Amy Wax
After years and years of shrugging its shoulders while one of its professors went around publicly denigrating students and inviting white supremacists to class, Penn Law finally initiated disciplinary proceedings against Amy Wax. She responded, unsurprisingly, by blasting the school that bent over backward for her for an eternity as a hotbed of censorship and started a legal defense fund that seems a tad questionable. But the point is, Wax is fighting back against the allegations contained in a lengthy independent report commissioned by the dean. And she’s fighting back by… admitting to most of the allegations.
Last week, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression invited Wax to tell her side of the story in a webinar titled “Amy Wax and the Limits of Academic Freedom.” The title is provocatively disingenuous as the Wax case has nothing to do with academic freedom except to the extent she is employed as an academic and she wants to be free from the consequences of her actions. Which is “academic freedom” in the same way an enflamed poodle is a hot dog.
But I digress.
For instance, she denied that she ever told a Black Penn Carey Law student that she was only a double Ivy because of affirmative action.
“There was no other record of a complaint of a personal remark like that, that I ever made to a student in my 30 years of teaching,” Wax claimed. “I deny that I ever made such a remark. I just don’t talk that way unless students consult me directly in a personal way — and they do that sometimes. I just don’t make such remarks.”
“Unless” seems to be doing a lot of work. Because “unless” really makes it seem as though Wax does “talk that way” and she knows students have a long list of receipts, but feels she can’t be punished if the student “asked for it” by approaching her directly.
And this is what passes for her denial! Beyond this, she more or less admits to everything. Bashing same-sex relationships as artificial on a panel with an openly gay professor, saying Black student enrollment would be “minuscule” if based on merit, saying Mexican men are more likely to assault women… all of it. She’s admitting pretty much all of it.
But let’s focus on this example:
Wax also admitted that she said, “finally, an American” after she listened to a group of students with “exotic” names introduce themselves.
“American universities should primarily educate American citizens,” Wax told the audience.
Again, Wax’s defense revolves around academic freedom — the principle that scholars shouldn’t be penalized for pursuing unorthodox research. Which scholarly endeavor was saying “finally an American” during class? Bashing same-sex marriage or repeating racist tropes about Mexicans are definitely inappropriate, but she can at least pretend those are policy issues she’s taken an academic interest in exploring or some nonsense. But mocking students and questioning their national origin based on their names is the heart of what she’s trying to call “academic freedom.”
This is the problem with trying to mount some sort of higher principle defense of Wax, something that FIRE has done in the past. There’s not much here beyond a bad slippery slope argument. Arguing that Wax deserves the shield of tenure lest some future censor use this case to punish a scholar for writing on critical race theory or something is that censors will always find an excuse to censor. Ron DeSantis — who Wax unironically described as a hero at this very event — is already blowing up tenure protections for “woke” professors in Florida.
Skip the slippery slope: Amy Wax is in trouble for going to the media to say Penn’s Black students don’t deserve their law degrees and telling students to their faces that having an “exotic” name means they don’t deserve an education. This isn’t academic freedom at all. This isn’t the case of a professor targeted for researching slavery. This isn’t even the case of a professor targeted for researching right-wing pseudoscience (and they exist). Society gives a pretty wide berth to scholarly inquiry, and if she could keep her bigotry in the pages of an academic journal, she wouldn’t be facing this inquiry.
But Wax got lazy. She decided to say random racist garbage to the local newspaper and on Zoomcasts and justified it all with citations to Wikipedia. For all the hand-wringing over free speech and academic freedom, that’s the difference here.
In that sense, the webinar seems to have unexpectedly succeeded in living up to its title. The limit of academic freedom is “effort.”
Amy Wax defends accusations of inflammatory remarks to audience of college professors [Daily Pennsylvanian]
Earlier: The Amy Wax Case Has Nothing To Do With Academic Freedom
Professor Declares Black Students ‘Rarely’ Graduate In The Top Half Of Law School Class
Law Professors Say White ’50s Culture Is Superior, Other Racist Stuff
Amy Wax Moves To Dismiss Disciplinary Action, Still Raising Legal Defense Funds That She Claims Are Tax-Deductible
Amy Wax Says Her Legal Defense Fund Is A 501(c)(3) Charity And That Seems… Odd
Law School Professor Amy Wax Cites Wikipedia And We Need To Stop Pretending Tenure Was Made For This
If You’re Just Finding Out Amy Wax Invited A White Supremacist To Her Class, There’s So, So Much More!
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
