Petition on Behalf of Professor Amy Wax

Amy L. Wax, Robert Mundheim Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, is under attack by the Penn administration for expressing opinions that it finds objectionable. Professor Wax has been barred from certain teaching activities and is under threat of more severe penalties, up to and including termination from her post. We, the undersigned, strongly object to the attack on Professor Wax’s academic freedom. If Penn’s effort to penalize Wax succeeds, the Penn community will be the poorer for it.

In a lengthy letter of accusation and threat dated 2 March 2022, the Dean of Law, Theodore W. Ruger, states that “Our University appreciates divergent speech, values academic freedom, and believes in open debate, …” and that “faculty members have great freedom to speak in ways that diverge from majority or institutional views.” Unfortunately, these freedoms apparently do not include opinions, no matter how well-founded or data-driven, with which the Administration disagrees.

Dean Ruger admits that the University of Pennsylvania is not neutral on substantive policy, having “prioritized inclusion and diversity” “as a central component.” Such an ideological position, which directly contradicts his other claims about Penn’s commitment to academic freedom and freedom of speech (claims recently reiterated by the Penn President under questioning during the U.S. House committee investigation on anti-Semitism), means that the expression of positions considered contrary to inclusion and diversity are regarded as heresy that warrants punishment.

Professor Wax’s alleged heresies are repeatedly denounced, named, and shamed by the Dean: “[Y]our intentional and incessant racist, sexist, xenophobic, and homophobic statements and actions … inflict harm on [students, faculty, and staff] and undermine the core values of our University. … Moreover, in public discussions about our students’ academic performance, you have disseminated false information about segments of our university community.” Nowhere in the letter is it established that Professor Wax’s opinions are false or unsubstantiated by credible research and data. No data has been provided to show that Wax spread “false information.”

The Dean’s threatening letter reads more like the production of a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion commissar than a set of formal, carefully considered charges against a member of an academic community. The letter is rife with unsubstantiated opinion and tittle-tattle, with a number of allegations based on words remembered after the fact and taken out of context. The descent into name calling is particularly disappointing. 

Ruger accepts as beyond dispute that certain remarks Professor Wax has made about blacks and women deliberately inflicted harm, but ignores that those remarks are part of a much wider discussion of important public policy issues on which Wax has been a serious contributor for many years. Wax’s statements on these topics are fully protected by established principles of academic freedom. For example, Wax argues, as many do, that racial preferences in admissions set up black students for failure. When she offers alternative ideas for improving blacks’ performance, she is addressing the important issue of what will work when affirmative action won’t. The Dean foolishly interprets substantive analyses of policy as denigration. 

It appears to the undersigned that the University of Pennsylvania, like many others in the Western world, has not decided whether it wishes to be a university with freedom of debate and reference to evidence, or a social movement/religion which requires adherence to its declared “truths.”

The attack on Professor Wax undermines the ideals of the Enlightenment university, particularly of diversity of opinion and open debate focused on reason and evidence. It takes courage to challenge a narrow departmental orthodoxy that interprets any opposition as moral defectiveness. An astute Dean would value that courage in Professor Wax, not seek to get rid of it.

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Alan Dershowitz, Emeritus Professor, Harvard Law School

Paul H. Robinson, Colin S. Diver Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania Law School

Jordan B. Peterson, Emeritus Professor of Psychology, University of Toronto

Gad Saad, Professor of Marketing, Concordia University Research Chair in Evolutionary Behavioral, Sciences and Darwinian Consumption (2008-2018), John Molson School of Business, Concordia University

Heather Mac Donald, Fellow, Manhattan Institute

Philip Carl Salzman​, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, McGill University

Janice Fiamengo, Professor of English, retired, University of Ottawa

John Ellis, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of German Literature, University of California, Santa Cruz

Elizabeth Weiss, Professor of Anthropology, San Jose State University