Chaos Abroad, Nonsense At Home with Amy Chua [S2 Ep.28]

Summary

Podcast Summary: Chaos Abroad, Nonsense At Home with Amy Chua

Podcast: Conversations With Coleman (The Free Press)
Episode: S2 Ep.28 — Chaos Abroad, Nonsense At Home
Date: September 11, 2021
Host: Coleman Hughes
Guest: Amy Chua (Professor at Yale Law School, author of "World on Fire", "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother", "The Triple Package", "Political Tribes")

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Brief Overview

In this engaging episode, Coleman Hughes talks with acclaimed Yale Law School professor and author Amy Chua. The conversation is split between two main themes: America's missteps in Afghanistan—particularly the failure to grasp ethnic and tribal dynamics in foreign policy—and the recent controversies Chua has faced at Yale Law, a microcosm of broader issues of campus bureaucracy and so-called "cancel culture." Chua offers an unvarnished, nuanced look at both the complexities of global politics and the troubles brewing at elite American universities.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Afghanistan: The Cost of Ignoring Tribal and Ethnic Realities

• America’s Ideological Lens

  • Americans tend to see conflicts like Afghanistan's as battles between ideologies—liberal democracy vs. Islamism. Chua emphasizes this is a misreading.
  • Quote:

    "In the United States, we have been kind of incredibly ignorant about the group identities that actually exist on the ground... We had this kind of anti-Islamist thing and it really, it hampered us." — Amy Chua (03:46)

• Ethnic Breakdown Ignored by U.S. Policy

  • The three largest ethnic groups in Afghanistan are Pashtuns, Tajiks, and Uzbeks. The Taliban is not just an Islamist movement, but also a primarily Pashtun ethnic movement.
  • Chua notes that the U.S. allied with Taliban rivals (Tajiks and Uzbeks), inadvertently alienating the majority Pashtuns.
  • Quote:

    "So it's amazing. We had all this military power, but we were basically shooting ourselves at the foot at every second." — Amy Chua (06:16)

• Poor Historical Analogy: Germany & Japan

  • Chua points out the folly in comparing post-war Afghanistan to World War II Germany or Japan, which were both extremely homogenous societies—unlike Afghanistan.
  • Quote:

    "Those are the dumbest models for the developing world... Japan was 98% ethnic Japanese... To use those as comparisons for countries like Afghanistan [is folly]." — Amy Chua (10:38)

• On the Execution of Withdrawal

  • Both agree the U.S. should have left Afghanistan, but the way withdrawal was executed was calamitous, jeopardizing the safety of thousands who had worked with the U.S.
  • Quote:

    "You could be in favor of withdrawal, and why not just start it earlier? ... But it didn't have to be that way. It could have been planned better from the beginning." — Amy Chua (22:20)

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Important Segment:

• [03:46–14:30] — Deep dive into Afghanistan's ethnic history & U.S. foreign policy blindness
• [14:50–22:20] — Assessment of withdrawal, U.S. failures, and long-term consequences

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2. The Fallacy of Ideological Universalism in Foreign Policy

• Vietnam and Iraq Parallels

  • The same mistakes of ignoring local group dynamics in Afghanistan also plagued U.S. involvement in Vietnam (with the ethnic Chinese minority) and Iraq.
  • Experts on the ground often understood these complexities, but decisions were made in Washington where "big fancy people" ignored them.

• Instrumental vs. Moral Obligations

  • Beyond morality, Chua warns that abandoning allies harms American credibility for future partners:

    "If the reputation gets out there that the US doesn't keep its promises...it's not good in terms of an incentive structure going forward either." — Amy Chua (27:54)

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3. Yale Law’s “Dinner Party-Gate” and Campus Bureaucracy

• Summary of the Incident

  • Chua describes being accused of inappropriate dinner parties with students and federal judges, a claim she adamantly refutes.
  • The accusation changed over time (from inappropriate gatherings to COVID violations), and she laments not being given due process.
  • Quote:

    "I just. I don't care about the students, but I deserve due process. We teach it in law school! ... I didn’t have a chance to defend myself, they didn't present me with evidence." — Amy Chua (31:54)

• The Real Story

  • Two students visited her for cheese and crackers and a conversation; the complaint came from a third party, not the students themselves.
  • Chua credits her defense to transparency and support from students and faculty:

    "I did fight back against what people call cancel culture, and I think it came out okay." — Amy Chua (36:34)

• Impact on Faculty-Student Relations

  • Both discuss how the risk of blown-up allegations chills professor-student social interaction, especially for male professors.
  • Many students still value informal contact, but professors are now gun-shy—fearful of career-ending misinterpretations.
  • Quote:

    "It's going to make a much less positive experience for the students... I do think it's a bit of a shame that things like that are bound to change going forward. But I think everything is cyclical. I think we'll swing back." — Amy Chua (44:07)

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Important Segment:

• [28:35–44:56] — "Dinner Party Gate," campus bureaucracy, due process, cancel culture, and effects on academic life

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• Coleman’s Analogy on U.S. Policy Error:

  "It's as if a country allied only with the Black minority and started a government with the Black minority in power only and expected the White majority to simply accept that." (07:36)

• Chua’s Commentary on Bureaucracy:

  "It's like in authoritarian regimes... the accusation keeps changing." (33:14)

• On the Importance of Mentorship:

  "It was going to Professor Chua’s in an intimate setting... that kind of saved me." — Amy Chua relaying a former student’s words (44:07)

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Podcast Timestamps Guide

| Time | Segment Description | |------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:30–03:46| Introduction & framing of Afghanistan discussion | | 03:46–14:30| Afghan ethnic complexity, historical parallels, U.S. blunders | | 14:50–22:20| Debate & consensus on withdrawal, consequences, and policy myopia | | 22:20–28:12| Moral & instrumental obligations to local allies after withdrawal | | 28:35–44:56| Yale "Dinner Party Gate" saga, campus bureaucracy, due process issues | | 44:07–45:10| Wrap-up, thoughts on cyclical nature of campus culture |

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Tone & Style

Throughout, Chua maintains a forthright, slightly exasperated but constructive tone—combining scholarly insight with personal candor. Hughes brings a curious, skeptical, but respectful energy, encouraging Chua’s deeper reflections and critiques.

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For Listeners Who Haven't Heard the Episode

This episode provides a sharp, inside look at how American misperceptions around ethnicity impede foreign policy, anchored by Chua’s field expertise, and a revealing window into the modern dynamics of campus politics—driven by rumor, bureaucratic overreach, and shifting standards of judgment. Both threads are united by Chua’s call for greater humility, local knowledge, and procedural fairness—abroad and at home.

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Further Reading

• Amy Chua, Political Tribes
• Liz Bruenig’s Atlantic piece on the Yale Law controversy

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Transcript

[A]

SA.

[B]

Welcome to another episode of Conversations with Coleman. If you're hearing this, then you're on the public feed, which means you'll get episodes a week after they come out and you'll hear advertisements. You can gain access to the subscriber feed by going to ColemanHughes.org and becoming a supporter. This means you'll have access to episodes a week early, you'll never hear ads, and you'll get access to bonus Q and A episodes. You can also support me by liking and subscribing on YouTube and sharing the show with friends and family. As always, thank you so much for your support. Welcome to another episode of Conversations with Coleman. My guest today is Amy Chua. Amy Chua is a professor at Yale Law School. Her books include World on Fire, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, the Triple Package and Political Tribes. She's made Time magazine's list of 100 Most Influential People in 2011 and has been a guest on many TV shows, including Good Morning America, the Today show, and Real Time with Bill Maher. Amy and I spoke on August 26 and discussed the situation in Afghanistan. We talk about how our failure to recognize the importance of ethnic differences hampered our military efforts there. We talk about our inept withdrawal and abandonment of our allies. And on a lighter note, we discuss a now resolved situation with her employer, Yale Law School, in which she was punished for having two of her students over for cheese and crackers. And we discussed the problem of campus bureaucrats and witch hunts of controversial professors in general. So without further ado, Amy Chua Professor Chua, thanks so much for coming on my show.

[A]

Again, thanks so much for having me.

[B]

So yeah, I think it was many months ago that I had you on to discuss many of your books, from World on Fire to Political Tribes to the Triple Package. And as I said then, I've been a fan of your work for a long time, and the occasion of my wanting to speak to you now is the debacle of our withdrawal from Afghanistan. And you brought a really interesting perspective to that from an angle that many people don't normally think about Afghanistan, which is in terms of ethnic and tribal differences. Pretty much how we've tended to talk and think about Afghanistan as Americans is in terms of the fight between liberalism and democracy on the one hand and Islamism on the other hand, between two ideologies. And no doubt that's an important way of looking at the situation. But as you say in your book Political Tribes, we've sort of been totally blind to the fact that many Afghanis view this primarily as an ethnic conflict that goes back hundreds and hundreds of years. And that set of motivations is key to understanding the way people behave. So can you talk a little bit about the perspective you're bringing to it looking at the ethnic divides in Afghanistan?

[A]

Yeah. So, you know, in US Foreign policy for at least half a century, I mean, most of your listeners are probably barely have heard of Vietnam, but I dated back to then. In the United States, we have been kind of incredibly ignorant about the group identities that actually exist on the ground. And we tend to view the world in terms of these grand ideological battles. You mentioned some of them capitalism versus Communism. And I have a whole chapter on how we got Vietnam wrong because we missed the ethnic angle there. But yeah, what happened with Afghanistan and to some extent Iraq also is. We were just. Our view was kind of like the free world versus terrorists or the axis of evil. We had this kind of anti Islamist thing and it really, it hampered us. I mean, we are talking about we had the greatest military power that anyone's ever seen. The Taliban, like, they don't, you know, they're so at the opposite extreme. But what happened is that in Afghanistan, it's really different from the United States. You know, we complain a lot about tribalism here, but a lot of developing countries, Coleman, they just really never had this national identity that tied them all together. And in Afghanistan, there are at least 14 ethnic groups, but the largest three are the Pashtuns, the Tajiks, and the Uzbeks. And when we invaded in 2001, right after 9, 11, we came in on this wave of collective grief and anger and we just bombed the hell out of everything and we declared victory. It's like, okay, we've defeated them. And, and that's actually not what happened. I mean, the Taliban just kind of dispersed and went up into the mountains. But what's interesting is that we miss the fact that the Taliban is not just a fundamentalist Islamist movement, which it is, but it's also primarily an ethnic movement founded and largely populated and led by this largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, the Pashtuns, who had ruled that country for hundreds of years, but were starting to lose their historical dominance. It was actually in the Cold War when the Soviets messed it up. But the Pashtuns, who basically felt like we owned this country, we founded this country, the name Afghan practically means Pashtuns, they started to lose their dominance. And what we did is we missed that. We're like, okay, the Taliban, we don't want to deal with anybody dealing with the Taliban. So we allied ourselves, the US Forces with. With the Tajiks and the Uzbeks. These are the main rivals of the Pashtuns. And then we set up this government that was viewed as favoring these Uzbeks and Tashik. So it's amazing. We had all this military power, but we were basically shooting ourselves at the foot at every second. So, you know, a lot of Afghanistan, you know, Pashtuns who welcomed us at first, they're like, wait a minute. Why is the US Allied with these groups that basically massacred our grandparents or killed our parents? Why is this government viewed? You know, why is that all the people in these top positions, why are they not part of our group? And that's essentially how the Taliban swept to power in the first place. They kind of went to all these places that were predominantly Pashtun, and they said, hey, you guys may not like us and agree with everything, but what are the alternatives? We're at least gonna protect the Pashtun identity. And that's actually how they did it again just this last month. You know, the US Is like, wait, what happened? How did the country fall so quickly? Same plan. The Taliban quietly went to all these places. They went to the Pashtun places first, and they said, we're Pashtuns. We're gonna protect you. We'll put you first. And people just folded.

[B]

Yeah. So it's worth going over a little bit of the basic history here so that people really realize how deep these ethnic attachments are and how far back they go. We're talking about ethnic identities that have survived over the course of hundreds of years that are embedded in what the nation means for many Afghanis. Right. I have to apologize in advance for the crudest and dumbest analogy I've probably ever made, but it's as if a country invaded America, and America has been dominated to one extent by people of European descent for hundreds of years. And it's as if a country allied only with or largely with the black minority and started a government with the black minority in power only and expected the white majority to. To simply accept that.

[A]

That's not the dumbest analogy at all. I mean, that's exactly what happened. I mean, obviously you're illustrating it in a very stark way, but that's how dumb the move was. You caught it exactly right.

[B]

Yeah. And then. So just. The only reason I use that analogy is just to convey at least some of the absurdity of, at the very least, not recognizing the ethnic dimension and Just casting everything in terms of the way that we tend to think about it, which is we're at war with Islamism and trying to institute democracy like we did in Germany and Japan and so forth. So. And you know, there's some interesting factoids in your book. You know, the Afghan national anthem mentions 14 different ethnic groups right there in the national anthem. And it's also worth dwelling on the analogy between Germany and Japan and the success of turning those countries into democracy, or even the success of the war in Korea, which is permanently on hold, but has stabilized and allowed South Korea to thrive and entering very different cultures with different levels of tribal breakdown. And in the book, you even talk about how even within any one of these tribes, the Pashtuns, the Tajiks, the Uzbeks, there's a complex clan system that if you don't understand, it's very difficult to get anything done. Right, so.

[A]

Exactly. Yeah. You know, and I'm so glad you mentioned Japan and Germany because those are the models that a lot of people trot out. You know, I mean, that's, they're like, hey, we did this before, after the Second World War. It's, they're the dumbest models for the developing world because for, in Germany's case, for tragic reasons, both Germany and Japan after the Second World War were among the most ethnically homogeneous countries you're ever going to find. You know, it's like Japan is like 9 was 98% ethnic Japanese. In other words, no ethnic divisions. It was really a very ethnically pure society. In Germany, they had just, with the genocide, exterminated all the Jews and all these smaller minority groups. It was also very ethnically homogeneous. Same with Korea. So to use those as comparisons for countries like Afghanistan, where not only are there all these religious differences and then ethnic differences, and then as you say, even within the Pashtuns, there are like hundreds of different sub clans and sub tribes. And to not understand that, you know, in some ways I want to jump, you know, when President Trump. Sorry, I think a lot of Florida, I know this is a totally different topic. And so many people in the kind of elite establishment were shocked that Florida, or lots of Miami went Republican. I had so many students who are from Miami and many of them are liberals, you know, but they're like, we could have told you this. It's like, you know, all these elites, they have no idea what's going on. You know, especially Hispanic males, they really like this self reliance stuff. They hate this Latinx stuff, they hate socialism. So it's a little bit parallel, which is like you have these, just people who are making all these decisions. In Afghanistan's case, displaying a level of ignorance about what's actually what people think and believe and care about on the ground is pretty astonishing given that these are, these are smart people making these decisions. So it's very hubristic, you know, to kind of not know about this society.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it's. To me, it's not even a character judgment on the, on the foreign policy professionals and military folks that we're gesturing to. It's. It's much more comment on how difficult it is to actually obtain practical on the ground knowledge in a culture that is really alien to your own, that you haven't grown up with. You know, as you say, it's like people. We can hardly figure out totally what everyone is feeling and thinking in our own country.

[A]

Right, right. I would say differ a little bit. Like I talked to, I've given talks at like the, you know, the State Department. And a lot of the people that are studying this stuff, they actually knew about all these ethnic divisions. And a lot of the actual soldiers who went in there, they quickly saw it. It's more like the kind of. It's more like the very top. And it's not the military leaders. Right. It's kind of like the Washington elite that is making some of these decisions. This happened in Vietnam too. The difference there was all the. We thought of that war as just warrior capitalism versus communism, you know, and we're in favor of capitalism. What they missed in Vietnam is that they had this, we talked about this last time, a market dominant minority, a little minority In Vietnam, only 1% of the population, but they were ethnic Chinese. And the Vietnamese majority hated this Chinese group. But guess what? They were all the capitalists. So we come in the 60s and 70s. Oh, we're championing capitalism. And we totally miss the fact that these capitalists were all of this different hated ethnicity. And again, a lot of people on the ground, you know, all these State Department people, they knew that, but it was like the big fancy, you know, people in D.C. just, just kind of ignored those, those facts.

[B]

Yeah. So it's often not, not that you don't know it, it's. You're. You haven't internalized how, how important it is, how central it is to the motivations of the people in the country you're trying to mold. So I guess I'm curious whether you think withdrawing was the right move.

[A]

Yeah. You know, so Colin, I try to be above Tribalism. And I find it's so hard. I think that's one reason I just kind of love your show. Like, I try to just call it like it is. So I was very honest with you. My expertise was in figuring out what happened. What are the actual dynamics and why do we keep making these massive foreign policy mistakes in Iraq too. We have the greatest military in the world. We keep having these military victories and then we keep losing in the end, right? This is. It basically happened in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, and it's embarrassment. So that's what I'm trying to figure out. So my lesson, the work I do is I think that whatever your politics are, even if you're a hawk, you know, you are a big interventionist or you're a pacifist and you don't want to be in there. My idea is like, we're always going to be able to do our foreign policy better if we actually understand the local dynamics on the ground, these groups, what the dynamics are. My own view is that, yeah, we didn't belong in there, that we. I wrote a chapter about this. The Soviet Union had their Vietnam in Afghanistan 20 years before. It was a mess. And the British, I don't know if your listeners know this. Afghanistan has never been conquered. The British couldn't conquer them. The British conquered all of India. They conquered all these places in Africa. But Afghanistan has not fallen. And part of that is this. Well, it's the terrain, the mountains, all these tribes. But it's a really, really hard country to defeat, even if you did know a lot about it. And yes, so I'm actually, I mean, it's. Who cares what I think? It's almost just a personal view. I do think that we weren't going to be able to win it. You know, as to the logistics, I'm not the expert. I do think that it was a mess. The execution was a mess, even with the spin. And that's something that, the kind of work I do could help, you know, like, if you. Again, to repeat, if you look at everyone's like, wait, how could it have fallen so quickly? It turns out that a lot of people even over there were saying, wait, it's already happening. The Taliban is going to all these areas that are all Pashtun and they're negotiating these things. And this could be something that is a change from the past. Apparently, if the Taliban is trying to run the whole country now, they may want to improve and not make the same mistakes that they did last time. So I've heard that they've actually tried to negotiate with some of these other tribes like the Uzbeks and Tajiks and. But again, we're the greatest nation in the world. We have all this education and we were so much more ignorant and so much less savvy than the leaders of the Taliban about the dynamic.

[B]

Yeah. So, yeah, to me it seems like the practicality of the situation should decide our path. It's not that we don't have enough guns. We have the most guns in the world. Right. No country can outgun us. It is partly that we don't have the will to sustain multi decade efforts overseas. A lot of Americans no longer see that we necessarily have a compelling interest there. And then even if we did there, the particular quagmire of the Afghani tribal and clan system that we're not going to understand perfectly anytime soon. And certainly we're not gonna understand better than the Taliban. And so it does seem like it's just a little bit of an exercise in futility for our military to be there. So despite sort of sharing a worldview and a sort of naive idealism somewhere in me with foreign policy hawks, it just doesn't seem, it hasn't seemed practical and it seems like that the pattern of Vietnam and Iraq is just very predictable at this point.

[A]

Yeah. You know, there's a little piece of my chapter that it's even worse than that, Coleman, because the Taliban is armed with all of our weapons. This goes back like 30 years ago when we, right after Vietnam, all the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and we were gun shy at that point. We're like, wait, we just came out of this misfit with Vietnam. We don't know what to do. It's the middle of the Cold War. So we outsourced our foreign policy in Afghanistan to Pakistan. Right. Because Pakistan is right next to Afghanistan. And I don't want to bore your listeners with the details, but so there are Pashtuns in Afghanistan and they're the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, but there are also posthumous across the border in Pakistan, tons of Pashtuns. And there are actually more Pashtuns in Pakistan even though they're a smaller group compared to other groups. But the United States back then we just like said, okay, Pakistan, we're going to give you all these arms and we're just going to you help us out on the Cold War. And General Zia at that time just played us. He took all of our weapons and he used it to divide and conquer. He basically empowered the most zealotist and Kind of extreme fundamentalist branch of the Pashtuts. So that's just a quick backstory. When you say feudal, I mean, why does the Taliban have. They have incredible arms, they have trucks, they are very, very well equipped. That's because it's our equipment. A lot of that is our equipment.

[B]

Yeah. And that's just poetic example of how our ignorance and casting of everything in terms of these ideologies has led to horrible outcomes for us and for many others. So, I mean, there's. Whether or not you think withdrawal is the right move. I think there are two separate questions. One is, should we withdraw? And I think the answer is probably yes to that. And then there is the way that we've withdrawn. And that's where I would say that that's where I've been the most upset by this. You know, I've read this take that's sort of floating around now that anyone who complains about the withdrawal is really, really just wants us to stay in Afghanistan forever. And the complaints about the withdrawal are just a way of sort of venting frustration about the fact that they want us to stay in an endless war. And I really think that's wrong. I think these are two separate things. Right. Like, you can completely agree that we should have withdrawn. You could think that we should have withdrawn a decade ago, but still see the fact that. So, like today, I read in the Times that we've got in total 250,000 people, just Afghanis who have worked with us directly as translators, as all kinds of different links to local communities and so forth, have worked with us directly and therefore against the Taliban. And if we are going to get out by August 31st at best, we're getting maybe not even really half of them out.

[A]

It's really bad. I so agree with you. You could be in favor of withdrawal, and why not just start it earlier? You know, I've got a lot of former students who are vets, and I kind of trust them the most. Not the politicians that are grandstanding, but the actual people who fought there. And I've got former students who are actually like cell phone texting people putting together private ways of getting people that are stuck there, Afghans that work for them that are, you know, these are. These are. These are even some students that are against immigration. But it's more like, look, we struck a deal with them, they helped us, they saved my life. I gave them a promise, and they did this for so many years, and their lives are now in danger. So we have to get them out. So I've got students in New York that have little private networks going on. And that's where I just agree with you. Like why are. Why is it so we only have like four days left and we don't know where these people are and we have no way of getting them out. And you know, Bagram Air Force is closed down and I mean it's chaos. I think the execution was really. And it all comes down to the fact why. There's one question, why did they start earlier in some ways just slowly extricating some people getting processing these visas? Because under these circumstances now this is one of the things I say in political tribes. Why are we always coming from behind in foreign policy? It's like now we're in this fifth best world where you know, there are these checkpoints, everything is a mess. And now we're trying to do our best. But it didn't have to be that way. It could have been planned better from the beginning.

[B]

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[A]

Right.

[B]

And then only once the last person has left do we begin actually evacuating all of our credible threat of force. In principle. It's not rocket science, although I'm sure there are. There are complexities to it that I don't understand.

[A]

But, you know, sometimes I wonder why people can't just have common sense, you know, because, you know, I think humility is important. It's true. We're not on the ground. We don't know specifically, but I think that you're right. Like, what is so complicated about that? Why wouldn't that be the normal way that you would do things, you know?

[B]

Yeah, yeah. And there's this gesture to, well, we can't solve all the world's problems and so forth. But I find that to be true. But just such an empty statement in this case, because it's, yes, there's gonna continue to be refugee crises all around the world. And it's true we're not solely responsible to fix all of them or to alone take all of the world's refugees every time. But in this case, we have a case where we went into a country, a country that's not. We invaded a country and asked people to help us fight an enemy. And now we're, you know, we're potentially hanging many of those people out to dry. It's a problem of our creation. This is not an abstract issue to care about, you know, just to go above and beyond. Right. It's like it's a moral obligation to help the people.

[A]

Yeah, I think there's a moral obligation. But you can also think of it in terms of instrumental terms, like if the reputation gets out there that the US doesn't keep its promises, you know, that if you tell people, you know, that this is what we're going to do, and you don't do it. I mean, it's not good in terms of an incentive structure going forward either.

[B]

No doubt. So one thing I just, on a completely different topic just wanted to hit on, partly because I tweeted about it in your defense was your debacle at Yale Law School and dinner party gate. Yeah, dinner party gate. I mean, this. Do you want to give a summary of what happened here or.

[A]

Yeah, you know me, I'm just totally anti being a victim, so I don't feel like I'm a victim, but this is the craziest thing that's ever happened to me. You know, I. Suddenly, there's this rumor. I get an email from the Yale Daily News saying, we've heard that you are going to be stripped from teaching the small groups at Yale Law School. A small group is like first years come in and you're in a small group. You're taught by a professor, 16 of you, and it's something that is supposed to be very intimate, and the professor socializes with you and you kind of get to know somebody. And it's a selling point for Yale. We're like, come to us because we're. We, you know, we get special mentorship now. I didn't want to teach the small group because I'm so controversial. I was like, no, I don't want to do it. They begged me from, you know, last September all the way through this past January, please, please, please teach a small group. I finally agreed. I get this email out of the blue in March from the Yale Daily News saying, we're here. You're going to be stripped of this because you've been having drunken dinner parties with federal judges at your house and then mixing all these accusations that were also false from when I had supported Brett Kavanaugh two years ago.

[B]

So it was like, that was March of this year that you.

[A]

Yes, just this past March, Yale Daily News sends an email. And I first thought it was a joke. Like, it was so crazy because it's in the middle of COVID Coleman. And I'll be the first to tell you that in the past, I have had great parties. We used to have Harvard, Yale games. Like I. I used to have, you know, the Asian students, over 100 people, Black Students association, over first generation professionals. I mean, I did that for 15 years. Some of my best memories. I'm not, I think, also a different topic. I think generations. I think things have changed. Students are more fragile. I wouldn't do this anymore. But the larger point is this just didn't happen. There was no dinner party with federal judges. And I was just going to just say, forget it. Okay? I was going to teach something else. But it was my daughter, who is 25, who said, mom, my generation gets our truth from social media. And if it's so false, you've got to fight back. So I did something I've never done before. I wrote in a letter to my entire faculty. And I'm actually pretty. At least before, I was pretty well liked in my faculty. I'm a team player. I'm not a problem. And I have to toot my own horn here. I have the highest teaching evaluation rankings at the school. I have the longest wait list. I'm a very popular teacher, and I have the most diverse classes, both with conservatives, but tons of progressives and minorities. I'm very proud of my teaching record. So I wrote this letter to the whole faculty, and I tweeted, we did it. And I'm not a big Twitter person like you. I just did this thing, and the next thing I know, it's like the New York Times is writing a piece and the New Yorker. And I didn't go to those media people, I guess, just because of who I am being so controversial on Tiger Mom, But I took every interview because I was like, I have the truth on my side, and I don't want to be canceled. So basically, I just fought back. And all these students wrote in my defense, and it's been a nightmare, but I kind of feel vindicated. I kind of feel like I won. The last piece was a piece in the Atlantic by Liz Bruinig. She's a socialist. She's very much a person on the left, and she just kind of. It's the third piece that says it doesn't seem to be any dinner parties. It was essentially a small handful of students who worked, I don't know, tape recording other students. There was a big misunderstanding. And my whole problem was I just. I don't care about the students, but I deserve due process. I just. We teach it in law school. What? We teach due process. And I, after I got the Yale Daily News, told me I was going to be stripped of my small group. I contacted the dean. I was like, what's going on? You know, I was. I thought she was my friend. And I was basically subjected to a zoom interrogation for 40 minutes where all they asked me about were, did I have dinner parties for these federal judges? And then they took the small group away. So I didn't have a chance to defend myself. They didn't present me with evidence. They didn't tell me why the small group was being taken away. They basically just believed this handful of students and were going to push me under the bus. So I was like, if I go down, I'm going to go down fighting. So now it's all over. The place.

[B]

So to be clear, their original accusation was that you were in breach of some contract as a professor by linking up federal judges to students or simply by having gatherings during COVID or having gatherings at all. What was the specific nature of the.

[A]

Well, this is one of the things that makes me upset. It's like in authoritarian regimes, like if you're in the Soviet Union, the accusation keeps changing. Okay, so the original accusation was. Was. So back when I was very controversial by supporting now justice Kavanaugh In 2018, there was a huge amount of controversy back then. And I fought back and I entered into an agreement. There were like somebody said, there was this crazy accusation that I told people to students to dress like models, you know, in interviewing with them. Completely false. He's a Federalist Society judge. That would be ridiculous to try to dress like a model. You know, Federalist Society students, you all wear dark suits. And if you're going to interview, you have to look professional. So they kept asking me, when I came back in the middle of this controversy, the dean kept saying, you have to apologize for telling students to dress like models. And I said, I refuse. I refuse to admit to something that I didn't do. And they're like, well, then you're not going to be able to satisfy these students are going to be protests. So I struck sort of like an agreement with them, a temporary agreement, said, okay, I won't teach a first year class for a year. And I wrote an apology that was kind of like, I apologize if I said anything that offended anyone, you know, but I absolutely did not tell people to dress like models. And there were all these accusations also about like drinking too much and everything. So I said, I, you know, for a short time, like there wasn't a stated time, but I'm going to lay low right now and I'm not going to, you know, have students over and I will never do anything inappropriate, something like that. But I viewed my agreement as being satisfied when the administration asked me to teach the small group because it's a requirement of teaching a small group that you socialize with students, that you have them over to your house.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, I know I was an undergrad two years ago, and undergrad is even. There's probably less of this in undergrad because of age than law school. But I know at least twice one of my professors in a small class had the class over for drinks and I got. I've got quite drunk and had a great time. Both times changed.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, it used to be.

[B]

Well, this Was even, you know, two, three years ago still happening? I mean, I think not. I'm not sure to what degree it's sanctioned by the school, but there is a kind of understanding. If there's a good feeling in the class and the professor has good judgment. It's kind of. You just use your judgment in a less than official way, because that's how most human interaction and connection and learning happens.

[A]

Yeah. I have to tell you, Coleman, I did that at the end of the year. I would have students over. I did it for 25 years. No problem. My evaluations were all the top. These are such fun way to have an intimate setting. It was only when I supported Brett Kavanaugh that this started, so. So I think this is all related to that. But then what happened is that it came out through all these journalists that there were no parties at all. And I would have been proud to admit, like, I. If I had had a party and served alcohol. What's wrong with that? The only problem is it didn't happen. So I was like, I am gonna stand up for the truth in this case. We're in the middle of COVID I'm not having any parties. And what, federal judges are gonna fly across the country to be with, like, two 23 year olds? So then the administration changed its story, and they're like, oh, it's a Covid violation. It was a Covid violation. And then it turns out that other professors were having these gatherings too. So the whole thing is just absurd. It's over. I will tell you that I'm very proud. I taught my first class on Monday. Packed room, 90 person wait list. It didn't have any effect, but I did fight back against, I guess what people call cancel culture, and kind of stood up for myself, and I think it came out okay.

[B]

I've heard many other horror stories of campus bureaucracies, you know, with no oversight, just completely railroading people. Students in some cases. So, yeah, this is definitely a problem that is not unique to Yale Law. And I think everyone should just check out the Atlantic piece by Liz Bruinig on this. Presumably, you know, Liz herself interview the two students that were, you know, the only two students that were actually at your apartment that comprised the event that is. That was the source of the accusation. Right. And neither of them have alleged anything ever.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Like, what they said happened is that, yeah, we went over to Professor Chua's and had some cheese and crackers and had a conversation about racism. Yeah. Their involvement at a newspaper and some. Something pretty normal to talk to a professor about and then left. And both of them were perfectly happy with how that went.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

And it was only one of their friends that was not actually there, but overheard that they were going to Professor Chua's and then, you know, wrote. Wrote like a dossier snitching on their friends, going to a professor's house. Again, friends have no problem with what happened. It's this third party. So it's really, it's really an amazing situation that it, that it, in a way, talking about it feeds into the problem, which is, you know, I'm not sure this should have been news to begin with. Certainly not news that came to, you know, the New York Times and so forth. But I do think this is not at all the first time I've heard of crazy stories where a campus bureaucracy that has no oversight and no individual bureaucrat incentivized to really get to the bottom of something. Especially when it's combined with a controversial professor or student, where a defense of that person could be read as a defense of that person's politics or that person's ideas. And it's just that extra layer of stench around that person, it's that person's reputation just, Just makes it harder to sort of behave normally as a bureaucracy ought to.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, I think that's why. Because you're right. Why is this in the New York Times? Why is there a New Yorker article? You know, and I think that what happens with this new kind of bureaucracy, as you mentioned, and all these deans that are supposed to be doing diversity or that a lot of people just don't fight back, you know, and they just kind of quietly go away and just kind of take it. And so I think my situation was unusual. Somebody else who writes for the Atlantic says a lot of people are watching this to see what happens, you know, are you going to be crushed and destroyed? Are you going to survive it? So, yeah, anyway, I think I did survive it. But people should read this piece by Elizabeth Brunick. It is, you won't believe it, people.

[B]

She's a great writer as well. So it has a really. It's not just a sort of a boring, factual read. It has a little bit of a Tom Wolf quality to it.

[A]

Well, they want to make a TV show.

[B]

Yeah. Oh, you know, it might make a good TV show with, especially with, you know, I'm curious about the. So, you know, the relationship between one of the students who was at your apartment and his friend, presumably who he had given a key to his apartment to do laundry there, who then ended up snitching on a meeting. Right. It's like, that friendship is definitely interesting material for a TV show.

[A]

I have tried to just focus not on the students and on the administration, because that's kind of. I feel like that's where I have my gripe and I'm focusing. I feel like these are my colleagues and professors should have rights. And I was never told what I was accused of, why the small group, which I didn't want in the first place, and it was so publicly humiliating, they're like, this newspaper article. Chu has been stripped of this small group for misconduct. And I just couldn't stand it. I was like, if you're gonna say that about me, where's the proof? And in the end, they didn't have any proof. They didn't have the goods. And it was a long, ugly process. But I did feel that the truth finally came out. I remember all these people were saying, what's the trick to surviving? Cancel culture. And I said, I don't have a trick. You know, it's been miserable. But I said, you know what? It does help to have the truth on your side. And that was definitely the case. Like, we just didn't have these dinner parties with federal judges. And it was. Two students came over in the late afternoon, and I was, like, basically being like a mentor to them for like, an hour and a half, and then they left. That was it.

[B]

Yeah. So, I mean, the reason I. I tweeted in your defense about this is because I do care about colleges and universities not becoming totally sterile environments where incidents like this discourage a professor from ever inviting their students or their class, you know, over. Over to their apartments and just making the experience of going to college or law school sort of more colorless.

[A]

Yeah. I think that change is happening, though. I've had so many students come to me and say, wait, you're responding to a tiny minority of voices. The rest of us, we wanna go to the professor's houses. This is why we came to Yale Law School. But I think your worries are real. I'm certainly gun shy. I don't wanna go through this again. So it is a shame. It is a shame.

[B]

Now that I've actually realizing I'm having this thought for the first time. But the three times in my Columbia experience that professors invited the whole class over to their apartment, each time to drink, they were all female professors. I noticed. And I don't know this, but I'm curious if male professors feel like it's just not worth the. Even if it's a 5% chance that there's a situation like what happened to Amy Chua, where, yeah, somebody says something vague and then it follows me for the rest of my life, even if it's just a comment that was made or overheard, it's like, why the hell would I take the chance of having my reputation having there be an asterisk next to my name for potentially decades, when I could just not have them over?

[A]

Definitely. And it's gonna make a much less possible positive experience for the students because you get to know among them, hundreds of letters that were written in my defense were people who said this, just that they're like, oh, I'm 40 now. I'm a partner at a law firm. I'm African American, and I almost didn't survive the law school. I almost. I was in a bad spot. It was going to Professor Chuas in an intimate setting where I finally could talk to somebody over drinks, feeling there was somebody that I could relate to, that kind of saved me. And that's one of the most important experiences I had. And I do think it's a bit of a shame that things like that will are bound to change going forward. But you know what, Coleman? I think everything is cyclical. I think everything is cyclical. I think we'll swing back because I think it's not a stable situation.

[B]

All right, so on that note, it's been very good to talk to you, Professor Chua. Hope to have you back again at some point and be well.

[A]

Thanks so much for having me.

[B]

If you appreciate the work I do, the best ways to support me are to subscribe directly through my website, ColemanHughes.org and to subscribe to my YouTube channel, so you'll never miss my new content. As always, thanks for your support.