The U. of Penn law school shouldn’t fire Professor Amy Wax because of her political views. That ought to be a given.
But Wax (photo, right) has for years publicly bashed immigrants and minorities (see story here and details here), and no minority student paying law school tuition should be forced to put up with that.
And because law is an intellectual discipline, stereotyping people based on race or national origin should disqualify a person from teaching even if her academic work justifies keeping her on the faculty.
Amy Wax (bio here) is unquestionably brilliant. Society makes allowances for the eccentricities of geniuses. But there are limits to everything. (Oppenheimer, you will recall, lost his security clearance; whether justifiably or not is still debated.)
Dr. Wax, J.D., M.D., is a bona fide genius. She graduated from Yale, attended Oxford and then Harvard’s medical and law schools simultaneously (she ultimately took her law degree from Columbia University, where she was law review editor). As a young lawyer, she argued cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. She taught at the University of Virginia law school before landing at the U. Penn. law school in 2001, where she received teaching excellence awards.
According to Wikipedia, her academic work focuses on “issues in social welfare law and policy, as well as the relationship of the family, the workplace, and labor markets.” That’s is a bit surprising; based on her biography, you’d expect her to be a heavyweight in health law.
She has problematic personal views.
In 2017, she told U. Penn’s student newspaper that “everyone wants to go to countries ruled by white Europeans” because of their “superior” mores. At a 2019 conference, she seemed to take “the position that our country will be better off with more whites and fewer non-whites.” In a December 2021 podcast interview, she said “the United States is better off with fewer Asians” because “Asians vote disproportionately for the ‘pernicious” Democratic Party” and called for immigration restrictions against Asians.
When the interviewer asked her what’s wrong with having “a lot of Chinese or Indian or Korean engineers, physicians, computer scientists, and whatnot” contributing to our society, she replied that someone who came her from India and “has taken advantage of everything our society has to offer, who is leading the good life, who is part of the elite” should be “grateful” and shouldn’t criticize the racism in American society.
A law professor criticizing people for exercising their First Amendment rights? Wanting to punish a group for what individuals said? Stereotyping people? Is that who you want teaching law students at an elite law school?
(While she’s been removed from some teaching duties, and the law school dean calls her views “diametrically opposed to the policies and ethos of this institution,” CNN says it’s unclear if U. Penn intends to take disciplinary action against her.)
Academic freedom should protect inquiry into controversial subjects, and allow for expression of divergent views in classrooms. It shouldn’t punish political beliefs. But Wax’s expressed views contain elements of racism, partisanship, and anti-intellectualism. There’s a risk of she’ll discriminate against students because of their race or national origin. Whatever her academic contributions may be, I think you can plausibly argue that teaching isn’t an ideal role for her.