Amy Wax Sanctioned But Keeps Her Job, Tenure, Confidence That School Can’t Do Anything More

Penn Law School professor Amy Wax got off remarkably light when a hearing board recommended a one-year slap on the wrist for her persistent attacks on the integrity of the school and its minority students. But she appealed anyway only for the full procedure to reach the same conclusion as the hearing board.

She still has a job and her tenure remains intact. Not a bad outcome for Wax. While the professor certainly would rather suffer no sanction, having beaten back the tenure challenge, she can carry on reasonably secure in the knowledge that there’s nothing she can do that can get her much more than a temporary pay cut.

Technically, the final sanction is one year at half pay and summer pay, a public reprimand, the loss of her named chair, and a requirement that she must always clarify that she’s not speaking for or as a member of Penn Law. Very interested to see how that last bit gets interpreted when she appears on an hour-long webcast with “Penn Law School Professor” slapped on a chyron the whole time.

It’s been a long journey to this point. In 2017, Penn Law School professor Amy Wax wrote an article extolling the superiority of white culture. The school did nothing at that juncture, respecting her free speech rights over their interest as an employer in not having a professor publicly suggest that the school’s minority students are inferior. Then she publicly declared Black students don’t graduate in the top half of the Penn class despite, obviously, having no support for this claim. Making up stuff about the school and undermining the integrity of the school’s blind grading policy got her suspended from teaching 1Ls. From there, she said the country needs “fewer Asians,” blamed women for ruining universities, and brought a white nationalist to campus.

At that point, the school had enough and conducted an independent investigation and ultimately went to the Faculty Senate, settling on the lackluster sanctions now affirmed on appeal.

Oh, and because the school year has already started, these won’t take effect until next year. Presumably that means Wax will still bring that white nationalist back to class this year… he’s scheduled to address the class in December.

Alex Morey of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression complained of the sanctions:

Faculty nationwide may now pay a heavy price for Penn’s willingness to undercut academic freedom for all to get at this one professor. After today, any university under pressure to censor a controversial faculty member need only follow Penn’s playbook.

But academic freedom is designed to protect controversial faculty from being punished for their speech or opinions. In an era when political forces right and left are all too eager to sanitize campuses of voices and views they dislike, faculty nationwide must be able to rely on the time-tested principles of academic freedom.

I’m not sure “academic freedom” is about professors collecting paychecks to cite Wikipedia.

Which is both objectively funny and quite relevant. Academic freedom is designed to allow scholars to pursue controversial research… and then have it peer reviewed and published and, ideally, advance the field. An academic who can’t find better support for their theories than Wikipedia would dismiss their hypothesis and move on. Wax just shifted to writing newspaper op-eds about white superiority which is not, to be clear, scholarship.

Nothing about Wax’s punishment has anything to do with academic freedom. The school isn’t penalizing her for pursuing controversial work, they’re penalizing her for lying about the school’s grading policies, bashing Asian Americans, and bringing a white nationalist to class.

Of the three, only the last is marginally defensible as a matter of “academic freedom,” and it’s only as defensible as the idea that you have to show hardcore porn in class to understand obscenity laws. You don’t. You can just teach the material. Law students are sharp enough to understand Skokie without actually bringing Nazis to campus.

Rather than attacking her academic work — or even her free speech rights as a private citizen — these sanctions reflect Penn’s right as an employer to not tolerate a hostile and discriminatory environment.

Which is why, despite FIRE’s protestations, faculty nationwide will not pay a heavy price over this. Defending free speech sometimes requires draping oneself in the slippery slope, but there’s nothing about the 7+ years of inaction that got to this point that will translate to a random professor doing genuine research.

Which isn’t an excuse not to remain vigilant against attacks on academic freedom. But these facts aren’t the rallying cry they think it is.

Penn will sanction Amy Wax, the law prof who invited a white nationalist to speak to her class [Inquirer]

Earlier: Penn Decided ‘Inviting White Nationalists To Campus’ Only Earned Amy Wax A Pay Cut… She Appealed Anyway
Law Professors Say White ’50s Culture Is Superior, Other Racist Stuff

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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 or Bluesky 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.