June 8, 2021 - 6:20pm
“I felt like it was straight out of a Kafka story.” Those were Yale law professor Amy Chua’s words when she spoke to UnHerd’s Freddie Sayers recently. Chua had been accused by the Yale newspaper of hosting drunken dinner parties with students, and possibly federal judges during the pandemic.
Chua rose to fame when she wrote the bestselling Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. At Yale she is known for mentoring students and guiding would-be-lawyers towards ultra coveted judicial clerkships. She also has, as the New York Times put it, a reputation for “boundary-pushing behaviour.” In 2019 she agreed not to drink or socialise at all with students outside of class. Meanwhile her husband, Jeb Rubenfeld, also a Yale law professor, was booted off campus, having been suspended from teaching for two years after an investigation into accusations of sexual misconduct against him.
When Chua spoke to UnHerd, the student paper’s allegations had lead to a further blow: the university removed her ability to teach a “small group” — a class of around fifteen students that is a key part of the Yale legal education. The accusation was “whacko”, according to Chua.
“I got smeared” Chua said, “and dragged through the mud.” It looked like a cancellation attempt.
Further light on the story was shed today by a long New York Magazine report that delved in the accusations against Chua and Rubenfeld. More than just a story about the couple, it exposes the fault lines in top American universities like Yale, between the old ideals of meritocracy and the new social justice beliefs of many students in them.
“There’s a weird schism among the students where they want the place to be utterly transparent and utterly equitable,” one anonymous professor told the mag , “but they also want to keep the prestige and privilege that the place affords.”
It seems likely that long after Chua’s battles are over, the ideological war on American campuses will continue. Below, Amy gives her full story on UnHerd:
I really felt like this was straight out of a Kafka story. I mean, sometimes there’s like a little bit of truth in something. This was wacko. I’ve been in sweatpants for a year with my dogs, wearing masks, and we don’t see anybody. To make a long story short, it was a relatively small group of students who maybe saw some text of other people cut and pasted. And I did something I’ve never done before. I fought back. I’ve always been a team player at my school. I was so outraged. I emailed the dean, and I said, “Are you going to stand by me? This is ridiculous”. Instead, I was interrogated. You know, “this is the time to come candid — have you had these dinner parties?”
So I ended up writing a letter explaining that there were absolutely no dinner parties. It’s ridiculous that I have to hear this from the Yale Daily News. I tweeted it, which my Gen Z daughter said that I should do that to correct the narrative. I’ve never done that before. But I survived. It actually came out well. An investigative reporter found that there were no dinner parties, and I got smeared and dragged through the mud and called, like, I was operating nefarious rings from my house.
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Subscribe“Implicit Bias” I was waiting for that, and in the last few seconds out it came. All the academics are bat-s*it crazy.
Universities are a separate world from reality, a social construct which has been co-opted by the Marxist/Liberals and Entryism. How can you sheep not see this is as much a war against America and the West as any of the World Wars previous? This is an existential threat to our civilization, culture, and freedoms, when one side not only claims to excursively hold the truth, but enforces that by threats backed by fear because real lives are destroyed as surely as under Mao’s Cultural Revolution (but less violently), then it is a civil war.
How is this different than living under a Mafia controlled city? The law of Omerta is ruthlessly enforced, snitches get stitches, the protection racket extends into every last outlet and business, school and Media. How does the Federal government allow this crime against freedom and the Constitution, and against America its self?
P.S. good by all, as the token Right Wing Conspiracy loon here, I hope a new one steps up to fill my soon to be vacant slot – although I suspect Unherd does not.
Best of luck!
When the financial tsunami comes we’ll all know who told us first!
My guess is I, and my fellow doom mongers on Youtube (see Harry Dent) will undergo our own “The Great Disappointment” like the Millerite Movement when they all met on the hill top awaiting the Rapture he predicted, and waited and waited, and finally gave up and went home, and so the name of the event. Later they became the ‘Seventh Day Adventists’ though. So I suppose if the economy keeps burgeoning I will find another cause to fallow.
Now, now my dear sir; this is not the time for pulling out. Stick to your guns and keep your fire trained on the enemy.
I am not pulling out, I am being banished. But good luck to you banner flying members.
Banished? Whatever for? Have you remonstrated with them? I thought that they were all about permitting marginalised opinion a voice. How horribly disappointing.
But we dont want just any old other right wing conspiracy loon-you are a special one- we like your background of lived experience PLUS brains plus very widely read plus a sense of humour – hard to find that combination in conspiracy loons !!!!