Law Schools

Amy Wax Relieved Of Her 1L Teaching Duties After Bald-Faced Lying About Black Students

Amy Wax finally took her racially insulting behavior far enough that the school had to step in.

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Professor Amy Wax has finally, mercifully received the reprimand she’s been courting for months. The Penn Law professor has basked in the spotlight of troll culture since last summer when she put out an op-ed, along with USD Law’s Professor Larry Alexander, dog whistling paeon to 1950s “bourgeois” culture resting on a rickety superstructure of innuendo and outright falsehoods. She alienated her students and colleagues alike, but somehow kept teaching 1Ls.

But in a statement released this evening, Dean Ted Ruger has finally taken action to address Wax’s shenanigans. Wax can continue to teach her elective courses, but she’s no longer able to teach students who have no choice in seeking her out as a professor.

The final straw came when video surfaced of her spouting off about how black students have never graduated in the top quarter of their Penn Law class and only rarely graduated in the top half.

For months, Dean Ruger has tacitly supported Wax by refusing to clip her “academic freedom” — no matter how embarrassingly shoddy her “research” might be — by not penalizing her for aggressively creating a hostile environment for students by publicly espousing her thinly veiled racism in order to grab cheap fame from the right-wing troll machine. However, slandering Penn’s students and intimating that she breaches the school’s anonymous grading policy in order to support her fantasies of white cultural superiority (and this is not an extreme statement… she has straight-up said she doesn’t “shrink from the word superior“) proved a bridge too far:

It is imperative for me as dean to state that these claims are false: black students have graduated in the top of the class at Penn Law, and the Law Review does not have a diversity mandate. Rather, its editors are selected based on a competitive process. And contrary to any suggestion otherwise, black students at Penn Law are extremely successful, both inside and outside the classroom, in the job market, and in their careers.

Of course, Wax’s claim is false. That the dean of an elite law school has to come out and say this is disgraceful. But Dean Ruger had to set the record straight for the good of his students and his school.

While Dean Ruger bends over backward to assure his audience that Professor Wax is suffering no sanction and that her academic freedom remains unchecked, he also removed her from 1L teaching responsibilities — an appropriate and necessary response to a professor publicly proclaiming her disbelief that minority students randomly assigned to her class can possibly succeed.

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As dean it is my responsibility to allocate faculty teaching resources in the best interest of students and of the Law School. After consulting faculty, alumni/ae, Overseers, and University officials, I have decided that Professor Wax will continue to teach elective courses in her areas of expertise, but that are outside of the mandatory first-year curriculum. In this respect, she will be similarly situated to a substantial majority of our tenured and chaired faculty, most of whom do not teach required first-year courses. This curricular decision entails no sanction or diminution of Professor Wax’s status on the faculty, which remains secure. Normally, this decision would be private, but because Professor Wax made these inaccurate public statements, and students and alumni raised their concerns publicly, sharing it with our community is important.

Professor Wax remains free to share her warrantless views to whatever media outlet will give her a platform to degrade the public discourse. And each appearance will continue to squander Penn Law’s goodwill by reminding everyone that Penn Law employs an academic incapable of passing a basic fact-check. But students will no longer be forced to worry that their grades and career prospects are in the hands of someone convinced that they cannot succeed in her eyes.

It’s a good start.

(Dean Ruger’s full message is available on the next page…)

Earlier: Professor Declares Black Students ‘Rarely’ Graduate In The Top Half Of Law School Class
Law Professors Say White ’50s Culture Is Superior, Other Racist Stuff
Dog Whistling ‘Bourgeois Values’ Op-Ed Gets Thorough Takedown From Other Law Professors
Law Students Seek To Ban Professor From Teaching 1Ls

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HeadshotJoe Patrice is an 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.

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