In February 2016, Chan, who is on the Yale-NUS College governing board, delivered a speech defending Singapore's decision to uphold Section 377A at the 24th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review in Geneva, Switzerland. Her speech prompted students' calls for Chan's removal from the school's governing board, while others said a removal would be unfair because Chan was speaking as a Singaporean ambassador, not as a governor of the college. The school rejected calls to remove her.