For the last few months, there has been a major controversy at the Law School of the University of Pennsylvania. The matter centers on certain comments that professor Amy Wax made in an interview last fall. At the time, she commented on the failure of affirmative action at the law school; she claimed that in her decades at Penn, the minority students in her classes simply did not do as well as the others. I could go back and get the exact quote, but that is not necessary. Wax was making the point that those admitted through affirmative action underperform in a significant way. Wax did not identify any particular students or indicate whether the results to which she referred had changed over her two decades teaching at Penn. Instead, she was speaking in very general terms about her personal observations.
The response to Wax's comments was a firestorm of complaints that Wax is a racist who had to be drummed out of the law school. After some months of upset, the dean of the law school announced that Wax would no longer be allowed to teach Civil Procedure to the first year law students. These students were to be "protected" from having to deal with Wax's views.
This kerfuffle at Penn gained a fair measure of attention around the nation, but in the current world most people still have not heard about it. It's an important issue, however, that ought not be ignored. Is it appropriate for a university professor to be barred from teaching because she commented on the success -- or the lack of success -- of affirmative action? Is the idea that there can be no observed differences between the performance of different groups for whatever reason so sacrosanct that even mentioning an opinion on that issue must subject the speaker to major punishment? Can a university actually function if its faculty must operate so as not to offend the thought police?
The situation at Penn has now escalated. The Chairman emeritus of Board of Overseers of the Law School and a Trustee of the University just resigned in protest of the treatment of professor Wax. In terms that the Penn administration can understand, this is a guy who gave or raised copious amounts of money for both the university and the law school. One of his complaints is that the law school won't give out generalized data that could make clear if Wax's observations are correct. Instead, she is being punished by the thought police.
In the interest of full disclosure, I should add that I have my undergraduate degree from Penn. I went to law school elsewhere.
The response to Wax's comments was a firestorm of complaints that Wax is a racist who had to be drummed out of the law school. After some months of upset, the dean of the law school announced that Wax would no longer be allowed to teach Civil Procedure to the first year law students. These students were to be "protected" from having to deal with Wax's views.
This kerfuffle at Penn gained a fair measure of attention around the nation, but in the current world most people still have not heard about it. It's an important issue, however, that ought not be ignored. Is it appropriate for a university professor to be barred from teaching because she commented on the success -- or the lack of success -- of affirmative action? Is the idea that there can be no observed differences between the performance of different groups for whatever reason so sacrosanct that even mentioning an opinion on that issue must subject the speaker to major punishment? Can a university actually function if its faculty must operate so as not to offend the thought police?
The situation at Penn has now escalated. The Chairman emeritus of Board of Overseers of the Law School and a Trustee of the University just resigned in protest of the treatment of professor Wax. In terms that the Penn administration can understand, this is a guy who gave or raised copious amounts of money for both the university and the law school. One of his complaints is that the law school won't give out generalized data that could make clear if Wax's observations are correct. Instead, she is being punished by the thought police.
In the interest of full disclosure, I should add that I have my undergraduate degree from Penn. I went to law school elsewhere.
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