Adam Walker, Contributing Photographer

Yale Law School professor Amy Chua was awarded the 2023 Lux et Veritas Faculty Prize by the Buckley Institute on Oct. 26. The prize, first awarded in 2022, acknowledges a Yale faculty member who actively fosters intellectual diversity among students in and out of the classroom. 

During the event — which was held at the Study at Yale — the Buckley Institute presented Chua with a $10,000 prize and a plaque, and Chua also spoke about her journey in law thus far. 

Buckley Institute president Ryan Gapski ’24 said that last academic year, the Buckley Institute asked Yale students and alumni to nominate faculty members who they thought went above and beyond to foster intellectual diversity. After receiving 29 different faculty member nominations from across the University, a judging panel decided that Chua best exemplified these qualities.

“As demonstrated by the many comments from students who nominated her, professor Chua has won the admiration of her students for her bold promotion of intellectual diversity,” Gapski said in his opening remarks. “She doesn’t just support ideological diversity in some abstract sense in the classroom, one student comments, but goes out of her way to help the students who hold those views feel valued.”

However, Chua’s receipt of the award also comes after a string of controversies associated with her tenure at Yale Law School.

In 2018, Chua and her husband, Yale Law School professor Jed Rubenfeld, faced an investigation amid reports that they had advised their female students to dress like models to increase their chances of securing clerkships from Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh ’87 LAW ’90. At the time, Kavanaugh was in the throes of his Supreme Court nomination hearings, which included several sexual assault allegations against him.  

Later, in 2019, accusations emerged that Chua continued hosting dinner parties at her home despite agreeing to cease all 0ut-of-class-hours interactions with students in response to the 2018 allegations. At the parties, Chua reportedly drank heavily and remarked inappropriately on both students and faculty. Chua later denied hosting these “dinner parties” and denied that she violated her agreement.

In 2020, Rubenfeld was suspended due to allegations of sexual harassment, but he later officially returned to his teaching position at the Law School in the fall of 2022 and is currently teaching “Advanced Constitutional Law.”

In 2021, two Yale Law School students, Sierra Stubbs LAW ’23 and Gavin Jackson LAW ’22, filed a lawsuit against the University, claiming that the Law School had forced them into participating in what they described as a “vendetta” against Chua. Their allegations centered on the claim that Law School administrators forced them to support a statement against Chua. However, a federal judge dismissed the majority of the case in October 2022, and both Stubbs and Jackson asked for the lawsuit to be entirely dismissed this past September. 

Journey to the legal profession

Following Gapski’s initial remarks at the event, Chua discussed her personal journey to becoming a professor at the Law School.

Chua, who grew up the eldest daughter of Chinese immigrants, said that her parents were very strict and had a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor. 

“It’s kind of ironic that I am getting to receive this fantastic award for promoting free speech and ideological diversity because I basically grew up in a household where there was no free speech,” she said.

However, she credited them with instilling valuable qualities in her, including drive, motivation and strong family values. 

As “science-oriented people,” Chua’s parents wanted her to become a doctor or physicist, so she came to Harvard as an applied math major, despite hating the subject. Later on, she switched her major to economics — which she said she had little interest in — hoping to convince her parents that it could be considered a science.

Chua said that in her senior year of college, she decided to apply to law school, mainly as a means of avoiding medical school. She was later accepted and went on to attend Harvard Law School.

“When I told my mom I got into Harvard Law School, she burst into tears,” Chua said.

At Harvard Law School, Chua remembered a challenging adjustment period, where she often felt out of place. She attributed this struggle to her upbringing, rooted in Confucian values that emphasized respecting elders and not questioning authority. 

According to Chua, these values served her effectively during her high school and college years, when she could succeed by listening to teachers and memorizing information. However, she found that law school demanded a different approach.

She recounted an incident when a professor called on her during class to discuss a judicial opinion. The professor asked whether she agreed or disagreed with the judge’s ruling. Chua said that she initially assumed that the judge’s opinion must be right simply because it came from a judge.

“I ended up doing fine at Harvard Law School, even though I was not very talented at it,” she said. “I just had to work harder than everyone else.”

Chua also recalled being the sole Asian American student in a section comprising over 150 individuals during her time at Harvard Law School. She also later became the first Asian American officer of the Harvard Law Review.

Following her graduation from law school, Chua clerked for Chief Judge Patricia M. Wald of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, where she said she was “the worst clerk” among her peers. At the end of her clerkship, she met with Wald to discuss her plans of becoming a law professor; apparently, Wald told her that she was not prepared for that career path.

With this feedback, Chua took a job on Wall Street, at a firm specializing in international transactions. Despite her role and educational background, she said she often grappled with a sense of imposter syndrome. 

However, it was Yale Law School professor John Langbein who guided her toward her true niche in the field of law: “the links between markets and ethnicity in developing countries.”

Applying for jobs as a law professor, Chua was rejected from all 100 schools she applied to, including the Law School. 

However, once she identified this more specific interest in law, she submitted a new draft of her work to the Columbia Law Review, which was later accepted. 

She eventually received an offer from the University of Buffalo Law School. Yet, Chua said, at the very last second, when she was getting ready to move to Buffalo, Duke Law School reached out with a competing offer. Chua accepted.

During her time at Duke, Chua submitted an article addressing the intersections of markets, democracy and ethnicity to the Yale Law Journal, which later garnered attention within the legal field.

“Suddenly, everybody in the world was interested in what I was writing about,” Chua said.  “The dangers of globalization, a rapid democratization and ethnic conflict.”

Chua’s work eventually culminated in her New York Times bestseller, “World on Fire.” She was later offered a tenured position as a professor at Yale Law School in 2001, seven years after facing her initial rejection.

Intellectual diversity in the classroom

After speaking about her journey to Yale Law School, Chua turned the conversation on her teaching philosophy.

“I am really committed to intellectual and ideological diversity,” Chua said.

Chua said that teaching now is “much more stressful” than it was 10 years ago due to political tensions in the classroom, with debates now demanding more planning and structure to keep them on track. 

She said that in her “Contracts” class, she strives to cover a broad spectrum of subjects, ranging from Marxist theories to Critical Race Theory, and that she encourages students to express their thoughts through short response papers. She allows students to write the papers anonymously, as she said students often worry about the social repercussions of their writing.

Chua said that she emphasizes the importance of intellectual diversity in class by making an effort to call on students from a variety of ideological backgrounds. When questioned about potential criticism of this teaching policy, she pointed out that, due to the self-selecting nature of her class, she has not faced much criticism, adding that the majority of her students were individuals who did not hold strong negative views toward her.

Following the event, there was a reception where attendees could speak directly with Chua.

“I was fortunate enough to catch professor Chua at the reception, and I was struck by how warm she was,” Yash Chauhan ’26 told the News. “As surprising as this may sound, I got the sense that she deeply cared about her students and created an open yet inclusive atmosphere in her classes.”

The event took place Oct. 26, which is Chua’s birthday.