A professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School will be suspended with half pay and full benefits for the 2025-2026 academic year because of her “discriminatory and disparaging statements.”

Along with the suspension, Professor Amy Wax received a public reprimand, loss of her named chair position and loss of summer pay “in perpetuity.” She will also be required to note in public appearances that she speaks for herself and not the university or its law school.

The New York Times described the sanction as “significant” but said it “falls short of the firing that some students wanted.”

Wax was accused of publicly warning against dominance by the “Asian elite,” immigrants from third-world countries and the loss of “bourgeois” habits. She was also accused of remarking that same-sex couples are not fit to raise children, that people of color have to stop acting entitled to remedies, and that Mexican men were more likely to assault women. And she was also accused of saying Black law students rarely graduated in the top half of their class.

Provost John L. Jackson Jr. published the public reprimand issued to Wax in the University of Pennsylvania’s Almanac on Tuesday. She was previously barred from teaching mandatory classes to first-year law students in 2018.

A faculty hearing board determined after a May 2023 hearing that Wax engaged in “flagrant unprofessional conduct,” Jackson wrote in the reprimand.

Jackson said the conduct “included a history of making sweeping and derogatory generalizations about groups by race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and immigration status.” Wax also made “discriminatory and disparaging statements targeting specific racial, ethnic and other groups with which many students identify” inside and outside the classroom, Jackson said.

As a result of Wax’s conduct, many students were “understandably concerned” that Wax “cannot and would not be an impartial judge of their academic performance,” Jackson wrote.
According to the Philadelphia Inquirer and the New York Times, Wax has denied making some comments and has contended that other remarks were taken out of context.

Wax has previously said she will challenge any discipline in court.

You can read more about this decision here.

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