PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The dean of the University of Pennsylvania law school says he is seeking sanctions against tenured professor Amy Wax.
This comes after she recently made racist remarks about the Asian American community, and there have been multiple complaints about Wax’s conduct since 2017.
Wax has a history of making headlines.
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In 2019, she received backlash after stating "our country will be better off with more whites and fewer nonwhites."
Earlier this month, Wax said that the U.S. would be “better off with fewer Asians and less Asian immigration.”
The latest comments have caused a chain of reactions, this time from students, local politicians, and Asian American advocacy groups calling for the tenured professor's removal.
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Penn Law School Dean Ted Ruger released a statement this week saying that he is initiating the university procedure for sanctions to be taken against Wax.
He cited the multiple complaints that have been received about her conduct over the past few years, saying "it is impossible for students to take classes from her without a reasonable belief that they are being treated with discriminatory animus."
Ruger also said in some cases, Wax “has exploited her faculty access to confidential information about students in ostensible support of her inaccurate statements.”
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Officials from the Academic Freedom Alliance have responded by stating that formal action taken against Wax would be “a clear threat to her freedom of speech” and academic freedom. They say no action should be taken against her for the comments.
“Politicians and members of the campus community are free to disagree with Professor Wax and to publicly express those disagreements, but the university must stand firm when those disagreements turn into demands that members of the faculty be sanctioned or terminated for expressing their political opinions in public," the statement added.
A spokesperson from the OCA-Asian Pacific American Advocates group said that while they think it’s appropriate to give Wax her due process, they hope university officials will keep in mind that words matter, and that historically and presently, xenophobic rhetoric has had negative consequences against individuals of Asian American communities.
