Penn will sanction Amy Wax, the law prof who invited a white nationalist to speak to her class

The University of Pennsylvania will sanction controversial law professor Amy Wax for a major infraction of the university’s behavioral standards following a decision by a university committee made public Monday.

Wax — who has called into question the academic ability of Black students, invited white nationalist Jared Taylor to her classroom, and said the country would be better off with fewer Asians and less Asian immigration — will be suspended for one year at half pay with benefits intact. She also will face a public reprimand issued by university leadership, the loss of her named chair and summer pay, and a requirement to note in her public appearances that she is not speaking for or as a member of the Penn Carey Law school or Penn.

But she will not be fired or lose her tenure.

“These findings are now final...,” Penn said in a statement, noting the five-member hearing board’s determination that Wax “violated the university’s behavioral standards by engaging in years of flagrantly unprofessional conduct within and outside of the classroom that breached her responsibilities as a teacher to offer an equal learning opportunity to all students.”

Penn intends to publish the announcement of the decision in Tuesday’s Penn Almanac.

Sanctions initially were handed down by a Penn hearing board in June 2023 and upheld by former Penn president Liz Magill, but Wax appealed the decision, which kicked off a review by Penn’s Senate Committee on Academic Freedom and Responsibility. That group decided that proper procedures were followed, the university said, which means the sanctions can take effect.

With the school year already underway, Penn said it would impose Wax’s suspension for the 2025-26 academic year. That means she will continue to teach this year.

The decision, which comes after more than two years of university proceedings, marks the first time in at least 20 years that a tenured professor has been sanctioned after the full faculty senate process was followed.

“This has been a faculty driven process and ... the decision in the case was reached after a significant amount of faculty time and thought, and is in accordance with the process set forth in the Faculty Handbook,” said Eric Feldman, chair of the faculty senate, who also is a law professor.

In a letter of reprimand to Wax that will be published in the Almanac on Tuesday, Penn provost John L. Jackson Jr. wrote that while academic freedom is broad, “teachers ... must conduct themselves in a manner that conveys a willingness to assess all students fairly. They may not engage in unprofessional conduct that creates an unequal educational environment.

“The Board has determined that your conduct failed to meet these expectations, leaving many students understandably concerned that you cannot and would not be an impartial judge of their academic performance. It is imperative that you conduct yourself in a professional manner in your interactions with faculty colleagues, students, and staff. This includes refraining from flagrantly unprofessional and targeted disparagement of any individual or group in the university community.”

» READ MORE: Penn hearing board recommended sanctions against Amy Wax in June, but her appeal means the process isn’t over

In her Aug. 11, 2023 letter explaining her decision to uphold the hearing board’s recommendations, Magill said the case wasn’t easy, noting Wax is an “award-winning teacher” and the importance of academic freedom.

But, Magill wrote in the 14-page letter, Wax’s conduct “would make many students reasonably wonder whether they could be fairly educated and evaluated by her.”

Reached by phone, Wax said: “Please don’t call me.”

Wax’s conduct, according to Magill’s letter, “included a history of sweeping, blithe, and derogatory generalizations about groups by race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and immigration status.” She also, according to the letter, breached “the requirement that student grades be kept private by publicly speaking about the grades of law students by race and continuing to do so even after cautioned by the dean that it was a violation of University policy.”

Wax also, both in and out of the classroom, repeatedly and in public made “discriminatory and disparaging statements targeted at specific racial, ethnic, and other groups with which many students identify,” the letter said.

» READ MORE: Penn law professor Amy Wax enraged people with her comments about Asians. Now, she may face sanction.

Interim Penn president J. Larry Jameson did not have to act on the hearing board recommendations because Magill had already done that. Jameson stepped into his role last December following Magill’s resignation in the wake of a bipartisan uproar over her congressional committee testimony about the handling of antisemitism on campus.

Jameson said in a letter that also will be published in the Almanac that he was confirming and implementing the decision.

Magill noted in August that under faculty senate rules, the president “shall normally accept” the recommendations, and “only in exceptional circumstances” can depart from them.

The decision is likely to reignite scrutiny over Penn’s handling in September of the Palestine Writes literature festival, which critics say included speakers with a history of making antisemitic remarks, and for resisting calls to discipline faculty and students for remarks some called antisemitic in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the country’s subsequent military response in Gaza. The campus continued to be roiled last spring after a pro-Palestinian encampment was erected on the College Green and eventually removed by university and city police. The encampment — one of dozens on campuses around the country — was up for more than two weeks.

» READ MORE: Penn law prof Amy Wax asks for delay of disciplinary proceedings for her cancer treatment

The U.S. congressional committee that investigated Penn’s handling of antisemitism complaints, a lawsuit filed by two Jewish students at Penn, and Wax’s lawyer all have pointed to the proceedings against Wax as evidence that Penn is willing to attempt to take action against some professors for some speech.

“Penn has demonstrated a clear double standard by tolerating antisemitic … harassment, and intimidation, but suppressing and penalizing other expression it deemed problematic,” Virginia Foxx, the Republican congresswoman who heads the House Education and Workforce Committee, wrote in January.

Others have argued that the two should not be conflated.

Wax has been accused of making racist statements to students in the classroom and of actions including inviting Taylor to speak to her class, most recently in November. Former Penn law school dean Theodore Ruger said in a 12-page report initiating the sanctions process against Wax that her initial invitation to Taylor “cross[ed] the line of what is acceptable in a university environment where principles of nondiscrimination apply.”

Her comments have been pervasive and consistent, those critics argue, negatively impacting her students and colleagues.

“We know that professor Wax’s conduct and speech — not just speech but also conduct — has been ongoing for years,” Apratim Vidyarthi, a 2022 Penn law graduate, said in February. He was part of a group that presented a petition to Penn with about 2,500 signatures, asking the university to launch an investigation into Wax.

“There is a strong record of evidence of her saying discriminatory things toward minority students,” he said. “There is that higher level of evidence that indicates that she is unfit to teach law students.”

Reached Monday afternoon, Vidyarthi said he was glad to see Wax get sanctioned, but said it took way too long from when complaints first surfaced and too many students have had to suffer. And, the sanctions didn’t go far enough, he said.

“What we originally asked for is her to lose her tenure,” he said, but added that a “half measure is better than nothing.”

He also said he’s concerned that the suspension isn’t occurring until next school year.

“That’s really unfortunate, especially since her harm is ongoing,” he said, referring to Wax’s decision to bring Taylor to campus again this semester.

Taylor is scheduled on Dec. 3 to deliver a guest lecture in Wax’s class: “Conservative and Political Legal Thought,” the Daily Pennsylvanian, Penn’s student newspaper, reported earlier this month.

But others were critical of Penn’s decision, saying the university failed to uphold academic freedom, which is supposed to protect controversial faculty from being sanctioned for expressing their views.

“Today Penn delivered on years of promises that they’d find a way to punish Amy Wax, without evidence of actionable discrimination, academic freedom be damned,” said Alex Morey, director of campus rights advocacy for the Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. “Private university faculty everywhere will pay for Penn’s desire to get at this one professor. Institutions that promise free expression and academic freedom now have the Penn playbook on getting around it if there’s enough pressure to find a way to punish a particularly controversial faculty member.”

Wax has denied making some comments and alleged other comments were taken out of context. In a filing, Wax’s lawyer had contended that Wax had been treated unfairly and that the charges against her presented a “one-sided and incomplete” picture. Among his arguments, he wrote that it was proper for Wax to invite Taylor to the seminar on conservative and legal thought, which is supposed to educate students on “conservative and right-of-center positions.”

Proceedings against Wax, 71, a professor at Penn for more than two decades, began in January 2022 when former Carey dean Ruger invoked the faculty review process, asserting that Wax’s “racist speech” was escalating and multiple complaints about her promotion of white supremacy had been lodged, and that her faculty presence had a cumulative effect on the law school community.

Up until then, Penn had condemned Wax’s statements, and in 2018, removed her from teaching mandatory courses but had cited academic freedom in declining to fire her.

A Troy, N.Y., native, Wax got her bachelor’s degree in molecular biophysics and biochemistry from Yale, graduating summa cum laude. She then studied philosophy, physiology, and psychology at Oxford. She graduated from Harvard Medical School, trained as a neurologist, and later got her law degree from Columbia, according to her curriculum vitae listed on Penn Law’s website.

She started her academic career at the University of Virginia and came to Penn in 2001. In 2005, she received Penn law school’s A. Leo Levin Award for Excellence in an Introductory Course. Two years later, in 2007, she was awarded her named chair after Robert Mundheim, a former Penn law school dean. And in 2015, she received the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching.

Just two years later in 2017, criticism ensued after Wax coauthored an op-ed in which she said, “All cultures are not equal. Or at least they are not equal in preparing people to be productive in an advanced economy.” Then she said during an interview that she didn’t think she’d ever seen a Black student graduate in the top quarter of the class at Penn Law and “rarely, rarely in the top half,” a claim that Ruger later disputed.

In 2019, she found herself under fire again after commenting during a conference about immigration.

Then in 2021, during a podcast with Brown University economist Glenn Loury, she said immigration policies should be geared toward “cultural compatibility” and called “the influx of Asian elites … problematic.” She later wrote on Loury’s site that “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.”