It seems that it\u2019s impossible to pass through a single week without hearing about multiple outrages in academia.\u00a0 And it seems just as obvious that the most obscene of these outrages tend to unfold at the most prestigious institutions of higher learning.<\/p>\n
Take, for instance, the University of Pennsylvania.\u00a0 Penn is an Ivy-league school located in the city of Philadelphia.\u00a0 It has recently been in the news because of \u201ccontroversial\u201d comments made by one of Penn\u2019s veteran faculty members, the Robert Mundheim Professor of Law, Amy Wax.<\/p>\n
Back in September of last year, Wax appeared<\/a> on The Glenn Show, <\/em>the on-line podcast of Brown University professor, Glenn Loury.\u00a0 During their exchange over some of the deleterious consequences of those race-based preferential treatment policies favoring black student applicants, Wax shared with her host\u2014who is black\u2014some of the observations that she\u2019s made over the duration of her career at Penn.<\/p>\n \u201cHere\u2019s a very inconvenient fact, Glenn: I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever seen a black student graduate in the top quarter of the class, and rarely, rarely, in the top half.\u00a0 I can think of one or two students who scored in the first half of my required first-year Civil Procedure course.\u201d<\/p>\n Wax and Loury were discussing what\u2019s come to be known as the \u201cmismatch\u201d effect of so-called affirmative action:\u00a0 In their eagerness to satisfy their quotas for black students, colleges and universities wind up mismatching students with institutions. So, Penn, say, recruits black students that, while they would\u2019ve performed excellently at a second-tier school, lack competitiveness at an Ivy-league school.\u00a0 This move on the part of the first-tier schools in turn has ramifications that affect the whole available pool of black students, mismatching them with institutions throughout the entire system.<\/p>\n Black students, in other words, are not <\/em>benefitted and, in fact, are actually harmed, <\/em>by the very policy from which they ostensibly benefit.<\/p>\n Wax continued in her conversation with Loury: \u201cWell, what are we supposed to do about that?\u00a0 You\u2019re putting in front of this person [a black student admitted via \u201caffirmative action\u201d] a real uphill battle. And if they were better matched, it might be a better environment for them.\u00a0 That\u2019s the mismatch hypothesis, of course.\u201d<\/p>\n She added: \u201cWe\u2019re not saying they shouldn\u2019t go to college\u2014we\u2019re not saying that.\u00a0 Some of them shouldn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n Wax, in noting that the Penn Law Review<\/em> has a \u201cdiversity mandate,\u201d strongly implied that those black law students who contributed enjoyed this distinction because of their race.<\/p>\n Once these remarks of Wax\u2019s became known, a petition calling for her removal from teaching\u00a0 her first-year Civil Procedure course was circulated, and Pennsylvania\u2019s branch of Black Lives Matter went so far as to demand her immediate termination from the university.<\/p>\n Asa Khalif<\/a>, the head of BLM Pennsylvania, threatened to \u201cbegin disrupting classes and other campus activities with a wave of protests\u201d unless Wax was fired.\u00a0 Wax posed a \u201cdanger\u201d to \u201cBlack and brown students,\u201d he remarked. \u00a0Khalif also styles himself a voice for the voiceless, or something like this, when he says that other Penn students have told him that \u201cthey are afraid to say anything about Wax due to potential reprisal.\u201d<\/p>\n Thus, BLM must \u201cspeak for the students who can\u2019t speak for themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n Unsurprisingly, the Dean of Penn\u2019s Law School, Theodore Ruger, caved to the PC pressure and rebuked Wax.\u00a0 \u201cBlack students have graduated in the top of the class at Penn Law,\u201d Ruger insisted, \u201cand the Law Review does not have a diversity mandate.\u201d<\/p>\n Wax is no longer permitted to teach any mandatory first-year courses.<\/p>\n Of course, Professor Wax had already come within the crosshairs of leftist militants for an op-ed<\/a> that she co-authored in August of last year.\u00a0 Wax lamented the disintegration of America\u2019s \u201cbourgeois culture,\u201d identifying this breakdown as among the principal causes of our nation\u2019s many maladies.<\/p>\n From the late 1940\u2019 to the mid-60s, bourgeois culture \u201claid out the script we all were supposed to follow: Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness. Go the extra mile for your employer or client. Be a patriot, ready to serve the country.\u00a0 Be neighborly, civic-minded, and charitable. Avoid coarse language in public. Be respectful of authority. Eschew substance abuse and crime.\u201d<\/p>\n Wax even boldly declared: \u201cAll cultures are not created equal.\u201d<\/p>\n Her fate was sealed.\u00a0 Penn\u2019s National Lawyers Guild issued a statement<\/a> in which it refers to Professor Wax\u2019s remarks as a \u201ctextbook example of [the] white supremacy and cultural elitism\u201d that have been \u201cused to denigrate the poor and sustain and justify the gross wealth inequality that defines American capitalism.\u201d\u00a0 The statement condemns \u201cProfessor Wax\u2019s racism and classism, as well as the \u2018moral toxicity and\u2026intellectual bankruptcy\u2019 of her opinion.\u201d\u00a0 Wax, the authors of the statement continue, is \u201cbigoted,\u201d \u201cwhite supremacist,\u201d and a \u201csegregationist.\u201d<\/p>\n The black Brown University academic, Glenn Loury<\/a>, to whom Wax made some of the remarks that landed her further in hot water with the left, as well as the Manhattan Institute\u2019s Heather MacDonald<\/a> are among those who have leapt to Wax\u2019s defense. Both have noted that his protestations to the contrary aside, neither Dean Ruger nor anyone else at Penn have supplied a scintilla of evidence to contradict a single syllable that Wax uttered regarding the general performance of black law students at Penn, and MacDonald specifically cited statistical data that dovetails seamlessly with the anecdotal account that Wax shared with Loury on his podcast.<\/p>\n However, while their efforts are commendable, ultimately they are to no avail, for facts, like reason, are suspect from the vantage of today\u2019s militant left.\u00a0 Wax above all people must know this.<\/p>\n