[2] Chen rose to prominence as a strong advocate for Amos Yee,[3] a Singaporean student who had been arrested and imprisoned for publishing materials (depicting Singapore's founding father Lee Kuan Yew in a negative way, and also criticizing Christianity and Islam) that the government of Singapore considered to be insulting.

[1][4] In 2017 Chen co-founded Ideas Beyond Borders with Faisal Saeed Al Mutar, an Iraqi advocate for free speech.

[7] Chen is a critic of China's human rights record, curtailing of free speech, and foreign policy.

[8] In 2021, Chen criticised the removal of The Adventures of Ook and Gluk: Kung-Fu Cavemen from the Future by Dav Pilkey from publication by HarperCollins in response to a 289-signature petition accusing the book of stereotyping harmful to Asians in depicting kung fu master Master Wong as wearing "a traditional-style Tang coat" and using "stereotypical Chinese proverbs" in training his black and non-Asian students to eventually surpass him in skill, with Chen instead praising Wong as "a prime example of a positive portrayal of an Asian character in literature, [coming] across as endearing and full of wisdom", refuting the petition creator's derision of the novel's Chinese proverbs as stereotypical and calling out their own negative views of Chinese people ignored by Pilkey, calling for the book to be unbanned.

[9] She was one of the first advisors, along with Bari Weiss, for FAIR, a controversial organization that seeks to fight critical race theory.