타이거맘 교수, 학생들과 술파티? 美 예일대 로스쿨 찬반 두쪽 났다

 

미국 예일대 로스쿨이 스타 교수이자 강한 자녀 훈육(訓育)방식으로 유명한 ‘타이거 맘(tiger mom)’ 에이미 추아 교수(58)가 작년 겨울 코로나 팬데믹 중에 자신의 집에서 학생들과 술을 마시며 벌였다는 ‘디너파티 게이트’로 시끄럽다. 이 사건을 보는 예일대 로스쿨 교수들과 학생들의 ‘비난’과 ‘옹호’ 시각도 반으로 쪼개졌다. 뉴욕타임스와 워싱턴포스트, 폭스뉴스, 뉴요커등 미국의 굵직한 매체들이 이 사건을 특집으로 다뤘다.

 

예일대 로스쿨은 하버드대와 더불어, 미국 로스쿨의 ‘투 톱(two top)’을 이룬다. 연방대법관 8명 중 4명이 예일 로스쿨 출신이고, 학풍은 보다 학구적, 철학적이며 미국 지성계의 최고 기득권 집단이기도 하다. 그런 예일대 로스쿨에 중국계스타 여교수가 일으킨 논란에 미 언론이 이토록 주목하는 것은 이 ‘디너게이트 파티’에 대한 학내 반응이 성(性)과 이념, 인종에 따라 갈기갈기 찢어진 현(現) 미국 사회를 그대로 반영하기 때문이다.

 

◇ 학생들 “추아 교수, 학생들과 술파티…멘토링 권한 박탈해야” 진정

지난 3월26일 예일대 로스쿨의 일부 학생이 로스쿨 학장인 헤더 거켄(Gerken)에게 “추아 교수가 코로나 팬데믹의 방역 지침을 어기고, 지난 겨울 멘토링하는 학생 여럿과 연방 판사들을 집으로 초청해 취할 정도로 술을 마시는 디너 파티를 했다”는 진성서를 냈다. 예일대 로스쿨은 1학년 첫 학기에 15명 안팎의 학생들을 교수에게 배정해 멘토링을 받게 한다. 그러나 팬데믹으로 인해, 학교 안팎의 학생 지도가 엄격히 통제된 상황이었다. 학생들은 “교수가 집에서 학생들과 술 파티를 했으니, 멘토링을 못하게 해야 한다”고 주장했다.

예일대 로스쿨의 '파워 브로커'이자 스타 교수 부부인 에이미 추와 제드 루벤펠드 교수. 성추행 의혹과 파격적인 주장으로, 이들은 미 지성의 최고 전당을 자부하는 예일대 로스쿨에서 종종 논란을 일으켰다./NBC 유니버설

 

추아 교수와 남편 제드 루벤펠드(62) 교수는 예일대 로스쿨의 스타 교수 커플이며, 실제로 이 부부의 집은 평소 법학자들과 판사들, 저술가들이 어울리는 명소이기도 하다. 이 진정서대로라면, 추아 교수는 “교수가 학교 지침을 어기고 학생들과 사적인 술‧디너 파티를 했다”는 비난을 피할 수 없게 된다.

 

◇ 로스쿨 학장은 추아에게 멘토링 권한 박탈

예일대 로스쿨 학장인 헤더 거켄은 헌법과 선거법의 최고 권위자로, 추아와는 다른 차원의 스타 교수다. 그는 추아와 화상으로 사실 관계를 확인한 뒤, 추아의 봄 학기 멘토링 권한을 박탈했다. 그러나 추아는 “집에 두 명의 멘티를 초청해, 창문 열고 떨어져 앉아 고민을 들어준 것은 맞지만, 술도 식사도 연방 판사들도 없었다”고 반박했다. 추아 교수를 학교 측에 고발한 학생들도 일방적인 주장 외에, 어떠한 증거도 제출하지 못했다.

헤더 거켄 예일대 로스쿨 학장/예일대 로스쿨

 

이 탓에, 거켄 학장이 4월21일 교수 회의에서 추아의 ‘불미스러운’ 행동을 거론하며 멘토링 박탈 처분을 밝히자, 일부 교수들은 “증거가 어디 있느냐” “학생들 간 고자질을 부추기느냐” “지금 미국이 애들이 부모랑 형제를 고발하는 1953년 모스크바냐”로 반발했다.

 

◇ 대학‧미국 사회도 이념‧인종 따라 찬반 갈려

추아 교수를 둘러싼 논란이 알려지면서, 예일대 로스쿨 학생들과 교수들은 물론, 미국 사회의 유명인사들 간에도 추아 교수에 대한 응원과 비판이 갈린다.

 

2018년 추아가 예일대 동문인 브렛 캐버너 연방항소판사의 대법관 지명자를 성추문 의혹 속에서도 지지한 것을 들어, #미투(MeToo) 운동 측은 추아의 ‘술 파티’를 비난한다. 뉴요커와 뉴욕타임스는 추아에 대한 비난에는 “아시아계에 대한 차별적 시각, ‘튀는 것’을 멀리하고 끼리끼리의 ‘종족주의(tribalism)’, 다른 부류를 거부하는 ‘캔슬 문화(cancel culture)’, 학생들이 교수를 공격하고 서로 고자질하는 엘리트 대학의 문화가 배어 있다”고 분석했다.

 

영국 출신의 저명한 역사학자인 니알 퍼거슨은 “사회적 이슈에 깨어났다(woke)는 학계가 자신들과 정치적 노선을 달리하는 소수파 교수에게 독설(毒舌)을 날리는 것”이라고 했다.

 

◇ 남편은 ‘성추행’…추아는 “미 지성계 불편한 존재”

문제는 추아‧루벤펠드 부부 교수가 최고의 지성을 자랑하는 ‘고상한’ 예일대 로스쿨에서 이전부터 튀는 행동과 주장으로, ‘미운 털’이 박혔다는 것이다. 헌법학자인 남편 루벤펠드는 2019년 여학생들에 대한 성희롱‧성추행 사건으로 무급(無給) 정직 처분을 받아, 지금도 강의를 하지 못 한다. 그는 “성폭력에서도 피해자가 노(no)라고 말했다고, 무조건 강간이 될 수는 없다”는 지론을 편다.

 

학교 당국은 당시 루벤펠드 교수의 성추행 사건을 조사하면서, 추아 교수도 학생들과 “빈번하게 과도한 음주를 한 사실”을 발견했다. 추아는 그때 “가까운 장래에는 학생들을 집으로 초대하지 않고 밖에서 어울려 술 마시지 않겠다”고 학교에 서약했다. 거켄 학장은 추아가 디너파티 게이트로 이 서약서를 위반했다고 했지만, 추아는 “지금 내게 쏟아지는 비난엔 일점의 진실도 없다(zero truth)”고 반박한다.

6월7일자 뉴욕 매거진에 게재된 인터뷰 기사에 실린, 추아 교수가 자신의 집 앞에서 찍은 사진/뉴욕 매거진

 

추아 교수도 매스컴의 주목을 즐기며, ‘파격적인’ 의상과 사진 촬영도 마다하지 않는다. 미 언론인 데이비드 프럼은 “추아는 미 지성계에선 불편한 존재”라며 “다른 사람들은 들어가지 않는 지역에 접근하고 경고음이 나면 ‘아, 미안, 이건 금기인가요?”라고 웃으며 묻는 스타일”이라고 평했다.

 

추아‧루벤펠드 교수 부부는 2014년에도 미국에서 유대계‧인도계‧중국계‧쿠바계 등 8개 인종이 특별히 성공하는 이유를 분석한 책 ‘트리플 패키지(The Triple Package)’을 써 ‘인종차별주의’ 논란을 일으켰다. 추아는 중국계, 루벤펠드는 유대계다.

'타이거 맘의 군가(battle hymn)'과, 특정 인종의 성공적 요인을 다룬 책 '트리플 패키지' 책 표지.

 

추아는 또 브렛 캐버너(현 연방대법관)의 연구관(로클럭‧law clerk)을 꿈꾸는 여학생들에겐 “캐버너가 좋아하는 외모가 있다” “그의 로클럭은 모두 모델처럼 생겼다”며 의상을 어떻게 화려하게 입어야 하는지 조언해, 페니미니스트들의 비난을 샀다.

 

◇추아 교수, 소수계 출신 학생들 각별히 관심 기울여

추아는 그러나 가난한 집안의 흑인이나 아시아계 등 소수계 학생들을 특별히 관심을 갖고 멘토링하면서, 자신의 엄청난 네트워크를 이용해 연방대법관이나 항소법원 판사들의 연구관으로 일할 수 있게 했다. 캐버너의 연구관으로도 자신의 딸과 여러 제자를 보냈다.

 

친(親)추아 진영 학생들은 “추아가 유색인종, 집안에서 처음 전문직이 되는 학생들, 주립대 출신들, 외국학생들을 매우 따듯하게 지도했다”고 말한다. 모두 67명의 학생-교수-교직원들이 추아를 지지하는 편지를 학교 측에 보냈다. 국내에도 번역된 ‘힐빌리의 노래’를 쓴 실리콘밸리의 사업가 J D 밴스도 책에서 “애팔래치아 산맥의 시골 출신인 나에게 추아 교수는 진심으로 대해줬다”고 감사한 바 있다.

 

반면에, 예일대 교수들과 재학생 중 반(反)추아진영은 추아‧루벤펠드 교수 부부가 로스쿨과 미 법조계에서 “전화 한 통화로” 행사하는 과도한 영향력을 비판한다.

 

추아는 “교수진 중의 유일한 아시아계 여성으로서, 다른 교수였더라도 이처럼 부당하게 대우받았을까 의문”이라고 반발했다. 그는 과거에 ‘타이거 맘’을 지지한 책과 ‘인종주의’ 논란을 일으킨 책을 썼을 때, 캐버너 대법관 지명자를 지지했을 때와 지금의 싸움은 다르다고 말한다. ‘디너파티 게이트’의 공격은 언론이나 소셜미디어에서 오는 것이 아니라, 바로 예일대 로스쿨 학생들과 교수진이 편이 갈려 자신에게 쏟아지기 때문이다. 그는 “이번 싸움이 가장 외롭다”고 영국의 더 타임스에 말했다.

 

 

 

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — On March 26, a group of students at Yale Law School approached the dean’s office with an unusual accusation: Amy Chua, one of the school’s most popular but polarizing professors, had been hosting drunken dinner parties with students, and possibly federal judges, during the pandemic.

Ms. Chua, who rose to fame when she wrote “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” is known for mentoring students from marginalized communities and helping would-be lawyers get coveted judicial clerkships. But she also has a reputation for unfiltered, boundary-pushing behavior, and in 2019 agreed not to drink or socialize with students outside of class. Her husband, Jed Rubenfeld, also a law professor, is virtually persona non grata on campus, having been suspended from teaching for two years after an investigation into accusations that he had committed sexual misconduct.

 

The dinner parties, the students said, appeared to violate Ms. Chua’s no-socializing agreement, and were evidence that she was unfit to teach a “small group” — a class of 15 or so first-year students that is a hallmark of the Yale legal education, and to which she had recently been assigned — in the fall. “We believe that it is unsafe to give Professor Chua (and her husband) such access to and control over first-year students,” an officer of Yale Law Women, a student group, wrote to the dean, Heather K. Gerken.

 

The students provided what they said was proof of the dinners, in the form of a dossier featuring secretly screen-shotted text messages between a second-year student and two friends who had attended. That touched off a cascading series of events leading to Ms. Chua’s removal from the small-group roster.

 

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.

Image

Prof. Amy Chua at her home in New Haven, Conn.Credit...Christopher Capozziello for The New York Times

 

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.”

ADVERTISEMENT

Continue reading the main story

 

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.

 

Particularly problematic, several professors said in interviews, was her reliance on the text-message dossier, prepared by a student who learned that two of his friends had gone to Ms. Chua’s house — and believed that the visits made them complicit in her, and Mr. Rubenfeld’s, behavior.

 

It is a curious document. Among other things, the aggrieved student’s text messages show him repeatedly asking one of the friends to admit to meeting judges there, and the friend repeatedly denying it. (“if you promise to keep it between us, i’ll tell you — it was Chief Justice John Marshall,” the friend finally texts, in an exasperated reference to the long-deceased jurist.)

 

Ms. Gerken referred to the dossier at an April 21 faculty meeting as evidence of Ms. Chua’s misconduct. Several professors who saw the material said in interviews that they were shocked at how unpersuasive it was.

“Evidence of what?” one asked. Another called it “tattletale espionage.”

“Where are we — in Moscow in 1953, when children were urged to report on their parents and siblings?” the professor said.

 

Ms. Chua acknowledges warning the students to keep quiet about the get-togethers (“I did tell them all, ‘Don’t mention this,’ because everything I do, I get in trouble for,” she said), but maintains that she violated no rules.

 

“There are many things in the past that I can say, ‘Oh, I probably spoke too recklessly,’ or, ‘Maybe it was interpreted this way,’” she said in a recent interview. “This most recent thing — there is zero truth to it.”

Ms. Gerken declined to be interviewed, but said in a statement that professors’ Covid-related behavior was relevant in determining their fitness to teach a small group.

“Health and safety expectations and exercising sound judgment about such matters should figure into whether a faculty member is suitable to teach a class, particularly a small-group course,” she said. “Professor Chua has publicly acknowledged that she served food and drink inside her home during the early weeks of the spring semester, when Covid was spiking and the university was repeatedly asking our community to avoid maskless indoor gatherings.”

A couple beset by controversy

Provocative and gregarious, Ms. Chua and her husband have long attracted attention at Yale Law School.

But the two are divisive figures, and not just because of “Tiger Mother,” Ms. Chua’s tough-love parenting memoir, or the rumors dating back years of Mr. Rubenfeld’s inappropriate behavior toward female students. At a time of left-leaning orthodoxy, Mr. Rubenfeld seems intent on pushing the envelope. After he wrote a New York Times opinion essay in 2014 questioning the fairness of campus sexual-assault findings, dozens of students signed a letter of protest.

Key Reading About Amy Chua

• • First Moment in the Spotlight: Amy Chua’s first book, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” written in 2011, is a memoir about strict Chinese parenting. Some felt it read as criticism of Western practices. Ms. Chua, a professor at Yale Law School, said that those readers missed the point.
  • Profile: Ms. Chua and her husband, Jed Rubenfeld, wrote, “The Triple Package,” in 2014 about why certain cultural groups tend to succeed more than others. They had no idea why this might be controversial.
  • Book Review: In “Political Tribes,” published in 2018, Ms. Chua argued that elite Americans underestimate the power of sectarianism, domestically and internationally.
  • Current Controversy: A dispute at Yale Law School centering on Ms. Chua is exposing a culture pitting student against student, professor against professor.

For Ms. Chua, similar trouble arrived in 2018, when Brett M. Kavanaugh, a Yale Law graduate, was nominated for the Supreme Court and she praised him as a fine mentor of women. (Her older daughter had been hired to clerk for him, and took the job after his elevation.) On a campus wracked by bitter anti-Kavanaugh protests, her views were regarded as a betrayal, especially when it emerged that she was said to have told students that Judge Kavanaugh’s female clerks “looked like models.” Suddenly, her reputation as someone who could help students get judicial clerkships was regarded as a negative.

Image

 

Professor Chua and her husband, Jed Rubenfeld, who is also on the faculty at Yale Law School. Credit...Peter Kramer/NBCUniversal, via Getty Images

With the #MeToo movement gathering force, years of rumors coalesced into official inquiries. Yale opened a Title IX investigation into allegations that Mr. Rubenfeld had made inappropriate sexual comments and attempted to touch and kiss female students. The details are secret, but in August, some of the claims were upheld, and he was suspended. (He denies sexually harassing students.)

 

As for Ms. Chua, her critics paint her as quick to play favorites, quick to improperly draw students into her confidence, and complicit in her husband’s behavior. After her 2019 agreement not to drink or socialize with students, she apologized to students she might have offended.

“I’ve been unfiltered and over the top,” she said. “I’ve tried to seriously change.”

‘The matter is closed’

Promises of change did little to allay the concerns of the students who, in March, saw Ms. Chua’s name on the small-group list and told the dean they had proof that Ms. Chua had broken her agreement.

The mention of evidence seemed to energize the administration. “Dean Gerken is taking this news VERY seriously and wants to move forward asap,” Ellen Cosgrove, the dean of students, wrote on March 26 to the students. “Would you be able to share the texts with me?” She asked them to keep her request private.

Two days later, Ms. Chua got an email from The Yale Daily News, the student newspaper, which said it had heard that she was about to be stripped of her small group.

That was news to Ms. Chua. Later that day, she met over Zoom with Ms. Gerken. It was not a pleasant meeting. The dean mentioned alcohol and judges, Ms. Chua said, before announcing that she had decided on a “different lineup for small group professors.”

Image

 

Dean Heather K. Gerken of Yale Law School.Credit...Mark Ostow

ADVERTISEMENT

Continue reading the main story

 

Ms. Chua stepped down rather than be pushed, she said.

The dean’s office responded that Ms. Chua had ample opportunity to defend herself.

“Throughout my deanship, I have made no decision about disciplinary action involving a faculty member until the person accused of misconduct receives notice of the allegations and has an opportunity to respond. Period,” Ms. Gerken said in her statement.

She added, “If a faculty member offers to withdraw from a course and I accept that offer, the matter is closed.”

Students and faculty split

The matter might indeed have been closed if The Daily News had not published its article the following week, referring to “documented allegations” that Ms. Chua had hosted “private dinner parties with current Law School students and prominent members of the legal community.”

Ms. Chua fired off her angry letter to her colleagues and posted it on Twitter. “As the only Asian American woman on the academic faculty, I can’t imagine any other faculty member would be treated with this kind of disrespect,” she wrote.

Then all hell broke loose.

In the anti-Chua camp, one alumna released an anguished five-page letter describing how her adoration of Ms. Chua had soured in 2018, when Ms. Chua decided to “throw students under the bus” by denying their claims that she had made the comments about Judge Kavanaugh’s law clerks.

“From the bottom of my heart, Amy, you gutted me,” the alumna wrote.

While the author was close to Ms. Chua, most of the law students criticizing her said they had never met her — and had been warned not to.

 

“We are scared that Chua is continuing to put students in harm’s way,” a student wrote to the dean.

Equally impassioned were dozens of letters supporting Ms. Chua, who posted them on her personal website. The letters spoke of her highly personal support for students of color, for first-generation professionals, for students from state colleges, for foreign students.

 

To suggest that she had harmed students by inviting them to her home, a pro-Chua student said, “is ludicrous in the first place, even if they were actual children. But these are adults.”

Lost in the cacophony were the fates of the two students whose text messages featured in the dossier, and who said the episode has left them unable to trust their own classmates. Their identities were revealed when the dossier’s creator prepared a supplementary “timeline,” including their names, and gave it to other students; soon it was all over school.

The release of the timeline, the students said, caused them to be attacked by classmates as somehow being both complicit in, and victims of, Ms. Chua’s perceived misconduct.

The ensuing furor led the Asian student to withdraw his application for a prestigious teaching-assistant job with another professor, he explained, because he feared people would say “that I obtained the position through some sort of pernicious arrangement with Professor Chua.”

The students said the dean’s office had never asked them what actually happened at Ms. Chua’s. They said, too, that the administration seemed much more worried that they might have been harmed by Ms. Chua than by the friend who secretly recorded their conversations.

When she raised the issue, one student said, “I was repeatedly told that the students were acting on my behalf and out of concern for me.”

 

As the spring semester wound down, the whisper network was in full force. Some professors were weary of Ms. Chua’s continuing dramas; others had lost faith in Ms. Gerken; others were calling for more transparency in faculty disciplinary matters.

“This is my fourth firestorm,” Ms. Chua said, “and I just kind of want to survive and write my books.”

At the April 21 faculty meeting over Zoom, Ms. Gerken related her version of events: Ms. Chua’s infractions, the contemporaneous student evidence. The presentation struck some professors as decidedly odd, and at least one secretly recorded the meeting.

At the meeting, Bruce Ackerman, a Sterling professor of law and political science, outlined the problem, or at least one of them: “Two of our most prominent professors, one of whom is the dean, seem to be saying diametrically opposite things.”