Yale Law School is a miserable hellhole
and, I suspect, the same holds true for our other "elite" institutions
The Atlantic recently published a story, “The New Moral Code of America’s Elite,” by Elizabeth Bruenig, which describes an incident (and its fallout) that seems insignificant in the grand scheme of things and at first blush. But I think, to the contrary, that it’s very worth thinking about because it pulls back the curtain from our regnant elite and those who would replace them, exposing them for what they are most fundamentally: people whose time to “lead” was up a long time ago.
“Dinner-party-gate,” explained
The controversy centers on three Yale Law School (YLS) students (Bruenig calls them “Guest,” “Visitor,” and “Archivist” to protect their privacy) and a notorious, famous, and powerful law professor, Amy Chua. Guest and Visitor are friends, and they had an in-person meeting at Chua’s home during the spring semester of their 2L year to discuss a problem that one of them (Guest) had with a student group that he was part of (Visitor felt similarly).
Guest, “who describes himself as half-Korean,” stepped down as an executive editor at the Yale Law Journal,1 but he “had misgivings about the way the journal’s staff had responded to his questions about the lack of racial diversity in its ranks, and his suggestions for addressing it.” Guest was also friends with Archivist, who would periodically come over to Guest’s apartment to do laundry.2
But, “Unfortunately for the Guest, the Archivist happened to be doing his laundry at [the Guest’s] apartment when the call came [from the Visitor, passing along Chua’s invitation to discuss the problem with the Journal], and [the Archivist] overheard the conversation,” which he documented as follows:
Feb. 18. I go over to [the Guest’s] to do my laundry. While at his apartment, I hear him call [the Visitor], who explains to him that Chua has just invited them over for dinner tomorrow. They discuss what to wear and what they should bring (ultimately deciding to bring a bottle of wine). [The Guest] makes zero mention of going over because of any personal crisis. After the phone call, he says that he’s been invited to a dinner party at Chua’s. [The Guest] implores me not to tell anybody so that Chua doesn’t get in trouble.
At this juncture, it’s important to note the way that Archivist has twisted what actually happened. Chua invited the pair over to discuss a problem that both of them were having with a student group’s internal handling of what they thought was an issue. They met in the afternoon. The purpose of the meeting was not to chum it up with Chua and rub elbows with someone who could help advance their careers. (Maybe, if we cast a cynical eye on the situation, that was the background/real reason that the pair did it. But, if it was, who cares? The art of “networking” basically boils down to “stumbling upon” some famous and powerful person, just so happening to mention, casually, of course, that you’re a fan of their work, and then hoping it all goes well from there. If Archivist is mad about this, he should figure out how to play the game better, find a way to tamp down his obsession with the rat race, or, better yet, exit the rat race altogether, for the good of his own health.)
From there, all hell breaks loose. Archivist was clearly envious of the time Guest and Visitor spent with Chua (though he maintains that he was nobly trying to “protect” them from Chua’s husband, Jed Rubenfeld, who was suspended from his duties for two years beginning in 2020 because of accusations of sexual impropriety). So, Archivist, like a well-adjusted adult, begins texting multiple people that the pair is “going to dinner” at Chua’s, outright identifying nefariousness on their part for such a routine activity. “I think it’s deliberately enabling the secret atmosphere of favoritism, misogyny, and sexual harassment that severely undermines the bravery of the victims of sexual abuse that came forward against Rubenfeld,” he fretted.
After the pair met with Chua for a second time to talk through how to handle the way the dust up regarding the student group was playing out in the press (Bruenig characterizes the second meeting as similar to “a media-strategizing session”), Archivist has reached his breaking point. He can’t take it anymore. Two meetings?!
So, in addition to trying to entrap Guest into admitting what he’s done (he records in his notes: “March 13: [The Guest] texts me again at 9:18 PM that he’s outside, indicating he has once again gone to Chua’s but won’t commit to saying so in writing”), Archivist is running this “scandal” up the flagpole at YLS, bringing the impropriety to the attention of YLS’s Title IX office. As if all that were not enough, Archivist also compiles “the dossier,” which is “a roughly 20-page PDF narrating the timeline of his private campaign to turn proof of his friends’ wrongdoing over to the administration—complete with screenshots of text messages, summaries of conversations, a reference to a secretly recorded phone call, and some offhanded musings on his peers’ moral laxity.”
A whisper campaign ensues (which also makes its way to Twitter). The pair is slandered by their peers. The Title IX office tries to pressure the pair to throw Chua under the bus. And, to top it all off, their career prospects are dashed (or, at the very least, seriously damaged). For example, neither Guest nor Visitor even attempts to apply for clerkships, which are highly coveted and sought after post-law school positions with judges (especially at a place like YLS). Both realized that “if they were to actually receive any clerkship or fellowship opportunities at the end of their hellish second year, those achievements would be instantly (and maliciously) attributed to dirty favors done for Chua and Rubenfeld.” Which caused them “to wonder whether receiving any of the clerkship or fellowship opportunities they had applied for would be worse than losing them.”
This, ladies and gentleman, is—dun dun dun—“dinner-party-gate.” Scary stuff, eh?
Our elite is totally unfit to rule
It goes without saying both that this is insane and that identifying YLS as an awful hellscape is too modest. As Bruenig notes, Guest’s (and Visitor’s) “only documented offense was visiting Chua” to discuss an issue they had with the Yale Law Journal. But “dinner-party-gate” is also highly revealing for that reason; the fury generated by this absolute nothingburger says a lot about the state of our elites. There’s a ton of moral dysfunction present here, which Bruenig hints at in a couple places. I’ll make it more explicit:
Archivist lies, cloaking his self-seeking envy in the language of social justice, rationalizing his vicious gossip as anti-sexual assault advocacy
Archivist gleans information about the pair’s first meeting with Chua while eavesdropping (which he can only do because Guest graciously lets him do his laundry in Guest’s apartment) and uses that information to achieve their eventual dishonor and career damage
Archivist does not privately confront the pair to their faces about what he perceives as their wrongdoing, opting instead to tattle on them to the Title IX office to let the bureaucracy fight his battle for him in—in full view of the public
The other students mob together to attack (anonymously, of course) the pair
The Title IX office pressures the pair to lie about what happened with Chua (The Office of Student Affairs “said something [to Visitor] like, . . . ‘All we need you to—all we need is the alcohol, just give us the alcohol. And that’s enough”)
The real issue for YLS appears to have been not Archivist’s invasion of Guest’s privacy and his deeply troubling ignition of a chain of events that baselessly trashed two of his peers but, rather, their weird political vendetta against Chua (Bruenig observes that YLS “seemed so eager to relieve itself of her presence that it lunged at an opportunity to weaken her position at the expense of two students who were left to deal with the consequences of the ultimately aborted campaign”)
If you haven’t known this for years, let this pathetic psychodrama dispel whatever doubt remains: These people are not fit to rule. They, and we, would be much better off if they took jobs waiting tables or stocking shelves. At least they’d learn to be like their co-workers: decent, salt-of-the-earth folks. The people described in this article—particularly the contemptible Archivist (who functions as a sort of archetypical character and stands in for his class, the “cognitive elite”)—should not be in positions of power and authority. Why?
Because they’re moral midgets and monsters.
They have no sense of shame or decency. They’re cowards with base motives (i.e., securing the best jobs for themselves and enviously stopping people they dislike from succeeding, as though their success is lessened if their peers also do well) who ruthlessly pursue them under the banner of nobility (i.e., so-called justice for victims of sexual assault—but insert whatever cause you want). They lack any kind of manly self-assertiveness, which is necessary for republican self-government, and prefer instead to backstab and let bureaucracies do their dirty work for them. They’re insufferable, amoral ladder climbers, whose only allegiance is to their own comfort and prestige. They have no sense of mercy or perspective or proportion; they’re rigid and pharisaical and severe in their judgment. They do not care about the truth, only what useful narratives they can spin out of thin air to advance their own narrow interests. They’re blinded by resentment and a crippling sense of their own inadequacy, which they outwardly weaponize to distract themselves from their own internal failings. They’re clearly miserable (probably because a lot of them live only for themselves), and they project their self-loathing onto everyone around them, sometimes with devastating public consequences. Most importantly, they’re totally ignorant of a core spiritual reality identified by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts.”
Americans rule themselves
These are the people who loudly proclaim a right to rule ordinary Americans—in direct defiance, it must be noted, of the moral claim of the Declaration of Independence, which explains that because “all men are created equal” and “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”—to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”—“Governments are instituted among Men [to secure those rights], deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” (emphasis added).
When these elites even deign to explain themselves, what is their proffered justification for their contrary assertion of their right to rule (whether we want them to or not)?
Their superior knowledge, which was gained by the “work” it took to attain their fancy degrees. But as Thomas Jefferson noted, just “[b]ecause Sir Isaac Newton was superior to others in understanding, he was not therefore lord of the person or property of others.”
And beyond even that laughably incorrect claim to rule, we should not want these people at the helm. I know children who behave more morally than these Yalies. And it’s not close. We need to stop crediting these once-impressive institutions, and the alumni they mint, with anything positive. Their fruits are moral chaos, moral dysfunction, and moral confusion. They pump out alumni who are arrogant and entitled, who know “the price of everything, and the value of nothing,” and who are illiterate in the basics of justice, the purpose of politics (securing the “safety and happiness” of the American people), and the ways of the human heart.
But we can’t gloat too much. After all, we fund them (in the case of public universities) or fail to exact our pound of flesh from them (in the case of private universities). We pay for the privilege of being mocked as bigots and having our country hollowed out and humiliated on the world stage.
These people absolutely have no right to rule us; they’re weak and selfish, and they breed moral madness wherever they go. Under and according to “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” Americans rule themselves, through their elected representatives, based on their consent, given as moral equals.
Ending this nonsense is long overdue. We can start by asserting our God-given right to rule ourselves and stop taking orders from moral dunces. What are we waiting for?
For the n̶o̶n̶-̶l̶a̶w̶y̶e̶r̶s̶ normal people out there, being an editor on a law journal/review is a prestigious (albeit largely thankless and grueling) gig. Such publications are entirely student-run and where professors publish their scholarship; they have the potential to bestow handsome rewards on those who suck up the punishment they dole out.
You might be surprised to hear this, but nowhere in the nearly 5,000-word report is it made clear why Archivist does not do laundry in his own abode. Perhaps he was impressive enough to get into YLS but not to find an apartment?
Man! What a story. The pettiness is awe-inspiring. The only consolation here is that the lefties are destroying each other almost as efficiently, and almost as gleefully, as they're destroying everything and everyone else.