A tenured University of Pennsylvania law professor is facing potential discipline, including being fired, for her comments about minorities.
Professor Amy Wax is the focus of a June 23 letter to UPenn faculty senate from the law school’s dean, Ted Ruger.
In the 12-page letter, Mr. Ruger accused Ms. Wax of committing a major infraction against the university’s standards under the faculty handbook and called for a “major sanction” against her.
The letter, which was first obtained by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) on July 13, said Ms. Wax “has shown a callous and flagrant disregard for our University community — including students, faculty, and staff — who have been repeatedly subjected to Wax’s intentional and incessant racist, sexist, xenophobic, and homophobic actions and statements.”
It noted that Ms. Wax told a Black student that she had become a double Ivy League graduate only “because of affirmative action”; said Mexican men are more likely to assault women, defending the statement as accurate in the same way that “Germans are punctual”; and said same-sex relationships are self-centered and not focused on family or community.
The letter also accused her of inviting “renowned white supremacist” Jared Taylor to speak and have lunch with her class in 2021.
Ms. Wax became a tenured professor at UPenn in 2001, and was granted a named chair in 2006.
FIRE reported that Ms. Wax has not been allowed to teach first-year classes since 2018 after she said Black students were “rarely” in the top half of her classes.
Last spring, she made national headlines during an appearance on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Today.”
“I think there is just a tremendous amount of resentment and shame of non-Western peoples against Western peoples for Western peoples’ outsized achievements and contributions. I mean, it’s really unbearable,” Ms. Wax said during the Fox News interview. She also said that people with Asian backgrounds who live in the U.S. “hate America.”
Ms. Wax said the university’s actions are a threat to the tradition of free expression and tenure protections for professors with unpopular views. She started a GoFundMe campaign on July 17 to pay for her legal defense, which has raised more than $123,000 of its $300,000 goal.
“They are further evidence of the ‘woke’ takeover of our university system, which seeks to stifle and punish dissent and purge our campuses of any deviation from a narrow set of progressive dogmas,” Ms. Wax wrote on the fundraising page.
• Matt Delaney can be reached at mdelaney@washingtontimes.com.
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