Tiger Mom’s husband kept trying to bang his students

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe she can get a book deal out of it.

No question.

Tiger divorcee dating.

Totally. She was the one who mentored the Hillbilly Elegy author (I did not like his book).

Interesting, I grew up in a poor community not quite as downtrodden as the Hollow, but went on to an Ivy and thought I would relate more to that book than I did. I suspect her influence maybe part of it.

To me, his memoir reeked of fabricated and exaggerated bull****. Makes sense to learn he was groomed by these shameless creeps who will say or do anything to "get ahead".

+1000

He wasn't even poor in the book -- growing up, his mom made the equivalent of a ~$300k salary in DC in today's dollars (I did the math); she was an addict and her bad choices were more to blame than money or a lack thereof. All those stories could have been fabricated or exaggerated, too. He did milk his experience through solid book sales in the neo-con, Bill Kristol circles and with the NYT crowd, so kudos to him.

Oh and he worked under Peter Thiel at his LOTR VC firm. He is doubling down on screwing his roots.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was at Duke Law when they were both there. She was a big hit among the students.

She was pretty hot when she was young (and still pretty hot for 50+ mom), so wonder if she made similar rounds when she was younger and married to her stodgy but connected DH?

She looks great for 57.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe she can get a book deal out of it.

No question.

Tiger divorcee dating.

Totally. She was the one who mentored the Hillbilly Elegy author (I did not like his book).

Interesting, I grew up in a poor community not quite as downtrodden as the Hollow, but went on to an Ivy and thought I would relate more to that book than I did. I suspect her influence maybe part of it.

To me, his memoir reeked of fabricated and exaggerated bull****. Makes sense to learn he was groomed by these shameless creeps who will say or do anything to "get ahead".

+1000

He wasn't even poor in the book -- growing up, his mom made the equivalent of a ~$300k salary in DC in today's dollars (I did the math); she was an addict and her bad choices were more to blame than money or a lack thereof. All those stories could have been fabricated or exaggerated, too. He did milk his experience through solid book sales in the neo-con, Bill Kristol circles and with the NYT crowd, so kudos to him.

Two things that stuck out immediately as red flags for bull**** was one, using "Mamaw" for grandmother REEKED of schemer trying to sound white trash. And two, when he mentioned his grandpa bought his grandma a new Buick (or Oldsmobile) every year, or something like that. Poor white trash aren't buying new cars, let alone every freaking year. And his mom was high school valedictorian and a nurse, right? How many poor white trash have valedictorian RN moms? It's basically the same tactic Trump uses when he phases his dad's help as a "SMALL one million dollar loan -- which I had to pay back." Not saying he was loaded, but he was comfortably middle class in a decent flyover town. I don't buy all the drama and alleged dialogue in the book. Boiler plate GOP establishment bootstraps horse****.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe she can get a book deal out of it.

No question.

Tiger divorcee dating.

Totally. She was the one who mentored the Hillbilly Elegy author (I did not like his book).

Interesting, I grew up in a poor community not quite as downtrodden as the Hollow, but went on to an Ivy and thought I would relate more to that book than I did. I suspect her influence maybe part of it.

To me, his memoir reeked of fabricated and exaggerated bull****. Makes sense to learn he was groomed by these shameless creeps who will say or do anything to "get ahead".

+1000

He wasn't even poor in the book -- growing up, his mom made the equivalent of a ~$300k salary in DC in today's dollars (I did the math); she was an addict and her bad choices were more to blame than money or a lack thereof. All those stories could have been fabricated or exaggerated, too. He did milk his experience through solid book sales in the neo-con, Bill Kristol circles and with the NYT crowd, so kudos to him.

Two things that stuck out immediately as red flags for bull**** was one, using "Mamaw" for grandmother REEKED of schemer trying to sound white trash. And two, when he mentioned his grandpa bought his grandma a new Buick (or Oldsmobile) every year, or something like that. Poor white trash aren't buying new cars, let alone every freaking year. And his mom was high school valedictorian and a nurse, right? How many poor white trash have valedictorian RN moms? It's basically the same tactic Trump uses when he phases his dad's help as a "SMALL one million dollar loan -- which I had to pay back." Not saying he was loaded, but he was comfortably middle class in a decent flyover town. I don't buy all the drama and alleged dialogue in the book. Boiler plate GOP establishment bootstraps horse****.

Absolutely. It was a book written for people who've never interacted with a poor person before and the characters somehow ALWAYS ended up conforming to the desired reader's idea of what such people should act like. Yuck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meh. He tried to bang but could not bang. Big difference.

At least that’s all that was alleged in the formal complaint process...

Exactly. Plus the average YLS alum, especially one that got an assist from him after any alleged extracurricular activity, is likely very successful and would not want anyone knowing how they get a leg up, nor any drama in their life from this. Plus YLS produces a lot of future professors, so who would want their participation in this to leak, knowing it could impact their Ivory Tower career. I'd bet anyone involved had a "no comment" response to Yale investigators.

Probably. I was at YLS 15 years ago and it was rumored then that he slept with his female students. I would say "well known" except I, of course, didn't know anyone who'd actually admitted to doing it, nor anyone alleged to have done so, only that everyone said it went on. So, that's rumor. I never took a class with either of them. Based on the gossip mill he was super smarmy and she was flashy and more talk than substance, and I was more interested in black letter, basic law than cutting edge stuff. (Not why most people go to Yale, admittedly.)

It was gross then and it's gross now. Gross of the teacher and the student, although given the power dynamics the teacher is always more to blame. It's not like they have to sleep with anyone if propositioned. There was another exceedingly good-looking, brilliant young prof when I was there -- Noah Feldman, who's now at Harvard or Columbia I think -- and I never heard any rumors about him.

I was also at YLS 15 years ago. I knew someone who got very sucked into Jed’s world, but escaped before very much physical happened. It was more about him singling her out as special than about any particular job. He solicited her opinion about things, complemented her ideas, etc; he was very charming, not bad looking and in a position of power. My friend is a wonderful person who has always struggled with self-esteem. I completely understand how it happened.

I have also heard a specific name of someone he slept with for awhile. Call it a very reliable rumor mill. She did get a big clerkship out of it, FWIW.

Other 15-year YLS person here. I believe you. I have never been very plugged into the rumor mill at any place I've lived or worked at, so for me to have heard rumors means they were seriously pervasive. Glad your friend got out, and hope she's doing better. I can see how difficult it would be to resist when it's flattery, especially intellectual flattery, rather than an outright proposition.

For the woman who slept with him, I hope she's doing better too. It's sad when stuff like that happens because for anyone who knows it went on, there will always be questions about whether she got that clerkship on her own merit. I wouldn't want to go through life feeling borderline fraudulent like that.

For another PP who asked about clerkships, something like 50% of YLS grads clerk at some point. Many do more than one clerkship (district court and appellate court). A very select few do Supreme Court clerkships, which usually requires having clerked for a very prestigious appellate judge (read, one who maybe also clerked for the Supreme Court and who has a reputation as an intellectual giant). Just about anyone at YLS who wants a clerkship could probably get one of some kind. The competition is over the appellate clerkships and especially the prestigious ones. Plenty of people don't want a clerkship at all -- if you don't plan to be a litigator, it's not much use other than as an additional year of training into how litigation operates, and of course bragging rights. Lots of YLSers want to teach, not practice law.

Personally, I did want to be a litigator and applied only to district courts. I didn't want to compete with the big guns going for appellate clerkships, and I didn't have any big-name professors in my corner. I also didn't want to do an appellate clerkship because everyone said it was like a fourth year of law school and I hated law school. I easily got a district court clerkship and it was wonderful. I learned a tremendous amount and it was practical application of the law, not the theoretical stuff we did at YLS, which I hated. Ironically I now practice appellate law and love it. Should've tacked on an appellate clerkship after my district court one, but I was stubborn and thought I had my career path planned out and that I'd never go anywhere near appellate anything. Oops.

The clerkship game isn’t just about merit. It’s also connections, who was a research assistant, who stroked whose ego, who gets to be “chosen” students for a variety of reasons. If you’re at YLS, odds are you’ve got enough brains to be a decent clerk.

I really wonder what the details of the allegations and findings are. To suspend him for two years (I’m betting paid) is such a black eye of shame for him, I wonder how he can walk the halls and look his colleagues in the eye. Or his daughters. Or Vicki Schultz!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe she can get a book deal out of it.

No question.

Tiger divorcee dating.

Totally. She was the one who mentored the Hillbilly Elegy author (I did not like his book).

Interesting, I grew up in a poor community not quite as downtrodden as the Hollow, but went on to an Ivy and thought I would relate more to that book than I did. I suspect her influence maybe part of it.

To me, his memoir reeked of fabricated and exaggerated bull****. Makes sense to learn he was groomed by these shameless creeps who will say or do anything to "get ahead".

+1000

He wasn't even poor in the book -- growing up, his mom made the equivalent of a ~$300k salary in DC in today's dollars (I did the math); she was an addict and her bad choices were more to blame than money or a lack thereof. All those stories could have been fabricated or exaggerated, too. He did milk his experience through solid book sales in the neo-con, Bill Kristol circles and with the NYT crowd, so kudos to him.

Two things that stuck out immediately as red flags for bull**** was one, using "Mamaw" for grandmother REEKED of schemer trying to sound white trash. And two, when he mentioned his grandpa bought his grandma a new Buick (or Oldsmobile) every year, or something like that. Poor white trash aren't buying new cars, let alone every freaking year. And his mom was high school valedictorian and a nurse, right? How many poor white trash have valedictorian RN moms? It's basically the same tactic Trump uses when he phases his dad's help as a "SMALL one million dollar loan -- which I had to pay back." Not saying he was loaded, but he was comfortably middle class in a decent flyover town. I don't buy all the drama and alleged dialogue in the book. Boiler plate GOP establishment bootstraps horse****.

Yeah, they mostly actually had skills that were desirable and not out of date, so they weren’t the real down and out. I Mean, the mom and aunt both worked in healthcare (nurse and radiology tech) and the uncle worked in healthcare-adjacent (sales for Johnson and Johnson or something like that?). In many depressed cities, getting the healthcare related jobs in nearby small cities mean you got the best jobs, the ones that are stable and indicate you actually have a non outdated skill. My family is in sw Virginia and if you commute to a health related job at a place like carillon clinic, you are considered very lucky since your skills are employable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Schadenfreude is real. I’m kind of delighting in this.

+100

[Anonymous]

Hillybilly Elegy... my mom was valedictorian out of 300-350 students and I end up Yale Law School... what are the odds. That's not dumb luck, that alone teases out his family is far more stable and values education far more than he led on in his bullshit book.

He also hypes his military bonafides... but Google claims "After graduating, he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and served in Iraq, performing public affairs activities." So he was a desk jockey who never saw combat?

That said, I wouldn't blame Amy for any falsehoods. I'd bet he's been trafficking in the same bullshit bootstrap white trash narrative since applying to college and law school. I don't think he ever expected the book to blow up like it did, seems it was written to help him segue into politics. And from what I recall, the right wing machine first pumped the hell out of his book, i.e. he's probably been a Koch, Heritage, et al. asset for 10 years.

[Anonymous]

He was quite handsome in his prime.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm sure a ton of law professors will be swept up in #metoo over the years. They hold a lot of sway over vulnerable women looking for that critical clerkship/biglaw job. However, those law professors are no longer important after 2L year so no downside to reporting their behavior.

No to play devil's advocate but we're taking about mid 20s, smartest young ladies in the world. I understand the power dynamic, but enough of the babe in the woods routine. If any YLS student hooked up with him -- and hooked up is a very broad scope -- for a leg up, it was a calculated move and they knew exactly what they were doing. Young attorney Kamala Harris was just a bit older than the average YLS student and she willingly dated married, obese and 30 years her senior Willie Brown, for which she was awarded a couple of plum low six-figure jobs.

I was in my mid 20s when I was sexually harassed in a Ph.D program by a professor who was not even tenured. I don't think you understand how terrifying it is to have someone with so much power over you abuse that power. He gave me horrible reviews after my complaint. I was not making the kind of money to be able to hire a good lawyer. I made the choice to file a complaint and leave and accept I would never get my Ph.D. Those who chose to sleep with him got a massive career boost. His wife ended up divorcing him and he made her life a living hell in court and somehow got custody of half the kids. Years and many complaints later the university did not give him tenure and he simply moved onto another University. He is remarried to a wealthy woman and living in a mansion, but estranged from some of his kids.

If I had a dollar for every case I knew where a grad student slept with their mentor and sometimes even married that mentor. Abuse of power is rampant and if you don't give in, in can ruin your career.

I don't have any direct experience with Rubenstein hitting on me but I was hit on as a 1L (or was it 2L? I'm confused now) by a partner when I was applying for law firm jobs. I am not a knockout or anything but had recently lost some weight and one of the interviewers who hired me for their firm kept trying to ask me out for drinks and dinner. It really broke me, temporarily, in ways that I couldn't have predicted or expected in myself -- I thought I was strong but I had never really encountered that sort of openly direct power abuse behavior before as an adult. It made me question everyone's motivations for a long time afterwards. (I went to a different firm even though the dude's firm might have been better long term for me, never went out with the guy and just said I was so busy and had tests etc, SORT OF reported the guy in the firm's follow up interview process -- even with all of that avoidance of injury and anything truly bad happening, it really messed me up for a while and played games with my mind. I can't imagine the harm it could do to actually get involved with a professor with power over you and power to affect your future if it wasn't absolutely a case of electric "love at first sight" for both of you, or something similar. And even then it's so sketchy for the professor to act on it.)

That said, I was at Yale undergrad in the 80s/90s and was friend-of-a-friend with a cosmopolitan girl from NYC who was talking about going over to Harold Bloom's house for help in his class, and my friend explained that "help" in this context really stood for something else, and that NYC girl was all right with that, and even back then Harold Bloom was not ... I mean, I understand he was supposedly brilliant but I never considered taking a class of his after that because that's not fair to anyone. Maybe NYC girl didn't realize how it might affect her, or maybe she really was up for it, or both, but I absolutely believe this abuse happens at Yale, Yale Law, etc.

[Anonymous]

She's probably strategizing how she can exploit this and make themselves out to be persecuted conservative martyrs like those gun-toting lawyers in St Louis.

[Anonymous]

Chubenfeld (Amy Chua and Jeb Rubenfeld) have been in the news again this weekend: NY Magazine and NY Times basically each put out articles fighting one another, pro and con, on the Yale Law School Dean's recent decision to remove Amy Chua from being in charge of a small group class after she allegedly brought students to her house and possibly served alcohol after allegedly agreeing not to do so:

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/06/amy-chua-jed-rubenfeld-yale-law.html
Sheesh, this picture sure is a lot:


An excerpt:

Chua’s insecurity about her place at the law school has not been unfounded, though many of her colleagues seem awed by her public profile. “Jed is very much a figure in the intellectual life of the school,” says a male professor. “Amy, not at all. Has there ever been a more famous Yale Law professor than Amy Chua? No. On the other hand, she has no capital at the law school because she’s not an important scholar.” (She was an excellent party host, he conceded.)

Rubenfeld embraced the role of boy genius turned provocateur. In class, he liked prolonged eye contact, Socratic cold calls, and edgy hypotheticals. He’d studied at Juilliard and would often dramatically exit the room at the end of a lecture. Says a colleague, “He thrives on the understanding of the classroom as an eroticized place, where there’s this kind of thrill of engaging in risky exploration about ideas that’s continuous with risky exploration of all kinds of boundary transgressions.” Around the time the Obama administration began pushing universities to crack down on sexual misconduct, in 2011, Rubenfeld began to explore new terrain: critiquing rape law. “The Riddle of Rape-by-Deception and the Myth of Sexual Autonomy” appeared in the Yale Law Journal in 2013, and the topic preoccupied him in class, too.

“He would give these examples that started out being sort of okay and take it further and further. He asked if it was okay to penetrate a baby,” a student who was in his small group in fall 2014 tells me. “Then he said, ‘You use a spoon to feed a baby.’ ” One of her classmates stared at him blankly when he did this, but she decided she would push back. “I think he liked it when people engaged in the lunacy of his arguments,” she says.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/07/us/amy-chua-yale-law.html

Ms. Chua says she did nothing wrong, and it is unclear exactly what rule she actually broke. But after more than two dozen interviews with students, professors and administrators — including three students who say they went to her house to seek advice during a punishing semester — possibly the only sure thing in the murky saga is this: There is no hard proof that Ms. Chua is guilty of what she was originally accused of doing. According to three students involved, there were no dinner parties and no judges; instead, she had students over on a handful of afternoons, in groups of two or three, mostly so they could seek her advice.

“I met with Professor Chua to discuss a deeply distressing experience I had, an experience that hinged on my race and identity,” said one of the students, who is Asian.

It may appear to be a simple matter, one professor losing one course, but nothing is simple when it comes to Ms. Chua, who seems perpetually swathed in a cloud of controversy and confusion. “Dinner party-gate,” as Ms. Chua wryly calls it, has turned into a major headache for the school.

The story has been adjudicated all over social media and picked up in outlets ranging from The Chronicle of Higher Education to Fox News. Ms. Chua’s retweet of a tart Megyn Kelly comment (“Tell the damn whiners to sit down,” Ms. Kelly tweeted) raised suggestions that Ms. Chua was positioning herself as a victim of “cancel culture.”

At the law school, the episode has exposed bitter divisions in a top-ranked institution struggling to adapt at a moment of roiling social change. Students regularly attack their professors, and one another, for their scholarship, professional choices and perceived political views. In a place awash in rumor and anonymous accusations, almost no one would speak on the record.

A feature of this difficult year has been increased demands from student groups. Against this backdrop, Ms. Gerken’s critics in the faculty worry that she acted too hastily in the Chua matter, prioritizing students’ concerns over a professor’s rights.

And from a letter written by a former YLS student:

“You do not have to believe that Prof. Chua is all good, or that she is all bad, or that she is mostly one or the other. She has done a lot of good for a lot of students. That is part of why she has gotten away with this for so long. And it’s part of why the bad hurts so much. It’s true that Prof. Chua builds relationships with students in a way that is important and abysmally rare at YLS. There is no excuse for the dearth of women of color on the YLS faculty, or the fact that those women provide such a disproportionate share of mentorship for students. It is still wrong for her to misuse those relationships and betray the trust students place in her. Good and bad don’t cancel out. There is no balancing test. It’s just all true.”

I come out on this where this last student did -- seems like Chua has done a lot of good for the law school, and not really been treated well by the school while she was doing that good work, but at the same time she has also betrayed students by preferencing certain students over others for clerkships and such based on how much those students would suck up to her rather than based on merit. Is that terrible when white men at the school have been basing benefits on qualities different perhaps than actual academic merit for years and years and years? So maybe it's not fair, and there is also a bunch of asian discrimination to deal with at the same time so perhaps doubly unfair. But I'm not sure this couple should be in a position of power at this school.

And then there's a whole separate thing going on on twitter with Akhil Amar and an alleged attitude about students who come to Yale Law School from state schools (the horror!).

[Anonymous]

I've been following this story closely since I knew Rubenfeld pretty well when I attended YLS 15+ years ago (and like a PP, he also flirted with me, but nothing more). As someone else mentioned, his reputation was well known and there were stories of at least one specific woman who slept with him and then followed him around his house during a party begging for him to "take her back" (or something along those lines). So most of my female friends knew to stay away. I'm curious what will happen at the end of the suspension.

[Anonymous]

Akhil Amar was doing that?! Good thing I never took one of his classes since I was from a state school. Maybe I should give my degree back?

Sad guy.

[Anonymous]

So both of her daughters got into Harvard Law? Mission accomplished.