They were warned by peers
On Monday morning, members of the Yale Law School faculty received a terse message from their provost informing them that Professor Jed Rubenfeld “will leave his position as a member of the YLS faculty for a two-year period, effective immediately,” and that upon his return, Rubenfeld would be barred from teaching “small group or required courses. He will be restricted in social gatherings with students.” As of Tuesday morning, he was no longer listed on the Yale Law faculty site.
Why? A pattern of sexual harassment. He denies it. Yale says it did in fact look into the matter as opposed to just making it up.
Multiple women told me that a whisper network about Rubenfeld operated on campus, and that as law-school students, they were warned by peers to be careful around him. One said she was told by a male alum, “You’ve not scraped the bottom of the barrel when it comes to Rubenfeld’s behavior. Stay away.”
Sounds familiar. Sounds like Michael Shermer and Lawrence Krauss.
Rubenfeld is married to fellow Yale Law professor Amy Chua, author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, and both wield power in the high-stakes race for judicial clerkships. In the summer of 2018, it was Chua who took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to vouch for then–Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh as a “mentor for young lawyers, particularly women.” (That was before allegations of sexual assault against Kavanaugh were made public.) The op-ed noted that the couple’s daughter had been about to clerk for Kavanaugh on the appeals court, and a year later, the Supreme Court acknowledged Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld would clerk for Justice Kavanaugh on the Court instead.
Ohhhh that guy.
Female students also said that Rubenfeld and Chua discussed with students hoping to work for Kavanaugh the importance of their physical appearance. Chua denied telling students that Kavanaugh preferred attractive female clerks or coaching them on how to dress in “outgoing” fashion for interviews, though a Slate story subsequently reported it had “confirmed the Guardian’s reporting with students who were present at the time.”
Fun couple.
H/t Screechy Monkey
But…but…but…if women aren’t in the law school to be eye candy and playthings for the men, why are they there? Surely they couldn’t be there just to become lawyers, could they?
Honesty, I am so sick of this sort of thing. At this point, it looks like we need to clean out the top levels of every field (not just academia, though that’s a good place to start, once we’re done with the White House) and try again. This time, don’t allow that kind of power. How? I don’t know. You have to have some level of structure, and students will always want things from profs that some students will be willing to do anything to get, giving profs the idea that students are fair game for their libido, but…there must be a way to limit.
I’ve got it! Start here: Believe the women. Don’t brush it under the carpet. You don’t have to fire someone immediately, because there are lies, but…don’t assume they are lying, assume they are telling the truth until investigations determine otherwise.
This means you have to respect the women as much as the men. You have to believe the women are as valuable as the men. That seems to be an impossible dream. I wonder why? (Rhetorical…)
It’s a minor thing, but Rubenfeld has written a couple of novels. Somebody gave me one of them for Christmas a few years ago.
It is AWFUL.
That is NOT MINOR.