Discretion is the better part of valor and you shouldn’t f**k around lest you find out. These lessons probably should have guided Yale Law’s Amy Chua when she pushed back against the administration’s decision to remove her from a small 1L mentorship group.
Honestly, Chua’s “punishment” is almost too insignificant to note. If the administration is correct that the professor continued to bring students to her home after her husband was suspended — but not fired — over sexual harassment allegations, losing a token group discussion class is the least of what a responsible organization could do.
Or, hell, maybe they did fire Rubenfeld and just not tell anybody. An eagle-eyed tipster noted that Justin Driver is the “Robert R. Slaughter Professor of Law,” which is the named chair that Rubenfeld previously held.
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Either way, if the school thinks Chua breached an agreement created to protect students, being asked not to do extra work is hardly a penalty.
But rather than take her slap on the wrist in stride, Chua pushed back against the Yale Daily News in an open letter to her colleagues. And that’s when alums started coming out of the woodwork to call bullshit on her defense.
https://twitter.com/LeahLitman/status/1380947251489607680
Alums have used words like “bullying” and “creepy” to describe the “Chuafeld” world. And folks who may otherwise have stayed silent have opened up about the transgressions they’ve seen. Frustration is another theme… frustration that this is going to be another minor blip before the school goes right back to enabling the professors.
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This cycle has happened before, and it will happen again: students complain and the law school appears to take action, but a few years go by and everything goes back to normal…. In one instance, [Gerken and Cosgrove] represented to us that Chua would never have a small group again. Apparently, that was not a firm commitment, given recent events. I have little faith that whatever happens now will be more than another delicate slap on the wrist for Chua, a mere gesture to appease students without making any lasting difference.
Which aren’t just limited internally to Yale. Remember that this is the woman who trumpeted Brett Kavanaugh while apparently privately noting… issues.
And this all reminds us that Chua was a Kozinski enabler too.
https://twitter.com/courtneymilan/status/1381259388195758085?s=20
By “a select few,” Milan means J.D. Vance, whom Chua steered away from Kozinski’s chambers and toward his ultimate path of shamelessly throwing his family under a speeding bus to advance his own career.
Many (though not all) of the stories we’ve all heard over the last several days would have stayed buried if Chua had just stayed silent. The common thread in these tips is that the response letter is what incensed them.
She does have her defenders though. I got an email this morning from an anonymous account claiming — through some wicked grammatical errors — to represent a coalition of law firms coming after me for reporting on Yale’s administrative decisions. It reeked of the brand of petty Mean Girls nonsense that all these alums say they felt subjected to throughout their law school careers. Not to borrow from the first article, but there are always gonna be some Gretchens out there.
Earlier: Yale Law School Strips Amy Chua Of 1L Group For Repeated Violations
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.