Law Schools

If You're Just Finding Out Amy Wax Invited A White Supremacist To Her Class, There's So, So Much More!

Because academic freedom.

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shock email wow Amazed entrepreneur working on lineYesterday, Jay Willis got ahold of the syllabus for Penn Law professor Amy Wax’s “Conservative Political and Legal Thought” seminar — which is an interesting read in its own right — and highlighted that Wax had invited Jared Taylor of American Renaissance to speak to her class at a lunch. Since Taylor’s the kind of guy who says stuff like, “Blacks and whites are different. When blacks are left entirely to their own devices, Western civilization — any kind of civilization — disappears” folks started sharing this revelation.

We already knew about the Taylor invite from Dean Ted Ruger’s June letter seeking “major sanctions” against Wax, where Dean Ruger says the invitation “crosses the line of what is acceptable in a University environment where principles of non-discrimination apply.” But it’s a testament to the extensiveness of her shenanigans that folks are still discovering more about the findings outlined in the letter weeks after the fact.

We linked to the letter at the time, but maybe we should’ve done more to pull out key examples for people who don’t have time to wade into the whole document. So if you’ve not dug into the formal letter, here are just a few of the highlights from the investigations of both former Northwestern dean Dan Rodriguez and Quinn Emanuel:

• Telling Jaime Gallen L’12 that Black students don’t perform as well as white students because they are less well prepared, and that they are less well prepared because of affirmative action.
• Emailing Gregory Berry L’10, a Black student, that “[i]f blacks really and sincerely wanted to be equal, they would make a lot of changes in their own conduct and communities.”
• Stating in class that people of color needed to stop acting entitled to remedies, to stop getting pregnant, to get better jobs, and to be more focused on reciprocity.
• Stating in class that Mexican men are more likely to assault women and remarking such a stereotype was accurate in the same way as “Germans are punctual.”
• Commenting in class that gay couples are not fit to raise children and making other references to LGBTQ people that a student reported evinced a “pattern of homophobia.”
• Commenting after a series of students with foreign-sounding names introduced themselves that one student was “finally, an American” adding, “it’s a good thing, trust me.”

That’s not even every bullet point from that section. The “academic freedom” canard that Wax defenders trot out is weak in every context but there’s not even the slimmest foothold for it here. Her public statements and Wikipedia-level scholarship should be more than enough for a school to terminate her, but Penn doesn’t even need to reach those issues. These are outright discriminatory statements that would warrant termination in any job.

And, not for nothing, but a lot of these discriminatory statements date back years, meaning Penn Law has had ample opportunity to muster the evidence to sanction Wax for some time.

Moving from purely discriminatory statements to statements undermining faith that the school evaluates students based on merit:

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• Stating that Blacks have “different average IQs” than non-Blacks, could “not be evenly distributed through all occupations,” and that such a phenomenon would not be “due to racism.”
• Stating “some of them shouldn’t” even go to college in reference to Black students who attend Penn Law and its peer schools.
• Stating that Asians have an “indifference to liberty,” lack “thoughtful and audacious individualism” and that “the United States is better off with fewer Asians and less Asian immigration.”
• Stating that immigrants with “Brown faces, Asian faces . . . feel anger, envy, and shame,” and expressing her disbelief that they would criticize the United States when “on some level, their country is a shithole.”
• Stating that “groups have different levels of ability, demonstrated ability, different competencies,” and that there are “clear individual and group differences in talent, ability, and drive” between races.
• Stating that “there were some very smart Jews” among her past students but that Ashkenazi Jews are “diluting [their] brand like crazy because [they are] intermarrying.”
• Stating that low-income students may cause “reverse contagion,” infecting more “capable and sophisticated” students with their “delinquency and rule-breaking.”

I cannot stress enough, these aren’t all the bullets from this section either.

It may sound crazy, but bringing a white supremacist to campus is one of her quasi-defensible actions. At least he’s an example of the subject matter of her crypto-fascism seminar! It’s not acceptable at all, but she can make an argument there.

The rest of these incidents are indefensible.

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HeadshotJoe 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 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.

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