Amy Chua and the age of infantilization

Our writers hold no party line; their only allegiance is to clarity of thought, elegance of expression and independence of opinion.

Before anyone says anything else about Amy Chua, it’s worth noting that we still have no idea exactly why people are talking about her. This is a peculiar state of affairs for a person whose offenses and subsequent downfall have been the recent subject of reporting in multiple major media outlets.

There’s an allegation: that Chua, a Yale Law School professor, violated both protocol and decency during the 2020 school year by hosting dinner parties at her home for students and elite members of the legal profession. There’s a punishment: the alleged infraction cost her a position as the head of one of the Yale Law School’s intimate classes for first-year students known as a ‘small group’.  But there is also a mess of competing storylines, contradictions and the lightly wafting scent of bullshit: according to the New York Times’s reporting, these allegations were not just entirely untrue, but also possibly motivated by either jealousy on the part of a disgruntled student, or dismay at the alleged presence of Chua’s husband at the parties, or lingering resentment over Chua’s unpopular associations or opinions on other, unrelated topics.

All of which is to say, the details are unknowable but also, perhaps, not very interesting. Chua mainly appears to have been the victim of an overzealous dean who took a ‘where there’s smoke there’s fire’ approach to the claims of a few overheated young folx (or just one young folk) — not a great idea anywhere, but an especially bad idea at a law school. If there’s a moral to this story, it’s probably aimed at future administrators who might be inclined to do the same. (Dear administrators: don’t do this.)

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