Penn imposes 1-year suspension on law professor over comments on race

The University of Pennsylvania law school says it is imposing a one-year suspension at half-pay and other sanctions along with a public reprimand on a tenured professor over her comments about race in recent years.

The university said Professor Amy Wax — who has questioned the academic performance of Black students, invited a white nationalist to speak to her class and suggested the country would be better off with less Asian immigration — will also lose her named chair and summer pay in perpetuity and must note in public appearances that she speaks for herself, not as a university or law school member. The university has not, however, fired her or stripped her of tenure.

Wax told the New York Sun after the announcement that she intends to stay at the school as a “conservative presence on campus.” She called allegations of mistreatment of students “totally bogus and made up” and said her treatment amounted to “performance art” highlighting that the administration “doesn’t want conservatives like me on campus.”

The university said in a notice posted in its almanac last week that a faculty hearing board concluded after a three-day hearing in May of last year that Wax had engaged in “flagrant unprofessional conduct,” citing what it called “a history of making sweeping and derogatory generalizations about groups by race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and immigration status.” Wax was also accused of “breaching the requirement that student grades be kept private by publicly speaking about the grades of law students by race” making “discriminatory and disparaging statements,” some in the classroom, “targeting specific racial, ethnic, and other groups with which many students identify.”

Provost John L. Jackson Jr. said academic freedom “is and should be very broad” but teachers must convey “a willingness to assess all students fairly” and must not engage in “unprofessional conduct that creates an unequal educational environment.” Jackson said Wax’s conduct left many students “understandably concerned” about her being able to impartially judge their academic performance.

Wax’s lawyer, David Shapiro, told the campus newspaper, the Daily Pennsylvanian, in November that officials targeted Wax over her public comments and some elements of her class on conservative thought, including having a white nationalist figure speak. But he said officials also buttressed their case by throwing in “a handful of isolated, years-old allegations (which are highly contested)” about alleged interactions with “a few minority students.”

Wax told the New York Sun that allegations of abuse or discrimination against students were “fabricated and tacked on as a cover for penalizing me for standard-issue, conservative anti-‘woke’ opinions and factual observations that are not allowed on campus.” She said she was committed to exposing students to “opinions and viewpoints they don’t want to hear” and said she fears campuses like Penn are “raising a generation of students who can’t deal with disagreement.”

In 2018, Wax was removed from teaching required first-year law courses after the law school dean accused her of having spoken “disparagingly and inaccurately” about the performance of Black students.