Law Schools

Professor Declares Black Students 'Rarely' Graduate In The Top Half Of Law School Class

And have *never* graduated in the top quarter as far as she can remember.

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Comedian Cristela Alonzo has this bit about walking through a racist locale and facing shouts of “Mexicans are lazy” and that “Mexicans are taking all our jobs,” forcing her to wonder “well, which one is it?”

Professor Amy Wax of Penn Law would do well to remember this little life lesson in racist contradiction before she makes any more public statements. In September, Wax appeared on Brown University economics professor Glenn Loury’s Skypecast and rambled about her unorthodox (read: lazy) views on race and sex. But toward the end of the show, Professor Wax found herself flummoxed by an interviewer applying basic logic and that’s landed her in more hot water.

The full interview is below, but it’s cued up to the most important point. Right after she’s finished explaining how black people would be better off if they understood that they’re better at menial tasks — yes, that’s actually part of the discussion that precedes this clip — Professor Wax claims that a black student has never finished in the top quarter of a graduating class Penn Law as far as she can remember and that they “rarely, rarely” finish in the top half. That prompts this money exchange:

For those unable to watch, here’s a transcript:

Loury: Do you have a racial diversity mandate for law review appointments at Penn?
Wax: Yes. Yes.
Loury: So you’re telling me that students of color who have served on law review are pretty much in the bottom half of their law classes at Penn?
Wax: …

Silence. The audience is just treated to long beats of dead air as she rolls her eyes back into her head to access whatever part of the reptilian brain controls explicit bias and scrambles to put together something to justify her wildly unsupported claim. When everyone came out of the woodwork to carefully and thoroughly undermine her shoddy, baseless claims in that infamous op-ed, she had the luxury of pretending that no one engaged her argument substantively and hoping that no one took the time to look back and discover that it’s an utter falsehood. But when called out in a recorded interview, there’s no way to wave it off.

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That’s when Wax, in desperation, ran face first into the wood chipper.

I would have to– What I know– I mean, I haven’t done a survey, I haven’t done a systematic study– I’m talking about who gets the honor– I have a big, I have a class of 89 or 95 students every year. So I see a big chunk of students every year, so I’m going on that because a lot of this data is a closely guarded secret as you can imagine.

So I guess the follow-up question is… which one is it? Did she have absolutely no evidentiary basis for claiming black students “rarely, rarely” finish in the top half of their classes at Penn or does she routinely violate blind grading rules? Because it’s one or the other and neither ends well for Wax. [UPDATE: Someone just pointed out to me a third option — if she grades blind and then seeks out grade information after the fact, then she’s admitting that she goes back and tries to figure out how black students specifically did in her course. That’s also disturbing.]

This double-bind is the basis of an alumni and student letter to Penn Law’s Dean Ruger:

Setting aside the false and slanderous nature of these statements, Professor Wax’s actions are in clear violation of the terms and spirit of Penn Law’s anonymous grading policy, and compromise the law school’s assurance that grades are maintained by the Registrar under strict scrutiny. In light of this policy, we would like to know upon what data Professor Wax relies, and whether such race-based data is even collected by the Law School. We are particularly sensitive to the cavalierly offensive remarks given that professors do not have access to name or race-based grades.

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The truth is, almost certainly, that Professor Wax has no idea what grades black students are getting at Penn Law and just made it all up to support laughable and discredited UCLA Law Professor Richard Sander’s Mismatch theory just like she made up all those “facts” to support her white cultural supremacy op-ed with Larry Alexander.

But this is the struggle for the clutch of academics searching for the Grand Unifying Theory of Justifiable Racism. There are only a finite number of facts that can be cherry-picked to back up this worldview and relying on out of context data usually creates a host of contradictions.

Will this be the event that finally gets Dean Ruger to pull Wax from 1L teaching duties? Ruger has already passed on a call to do so and likes to elide the subject of Professor Wax’s demeaning statements, but perhaps intimating that she violates school policy on a talk show will generate some urgency.

Earlier: 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

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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