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Penn Law prof gets half-pay suspension for ‘discriminatory and disparaging statements’

By Debra Cassens Weiss

September 25, 2024, 8:51 am CDT

A professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School will be suspended with half pay and full benefits for the 2025-2026 academic year because of her “discriminatory and disparaging statements.”

Along with the suspension, professor Amy Wax received a public reprimand, loss of her named chair position and loss of summer pay “in perpetuity.” She will also be required to note in public appearances that she speaks for herself and not the university or its law school.

The New York Times described the sanction as “significant” but said it “falls short of the firing that some students wanted.”

Other publications with coverage include the Philadelphia Inquirer, Law.com, Law360 and Inside Higher Ed.

Wax was accused of publicly warning against dominance by the “Asian elite,” immigrants from third-world countries and the loss of “bourgeois” habits. She was also accused of remarking that same-sex couples aren’t fit to raise children, that people of color have to stop acting entitled to remedies, and that Mexican men were more likely to assault women. And she was also accused of saying Black law students rarely graduated in the top half of their class.

Provost John L. Jackson Jr. published the public reprimand issued to Wax in the University of Pennsylvania’s Almanac on Tuesday. She was previously barred from teaching mandatory classes to first-year law students in 2018.

A faculty hearing board determined after a May 2023 hearing that Wax engaged in “flagrant unprofessional conduct,” Jackson wrote in the reprimand.

Jackson said the conduct “included a history of making sweeping and derogatory generalizations about groups by race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and immigration status.” Wax also made “discriminatory and disparaging statements targeting specific racial, ethnic and other groups with which many students identify” inside and outside the classroom, Jackson said.

As a result of Wax’s conduct, many students were “understandably concerned” that Wax “cannot and would not be an impartial judge of their academic performance,” Jackson wrote.

M. Elizabeth Magill, then the president of the University of Pennsylvania, accepted the hearing board recommendations in August 2023. The school faculty’s Senate Committee on Academic Freedom and Responsibility found no defect in procedures in Wax’s case, making the hearing board findings final.

According to the Philadelphia Inquirer and the New York Times, Wax has denied making some comments and has contended that other remarks were taken out of context. She did not comment when contacted by both newspapers. Nor did she immediately respond to an ABA Journal email seeking comment.

Wax has previously said she will challenge any discipline in court, according to the New York Times.