About Amy

Amy Chua is the John M. Duff Professor of Law at Yale Law School.  She was born in 1962, the Year of the Tiger, in Champaign, Illinois.  She lived in the Midwest (Go Purdue!) until she was eight, when her father Leon Chua became a professor at UC Berkeley, and her family moved to California.  Amy graduated from El Cerrito High School (Go Gauchos!) in 1980.

In 1980, Amy headed East.  She graduated from Harvard College magna cum laude in 1984 and Harvard Law School cum laude in 1987.  While at Harvard Law School, Professor Chua was executive editor of the Harvard Law Review. After graduating, she clerked on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit for Chief Judge Patricia M. Wald, who was a wonderful mentor to her.

Amy practiced for four years with the Wall Street firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, where she worked on international transactions throughout Asia, Europe, and Latin America.  In 1994, she joined the Duke University Faculty of Law.  Amy and her family loved Duke, and she received tenure there. Amy joined the Yale Law School faculty in 2001.

Amy is a noted expert in the areas of foreign policy, globalization, and ethnic conflict. Her first book, World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability, a New York Times bestseller, was selected by both The Economist and the U.K.’s Guardian as one of the Best Books of 2003.  She’s also the author of the 2011 memoir Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, a runaway international bestseller translated into 30 languages, and The Triple Package, a 2013 New York Times bestseller coauthored with her husband, Jed Rubenfeld.

Amy has appeared on television programs such as Good Morning America, The Today Show, The View,The Colbert Report, Charlie Rose, The Lehrer News Hour, and Real Time With Bill Maher.  Her writings have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Forbes, the Financial Times.  She has spoken at Aspen and Davos, and addressed numerous policymaking institutions, including the World Bank, the Brookings Institution, and the CIA.

In 2011 Amy was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world, an Atlantic Monthly Brave Thinker, and one of Foreign Policy’s Global Thinkers of 2011. She is also a multiple-time recipient of the Yale Law School’s “Best Teaching” award.

Amy lives in New Haven and New York City with her husband, Jed Rubenfeld, and her unbelievably cute Samoyed dogs. Her two daughters, Sophia and Lulu, are her pride and joy.