UPenn Law School has suspended Professor Amy Wax for a year at reduced pay.
She was suspended for, inter alia, making politically incorrect statements. Most notably, she remarked that in her two decades as a law professor, black students rarely ranked in the top half of their respective classes, a factually supportable observation I myself have made several times in testimony before various House and Senate committees. She’s made some other comments about other minority groups that caused varying degrees of controversy.
I don’t profess to know Wax. She testified before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights several years ago on these very topics and was a delight. We had lunch, after which I remarked to both a fellow commissioner and my assistant that I hoped my kids were fortunate enough to have professors half as talented and engaging as Amy Wax.
Her CV reads like science fiction: She graduated summa cum laude from Yale with a degree in molecular biophysics and received a master’s in philosophy from Oxford. Next, she went to Harvard Medical School and Harvard Law School — at the same time. Upon graduation, she became a neurologist. Because neurology, apparently, isn’t sufficiently challenging, she also argued a number of cases before the United States Supreme Court.
Perhaps all of the facts support Wax’s suspension. Until they’re adduced in the inevitable lawsuit, however, skepticism is warranted.