Yale isn t America s only top institution facing a meltdown

Yale University appears to be in the midst of a meltdown. You may find that irrelevant, or even amusing, but you shouldn t. Because Yale s sad condition, unfortunately, is common to many of our most important institutions.

As I wrote here last week, Yale s governing board, faced with a challenge by an outsider, secretly rewrote its rules as the votes were counted, so as to ensure no more unapproved candidates.

Why is Yale so eager to avoid outside scrutiny?

There was also a scandal about a speaker at Yale who discussed the psychopathic problem of the white mind and talked about emptying her revolver into the head of any white person who got in her way.

But the big Yale development this week came from my alma mater, Yale Law School, where the New York Times reported on a bizarre student campaign against law professor Amy Chua, best known for her Tiger Mom book on raising children.

Both she and her husband, Jed Rubenfeld, were made pariahs on campus based on student complaints, coincidentally shortly after showing support for then-nominee for the Supreme Court Brett Kavanaugh.

Then this year, students accused Chua of, well, something and the school backed them. It had to do with claims that she had dinner parties for some students at which federal judges were present. As proof, students circulated screenshotted text messages from students who were allegedly there. As the Times reports: Ms. Chua says she did nothing wrong, and it is unclear exactly what rule she actually broke.

via nypost.com

We only had a bit of drama when I was at Yale Law School. The only thing I was aware of was a kerfuffle on the YLJ when the editor-in-chief and his executive editor fired and then were forced to rehire a nice African-American woman who was an articles editor. The whole thing was embarrassing and gave the top editors the chance to display their natural arrogance, it goes almost without saying. Still, the woman in question was abjectly unqualified for the job; it must have been humiliating for her. Still further, I was shocked at how insensitive all the people supposedly most committed to civil rights turned out to be in this event. Oh well. A good time was had by all.

In other news, I got one of many solicitations for a gift from the Dean of The Yale LS a few days back. A pretty little card it was. Hilarious.