I wrote about Amy Wax in September of 2024 in UPenn and Amy Wax: double standards.
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Graphic: Amy Wax, C-Span Screenshot
As the September AT post notes, Penn has been harassing Wax for years. Her offense? She’s Jewish, conservative, and has dared to speak against DEI and wokeness. Not only have her writings and statements been entirely factual—Penn has never denied that—she’s entirely within her First Amendment rights and Penn’s academic freedom guarantees. That didn’t stop a ruthlessly woke institution like Penn.
Wax is a tenured law professor at Penn. She’s not only a medical doctor—a neurologist—but a Juris doctor—lawyer—and has argued 15 cases before the Supreme Court. That’s an extraordinary record, and Wax is an extraordinary person. One would think Penn would think and act very carefully indeed before trying to punish someone like Wax. One would think wrongly.
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Graphic: X Screenshot
Legal Insurrection reports Wax, who did all she could to avoid it, finally filed suit against Penn on 01-16-25:
As we reported earlier, the school said Wax’s “discriminatory and disrespectful statements to specific targeted racial, national, ethnic, sexual orientation, and gender groups with which our students and colleagues identify” created “an unequal learning environment.” Her punishment included suspension for one year at half pay, loss of her named chair, and public reprimand—though she was not fired and did not lose tenure.
But in her lawsuit, Wax’s lawyers allege it was UPenn that discriminated based on race. By tolerating antisemitic speech while punishing Wax’s protected speech, the University violated federal law against racial discrimination…
Take the link to read the entire suit. Lawyers always write such things in the most favorable light for their clients, but this suit is remarkable in that everything Wax’s lawyers allege is objectively factual and true and can be easily proved, such as Penn’s antisemitism, which is a significant cause of Penn’s institutional hatred of Wax.
But the true reason for disciplining Wax, her lawyers allege, is that at UPenn, ‘some races may not be criticized while other racial or ethnic groups can be—and routinely are—subjected to virulently racist speech without consequence.’
UPenn’s speech policy discriminates based not only on the content of speech but also on the racial identity of the speaker, the lawsuit continues. ‘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 complaint alleges UPenn’s disciplinary proceedings also violated her due process rights under the terms of her tenure. And they violated the school’s own procedures, by mischaracterizing Wax’s speech as ‘conduct’—analogous to major felonies such as rape—in an attempt to justify jacking up the charges to impose ‘major sanctions’ for what was in fact academic speech.
‘Penn has never used the ‘major infractions’ procedures for any other speech,’ the lawsuit says. ‘Indeed, it has not even invoked the minor infractions disciplinary procedures for any of the anti-Semitic speech or incitements to violence described in this Complaint.’
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This is just one example of the kind of testimony, should Penn be sufficiently stupid as to go to trial, that will make Wax a wealthy woman:
The proceedings against Wax were initiated in 2022 by then-Dean Ted Ruger, who betrayed his own bias earlier in 2019 when he told students at a town hall meeting, ‘Her presence here…makes me angry, it makes me pissed off,’ adding that it ‘sucks’ that she was still there. And when students talked about wanting to fire her, he said ‘the only way to get rid of a tenured professor is this process …that’s gonna take months.’
Penn instituted its punishment of Wax at a time when DEIcrats thought they were invulnerable and would always be in power, and why not? The Harris/Biden/Garland DOJ had their backs. Then Donald Trump won reelection and—the horror—DEI’s death knell sounded.
Professor Amy Wax, in an interview with the Sun, discloses that ‘the possibility has been brought up’ that the Trump administration could join her federal civil lawsuit against the University of Pennsylvania for violating ‘core principles of the First Amendment’ and enforcing policies that are ‘racially discriminatory.’
There’s no question Penn violated its own policies, the First Amendment, and numerous federal anti-discrimination laws, not only in their treatment of Wax, but in their support for antisemitic speech and violence on campus, and by members of the faculty. Former Penn President Liz Magill, instrumental in the persecution of Wax, was forced to resign after her astonishingly stupid and arrogant appearance before Congress where she stubbornly refused to denounce blatantly antisemitic violence on the Penn Campus.
The Trump DOJ will likely join Wax’s suit because Penn is blatantly in violation of federal civil rights law. A win for Wax will likely set the standard and force an even more rapid and complete elimination of DEI. It couldn’t happen to worse people.
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Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.
This article was originally published at www.americanthinker.com
