by Greg Piper
Six years after The University of Pennsylvania has disciplined a tenured law professor for allegedly lying about the academic performance of black students, but never providing the supposedly correct numbers itself, it appears that the Ivy League school is encouraging another school to leave or sue.
Penn made the announcement official on Tuesday will suspend Amy Wax (pictured above) for the 2025-2026 academic year, saying it is not due to her overtly conservative views but rather “years of grossly unprofessional conduct in and out of the classroom that violated her responsibilities as an educator to provide equal opportunities for learning for all students.”
The university upheld the sanctions previously recommended by the Faculty Senate Hearing Committee and which the Academic Freedom Committee found to be procedurally sound. Wax will lose half of his 2025-2026 salary, his entire summer salary “in perpetuity” and his tenured chair at the law school.
As directed, Chancellor John Jackson publicly reprimanded Wax, who must disclose in future public appearances that she was not speaking on behalf of the law school or Penn.
He characterized Wax’s speech on the controversial issues as “your behavior” that did not express “a willingness to fairly evaluate all students…leaving many students understandably concerned that you cannot and would not be an impartial judge of their academic performance.”
She is prohibited from making “grossly unprofessional and targeted disparagement of any individual or group within the university community” while she remains a faculty member, Jackson wrote, suggesting she could still be fired.
Given this, it seems likely that the punishment will end up in court Wax filed a defamation lawsuit when then-Dean Ted Ruger claimed she invented academic statistics in a story Podcast by Brown economist Glenn Loury she didn’t recall ever seeing “a black student graduate in the top quarter” of the law school and “seldom in the top half” during her two decades at Penn.
She said she discussed the lawsuit against Penn with her Paul Levy, an influential Penn confidant who resigned in protest the original sanction imposed on Wax in 2018: prohibiting her from teaching compulsory first-year classes as the student petition demanded partly.
Talking about academic performance by race is a third rail for faculty.
Georgetown Law fired veteran professorSandra Sellers, for lamenting the “underperforming” performance of “many” of her Black students each semester during a Zoom call with a colleague she considered private.
Wax first targeted her back with students in 2017 publicly praising “bourgeois values” in a column. Local lawmakers showed up at Penn’s door in 2022 when Ruger said Wax’s views were protected by seniority: prompting him to step back at the end of the press conference.
In another interview with Wax this spring, while her appeal was pending, Loury, who is black, made her flagged comments it reflected his own “provable statements of fact or reasoned statements of opinion” about race, cognitive abilities and social issues.
Penn’s basis for disciplining Wax is reminiscent of another private university’s argument, Marquette in Wisconsin, against it the tardy John McAdamssuspending a conservative political scientist without pay for more than two years for publicly criticizing a colleague who banned a student from openly opposing same-sex marriage in her class.
This is what the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in 2018 Marquette breached its contract with McAdams violating his academic freedom and that the faculty hearing board that evaluated him was “infected” with “unacceptable bias” against McAdams, ordering his reinstatement “with intact rank, seniority, salary and benefits” and back pay.
Retired Ohio University economist Richard Vedder, who served with Wax on the board of the National Association of Scientists, said he “suspects Penn is deliberately prolonging this ordeal, hoping that Wax, a septuagenarian cancer survivor, will simply get over it.” “to retire.”
In essay for the Independent Institutewhere he is a senior lecturer, Vedder wrote that Penn is “punishing Wax to appease left-wing faculty and students, but not firing her, hoping it will appease supporters of academic freedom and the First Amendment.”
If that was Penn’s hope, it doesn’t look like it will come true.
Groups and advocates for free speech and academic learning condemned the punishment and called out Penn’s perceived double standard, as did the House Education Committee and the chairwoman of the Labor Committee Virginia Foxx, RNC, in the letter in January contrasting “Penn failed to deal with anti-Semitism” with a crusade against Wax and “a sanction speech he did not favor.”
as organizer of the campus Palestyna Pisze Literature Festival a month before the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023, professor of Arabic literature Huda Fakhreddine invited a speaker from a US-listed terrorist organizationPopular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Fakhreddine celebrated the massacre committed by Hamas, Slow warning signal in Washington reported.
Wax’s lawyer, David Shapiro, called what he considered a “blatant double standard” in a statement. op-ed for Daily Pennsylvanian then.
“If you are a Jew-hating propagandist attacking Israel, you can say anything and invite whoever you want to campus, and you are protected by the school’s commitment to academic freedom,” he wrote in November 2023.
University Failed to Punish Lecturer Dwayne Booth ‘for His Caricatures Portraying ‘Zionists’ as Nazis Drinking the Blood of Palestinians’ – Free Beacon Reporter Written by Aaron Sibariumbut rather he invited Booth back to teach this fall, after the media published his caricatures.
Penn provided “zero evidence that Wax ever discriminated against her students” but said over the years that it would “find a way” to discipline Wax for her speech, Alex Morey, vice president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said in a written statement.
“Faculties across the country may now pay a high price for Penn’s willingness to undermine academic freedom so that they can all get their hands on this one professor,” she said. Universities “should merely follow Penn’s playbook.”
University spokesman Ron Ozio provided a written statement and materials regarding Wax’s discipline Only News asked about the allegedly different treatment of different points of view.
“Last year, a five-member faculty hearing panel determined that Professor Amy Wax had violated the University’s standards of conduct by engaging in grossly unprofessional conduct in and out of the classroom over the years that violated her responsibilities as an educator to provide equal learning opportunities for all students,” he wrote. “These findings are now final following a determination by the Senate Committee on Faculty Academic Freedom and Responsibility that due process was followed.”
Ruger ignored Penn’s requests for four years of black student performance numbers that could have been disclosed in legal proceedings and dissected Penn Law’s admissions practices to compare them with Wax’s recollections.
He suddenly withdrew this demand in her motion to the 2022 Faculty Senate to “consider major sanctions” against Wax for her “intentional and ongoing racist, sexist, xenophobic, and homophobic actions and statements,” which also included her view that America “would be better off with fewer Asians.” and less immigration from Asia.”
Wax said supports immigration from the “first world” and Western countries for cultural reasons and opposes Asian immigration because of its “mysterious” support for the “pernicious” Democratic Party.
Jackson’s public reprimand implicitly confirms that Wax did not make false claims. Her culpable conduct includes “violating the requirement to maintain the confidentiality of student grades by publicly talking about race-based grades for law students and continuing to do so even afterward.” Ruger told her this was a violation, referring to her podcast interview and subsequent remarks.
“I have no doubt” Wax will file a lawsuit and “eventually prevail” in court, Princeton political scientist Robert Georgewho is promoting his fresh book with a fellow odd couple and independent presidential candidate Cornel West, wrote on X. She hopes the “scale” of her anticipated legal victory will “dissuade other institutions from this type of behavior.”
“The chance of a lawsuit here is greater than the chance that the Penn professor is not a conservative,” a former Trump administration Department of Education official said dispassionately Adam Kissel, also a former member of FIRE.
Wax is known for her hostility towards the media. In 2022, she denigrated this reporter when asked how she read Ruger’s letter, which seemed to confirm that she didn’t invent academic statistics.
The Questioner from Philadelphia reported that Wax answered the phone, “Please don’t call me.” Her lawyer Shapiro declined to comment on the matter New York Times.
Read the source documents:
Report SCAFR.5.29.23.pdf
2023.08.11_Decision of the President_Professor Wax (2) (1).pdf
Wax public reprimand.pdf
Almanac Statement.pdf
– – –
Greg Piper is an investigative reporter at Just the News.
Photo “Professor Amy Wax” by Penn’s Law.
