Amy Wax: America’s Most Fearless Academic by Jared Taylor

Amy Wax has been a tenured professor at Penn Law School since 2001. Yesterday she proved, once again, that she must be the most intrepid academic in America. I should know; I was there

Professor Wax has been horrifying her employer, the University of Pennsylvania Carey School of Law, for years. In 2017, for example, he co-wrote a comment for Philadelphia Inquirer, in which he argued that some cultures are better than others, and called for a return to a “bourgeois culture” that expects citizens to at least graduate high school, get a job, stay out of prison and marry before having children. . The same law Penn compiled a list of furious responses and felt compelled to issue a statement saying his views were “not a statement of Penn Law’s values.” The faculty of law he forbade it of teaching a mandatory first-year course.

Professor Wax continued to speak out, and last summer the school resorted to the most drastic action it could take: a formal investigation to determine whether her “racist, sexist, xenophobic and homophobic actions and statements intentional and incessant” were serious enough. to demand a “significant penalty” that could include removing her from office and firing her.

The letter of Law School Dean Theodore Ruger who initiated the proceedings shows how easy it is to scare people who run elite institutions. It lists many examples of Professor Wax’s alleged “persistent racist and bigoted statements on and off campus,” along with complaints from people she reportedly made feel “degraded” or “unsafe.” The letter was of special interest to me. On the first page of what amounts to a 14-page indictment, Dean Ruger wrote:

Finally, Wax’s decision in 2021 to invite an avowed white supremacist, Jared Taylor, to be the featured guest speaker at a regular meeting of his law school class, and to have Taylor as a guest at a luncheon with his students expected to attend. , crosses the line of what is acceptable in a university setting where the principles of non-discrimination apply. [This invitation] he caused profound harm to our students and teachers, and his escalating pattern of behavior increases the risks of further harm and escalating harm in the future.

The disciplinary proceedings against Professor Wax—the equivalent of a full-blown trial—threatened to bring a humiliating end to a distinguished career. It was very long and expensive; its defense required countless hours of legal representation. And on top of all that, Prof. Wax underwent a grueling series of cancer treatments. I did not expect that he would invite me back to speak to his class on “Conservative Legal and Political Thought.” I didn’t know Amy Wax. In a bold gesture of defiance, and as an affirmation of his deep convictions about the ownership of what he had done, he rescheduled me for this fall.

This caused fury not only in the pages of Penn diary but in national media. Student grievance groups BIPOC called on the school to “ban Taylor from campus.” The president of the student council declared herself “very confused about what she is doing [Taylor] can offer to a class. . . . He exists in Neo-Nazi circles.”

But there seemed to be no confusion in the minds of the protesters who were at my talk yesterday. At the entrance to the building, a table had been set up to hand out handwritten signs to the waiting protesters: “Fire Amy Wax,” “Fuck White Supremacy,” “White Supremacy No Place Penn,” “Penn’s Morals”. they’re Lax Until They Fire Amy Wax,” etc.

The class itself, an hour and 45 minute seminar, went well. I explained race realism and white advocacy to an intelligent and sometimes critical group of students who, as far as I could tell, showed no signs of feeling “deviant” or “insecure.”

By the time the class ended, 70 or 80 people had gathered in the room. They jeered and hissed as each student left the room. This was disgusting. The demonstrators could call me or Prof. Wax, but it is despicable for students to try to humiliate their peers in order to go to class.

Professor Wax and I were the last to leave and were rewarded with a lively chorus of banality: “One, two, three, four, Amy Wax, here’s the door. Set, six, seven, eight, Penn Law tolerates hate.”

Most people would have run down the hall away from the crowd. Not Amy Wax. I wish I had a video of what happened next. He pulled out his cell phone camera and approached screaming protester after screaming protester, snapping pictures of their faces and the signs they were holding. He walked from one end of the group to the other and back again, no more than a foot or two away from the people howling at his head. I smiled and waved to the crowd until Professor Wax returned to my side and we returned to her office.

In the current climate, I would have hesitated to get so close to the jumped lefties, and I might turn my back on them and never see them again. Professor Wax works there. Those protesters know where his office is and what his hours are. She defied them with as much grace and elegance as anyone could have.

I took a poster with me as a souvenir.

But I also took home something much better. Of all my messes with protestors, and there have been many, there has never been one that gave me so much pleasure, thanks to Amy Wax.