By Jared Mitovich 01/27/22 1:18am

amy-wax-3-jesse-zhang

Credit: Sukhmani Kaur , Jesse Zhang

Tenured Penn Law professor Amy Wax reiterated racist remarks against Asian and Black Americans, retaliating against the University's recent decision to initiate sanctions against her.

Wax, who has worked at Penn for two decades, decried the current state of higher education and the conservative political movement in the United States. This is not the first time Wax has made headlines for discriminatory rhetoric, as her anti-Asian remarks earlier this month ignited an online firestorm and strong reactions from the University community and local politicians.

"Given the realities of different rates of crime, different average IQs, people have to accept without apology that Blacks are not going to be evenly distributed throughout all occupations. They're just not, and that’s not a problem. That’s not due to racism," Wax said in an interview with Concordia University professor Gad Saad on Jan. 24.

"Groups have different levels of ability, demonstrated ability, different competencies," Wax claimed falsely. In 2018, Penn Law Dean Ted Ruger barred Wax from teaching mandatory first-year law courses after she received criticism for saying she has never seen a Black Penn Law student graduate in the top quarter of their class — which Ruger said was false.

RELATED:

Penn Law professor Amy Wax’s anti-Asian comments spark national scrutiny

Penn Law to begin sanctions process against Amy Wax, citing 'increasing' promotion of white supremacy

The interview follows Ruger's initiation of a formal faculty review to investigate and determine whether Wax’s public conduct has impacted her classroom teaching. Ruger wrote in the Jan. 18 announcement that Wax’s conduct has led to multiple complaints from University community members since at least 2017, which have cited Wax’s comments as a “cumulative and increasing” promotion of white supremacy.

But Wax told Saad that she is the “only person” Penn has left on its faculty that her students “can talk to and go to for advice.” She said she does not want to give the University “the satisfaction” of her resignation.

“My case is on some level not about me. I’m just roadkill, I’m a casualty in the culture wars,” Wax told Saad, whose YouTube channel has more than 230,000 subscribers. “What I see being said and done with respect to me is truly alarming. It is a total repudiation of the very concept of academic freedom.”

During the interview with Saad, Wax labeled the curriculum at Penn Law and other law schools as having been “propagandized” by diversity, equity, and inclusion supervisors and political interests, which she claimed has hurt her own students’ knowledge of conservative thought and legal concepts over the years. In 2019, Ruger established the Office of Inclusion and Engagement at Penn Law and announced several new initiatives to increase diversity and inclusion at the law school, including the formation of a student advisory board, alumni advisory board, and a newly appointed associate dean for inclusion and engagement.

“I have seen my students change over even 10 to 15 to 20 to 30 years… They have become these cowed, benighted sheeples. It’s just unbelievable,” Wax said of her Penn Law students. “So not only are they thoroughly intimidated as they should be, but they are ignorant.”

Ruger’s decision to launch the sanctions process against Wax followed a petition, created by Penn Law third year Apratim Vidyarthi and other law students, calling for Wax’s suspension and reformation of the University's tenure policy. The petition, which has since garnered more than 2,500 signatures, was sparked by Wax’s recent claim that "the United States is better off with fewer Asians and less Asian immigration."

Wax is teaching two courses this semester, LAW 672: "Remedies" and LAW 956: "Conservative Political and Legal Thought." LAW 956 is the only course Penn Law currently offers on conservative legal thought, Vidyarthi previously told the DP.

University spokesperson Stephen MacCarthy and Penn Law spokesperson Rebecca Anderson both wrote to The Daily Pennsylvanian that they would withhold public comment on the controversy until the faculty review process of Wax has concluded, in adherence to University policy.

According to Penn’s procedure governing sanctions taken against a faculty member, the Faculty Senate — which serves as the representative voice for full-time teaching faculty — will create a board of five people who will both hear the charges and the defense and vote on the implementation of sanctions. If this board finds Wax guilty of violating the University’s behavioral standards, Wax potentially faces major or minor sanctions, ranging from suspension to a letter of reprimand.

The Philadelphia City Council also recently criticized Wax for these claims, and urged Penn to review her role within the University.

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On the other hand, the Academic Freedom Alliance addressed a letter on Jan. 18 to Penn President Amy Gutmann arguing that Wax should not face formal consequences for her controversial comments. Princeton University professor Keith Whittington, who serves as chair of AFA’s Academic Committee, told the DP he found it “disturbing” that Penn responded to pressure from students and lawmakers by invoking the formal sanctions process against Wax.

“They've been trying to fire me for years and they’re still trying. I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction,” Wax told Saad during the interview. A petition that was launched three years ago calling on Ruger to fire Wax has now received more than 76,000 signatures.

“I come from a barely middle class family, and for me to have worked so hard, to be earning the money that I do and have the position that I have and things like library privileges – which sounds silly, but it means a lot to me – I am not going to give that up without a fight," Wax said. "This is just nuts and bolts, you know, I’ve worked too hard to get where I am. Why would I give it up?”

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5018552&forum_id=2#43863450)

Last couple lines are legit sad.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5018552&forum_id=2#43863639)

She next attended both Harvard Medical School (M.D. 1981) and Harvard Law School (first year of law school, 1981).[1][2][4][5] Wax practiced medicine from 1982 to 1987, doing a residency in neurology at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, and working as a consulting neurologist at a clinic in the Bronx and for a medical group in Brooklyn.[1][4] She completed her legal education at Columbia Law School (J.D. 1987; Editor of the Columbia Law Review), working part-time to put herself through law school.[1][2][4][5]

Wax then clerked for Judge Abner J. Mikva of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1987 to 1988.[2] She was admitted to the New York State bar in 1988.[6]

Legal career

Wax first worked in the Office of the Solicitor General of the United States of the United States Department of Justice from 1988 to 1994.[5][7] During her tenure in the Office, she argued 15 cases before the United States Supreme Court.[8] She taught at University of Virginia Law School from 1994 to 2000.[2][7]

Wax is the Robert Mundheim Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, having joined the law school's faculty in 2001.[5][7][9] She received both the A. Leo Levin Award for Excellence in an Introductory Course, and the Harvey Levin Memorial Award for Teaching Excellence.[5][7] In 2015, she received a Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching, making her one of three Penn Law professors to have received the award in 20 years.[10][1

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5018552&forum_id=2#43863771)

🤡🌎

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5018552&forum_id=2#43863700)

amy-wax-3-jesse-zhang

Credit: Sukhmani Kaur , Jesse Zhang

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5018552&forum_id=2#43863713)

ingest the propaganda or else

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5018552&forum_id=2#43870759)

"The suspect, who is innocent, was found guilty yesterday..."

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5018552&forum_id=2#43878957)

https://www.law.upenn.edu/live/files/11427-cvawaxpdf

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5018552&forum_id=2#43863801)

Come on

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5018552&forum_id=2#43865561)

Let's see your "markers of significant intelligence" lmao

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5018552&forum_id=2#43866602)

1. I don't think it's my burden of proof to show she's dumb. I think the burden is on whoever is claiming she's smart. When I ask for signs of intelligence and all I get is a list of credentials, I get suspicious.

2. I have only evaluated her along one domain: her legal reasoning. That has nothing to do with whatever you think about her views on race or even affirmative action, since she's not raising legal arguments there.

3. Here's something Amy Way believes, and I believe you can find videos of her arguing this point if you look: she thinks there is some inchoate "morality" that emerges from common law if you go back pre-Warren court, and that we used to take things like "sodomy" seriously in this country. She thinks we should be asking judges TODAY to re-breathe life into this moral code that presently lies dormant in our legal tradition. That's not really what she argued on the occasion I'm talking about, but it's something I think I can find videos of her arguing. Do you think it's effective advocacy to raise that kind of argument in front of a judge?

4. I'm quite sure if I try hard enough I can find videos of Amy Wax making references to her own appearances on TV during her own lectures. Like she'll say "I was on Fox News talking to X, and you wouldn't believe the hate mail...." and act all appalled. She does this schtick ROUTINELY. She probably ghost writes half the articles about her.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5018552&forum_id=2#43882330)

2. Okay. Bear in mind your "evaluation" is a conclusory assertion that she sounded like an idiot, with no evidence or even context given.

3. "Do you think it's effective advocacy to raise that kind of argument in front of a judge?" This question evinces serious unfamiliarity with what law professors do and, especially, with what prestigious law professors do. Go read a random sampling of Akhil Reed Amar's work and tell me that you'd "argu[e it] in front of a judge."

4. This is annoying but doesn't have shit to do with anything. We exalt victims in this [dying] culture; she's just responding to incentives.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5018552&forum_id=2#43884502)

This was 7-9 years before Obergfell was decided. Bush was in office and the gay marriage movement was still a fringe thing. If you were a lib, you were supposed to say you support civil unions.

Conservative lawyers had not formulated good legal arguments against this sort of thing, and for the most part really weren't interested. By and large we just didn't really care if gays got married or whatever. We still don't. I think we also knew that if libs ever did make a serious attempt to constitutionalize gay marriage, they would probably get away with it because that's the way the wind was blowing.

Here comes Wax telling us she's got the Good News. We don't actually have to lie down and take it. We can take this battle to court and win! By telling courts that gays are smelly. The spent and hour telling us that gay sex is just fundamentally gross.

I wasn't offended by that in the sense that I thought it was mean to gays. They probably agree that it's gross and DGAF.

I just found her entire argument to be intellectually and practically worthless. Nothing she said invited debate or addressed a point that anyone else was debating. Obviously as a lawyer, you would never present that kind of reasoning in a brief. Who would the client even be? The government? I think everyone in the room felt like their intelligence had just been insulted. Furthermore, if you were one of the people who invited this bitch to drop this turd in front of a room full of prestigious lawyers, you might feel pretty fucking apologetic to some of them, since you would have to presume some of them felt insulted by what they just heard.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5018552&forum_id=2#43887788)

"Finally (and this is in some ways the most important concern for me, as a parent), legalizing homosexual marriage will of course create pressure to "normalize" those relationships in all contexts. This will extend to teaching in public schools (and private schools for that matter).

The absolute equivalence of hetero and homosexual relationships will become public orthodoxy. The result will be that parents will be effectively disabled from expressing any preference whatsoever for heterosexuality, heterosexual families, or traditional heterosexual marriage, and any disapproval or lesser preference for homosexuality, even for their own children. The parity of homosexual and heterosexual relationships and life styles will be aggressively pursued, and anyone who dares to question this will be defined as a bigot. Do I look forward to this breathtaking expansion of the empire of political correctness? Certainly not! The implications of such a state of affairs for religious practice and expression are staggering -- this is a whole different subject unto itself."

The right to ridicule fags is not a constitutional right we should be invoking in opposition to gay marriage. Like she says here, it's an entirely separate issue. But she also thinks it's the "most important" issue and the one we should be talking about.

I should also add that I saw her speaking off the cuff. In almost every lecture of her I can find she is reading prepared remarks. She doesn't do the "aiiight" thing as much, though she does it occasionally. I saw her speak off the cuff for an hour about how disgusted she is personally by gays, as if to presume it was apropos of anything on any of our minds that day.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5018552&forum_id=2#43887896)

you feel me?

nom'sane?

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5018552&forum_id=2#43863994)

“immigration of "Asian elites" to the United States is problematic because of their support of the Democratic Party.”

Then the Penn dean responds with typical CRT mumbo jumbo religious symbolic nothingness:

“Like all racist generalizations, Wax’s recent comments inflict harm by perpetuating stereotypes and placing differential burdens on Asian students, faculty, and staff to carry the weight of this vitriol and bias,” Ruger wrote.”

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5018552&forum_id=2#43865705)

amy-wax-3-jesse-zhang

Credit: Sukhmani Kaur , Jesse Zhang

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5018552&forum_id=2#43865666)

Even I would have a hard time saying that she should continue teaching.

What she said is detrimental to her ability to be able to be a teacher and mentor to the students. If you're a black student at Penn, it isn't unreasonable to think that she's not going to give you a fair shot.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5018552&forum_id=2#43866245)

Why would you want to effectively turn over administrative power to students?

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5018552&forum_id=2#43866617)

https://twitter.com/gadsaad/status/1487168781311000586

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5018552&forum_id=2#43868797)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhyeUd7vOe4

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5018552&forum_id=2#43869055)

I think cases like hers are good too for stirring debate about tenure and whether it makes sense, especially since she's openly calling academia a scam.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5018552&forum_id=2#43869779)

BUT I WON'T BACK DOWN

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5018552&forum_id=2#43870750)