Amy Wax of Pennsylvania State University is punished for her comments but does not lose her job

In what may be the last case to address whether the tradition of academic freedom protects free speech that is widely viewed as racist or otherwise degrading to students and others, a controversial law professor who publicly declared that “our country would benefit from more white people and fewer non-white people” is facing punishment.

After years of uproar over Amy Wax's inflammatory statements and writings about blacks, Asians and others, the University of Pennsylvania has now publicly reprimanded her and cut her salary. Some of Wax's faculty colleagues issued the sanctions, which have now been endorsed by both the former and current interim presidents of the Ivy League institution.

Despite persistent calls for her dismissal, Wax, who declined to comment Monday, will not lose her job or her tenure. She has been a law professor at Pennsylvania University since 2001.

But she will be suspended on half pay for the next academic year and will permanently lose her summer salary. She will also no longer be honored as the Robert Mundheim Chair in Law – she will lose the chair. She was also publicly reprimanded today and must remember in future public appearances that she only speaks for herself and not for the university or the law school.

Wax's comments and the university's efforts in recent years to punish her attracted both national media attention and calls from organizations that support free speech and academic freedom not to punish her.

Wax has a long history of offensive remarks. The Daily Pennsylvanian According to a student newspaper, she has repeatedly invited a white nationalist to speak in her class, including last fall.

Theodore W. Ruger, the former dean of Pennsylvania University's Carey Law School, said the university had already relieved Wax of teaching all required courses in 2018. That came after Wax commented on “the academic performance and grade distributions of black students in their required first-year courses,” Ruger wrote in 2022 to the then-chair of Pennsylvania University's Faculty Senate.

Ruger's letter suggested that Wax's speech had finally caught up with her. The dean specifically called the invitation of the white supremacists a line-crossing and initiated disciplinary proceedings that could have led to Wax's dismissal. “For at least a decade, Wax's well-known and escalating behavior, some examples of which are listed below, has created an environment in which students, faculty, and staff believe they will be subjected to Wax's discriminatory hostility,” Ruger wrote to a former faculty senate chair.

The former law school dean claimed that Wax not only made controversial public statements, Ruger said she told a black student that she got into an Ivy League university “only because of positive discrimination,” and that she also said in class that “homosexual couples are not fit to raise children” and that “Mexican men are more likely to assault women.”

Ruger also alleged, among other things, that Wax told a black faculty member that it was “rational to be afraid of black men in elevators.” He also cited some of Wax's public statements, including the alleged statement, “Given the reality of differing crime rates and differing average IQs, people must accept without apology that blacks will not be evenly distributed in all occupations.”

The dean accused Wax of “ongoing racist, sexist, xenophobic and homophobic actions and statements,” adding: “Wax's pervasive and derogatory racism and sexism expressed in public statements, together with her behavior in the classroom, leads reasonable students to conclude that they are being judged and evaluated on the basis of their race, ethnicity, gender, national status or sexual orientation rather than on their academic performance and 'true merit.'”

He asked the chair of the Faculty Senate to convene a hearing panel to consider Wax's punishment. This was done, but the case dragged on for two years.. Some organizations that support free speech and academic freedom have consistently defended their academic freedom.

Deferment to the faculty

In May 2023, about a year after Ruger's letter began the process, five professors who tried Wax's case unanimously decided on the punishment she ultimately received, according to an August 2023 letter from then-Penn President Elizabeth Magill expressing her own decision in the case.

According to Magill, the professors felt that Wax's conduct was “blatantly unprofessional” and that “not all students were given an equal opportunity to learn from her.”

“This conduct,” Magill wrote, “included a history of making sweeping, cavalier and derogatory generalizations about groups based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and immigration status.” She said Wax's conduct also included “violation of the requirement that student grades be kept confidential.”

Magill wrote that it is “longstanding policy” at Pennsylvania University “that allegations that a faculty member has violated the University's Code of Conduct must be adjudicated by faculty colleagues.” Magill wrote that she could only deviate from the faculty committee's decision under “extraordinary circumstances.” She did not cite any such circumstances and affirmed the punishment.

Magill herself later resigned from the university following a highly critical and televised response to questioning by congressional Republicans about her handling of reported anti-Semitism on campus. Shortly before that congressional hearing, David Shapiro, an attorney who represented Wax during the confirmation hearing, publicly accused Magill and Penn of hypocrisy over their handling of controversial pro-Palestinian statements compared to Wax's speech.

Wax appealed the rulings. In May, Pennsylvania University's Senate Committee on Academic Freedom and Accountability affirmed the rulings, saying its own limited task was to “determine whether there was 'a significant procedural error,'” and it found none. Finally, university chancellor John L. Jackson Jr. informed Wax in a letter dated today that “interim President J. Larry Jameson has confirmed and is implementing the final decision” and “the matter is now closed.”

Eric A. Feldman, the current chair of the Faculty Senate, wrote in an email that he could not discuss the case because he serves on a committee involved in it. But he added, “I want to emphasize that this was a faculty-driven process and that the decision in this case was made after considerable faculty time and consideration and was consistent with the process set forth in the Faculty Handbook.”

In a March interview with Glenn Loury, a professor of economics and social sciences at Brown University and a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, Wax said she was being punished for “the usual conservative views on very important social issues” and called the university's actions “bullshit.” She said the hearing committee report, which she called “brazen and absurd,” shows that “there is only a single set of very narrowly defined statements or opinions that you can make about these sacred, protected groups — and black people are, of course, the most important sacred, protected group.”

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression continued to defend Wax on Monday and called on Penn to reverse the sentence she imposed.

“Simply labeling a faculty member as unprofessional, without serious misconduct such as sexual misconduct and research fraud, is not enough” to justify that punishment, said Zach Greenberg, a First Amendment attorney at FIRE. He said academic freedom should protect controversial speech and views “even when they might offend others.”

“If there is evidence that their grading is based on race or other inappropriate factors,” Greenberg said, “Penn has not shown it.”