How Realistic Is The Chair? Real Pembroke University Explained

Netflix’s latest dramedy, The Chair, takes place at Pembroke University, and the show’s setting and events were inspired by real life. Co-created by Amanda Peet and Annie Wyman, the Netflix TV show stars Sandra Oh as Ju-Yoon Kim, the newly appointed chair of Pembroke’s English department. The show has become one of the streaming platform’s most popular series since the comedy’s release in August of 2021.

The Chair season 1, opens as Sandra Oh’s character has just become the first female and person of color to be appointed chair of the English department at Pembroke University. With enrollment down and tenured professors reluctant to bring their courses into the 21st century, Ju-Yoon Kim (Sandra Oh) quickly finds herself in over her head. As the show follows her struggle to bring the college into modern times, The Chair season 1 deals with many relevant themes for today, including racism, sexism, and inequality in academia, all-too-familiar college scandals, and the danger of a seemingly innocuous act being taken out of context in the age of social media, memes, and GIFs.

The Chair revolves around the English professors and their students on a college campus that looks so familiar it could be based on a real place — and Pembroke does exist, if in name alone. There is a Pembroke College at Cambridge and The University of North Carolina at Pembroke, but the show’s Pembroke isn’t based on either institution specifically. Instead, it serves as a conglomerate of the liberal arts college experience in general. Inspired by real places and events, the show creates a story and setting that, while fictional, feels real and relatable to its audience. The problems faced by the department in the original Netflix show are representative of the times, and the awkward state of transition the world of academia currently finds itself in, with college enrollment numbers down overall and English majors becoming few and far between.

In The Chair, while the women from Kim’s generation, and younger professors like Dr. Yaz McKay, continue to fight for their positions in the department — and struggle to garner the respect they deserve from their tenured, male colleagues — the show also explores the differences between this generation of female professors and the one that came before. These seem to be the only options for female professors over 50. On the one hand, there is professor Joan Hambling who has been resigned to an office that looks more like a sad, converted attic with terrible wifi. Then there is professor Rentz’s wife, who quit teaching after having children and before earning tenure because “someone had to make dinner.” 

The show also points out how the curriculum in university departments like this one often revolves around dated literature and ideas. Not to mention, the person chosen to come and speak to writing students isn’t really a writer at all, but the movie and TV show actor, David Duchovny, who plays himself in the series. He also happens to be a best-selling author, but this choice speaks to how real-life universities often pander to celebrities as a marketing tactic in hopes of attracting new students.  The kind of real-life college scandals familiar to viewers today also make an appearance, when professor Bill Dobson is caught on camera doing a Hitler salute as part of his lecture on fascism (innocent, in context), which spirals into a college-wide controversy that eventually implicates Dr. Kim as well. At the time of the incident, viewers know Dobson is also dealing with the recent loss of his wife — the kind of detail that typically gets left out of stories like this one as they rapidly go viral in real life.

Of course, that doesn’t excuse the insensitivity of Dobson’s “joke,” and he is clearly a character who has a lot to learn. In the Netflix show, Bill Dobson (Jay Duplass) is someone whose arrogance often blinds him to the reality — and possible severity — of a situation, including how his actions might impact Dr. Kim’s personal life as well as her career throughout the series. Like the university setting it represents, The Chair’s characters feel real because they represent people viewers recognize in real life. The show may not be based on a true story, but its realism comes from the real-world circumstances it depicts.

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