Penn Law School can't fire Wax, so won't pay her

Penn Carey Law School to fine tenured professor Amy Wax half of a year's pay for telling the truth.

From the Daily Pennsylvanian, the student newspaper at the U. of Pennsylvania (which, by the way, is known as Penn, not as Penn St.):

Penn to impose major sanctions on law professor Amy Wax after years of controversy

By Ethan Young 4 hours ago

Penn has upheld sanctions against University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School professor Amy Wax following her history of discriminatory remarks and two years of disciplinary proceedings with little precedent.

The new ruling, first reported by The Philadelphia Inquirer, comes after the Faculty Senate Committee on Academic Freedom and Responsibility upheld sanctions that were initially recommended by a Faculty Senate hearing board on June 21, 2023 and strikes down an appeal filed by Wax and her lawyer, David Shapiro, this past February….

The sanctions mark the first time in recent history that a tenured University professor has been sanctioned through Faculty Senate procedures. …

The DP previously reported that the recommended sanctions against Wax included a one-year suspension at half pay…

We can’t violate your tenure, so we’ll just not pay you what you are contractually owed.

In a June 2023 letter to former Penn President Liz Magill, the hearing board noted that they “do not dispute the protection” that Wax holds over her views, but said that the way she presents these views violate widely acknowledged “behavioral professional norms” when presented as “uncontroverted.” …

But Penn hasn’t controverted her statements of fact, just censored them.

The hearing board “unanimously” found that the facts presented throughout the hearing “constitute serious violations of University norms and policies,” according to the letter. The hearing board also concluded that Wax’s behavior “has created a hostile campus environment and a hostile learning atmosphere.”

As opposed to the countless educational institutions that made Ta-Nehisi Coates’ hate-filled racist book Between the World and Me assigned reading.

The standard used to punish Wax has drawn scrutiny from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a national civil liberties group which said on Monday that Penn had mustered “zero evidence” that Wax discriminated against her students.

Law school tests are blind-graded.

“Faculty nationwide may now pay a heavy price for Penn’s willingness to undercut academic freedom for all to get at this one professor,” FIRE Vice President Alex Morey wrote in a statement. “After today, any university under pressure to censor a controversial faculty member need only follow Penn’s playbook.”

Wax's history of discriminatory statements has included her claiming that Black students never graduate at the top of the Penn Carey Law class and that “non-Western groups” are resentful towards “Western people.”

What we’re Professor Wax’s offenses?

Basically, as I will document after the paywall, telling the truth.

By the way: I’m doing book tour appearances in Chicago this week to promote my anthology Noticing: dinner on Thursday evening September 26th downtown and a speaking event on Friday night September 27th on Chicago’s north lakefront. See Passage Press’s website for tickets.