Should-Read: By and large a good statement. However, while free speech extends to statements made with “conscious indifference to their truth content”, I do not believe that academic freedom does. Professors who make and reiterate and decide to die on the hill that is statements made with “conscious indifference to their truth content” are violating the norms of academic responsibility as much as those who commit plagiarism or falsify experimental results. I do not believe that the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania should continue to employ Professor Wax: Ted Ruger (Dean): Lawyers, Guns & Money: “Dear members of the Penn Law community…
…I write to share with you information about a development of great concern to our intellectual and professional community. In the past two weeks, students and alumni have brought to my attention a number of public claims made last fall by one of our tenured faculty, Amy Wax, during a video interview. Specifically, Professor Wax stated that, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a black student graduate in the top quarter of the class, and rarely, rarely in the top half.” Moreover, she claimed that the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, a prestigious law journal whose editorial board is composed of Penn Law students, has a racial diversity mandate, suggesting that black students on Law Review had not earned their place. Speaking about black law students at Penn and peer schools, she went on to say that “some of them shouldn’t” even go to college.
It is imperative for me as dean to state that these claims are false: black students have graduated in the top of the class at Penn Law, and the Law Review does not have a diversity mandate. Rather, its editors are selected based on a competitive process. And contrary to any suggestion otherwise, black students at Penn Law are extremely successful, both inside and outside the classroom, in the job market, and in their careers.
I want to make absolutely clear that Professor Wax, like every member of the faculty and the student body, is protected by Penn’s policies of free and open expression as well as academic freedom, and I will steadfastly defend the rights of Law School community members to openly express their views. This has been the position of the Law School throughout my tenure as dean, and before, and it is the consistent message I have articulated in handling protests involving provocative figures speaking on campus, student-led panels on controversial topics, and other free speech debates including those involving Professor Wax. I will maintain this position moving forward. Professor Wax enjoys the same status as every other tenured colleague here: her job, salary, seniority, and opportunity to teach a full load of courses remains secure. She is scheduled to teach a full course load in the next academic year….
Law schools are not free-standing debating societies or think tanks; we are also demanding professional schools dedicated to training hundreds of students each year…. Professor Wax has chosen to speak publicly, disparagingly, and inaccurately about the performance of these students, some of whom she has taught and graded confidentially at Penn Law. As a scholar she is free to advocate her views, no matter how dramatically those views diverge from our institutional ethos and our considered practices. As a teacher, however, she is not free to transgress the policy that student grades are confidential, or to use her access to those Penn Law students who are required to be in her class to further her scholarly ends without students’ permission. Penn Law does not permit the public disclosure of grades or class rankings, and we do not collect, sort, or publicize grade performance by racial group. The existence of these policies and practices, while constraining this response, is not an invitation to statements made with conscious indifference to their truth content…
