HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Sanctioned Penn Professor Amy Wax Says āPossibilityā Trump Will Join Her Fight Against University That Punished Her for āOffensiveā Speech.
Professor Amy Wax, in an interview with the Sun, discloses that āthe possibility has been brought upā that the Trump administration could join her federal civil lawsuit against the University of Pennsylvania for violating ācore principles of the First Amendmentā and enforcing policies that are āracially discriminatory.ā
Penn, as itās called, has been trying to fire Dr. Wax, a tenured legal scholar who has argued cases before the Supreme Court and also happens to be a physician, for years due to statements sheās made ā most controversially about the performance of her Black students ā that have roiled the campus and made her persona non grata among the overwhelmingly liberal faculty.
Dr. Wax is now suing Penn after it punished her, including reducing her compensation, with what her complaint calls āacademic discipline in the form of major sanctions.ā The suit, in which the law professor uses a legal theory whose shape emerged in the wake of the attacks of October 7, 2023, to take on her hostile employer, could gain momentum from Washingtonās help. The Trump administration could see in the polarizing professor an ally in its push to change the culture on Americaās campuses.
Penn accuses Dr. Wax of committing a āmajor infractionā for āmaking intentional and incessant racist, sexist, xenophobic, and homophobic statements and actions that inflict harm.ā
Pennās faculty appears to have been especially incensed at Dr. Waxās claims that ānon-Western groupsā are resentful toward āWestern peopleā and that in her experience, Black students had rarely graduated at the top of their law school classes. She told the Sun in 2023 that she rejects the āpremise that all groups are equal in their skills, ability, preferences, and talents,ā but has always maintained that she has never discriminated against any student.
Penn and its lawyers ruminated on how to punish Dr. Wax in spite of her tenure. The university settled on a punishment that included a one-year suspension at half pay, the loss of a named chair and summer pay, a public reprimand, and a requirement that she note in the course of every public appearance that she does not speak for Penn. She calls the process that led to her sanctions āabnormal.ā
Penn called her comments all sorts of things, except false.
