The Trap House Formerly Known As Yale Law School

Still embroiled in the Trap House idiocy, chronicled as it got worse and word by David Lat, the last thing Yale Law School needed was the re-emergence of another scandal of “equity.”  After all, this is YLS, the other school where leaders of the future of America are bought and sold. But then, critical race theory is, at its roots, a legal theory that can only be truly appreciated by the very smartest among us, so it makes complete sense that YLS would take the lead in taking a swan dive into the cesspool.

Two unnamed Yale Law School students filed a complaint Monday against three Law School administrators and the University for allegedly “blackball[ing]” them from job opportunities after they refused to endorse a statement in the ongoing investigation against law professor Amy Chua.

The students, referred to as Jane and John Doe throughout the lawsuit, are suing the University and Yale Law School Dean Heather Gerken, Law School Associate Dean Ellen Cosgrove and Director of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Yaseen Eldik on the grounds of breach of contract, intentional interference with prospective business relationships and defamation, among others.

If you’ll recall, Chua’s path to pariahdom started with her Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother best selling book, which horrified people because it reflected her demand for hard work and sacrifice. She then told students to dress appropriately to get clerkships, and later publicly backed Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination as a Supreme Court justice, which was tantamount to endorsing rape at Yale. And, of course, her husband, Jed Rubenfeld, was canceled as a sexual harasser.

With all that, Chau had the chutzpah to hold what YLS deemed a dinner party for students.

The Law School’s investigation into Chua’s behavior was first made public in April 2021, when the News reported that she was hosting private gatherings in her New Haven home — despite having agreed to cease such out-of-class interactions in 2019. After Law School administrators were informed of these gatherings, including from a 20-page dossier that was compiled by a law student with personal knowledge of the gatherings, the Law School revoked Chua’s ability to lead a first-year small group for the 2021-22 academic year.

It’s hard for Yale Law Dean Heather Gerken and DEI Czar Yaseen Eldik to purify their sanctum of heretics without the help of students to back up their stories, and so they used their fiat to persuade students to speak the right words for the cause. But two YLS students bristled like Trent Colbert pretending to apologize. And they sued.

  1. Two Yale Law School deans, along with Yale Law School’s Director of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, worked together in an attempt to blackball two students of color from job opportunities as retaliation for refusing to lie to support the University’s investigation into a professor of color.
  2. Gerken, Yale Law School’s Dean, and Cosgrove, the Associate Dean, approached an esteemed law professor and expert in constitutional law, and discouraged the professor—who already employed Jane and John as long-term research assistants—from hiring Jane and John as so-called “Coker Fellows,” prestigious teaching assistant positions that often lead to federal clerkships and other lucrative career opportunities.
  3. Defendants Gerken and Cosgrove approached the professor as retaliation for Plaintiffs Jane and John’s reporting a harassing and defamatory report (the “Dossier,” Ex. A), which was compiled and circulated by another law student and related to Plaintiffs’ private interactions with a high-profile Yale Law School Professor, Amy Chua (“Chua”).
  4. The Dossier, which Defendants disseminated, placed Jane and John at the center of an ongoing campus-politics feud between Gerken and Chua.

Yale has responded that the suit is “legally and factually baseless,” because what else would they say, and as Eugene Volokh reminds us, this is just the plaintiff’s “side of the story,” although competent plaintiff’s lawyers will similarly remind us you don’t make a decent living by pursuing frivolous suits.

The lawsuit further alleges that after the students denied the contents of the dossier and declined to sign onto the statement against Chua, Cosgrove and Eldik called the students on a daily basis during one week in April 2021, saying that the two had a “moral obligation” to “future generations of students” to make the statement against Chua.

The lawsuit also states that Eldik told Jane Doe that the dossier would likely end up in “every judge’s chamber,” keeping her from receiving job opportunities if she did not comply with the Chua investigation.

This is what we’re being vehemently told isn’t happening, not at Yale, not at any university, not at a school near you. The invocation of “morality” to rid the school of heretics, even if it means threatening students to lie for the sake of “future generations of students” upon pain of harming the career prospects of students. And the suit gives rise to a new reason, and rationale, to attack.

Law professor Monica Bell LAW ’09 said that she believes the sole point of the lawsuit is to generate press attention. She said that she does not believe the two law students “think they can win” the lawsuit, and that the lawsuit’s purpose is to “make things … look bad.”

Why students would want to “generate press attention” against their own law school is unclear. Why the suit would to seek to “make things…look bad” makes little sense. But then, Bell is a good soldier for the cause, and if this is the best excuse she can make up on the fly, then so be it. And the fact that the students are pursuing this pseudonymously makes Bell’s claim even more foolish than it would be otherwise.

Whether Yale Law School deserves its exalted reputation or not, it remains that it’s one of a handful of law schools that produce the future senators, presidents and Supreme Court justices into whose hands the future of this nation relies. And if this is what is happening at YLS, that students are not merely being further indoctrinated into authoritarian social justice, but being compelled to abandon all integrity as a matter of “moral obligation,” then it’s time to consider a Yale diploma too tainted for future public service.

14 thoughts on “The Trap House Formerly Known As Yale Law School

  1. Hunting Guy

    Scott H. Greenfield.

    “… it remains that it’s one of a handful of law schools that produce the future senators, presidents and Supreme Court justices into whose hands the future of this nation relies.”

    Charles White.

    “God help us all.”

    1. PseudonymousKid

      I read tons of SHG quotes everyday. Can you play with the ideas a bit? Add a dash of originality? I like you more than I like Heinlein, and quoting our Host back to him feels icky.

  2. E P

    These people elected to lose their minds and replace them with vicious and destructive substitutes.

    It’s not surprising they would take issue with Chua. You have to be independent and demonstrate leadership qualities to please a tiger mom and universities stopped seeking independent and talented people decades ago, preferring conformists over potential geniuses who go against every grain. She’s for everything they don’t want in students or professionals.

  3. Guitardave

    Maybe it’s time to reconsider the idea of getting our ‘future leaders’ from the same compromised institutions that supplied the ones that made the mess in the first place. Like that pithy insanity quote…about repeatedly doing what don’t work, but always thinking next time it will.

  4. Paleo

    Cosgrove and Eldik don’t seem to have any constructive purpose in terms of contributing to better outcomes for the institution or the students. The seem to have the same role as the party officials that were embedded in Soviet military units – they insure ideological purity. Bet their parents must be proud.

    1. SHG Post author

      As Director of DEI, that seems to be Eldik’s specific job duty. Maybe law schools (not to mention all universities) shouldn’t have a Grand Inquisitor on staff?

    2. Rengit

      People clamored for the growth of the DEI bureaucracy on the theory that the institutions themselves were fundamentally hostile to minority students, and as such the DEI offices are necessary in order to make the school more friendly to minority students by taking their concerns seriously. TrapHouseGate and the Chua debacle reflect specifically what these bureaucracies were supposed to do; they’re necessarily hostile to the institution and most students, because they exist on the theory that that such hostility necessary to counterweight the institution’s own hostility.

  5. Jim

    “Cosgrove and Eldik called the students on a daily basis”

    This is what happens when you have more administrators than undergraduate students…

    (I know better to infringe on your lawyers’ space with tangential comments, but this one is just too good not to share. Please and thank you?)

  6. Lee Keller King

    “Dear Yale Law School:

    “Thank you for your recent assistance in our annual fundraising and recruiting efforts.

    “Federalist society.”

    1. SHG Post author

      Fundraising perhaps, because the money comes from those who have it, but recruitment? That would require students to be bold enough to risk their future.

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