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Amy Wax

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ProfessorAmy Laura Wax
Born (1953-01-19) January 19, 1953 (age 71)
Troy, New York
Alma mater
OccupationLaw professor
EmployerUniversity of Pennsylvania Law School
Notable workRace, Wrongs, and Remedies: Group Justice in the 21st Century (2009)
TitleRobert Mundheim Professor of Law
Awards

Amy Laura Wax (born January 19, 1953) is an American lawyer, neurologist, and academic. She is the Robert Mundheim Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Her work addresses issues in social welfare law and policy, as well as the relationship of the family, the workplace, and labor markets.

Early life

Wax was born and raised with her two sisters in a Jewish household in Troy, New York, where she attended public schools. Her parents were immigrants from Eastern Europe. Her father worked in the garment industry, and her mother was a teacher and an administrator in the government in Albany, New York.

Education

Wax attended and graduated from Yale University (B.S. in molecular biophysics and biochemistry, summa cum laude, 1975). She then attended Oxford University (Marshall Scholar in Philosophy, Physiology, and Psychology, Somerville College, 1976).

She next attended both Harvard Medical School (M.D. 1981) and Harvard Law School (first year of law school, 1981). Wax practiced medicine from 1982 to 1987, doing a residency in neurology at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, and working as a consulting neurologist at a clinic in the Bronx and for a medical group in Brooklyn. She completed her legal education at Columbia Law School (J.D. 1987; Editor of the Columbia Law Review), working part-time to put herself through law school.

Wax then clerked for Judge Abner J. Mikva of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1987 to 1988. She was admitted to the New York State bar in 1988.

Legal career

Wax first worked in the Office of the Solicitor General of the United States of the United States Department of Justice from 1988 to 1994. During her tenure in the Office, she argued 15 cases before the United States Supreme Court. She taught at University of Virginia Law School from 1994 to 2000.

Wax is the Robert Mundheim Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, having joined the law school's faculty in 2001. She received both the A. Leo Levin Award for Excellence in an Introductory Course, and the Harvey Levin Memorial Award for Teaching Excellence. In 2015, she received a Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching, making her one of three Penn Law professors to have received the award in 20 years.

Her academic focus is on social welfare law and policy, and the relationship of the family, the workplace, and labor markets. Wax authored Race, Wrongs, and Remedies: Group Justice in the 21st Century (2009).

Controversies

Comments

Wax has made controversial comments that have attracted national attention. In an August 2017 piece in The Philadelphia Inquirer entitled “Paying the price for breakdown of the country’s bourgeois culture,” she wrote with Larry Alexander, the Warren Distinguished Professor at the University of San Diego School of Law, that the decline of “bourgeois values” (such as hard work, self-discipline, marriage, and respect for authority) since the 1950s has contributed to social ills as male labor-force-participation rates are down to Depression-era levels, opioid abuse is epidemic, half of all children are born to single mothers, and many college students lack basic skills, asserting that "all cultures are not equal. Or at least they are not equal in preparing people to be productive in an advanced economy." She told the The Daily Pennsylvanian that "everyone wants to go to countries ruled by white Europeans" because of their "superior" mores.

In a September 2017 podcast interview with Professor Glenn Loury, she said: "Take Penn Law School, or some top 10 law school... Here's a very inconvenient fact ... 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 ... I can think of one or two students who scored in the top half in my required first year course," and said that Penn Law has a racial diversity mandate for its law review. The University of Pennsylvania Law School dean, Theodore Ruger, responded to her comments, saying, "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.”

In July 2019, at the Edmund Burke Foundation's inaugural National Conservatism conference, Wax claimed that the United States "will be better off with more whites and fewer nonwhites," also claiming that immigrants are more likely to "litter." Her comments drew immediate reactions online.

Reactions

A petition in August 2017 seeking to fire Wax gathered about 4,000 signatures. That same month, 33 of her fellow Penn Law faculty members signed an open letter condemning statements made by Wax in her Philadelphia Inquirer piece and The Daily Pennsylvanian interview. The Penn Law chapter of the National Lawyers Guild strongly condemned her comments. Graduate Employees Together–University of Pennsylvania, a group of unionizing graduate students, said: “We are outraged that a representative of our community upholds, and published, these hateful and regressive views.” Asa Khalif, a leader of Black Lives Matter Pennsylvania, demanded that Wax be fired. Khalif said he had notified the University of Pennsylvania that if Wax were not fired within a week he would begin disrupting university classes and other activities with a series of protests.

As a result of these controversies, in March 2018 Dean Ruger of Penn Law School stripped Wax of her duties teaching curriculum courses to first-year students.

In an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal in March 2018 entitled "The University of Denial; Aggressive suppression of the truth is a central feature of American higher education," she wrote:

"The mindset that values openness understands that the truth can be inconvenient and uncomfortable.... Hoarding and hiding information relevant to such differences... violates basic principles of fair play... Universities, like other institutions, scheme relentlessly to keep such facts from view...."

Author and political analyst Mona Charen said that the op-ed on bourgeois values "contained not a particle of racism," and that "if the Left cannot distinguish reasoned academic arguments from vile racist insinuations, it will strengthen the very extremists it fears." Political commentator Heather MacDonald wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed in which she criticized the "hysterical response" to Wax's piece. University of Pennsylvania Law School Overseer Paul Levy resigned to protest what he termed "the shameful treatment of ... Wax." Levy wrote in his letter of resignation: "Preventing Wax from teaching first-year students doesn't right academic or social wrongs. Rather, you are suppressing what is crucial to the liberal educational project: open, robust and critical debate over differing views of important social issues."

The New Criterion wrote: "Dean Ruger may wish to consult a study published in the Stanford Law Review in 2004 which showed that in the most elite law schools ... only 8 percent of first-year black students were in the top half of their class." Robert VerBruggen, deputy managing editor of the National Review, cited papers he said supported Wax's claims and wrote "If Penn Law is different, or if things have changed in recent years, let’s see some numbers."

Jonathan Zimmerman, who teaches education and history at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote: "I think a lot of what Amy Wax says is wrong. But ... I also think it's my duty to defend her right to say it, and to plead for a more honest and fair debate about it... we should want everyone to hear what she says, so that they can come to their own educated conclusions."

References

  1. ^ "C.V., Amy Laura Wax" (PDF). University of Pennsylvania Law School.
  2. ^ "Our History: Former Faculty: Wax, Amy L. (1994-2001); Tenured faculty at the University of Virginia School of Law through its history.", University of Virginia School of Law.
  3. Nick Roll (August 25, 2017). "Outrage Over Op-Ed", Inside Higher Ed.
  4. ^ "Q&A with Amy Wax; University of Pennsylvania Law School Professor Amy Wax talked about the limits of free expression on U.S. college campuses (video)". C-SPAN. June 5, 2018.
  5. ^ "Penn Law Faculty: Amy Wax, expert on Civil Procedure, Social Welfare Law and Policy, Law and Economics, Family Law". University of Pennsylvania Law School.
  6. Amy Wax. Martindale-Hubbell. 2019 – via Google Books. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
  7. ^ "Prof. Amy Wax; Robert Mundheim Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania Law School". The Federalist Society.
  8. Amy Wax, Robert Mundheim Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania Law School website.
  9. "Amy L. Wax". National Review.
  10. "Amy Wax recipient of Penn’s Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching", University of Pennsylvania Law School, April 20, 2015.
  11. ^ Christopher DeGroot (October 2017). "Standing up for Good Sense: A Defense of Amy Wax," New English Review.
  12. Madeleine Ngo (September 30, 2018). Penn Law prof. Amy Wax on Brett Kavanaugh allegations, The Daily Pennsylvanian.
  13. Amy Wax and Larry Alexander (August 9, 2017). "Paying the price for breakdown of the country's bourgeois culture,"The Philadelphia Inquirer.
  14. Dan Spinelli (August 10, 2017). "‘Not all cultures are created equal’ says Penn Law professor in op-ed", The Daily Pennsylvanian.
  15. Joe Patrice (March 8, 2018). "Professor Declares Black Students ‘Rarely’ Graduate In The Top Half Of Law School Class", Above The Law.
  16. Kelsey Bolar (November 21, 2018). "Professor Says Banning These Words Would Fix Free Speech on Campus," The Daily Signal.
  17. "The downside to social uplift," Glenn Loury & Amy Wax, The Glenn Show (video).
  18. PinkMarch 31, Aiden; 2018YouTube. "Is This Penn Law Professor A Truth-Teller Or A Bigot?". The Forward. Retrieved 2019-07-19.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  19. Zack Beauchamp (July 17, 2019). "Trump and the dead end of conservative nationalism," Vox_(website).
  20. https://twitter.com/hamandcheese/status/1150971610247106561
  21. https://twitter.com/AdamSerwer/status/1151571319391182848
  22. https://twitter.com/SP_Silvestro/status/1151576690818244609
  23. Juliana Feliciano Reyes (August 9, 2017). The internet wants Penn Law prof Amy Wax fired (again) — this time for her comments on the Kavanaugh hearing, The Philadelphia Inquirer.
  24. Guest Column by 33 Penn Law faculty members | "Open letter to the University of Pennsylvania community," The Daily Pennsylvanian, August 30, 2017.
  25. "Penn NLG Statement on Professor Amy Wax," Guild Notes.
  26. "GET-UP Statement about Wax Op-Ed," GET-UP, August 11, 2017.
  27. ^ "Fahrenheit 451 updated," The New Criterion, April 2018.
  28. John N. Mitchell (March 17, 2018). "Black Lives Matter leader: Penn has to fire ‘racist’ professor," The Philadelphia Tribune.
  29. "Penn professor removed from class for saying black students underperform", Associated Press, March 14, 2018.
  30. Jessica Schladebeck (March 15, 2018). "Penn Law professor loses teaching duties for saying black students ‘rarely’ earn top marks," New York Daily News.
  31. Amy L. Wax (March 22, 2018). "The University of Denial; Aggressive suppression of the truth is a central feature of American higher education", The Wall Street Journal.
  32. Mona Charen (September 8, 2017). "Amy Wax - UPenn Law Professor Gets Heat for 'Bourgeois Values" Op-Ed," National Review.
  33. Heather MacDonald (September 18, 2017). "Higher Ed’s Latest Taboo Is ‘Bourgeois Norms’; An op-ed praising 1950s values provokes another campus meltdown— from the deans on down", The Wall Street Journal.
  34. Paul S. Levy (June 10, 2018). "University Boardrooms Need Reform; As in corporate America in the 1980s, self-serving managers are putting institutions at risk", The Wall Street Journal.
  35. Sarah Fortinsky (April 9, 2018)."Penn Trustee Emeritus resigns over University 'treatment of Amy Wax'", The Daily Pennsylvanian.
  36. Robert VerBruggen (March 21, 2018). "If Amy Wax Is Wrong, Let's See the Data," National Review.
  37. Jonathan Zimmerman (September 14, 2017). "Academics may not agree with what Amy Wax says but should defend her right to say it" (essay), Inside Higher Ed.

External links

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