The University of Pennsylvania found Amy Wax had a long history of unprofessional conduct; she says it’s protected speech
University of Pennsylvania professor Amy Wax poses for a portrait at her home in October.
By Joseph De Avila | Photographs by Will Figg for WSJ
Oct. 17, 2024 5:30 am ET
Amy Wax, the Ivy League law professor suspended for making racist, sexist and inflammatory comments, stands to lose half a million dollars from her punishment.
Wax said she doesn’t regret the remarks that led to her reprimand. She is considering taking legal action, she said.
Following an investigation into Wax’s conduct, the University of Pennsylvania suspended her from her tenured position with the Carey Law School last month for a year on half pay, taking effect in the fall of 2025. She also lost summer pay in perpetuity.
“I only regret that I am sufficiently frank and blunt and forthright,” Wax said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “I stand by what I say because what I say is so much more nuanced and interesting than the sound bites they have lifted.”
The severity of Wax’s suspension is rare for a tenured professor. It comes as academic freedom and free expression on college campuses are facing heightened scrutiny from lawmakers and the public following the Hamas attack on Israel last year and the subsequent war in the region.
Wax has drawn outrage at the university for years. She has been criticized by students, faculty members and alumni for making disparaging comments about minorities and others.
Among the many comments flagged by the University of Pennsylvania: “As long as most Asians support Democrats and help to advance their positions, I think the United States is better off with fewer Asians and less Asian immigration.” She also has said that “on average blacks have lower cognitive ability than whites.”
Wax engaged in years of flagrantly unprofessional conduct within and outside of the classroom, a Penn spokesman said, breaching her responsibilities as a teacher to offer an equal learning opportunity.
Golkin Hall at the University of Pennsylvania’s law school.
‘Everything that the First Amendment would allow’
Wax received a medical degree from Harvard Medical School before deciding she wasn’t suited to be a practicing physician. She went on to receive a law degree from Columbia Law School. She argued 15 cases before the Supreme Court as an assistant to the U.S. solicitor general before turning to academia.She joined Penn as a tenured law professor in 2001. She is teaching one course this semester.
Wax said conservative professors like herself face hurdles. Only certain conservative viewpoints are tolerated, such as some libertarian views, while others are off-limits. On immigration, she said, professors can’t talk about “the third-worldization of our country, the loss of our culture.”
“That kind of talk is xenophobia,” Wax said. “It marks you out as an evil bad person.”
Her suspension sends a message to other conservatives on campus to keep quiet, she said, conflicting with academic freedom and a call for diversity of thought.
After years of complaints from students and alumni, Theodore Ruger, who was dean of the law school at the time, requested in 2022 a review by a five-member board of tenured faculty to determine whether Wax violated university standards. The panel found that Wax engaged in flagrant unprofessional conduct. J. Larry Jameson, interim president of Penn, accepted the final decision last month.
Alexander Diwan, president of the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School Council of Student Representatives, said professors need to be able to express unpopular opinions.
As the school investigated Wax, it was also thrown into turmoil as protests over the Israel-Hamas conflict erupted, bringing national attention to how schools balanced free speech with curbing antisemitic conduct.
Wax said it is hypocritical for the university to suspend her while not punishing what she described as antisemitic speech.
“My view on antisemitic speech is that we should be able to hear everything that the First Amendment would allow, which means everything that is not a direct threat of violence,” Wax said.
Policing of political views has increased recently as more professors have come under scrutiny for expressing pro-Palestinian or anti-Israeli views or more broadly sharing their thoughts on race or gender.
Often the only thing protecting a professor from an angry college administrator or a social media mob “is the time-honored principle of academic freedom,” said Alex Morey, vice president of campus advocacy for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a group focused on campus free speech.
“But if it’s something that’s rooted in bigotry I think a line is being crossed,” Diwan said.
The Black Law Students Association at Penn has called for her termination.
“Allowing Amy Wax to remain a faculty member at this institution sends the clear message that Penn Carey Law tolerates scholarship rooted in white supremacy,” it said.
Wax lecturing for Penn’s law school in 2018.
Cultural compatibility versus diversity
Wax points to comments she made at the National Conservatism Conference in 2019 as an instance where critics at the university have taken her words out of context.“They claimed I said, ‘America would be better off with more whites and fewer nonwhites,’” Wax said. “Well, I never said that. I said that America should have an immigration policy that’s low and slow and favors people that come from cultures very much like ours—democratic, post-Enlightenment, industrialized.”
Wax said many conservatives fear being accused of favoring certain demographics and of advocating for more white immigrants. Cultural compatibility is more important than having a diverse population, she said.
“Now, you tell me whether that’s equivalent to saying, ‘America would be better off with more whites and fewer nonwhites.’ Is that equivalent to saying that? That is a complete distortion and misrepresentation of what I said,” Wax said.
Opposition to Wax swelled upon the publication of a 2017 op-ed she co-authored that argued all cultures aren’t equal in preparing people to be productive citizens in a modern technological society. The authors criticized “the anti-‘acting white’ rap culture of inner-city blacks; the anti-assimilation ideas gaining ground among some Hispanic immigrants.”
Wax earlier this month.
Wax was also criticized for inviting Jared Taylor to speak to her students. The Southern Poverty Law Center, an advocacy group that tracks extremism, calls Taylor a white nationalist. Ruger, the former dean, cited the 2021 invitation when he asked for an investigation into Wax’s conduct.
Wax’s invitation of Taylor created a firestorm on campus. Affinity groups condemned the invitation and students protested outside her classroom in the fall of 2023 and plastered posters calling for her termination.
Wax defended her decision to invite Taylor to speak to her class.
“The movement that he represents—the far right, nationalism, whatever you want to call it, trying to preserve European culture—is part of the conservative movement in the United States right now,” Wax said. “Students are entitled to know about it, and they don’t know anything about it. All they know is that they’re supposed to disapprove of it.”
Wax acknowledged there are limits to what speech is covered by academic freedom. Epithets, name-calling and insults shouldn’t be allowed, she said.
“I don’t know where the line is,” Wax said. “I think it’s out there somewhere. I didn’t even come close to it.”
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