The College Fix

Attorney for the conservative law professor says antisemitic language goes unpunished

The University of Pennsylvania illegally discriminated on the basis of race when it punished Professor Amy Wax for her political comments, but not others for their similarly controversial statements, according to a legal letter.

An attorney for Wax told the university it has until this Thursday to retract its punishments against his client or else it will be sued. The legal letter says the school discriminated on “the race of the subject of the speech at issue,” noting that antisemitic language went unpunished.

She is suspended for the 2025-26 school year and will only receive half her salary for that duration, as previously reported by The College Fix.

She will also be stripped of her named chair and lose her summer pay in perpetuity. She has also been given a “public reprimand” and a requirement “that you note in public appearances that you speak for yourself alone and not as a University or Penn Carey Law School faculty member.” However, the sanctions came after Wax refused to take $50,000 in exchange for not criticizing the school publicly.

These punishments are based on “harm” caused by her speech, though “the university has never identified or defined,” what this “harm” is, according to Wax’s attorney Jason Torchinsky.

“[W]e note that other professors and lecturers at the University have engaged in speech far more egregious, and thus potentially ‘harmful,’ which the University has never taken steps to sanction,” the letter stated. “For example, the University failed to discipline Dwayne Booth, a lecturer in one of the undergraduate departments, for his blood libel cartoons against Jews.” The cartoon can be seen in the letter.

The letter also pointed out several other examples, including an “artist-in-residence at Penn” who shouted “there is only one solution” during a pro-Palestine rally.

More recently, a Penn professor, Julia Alekseyeva, had to walk back her apparent praise for an accused assassin of UnitedHealth Care CEO Brian Thompson.

“Given the manifest illegality of the proposed discipline against Professor Wax, I ask that you formally and conclusively disavow imposition of the proposed discipline by close of business on Thursday, December 19,” Torchinsky wrote.

He also said the university violated Wax’s contract, which promises free speech, and the American with Disabilities Act, for not accommodating her cancer treatments during the investigation.

The university has targeted Wax for years for her statements on race, IQ, and immigration.

Wax has said “family breakdown,” “high crime rates,” and “educational underachievement” are what hold black Americans back more than racism or discrimination, as previously reported by The College Fix.

She also has suggested black law students underperform at the university, an allegation Penn has never disproven, though it removed her from teaching first-year classes as a result. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a black student graduate in the top quarter of the [law school] class, and rarely, rarely in the top half,” she said in 2018.

The Black Law Students Association praised the punishments against Wax earlier this year, but reiterated it wants her fired.

MORE: Just 19 Republican professors found at ASU compared to 284 Democrats

IMAGE: Greg Piper for The College Fix

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