It is interesting, but depressing to me, that the more eminent a college or university is perceived to be, the more outrageous are efforts by administrators to stifle individual expression and enforce a numbing conformity of ideas reminiscent of universities in the old Soviet Union or Nazi Germany.
The most prestigious group of schools in America is no doubt the Ivy League, eight elitist and highly selective institutions in seven Northeastern states. In the last decade, Yale attacked and hounded from campus two scholars who dared to defend the right of students to wear Halloween costumes similar to what grade-schoolers don to trick or treat. Princeton revived ancient (and already adjudicated) charges of inappropriate sexual conduct against distinguished classicist Joshua Katz in order to punish him for more recent anti-woke criticisms of campus happenings.
Not to be outdone in its efforts to ban impermissible and thereby impure thoughts, the University of Pennsylvania is going after Amy Wax, the Robert Mundheim Professor of Law in Penn’s law school.
Full disclosure: I consider Amy a friend. We serve together on the National Association of Scholars board. It is indisputable that she is an extraordinary scholar, with degrees from Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Oxford. In addition to her law degree, she possesses an MD and is a neurologist.
Amy has won the Lindback Distinguished Teaching Award, as well as multiple teaching awards from Penn. She has argued numerous cases before the Supreme Court. For years, Professor Wax was a mainstay in teaching civil procedure to first-year Penn Law students.
Yet the Dean of Penn Law, Ted Ruger, is practically begging Penn’s faculty senate to impose “severe sanctions” (translation: dismissal) on her. To quote the dean, Wax is guilty of “intentional and incessant racist, sexist, xenophobic, and homophobic actions and statements.”
The campaign against Amy began when she co-authored an op-ed in 2017 that defended bourgeois values and argued that civilizations are successful to the extent that they adopt them. Students and fellow faculty members expressed outrage at such provocative thoughts.
