Original ‘Tiger Mother’ says pressure to denounce Kavanaugh at Yale was like ‘cultural revolution’
Woke culture at an elite American university got so out of control during Trump’s first term it was reminiscent of China’s Cultural Revolution, "Tiger Mother" author Amy Chua said Monday.
Chua, a Yale Law School professor for nearly a quarter-century, faced immense pressure to denounce her long-time friend, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, ahead of his 2018 Senate confirmation hearing.
An open letter urging the Senate to essentially halt the confirmation process pending an FBI investigation received 47 faculty signatures, but Chua’s was not among them.
"This is exactly what they did in the Cultural Revolution," Chua said. "The terminology was so similar—it was like ‘denounce,’ you know? You could just see everybody folding on the faculty. It was just like lemmings—we all have to sign this thing, and I just don’t like signing things, the weakness," Chua told The Free Press.
"I wasn’t trying to be brave or stand out, for me, it was a very personal decision. I just don’t turn on my friends. It wasn’t, ‘Did you think it happened or not?’ I was like, ‘I’m just not going to denounce him.’ "
Chua is the author of "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother," a book which popularized her highly involved and academically rigorous Chinese-style upbringing, along with several other books. Her book immediately attracted controversy, with one critic accusing her of "reinforcing stereotypes."
Chua confessed that she was in a "a long fight for survival" during the tumultuous period in which the uproar around the Kavanaugh confirmation gripped Yale Law school’s students and faculty.
Kavanaugh was accused of having committed a sexual assault as a teenager at Georgetown Preparatory school by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford.
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The Guardian reported at the time that Chua told female students who wanted to work for Kavanaugh to doll themselves up, allegedly saying it’s "not an accident" that his women clerks "looked like models."
"The Triple Package" author vehemently denied the allegations, calling them "completely false" spin.
"That is just dumb advice that I would never actually give, to dress like a model to go interview for a conservative," she said.
The media coverage of the Kavanaugh allegations has garnered intense scrutiny. New York Times reporter David Enrich recently confessed he would cover the incident "differently" today in an exchange with Kavanaugh’s childhood friend Mark Judge.