Law Schools

Law School Professor Amy Wax Cites Wikipedia And We Need To Stop Pretending Tenure Was Made For This

Tenure is no longer a defense for Amy Wax.

By  
on

Penn Law’s resident scholar of phrenology Amy Wax has spent the last few years making the rounds as a token “academic” behind all sorts of racist stereotyping that far outstrip her actual scholarly qualifications. For most of this run, Penn was embarrassingly impotent as the school’s reputation was dragged through by a grifter searching for her 15 minutes of infamy one grainy Skype vlog at a time. As the lunacy continued to spiral, Wax was pushed out of teaching 1Ls and then nudged into a sabbatical.

Both remedial actions were about as effective as CPR on a sucking chest wound as Wax used the former to gin up right-wing ire against “political correctness” — inevitable — without stripping her of the title that lets her use the school’s reputation to go to the media and complain. Her sabbatical only succeeded in giving her more time to concentrate on using the “currently employed by prestigious school” goodwill to make it sound like there’s some veneer of credibility to her rantings.

But she can’t be fired, they say, because of tenure. In a world where labor protections are tattered right and left — regardless of 40 years of precedent — the stranglehold tenure has on academia is laudable. For Amy Wax, however, tenure shouldn’t be able to save her anymore. As we’ve discussed in these pages previously, the point of tenure is to protect the academic freedom to explore unconventional ideas in the pursuit of scholarship. Wax’s escapades have long outstripped knowledge production and entered the realm of carnival barker.

If this wasn’t clear before — and it was — it should be crystal clear to the school after Wax was asked to engage in a Q&A with Isaac Chotiner for the New Yorker. When approached, she decided to say yes to this opportunity, a decision best summed up by one of Chotiner’s former colleagues:

There’s a lot to unpack here, and a lot of it is redundant if you’ve followed Wax’s clumsy trajectory through the media landscape. She doubled down on the idea that minorities are “loud” whenever they aren’t silent and that places are “nice” if white people go there. Chotiner deftly walks her from dog whistle to dog whistle like a trainer at the Westminster and watches her flounder as she tries to explain it’s not really racist, it’s just that white people who come from white “cultures” are superior.

However, the most important takeaways from this article come at every juncture where Chotiner presses her for some scholarly backup for her words. When asked about her claim that women are less intellectual than men, she dropped names and referenced “literature” in the grandiose way an academic might if they’re hoping to bully someone off the subject. Chotiner demanded links. After the interview — with all the time in the world to provide the ideal answer…

Sponsored

[Wax sent links to two studies whose lead author is Richard Lynn, a British psychologist who is known for believing in racial differences in intelligence, supporting eugenics, and associating with white supremacists. (She also shared the Wikipedia page for “general knowledge,” which cites several of Lynn’s studies.) David Lubinski, a professor of psychology at Vanderbilt, clarified that his research was about the life choices of men and women and did not address claims such as women being less intellectual than men.]

Amy Wax cited Wikipedia to answer a question about the validity of her claims, presumably because the 8Chan link is dead. This is… a problem.

She. Cited. Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is a wonderful resource for all manner of information, but it is not in any way the appropriate answer for an academic asked to provide backup for even their mundane findings let alone their controversial ones — just as you wouldn’t want a practicing lawyer to write a brief only citing hornbooks. That she didn’t seem to have any grasp of Lubinski’s actual article is only icing on the cake after the Wikipedia moment.

For everyone involved in the Penn leadership: This isn’t a matter of academic freedom anymore. This is not an academic. This woman is just using the title you afford her to vent her decidedly unacademic views. It’s time to cut her off. Every day she keeps that title, she degrades the institution. She will ignite a firestorm if she’s fired but she will also lose her platform. None of these people care about someone giving voice to backward stereotypes, they care about an “Ivy League Law Professor” giving voice to backward stereotypes.

Sponsored

Without this job, judged solely on the merits without the imprimatur of Penn’s authority, she fades into the obscurity — or at least the Antonin Scalia School of Law (ASSLaw). If her job is protected by tenure, then what does tenure even mean anymore?

Because it shouldn’t mean Wikipedia cites.

A Penn Law Professor Wants to Make America White Again [New Yorker]

Earlier: Amy Wax’s Racist Remarks Force Penn Law School To Let Her Take A Paid Vacation
T14 Law Professor Goes To White Nationalism Conference And Says White Nationalist Things And Somehow Still Has A Job
Academia Means Never Having To Say, ‘I Got Fired’
T14 Law Professor Goes To White Nationalism Conference And Says White Nationalist Things And Somehow Still Has A Job
Professor Amy Wax And The Bell Curve
Law Professors Say White ’50s Culture Is Superior, Other Racist Stuff
Penn Law School Prof Amy Wax Stumbles Into A Truth… Before Delving Back Into Vile Conspiracy Theories
Amy Wax Relieved Of Her 1L Teaching Duties After Bald-Faced Lying About Black Students
Professor Declares Black Students ‘Rarely’ Graduate In The Top Half Of Law School Class
Dog Whistling ‘Bourgeois Values’ Op-Ed Gets Thorough Takedown From Other Law Professors
Law Students Seek To Ban Professor From Teaching 1Ls
Law School Professor Says Dr. Ford ‘Should Have Held Her Tongue’ In Latest Embarrassment To Her School

HeadshotJoe 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.

Topics

, ,