Amy Wax, the tenured law professor who was disciplined by the University of Pennsylvania for making controversial remarks about race and gender, told Penn on Thursday that she will sue the university for race discrimination if it does not drop the sanctions against her, according to a letter from Wax's lawyers obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. It's the latest salvo in a nearly three-year-long battle between Wax and the Ivy League school, which announced in September that it was suspending her at half-pay for one year.
Penn has until December 19 to "conclusively disavow" those penalties. "Should you fail to do so," the letter states, "Professor Wax will file suit against the University."
Because Penn promises its professors academic freedom, the letter argues that the school breached its contract with Wax by punishing her for protected speech. It notes that Penn took no action against professors who spewed anti-Semitic bile after the October 7 attacks. And it uses Penn's double standard to make a creative legal argument: By punishing speech that offended racial minorities—but not speech that offended Jews—the university engaged in unlawful race discrimination when it singled Wax out for punishment, the letter says.
"The University's speech policies … transparently discriminate on the basis of race, including most notably the race of the subject of the speech at issue," the letter reads. "As such, they violate federal law's various prohibitions against race-based discrimination."
Wax's lawyer, Jason Torchinsky, a former official in the Department of Justice's civil rights division, said the case could mark the first time a university has been sued for having racially discriminatory speech policies.
"We are not aware of any specific challenge to a university's speech policies on that basis, so this would likely be the first," he said. "That is perhaps not too surprising, since universities used to be much more committed to free speech, and the insanity of DEI offices is a relatively recent development."
A spokesman for the university, Rob Ozio, did not respond to a request for comment.
The letter is the latest example of how Penn's permissive approach to anti-Semitism has complicated its efforts to discipline Wax, inviting charges of hypocrisy and, now, legal jeopardy.
The university sanctioned Wax for saying, among other things, that black law students "rarely" finish in the top half of their class. But it took no action against Dwayne Booth, a lecturer in Penn's school of communications, for publishing a cartoon that depicted Israelis drinking the blood of Gazans. Nor did it punish Ahmad Almallah, an artist in residence at Penn, for chanting, "There is only one solution," at an anti-Israel rally.
The letter cites both examples as evidence of Penn's selective commitment to free expression. It also notes that, so far, the school has not sanctioned Julia Alekseyeva, an English professor, for celebrating the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and praising Thompson's alleged killer.
"These are but three examples of the University's highly selective enforcement of its speech policies," the letter reads. "The proposition that Professor Wax’s speech merited disciplinary action based on the putative 'harm' caused by her speech—but none of the foregoing instances did—is preposterous."
Wax is widely seen as a test case for tenure and academic freedom. Free speech watchdogs like the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression have argued that her remarks—many of which were made off campus—are the sort of controversial speech that tenure is meant to protect.
The embattled professor is undeniably a bomb-thrower. She has argued that the United States would be better off with fewer immigrants, that racial differences in IQ explain racial disparities in achievement, and that Asians' "overwhelming" support for Democrats reflects their "indifference to liberty" and "lack of … individualism." She has also invited Jared Taylor, a self-described "white advocate," to speak to her class on multiple occasions.
But those views are not obviously more offensive than the ones Penn platformed in September 2023, when faculty members hosted a Palestinian literary festival featuring prominent anti-Semites. Speakers included Roger Waters, the former Pink Floyd frontman who has referred to Jews as "kikes" and worn Nazi uniforms on stage, and Refaat Alareer, a Palestinian poet who said that "most Jews" are "evil." Another speaker, Salman Abu Sitta, had blamed Jews for destroying European economies.
Facing blowback from donors, then-Penn president Liz Magill in October 2023 sent a memo to trustees explaining why the festival had been allowed to proceed. "Penn does not regulate the content of speech or symbolic behavior," she wrote, and professors are free to invite speakers with "hateful views."
After the October 7 attacks, Wax seized on Magill's memo to argue that she should not be disciplined for her own remarks.
"The [memo] makes clear that even if Jews are 'harmed' by the speech of radical left Palestinian supporters appearing at the [Palestine Writes] Festival, those organizing the [Palestine Writes] Festival and inviting Jew-hating Palestinian nationalists will not be punished because Penn permits and protects the expression of all viewpoints, even those that are contrary to Penn's 'institutional values,'" Wax's lawyers wrote in a letter last year to the university. "But if a strongly conservative and tenured professor invites Jared Taylor, assigns Charles Murray and Enoch Powell, and takes to social media to tell very hard-to-hear truths about group differences, she is not protected. Rather, she is sanctioned."
The charge of hypocrisy was sharpened when Magill, testifying before Congress last December, said that calls for the genocide of Jews did not necessarily violate the university's policies on bullying and harassment. Four days later, she resigned.
The university nonetheless continued its crusade against Wax, culminating in the sanctions announced in September. At one point, Penn offered to water down those sanctions if Wax would agree to stop criticizing the university's double standards. She refused, arguing that the entire case was about free expression.
"Penn wanted absolute silence," Wax told the Free Beacon in an interview. "The big question is: Why do they want to hide what they're doing?"
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