.

On Friday, Mrs. Clinton said in a paid address to business leaders at a country club on Long Island, N.Y., that she would seriously consider a run for president “sometime next year.”