Amy Wax Is Academic Freedom’s Canary in the Coal Mine

Yesterday, the University of Pennsylvania completed its years-long end run around academic freedom to punish law professor Amy Wax. {snip}

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Penn is a private school that nonetheless makes First Amendment-like promises to respect its students’ and faculty members’ right to free expression. Whether on a contractual or moral basis, Penn should have kept those promises. Instead, it abandoned principle for the sake of expediency.

While it remains to be seen whether Wax will keep her promise to sue Penn if she’s punished, I told The New York Times yesterday that the university’s decision “should send a chill down the spine of every faculty member, not just at Penn but at every private institution around the country.”

Penn’s dubious procedural efforts — which stripped Wax of many of the due process protections tenure affords — paid off. If that’s all it takes to sidestep tenure, the rights of even the most protected private college faculty are tenuous at best.

FIRE has long defended Wax, and we continue to do so for two reasons. First, because her comments are unquestionably protected by academic freedom. And second, because the same principles that protect her right to hold both her views and her job also protect faculty who represent a range of viewpoints around the country.

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