University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax will be suspended from teaching for one year after a Monday ruling by the faculty committee tasked with reviewing her lengthy record of "flagrantly unprofessional conduct," university officials said.
Wax, a tenured professor at Penn's Carey Law School, has a history of inflammatory remarks that have included her calling into question the capabilities of Black students and suggesting the country would be better off with fewer Democrat-leaning Asian immigrants.
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On multiple occasions — including this month — Wax also invited Jared Taylor, editor of the white nationalist outlet American Renaissance, to speak in her classroom at the Ivy League school.
Monday's decision by Penn's Faculty Senate Committee on Academic Freedom ends more than two years of disciplinary review of Wax's conduct inside and outside the classroom. The school's five-member faculty hearing board chose to sanction Wax in June of last year, prompting an appeal from Wax. The faculty senate committee's determination on Monday concluded that the disciplinary actions against Wax, 71, followed proper procedure in finding she had violated Penn's behavioral standards.
The long-tenured professor "breached her responsibilities as a teacher to offer an equal learning opportunity to all students," a university spokesperson said Monday, resulting in a one-year suspension with pay that will take effect for the 2025-2026 academic year.
"These findings are now final," the university spokesperson said.
In addition to her suspension, Wax will be denied summer pay, stripped of her named chair at Penn and required to include a disclaimer for all public appearances noting that she's not speaking as a representative of the university or the Carey Law School. She will not be fired or lose her tenure at Penn and will be permitted to finish out the current academic year.
The committee's decision also requires that a public reprimand of Wax be shared with the university community in the Penn Almanac, the Ivy League school's weekly publication of record that comes out every Tuesday.
Last year's decision to sanction Wax was reviewed and uncontested by former Penn President Liz Magill, who resigned in December amid backlash over the testimony she gave at a congressional hearing about antisemitism on Penn's campus. Penn's interim president, J. Larry Jameson, confirmed his predecessor's finding and will move forward with the decision reached Monday, the university said.
A history of charged remarks and backlash
Wax has a background in biomedical science with degrees from Yale and Harvard universities. She got her law degree from Columbia University in 1987. Her decades-long career has included numerous publications in law journals, 15 cases argued before the U.S. Supreme Court while working for the Department of Justice, and one of Penn's prestigious Lindback Awards for Distinguished Teaching.
Wax began teaching at Penn in 2001 and was named the Robert Mundheim Professor of Law in 2007. Her academic bio said her work addresses "issues in social welfare law and policy as well as the relationship of the family, the workplace, and labor markets."
For years, Wax has stoked controversy with disparaging comments about people of color and immigrant communities. In a 2017 interview with Brown University professor Glenn Loury, she claimed Black students practically never graduate at the top of their law school classes.
"I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Black student graduate in the top quarter of the class, and rarely, rarely, in the top half," Wax said, adding that Black students' academic pursuits are often "mismatched" with their abilities.
Backlash against those remarks led the university to remove Wax from teaching required courses at Penn.
Two years later, while speaking at a conservative conference in Washington, D.C., Wax argued the United States "will be better off with more whites and fewer nonwhites." Those remarks prompted student petitions for Wax to be reprimanded and drew rebuke from former Penn Carey Law Dean Ted Ruger, who said the university prizes having a diverse student body.
"At best, the reported remarks espouse a bigoted theory of white cultural and ethnic supremacy," Ruger said of Wax's comments. "(At) worst, they are racist."
On yet another occasion in 2022, Wax maligned Asian immigrants in a response to a letter that one of Loury's listeners wrote him after seeing Wax discuss the topic on his podcast.
"As long as most Asians support Democrats and help to advance their positions, I think the United States is better off with fewer Asians and less Asian immigration," Wax said.
At various points, Wax has publicly defended herself by claiming American universities engage in suppression of the truth to appease ideals of social comfort, despite evidence that may upset those values.
“It’s all psychologized,” Wax told Law.com earlier this year. “What the woke catechism, the woke set of precepts, has done is that they’ve taken subjective reactions and made them reign supreme, which is completely contrary to every First Amendment principle that ever existed.”
Wax's fraying reputation and repeated appearances in the news coincided with sharply declining enrollment in her Penn courses in recent years, according to a review by the Daily Pennsylvanian, the school's student newspaper.
Battle continues over academic freedom
The university's decision on Monday comes amid increased scrutiny of Penn's handling of campus conflicts surrounding the war in Gaza.
The university's decision to host the Palestine Writes Literature Festival last fall — about a month before the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel — provoked an uproar from critics and donors who contended Penn had adopted a double-standard. The annual festival celebrating Palestinian culture included several controversial speakers accused of espousing antisemitic views.
After Magill's congressional testimony, some lawmakers questioned why the university would pursue sanctions against Wax while allowing the literary festival and student protests to create a threatening atmosphere on campus.
"Penn has demonstrated a clear double standard by tolerating antisemitic vandalism, harassment, and intimidation, but suppressing and penalizing other expression it deemed problematic," Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-North Carolina) said of the school's policies.
But the university also came under scrutiny for the way it brought in police to disband a pro-Palestine encampment that took over Penn's College Green for three weeks this spring. Protesters later marched through University City and stopped outside Jameson's home, where they breached the outside gates and released black, red and green smoke representing the Palestinian flag.
With students back on campus for the fall semester, the Daily Pennsylvanian reported this month that activists with the pro-Palestinian group Penn Students Against the Occupation of Palestine had vandalized the statue of Benjamin Franklin that sits outside College Hall.
In the university's reprimand addressed to Wax — dated to be published Tuesday — Provost John L. Jackson Jr. defended academic freedom and said the professor must refrain from "flagrantly unprofessional and targeted disparagement" of any individual or group in the Penn community.
"Academic freedom is and should be very broad. Teachers, however, must conduct themselves in a manner that conveys a willingness to assess all students fairly," Jackson wrote. "They may not engage in unprofessional conduct that creates an unequal educational environment."
