Penn professor Amy Wax sues university, alleging her suspension is the result of racial discrimination

University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax filed a federal lawsuit Thursday against the Ivy League school, alleging racial discrimination led to her suspension and other sanctions imposed on her in September.

Wax, 71, is a tenured professor at the Carey Law School and has taught at Penn since 2001. At the end of a disciplinary review that spanned more than two years, the university found she had engaged in "flagrantly unprofessional conduct" inside and outside the classroom. She was suspended for one year at half pay and was stripped of her named chair at Penn.

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Over the years, Wax's controversial remarks have included her broadly questioning the academic abilities of Black students and suggesting the United States would be better off with fewer Asian immigrants who support Democrats. Wax also invited Jared Taylor, the editor of the white nationalist news outlet American Renaissance, to speak in her classroom on multiple occasions.

Wax's lawsuit, filed in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, claims Penn violated her civil rights and applied double standards to her behavior and speech. The suit describes the five-member faculty hearing board that sanctioned her as a "kangaroo-court" that engaged in unfair processes.

"The disciplinary procedures used were both grossly deficient and a wild departure from established norms governing academic discipline," the suit claims.

Wax is seeking to have a federal judge order Penn to remove its sanctions on her and to rule that the university's speech policy violates federal laws regarding discrimination and free speech. The suit also contends Penn's discipline was in breech of her tenure contract, among other claims.

The lawsuit claims Penn's speech policy allows some races and ethnic groups to be criticized while permitting others to be disparaged without consequence. The suit points to multiple examples of Penn choosing not to discipline educators for remarks and conduct that could have been viewed as causing "harm" similar to the impact of Wax's past statements.

The lawsuit mentions the political cartoons of Dwayne Booth, a non-tenured Penn lecturer who sparked backlash last year for his drawings that criticized Israel's bombardment of Gaza. One of Booth's cartoons referenced the antisemitic "blood libel" myth long used to demonize Jews. Booth's work was condemned by Penn interim President J. Larry Jameson, who called the cartoons "reprehensible," but the university declined to discipline the lecturer.

Wax also claims Penn showed a pattern of permitting antisemitic speech on campus as tensions rose over the war in Gaza. Her suit references Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro's remark in December that the university had "lost its way" in its handling of antisemitism, particularly when former Penn President Liz Magill gave wavering Congressional testimony about campus protests and academic freedom. High-profile donors demanded Magill's resignation. And last spring, after a pro-Palestine encampment took over Penn's College Green for three weeks, the university brought in police to disband the protest that some students said made them feel unsafe.

More recently, Penn rebuked English and media studies professor Julia Alekseyeva for social media posts that celebrated the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December. Alekseyeva publicly apologized and deleted the posts without facing discipline.

"These actions by the University thus reveal that its 'harm' rationale is entirely pretextual and served as a thin veneer for discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity and other protected grounds," the lawsuit states.

After her suspension, in an interview with the New York Sun, Wax vowed to remain "a conservative presence on campus" and characterized Penn's disciplinary review as "performance art."

A Penn spokesperson said the university does not comment on pending litigation.

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. The university removed Wax from teaching required law courses in 2018 after she claimed on a podcast that Black students rarely graduate in the top quarter of their classes. In her lawsuit, Wax claims the university never provided evidence to refute her comments and went on to selectively discipline her while ignoring other conduct that should have warranted a similar response.

"White speakers are far more likely to be disciplined for 'harmful' speech while minority speakers are rarely, if ever, subject to disciplinary procedures for the same," the lawsuit says.

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