She is known as the godmother of the “chicken world”.
Her husband, a well-known professor at Yale Law School.
She “tortured” her two daughters and sent them all to Harvard.
She is the creator of the term “Tiger Mom”, Meier Tsai.
She wrote “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom” and appeared on the cover of Time magazine, sparking a great discussion on education in China and the United States.
Now, the tiger mom, Meier Tsai, has been punished for violating the epidemic ban.
With her husband’s previous “indiscretions” with students, the family’s reputation is in crisis ……
01
Tiger mom suspended by Yale University
Recently, the Yale Daily News reported that a number of Yale Law School students brought to the university’s attention that Meier Tsai was in private contact with students and held a private party at her home, taking students to drink alcohol at her home.
This is reportedly not the first time such a thing has happened.
According to media accounts, back in 2019, Meier Tsai did the same thing.
She took some students home and drank with them during that time.
At the time, Yale Law School warned her about it and suspended her for a period of time.
According to the press, the school and she later signed an agreement that explicitly forbade her from taking students to parties and drinking, and from teaching required classes.
She also paid a fine.
Currently, Meier is suspended from Yale University.
She was primarily responsible for teaching incoming students in the Law School’s junior Small Group and providing academic and career guidance to students.
After being disgraced by such treatment, Meier fought back.
02
Tiger Mom responds.
“As an Asian, I was bullied.”
She wrote on social media.
“I did not break protocol or invite students to a party during the epidemic, all I did was help some students and give comfort during a social incident of discrimination and violence against Asians.”
“As the only Asian female professor at Yale Law School, I can’t imagine if anyone else would have been treated with such disrespect and a complete lack of due process.”
She wrote a long letter to all her faculty colleagues in response.
She argued that the Yale Daily News story was completely empty and fabricated.
She denied having any inappropriate gatherings at home with her students.
In the letter, she also claimed she was “bullied” when she communicated with the law school’s leadership.
“When I had a video call with one of the principals, I was rejected with outright insults and treated like a criminal.”
She alleges that someone leaked her confidentiality agreement with the faculty and calls for a third party to intervene in the investigation.
In her letter, she addressed Heather Gerken, dean of Yale Law School, saying.
“I am extremely frustrated. Without notice, classes were simply cancelled.”
The dean herself did not respond to the report, neither admitting nor denying it.
He simply said, “It is our responsibility to allow all students to learn and live in a respectful and safe environment, and Yale Law School will not allow misbehaving faculty members to exist.”
The incident sparked a major debate in Chinese social circles and among Yale alumni.
Yale alumni who know the Tsai-Meiers say the couple is “quite influential” on Yale’s campus and has extensive connections in the judicial community.
The husband, Field, has been teaching at Yale for 30 years and has a very high status.
The company’s main business is to provide a wide range of products and services to the public.
Because in August last year, Cai Meier’s husband has been suspended by Yale University for two years.
03
Husband suspended for 2 years for sexually harassing students
From school to house party
On August 26, 2020, Yale Law School issued an announcement that Fields had been suspended for two years for repeatedly sexually harassing female students over the course of his teaching career over the past several decades.
Even if he returns to teaching in the future, he is prohibited from teaching small groups of students and is not allowed to have socially sexual contact with students after class.
For years, rumors of sexual harassment by Field circulated within Yale Law School.
But there was never a major uproar.
That is, until 2018, when three female students officially reported it to the university under the influence of the #MeToo movement.
They claimed that Fields “inappropriately touched students, verbally harassed them, and tried to kiss them” in class and at private parties.
Such behavior occurred not only at school, but also at private parties he hosted at his home.
Felder also liked to drink with students, and to the point of getting drunk.
He would also offer to take girls home afterwards.
Such words and actions have been confirmed by many Yale alumni.
As with his wife’s public cries of injustice today, Field denies this.
“I have never tried to harass any female student, and I have certainly said things that were inappropriate in my 30 years as a professor, and students can complain if they feel uncomfortable, but sexual harassment is another matter entirely.”
Now, both husband and wife have been suspended, and their reputations and images as elite individuals have been tarnished.
The Financial Times was even more direct: “The Tsai Meier family’s elite image is bankrupt.”
What is even more ironic is that not long ago Meier Tsai just published her new book, Upward Mobility.
She summarizes her own educational experience and family stories to tell people how to “squeeze” into the elite class.
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Tiger education relies on three things to enter the elite class
The criticism is constant, and the persona is all broken?
In this new book, Cai Meier summarizes the “struggle of the chicken child”.
People who succeed in upward mobility have “three elements” that make them successful.
They are Superiority, Insecurity and Impulse control.
Insecurity is the anxiety and uneasiness about your own value or social status, the feeling that you, what you do, or what you have is not good enough at some basic level.
She believes that this tormenting force is the universal motivation for people to succeed.
So, it must be “chicken”.
That’s what she says, and that’s what she does for herself and for her children.
Amy Chua, herself, comes from a family of schoolteachers.
Her father, Shao-Tang Tsai, is a Filipino-Chinese who went to the United States to study in his early years and is known as the “father of nonlinear circuits” and later became a professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
The requirements of her parents for Meier Tsai are.
That her report card be perfect.
Even one A- out of all A’s would be an embarrassment to her parents.
Never make excuses by complaining.
If things don’t seem fair to you at school, you have to prove yourself by working twice as hard to achieve twice as much.
Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld, Meier Tsai’s oldest daughter, recognizes the alphabet at 18 months.
At age 3, she read Little Women, began playing the piano, and at age 14, she was playing piano at Carnegie Hall.
Later, after graduating from Harvard University as an undergraduate, she entered Yale Law School to further her education while she joined the U.S. Army, where her mother, Meier Chua, and father helped her bring on the rank of 2nd Lieutenant.
Her youngest daughter, Lulu Chua-Rubenfeld, was 12 years old when she took the position of principal violinist in the Youth Orchestra and graduated from Harvard University with a degree in Art History.
The strict rules of a Tiger education, the children say, are
No watching TV or playing games
No hanging out with other kids
No sleepovers at other kids’ houses
No group play activities
No extracurricular activities of their choice
Must get A’s in all grades
No failing to get a first in any subject except physical education and drama
No group recreational activities at school
No participation in school productions
No complaining about not attending school productions
No practice of instruments other than piano or violin
No not practicing piano or violin on a particular day
This philosophy has led to a very successful Tiger education, and the children are indeed very good.
However, this “chicken” motivation has led to a lot of criticism from the family.
It was previously revealed in the media that Meier Chua had repeatedly instructed her female students to dress “attractively” in order to secure an internship as a judge’s clerk for the current conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh.
In her 10 years as a member of the Yale Associate Justice Affairs Committee, Amy Chua sent 10 Yale students she mentored to clerk for Kavanaugh, eight of whom were women.
The justice, who was nominated by Trump, has encountered at least three women who have accused him of sexual harassment.
When Kavanaugh was involved in the sexual assault controversy, Amy Chua came out to endorse Kavanaugh as a “good mentor for women” with her personality.
She even stated, “If my daughter were to be a judge’s assistant, there is no judge I would trust more than him.”
And she did end up sending her oldest daughter, Sophia, to be a clerk.
This was criticized by the press as a “secret contract of flattery and reticence.
If teaching students to dress boldly and make peace with power is what is called “insecurity”.
Then the “three elements of restraint” that successful people need to have must not be this form of humiliation.
Slate magazine once said.
“Hard work and talent can be worthless without other privileges.
Flattery, powerful allies, allegiance to and benefit from a corrupt system, and a monopoly on resources to the disadvantage of others – that’s the real “battle cry” of Amy Chua, and that’s all she teaches us.”
Just because you didn’t succeed, it probably doesn’t mean you didn’t work hard enough.
And the battle cry you see from the elite mentor may be just one side of her life.
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