Streetwise Professor

UPenn has penalized Professor Amy Wax for “a history of making sweeping, blithe, and derogatory generalizations about groups by race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and immigration status.” I presume this standard will be applied now to all Penn faculty. (I crack myself up sometimes).

Penn has suspended her for a year on half-pay, permanently eliminated her summer support, and stripped her of her endowed chair. It could have been worse: previously she was under threat of termination.

Wax certainly speaks forcefully. But this should not be disqualifying for a professor. In fact, it should be encouraged. Free marketplace of ideas and all that. Those who disagree can do so just as forcefully.

But without employing coercive force–which Penn has done. Probably because they realize she would give better than she gets if they actually dared to debate her.

So what has Wax said that offends Penn so?

One is her remark: “Here is a very inconvenient fact Glenn [Loury], I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Black student graduate in the top quarter of the class and rarely, rarely in the top half.” Note, she asserts this is a fact. Asserted facts can be verified or proven incorrect. If she was wrong, Penn would no doubt have been tripping over itself to prove her so. They have not, claiming that they don’t disclose grades–a patently bullshit excuse because it would be possible to refute her statement with anonymized data.

But they haven’t.

Qui tacet consentire videtur: “he who is silent is taken to agree.” So we can take her statement as true.

What is the sin in speaking the truth? Well, when it gores certain oxen and undermines sacred shibboleths.

The New York Times says that in another transgression Wax “derided as unrealistic television ads depicting ‘Black men married to white women in an upper-class picket-fence house.'”

So riddle me this: is it a representative, realistic depiction of the US? If so, what is the need for reparations, affirmative action, anti-racism, etc. etc. etc.? The incoherence here is obvious. On the one hand, the NYT and its fellow travelers fervently believe that blacks are oppressed and victimized and that this justifies aggressive state action, but it is apparently beyond the pale to say that ads that show the opposite are unrealistic. Both of those things cannot be true.

Some of her other statements are not strictly factual, but certainly well within the bounds of civil discourse and vigorous academic debate. Among those receiving the most attention are from an interview she did with Tucker Carlson:

Penn Law professor Amy Wax tells Tucker Carlson that "Blacks" and other "non-western" groups harbor "resentment, shame, and envy" against western people for their "outsized achievements and contributions." pic.twitter.com/jpQmOU554C

— nikki mccann ramírez (@NikkiMcR) April 11, 2022

I recommend you listen to the entire video rather than rely on the clip-quote summary in the post–which we will see is essential with virtually every media discussion of Wax.

These statements are in fact an example of what Michael Anton calls the “celebration parallax”:

In contemporary speech, on any “controversial” topic—or, to say better, regime priority—the decisive factor is the intent of the speaker. If she can be presumed to be celebrating the phenomenon under discussion, she may shout her approval from the rooftops. If not, he better shut up before someone comes along to shut him up.

The left validates, encourages, and teaches, and indeed celebrates, “resentment, shame, and envy” by “people of color” who were in their telling victimized and oppressed by the West: they think that these emotions are fully justified and should be employed to attack the west. Hell, that is basically Franz Fannon in a nutshell. (Just look at the excoriation of “colonialism” on campuses today: the alleged victims thereof are celebrated for speaking out).

Wax has observed the same phenomenon, but as an advocate for western civilization, objects to it, particularly among those who flock to and are embraced by western countries.

That is, since Wax does not celebrate this agreed-upon phenomenon, “someone” (Penn specifically) has come along to shut her up.

This Carlson interview is the source of another charge against Wax, namely (per the WSJ):

During the appearance, Wax asserted that “Blacks” and other “non-Western groups” harbor “resentment, shame and envy” against Western people for their “outsized achievements and contributions even though, on some level, their country is a shithole,” according to a decision published in 2023 by then-Penn President Liz Magill.

Listen to the interview. That’s not what she said. Yes, she said “shit-hole country” but in a different part of the interview, and did not apply it as broadly as the above quote implies (second post below):

Wax then attacks Indian immigrants for criticizing things in the US when "their country is a shithole" and goes on to say that "the role of envy and shame in the way that the third world regards the first world […] creates ingratitude of the most monstrous kind." pic.twitter.com/dUL9coinS9

— nikki mccann ramírez (@NikkiMcR) April 11, 2022

The relevant part: “Here’s the problem. They [Brahmin women from India] are taught that they are better than everybody else because they are Brahmin elites and yet, on some level, their country is a shit hole.”

Note the dishonest mashup of the quote from the WSJ, which is attributed to Magill–who by the way was forced to resign from her presidency for her, well, shameful handling of and testimony about anti-semitism at Penn. The mashup implies Wax applied the epithet “shit-hole” to the countries of origin of all “non-Western groups” when in fact she was referring to a very narrow group (some female Brahmin doctors at Penn Med) from one very specific country whom she has observed personally.

Wax was pointing out the ingratitude and hypocrisy of those who criticize the United States for poverty, racism, and inequality who (a) have reached the pinnacle of success in this country, and (b) come from a country that by all of these measures is far, far, far worse than the US. Wax is basically saying: “Physician, heal thyself” or “physician, heal thy country.” Or (to use another Biblical expression): “why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”

And as for the pejorative “shit-hole”, pretty much everyone who has spent any time in India will say it is literally accurate.

Wax makes pains to say that she is not applying this to all Indians, all Brahmins, or even all Indian Brahmin doctors (thereby contradicting Penn’s claim that she makes “sweeping . . . generalizations about groups”). But I would note that I have long remarked on the fact that high status Indians in the United States are disproportionately leftist. (Another example of the celebration parallax, no doubt: the left celebrates fellow leftists).

In sum, Wax’s real crimes are: (a) pointing out truths (often uncontested and even acknowledged) that discomfit the left, and (b) defending the West generally and the US specifically from attacks by non-westerners/non-Americans who have actually been their beneficiaries. In a world where academic freedom and free speech were valued, these would not be crimes, but subjects for debate. But debate and argument is not something that the left can possibly abide–because they would lose. So instead they punish, censor, and silence.

And not just Amy Wax. This is a classic example of pour encourager les autres. Especially those who have not yet attained Wax’s record of achievement. (The treatment of Roland Fryer by another disgraced Ivy League president, Claudine Gray, is another).

The message: stay on the reservation, or else.