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Amy Laura Wax (born January 19, 1953) is an American lawyer, neurologist, and academic. She is the Robert Mundheim Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Her work addresses issues in social welfare law and policy, as well as the relationship of the family, the workplace, and labor markets.

Early life

Wax was born and raised with her two sisters in a Jewish household in Troy, New York, where she attended public schools. Her parents were immigrants from Eastern Europe. Her father worked in the garment industry, and her mother was a teacher and an administrator in the government in Albany, New York.

Education

Wax attended and graduated from Yale University (B.S. in molecular biophysics and biochemistry, summa cum laude, 1975). She then attended Oxford University (Marshall Scholar in Philosophy, Physiology, and Psychology, Somerville College, 1976).

She next attended both Harvard Medical School (M.D. 1981) and Harvard Law School (first year of law school, 1981). She practiced medicine from 1982 to 1987, doing a residency in neurology at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, and working as a consulting neurologist at a clinic in the Bronx and for a medical group in Brooklyn. She completed her legal education at Columbia Law School (J.D. 1987; Editor of the Columbia Law Review), working part-time to put herself through law school.

Wax then clerked for Judge Abner J. Mikva of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1987 to 1988. Wax was admitted to the New York State bar in 1988.

Legal career

Wax first worked in the Office of the Solicitor General of the United States of the United States Department of Justice from 1988 to 1994. During her tenure in the Office, she argued 15 cases before the United States Supreme Court. She taught at University of Virginia Law School from 1994 to 2000.

Wax is the Robert Mundheim Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, having joined the law school's faculty in 2001. She received both the A. Leo Levin Award for Excellence in an Introductory Course, and the Harvey Levin Memorial Award for Teaching Excellence. In 2015, she received a Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching.

Her academic focus is on social welfare law and policy, and the relationship of the family, the workplace, and labor markets. Wax authored Race, Wrongs, and Remedies: Group Justice in the 21st Century (2009).

Controversies

Wax has made controversial comments that have attracted national attention. In an August 2017 piece in The Philadelphia Inquirer entitled “Paying the price for breakdown of the country’s bourgeois culture,” she wrote with Larry Alexander, the Warren Distinguished Professor at the University of San Diego School of Law that the decline of “bourgeois values” (such as hard work, self-discipline, marriage, and respect for authority) since the 1950s has contributed to social ills as male labor-force-participation rates are down to Depression-era levels, opioid abuse is epidemic, half of all children are born to single mothers, and many college students lack basic skills, asserting that "all cultures are not equal". She told the Daily Pennsylvanian that "everyone wants to go to countries ruled by white Europeans" because of their "superior" mores. In a September 2017 interview with Professor Glenn Loury, she said that as far as she can remember a black student has never finished in the top quarter of a graduating class at Penn Law, that they rarely finish in the top half of graduating classes, and that Penn Law has a racial diversity mandate for its law review.

A petition in August 2017 to fire Wax gathered about 4,000 signatures. That same month, 33 of her fellow Penn Law faculty members signed an open letter condemning statements made by Wax in her Philadelphia Inquirer piece and Daily Pennsylvanian interview. As a result of these controversies, in March 2018 Dean Ruger of Penn Law School stripped Wax of her duties teaching curriculum courses first-year students.

In an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal in March 2018 entitled "The University of Denial; Aggressive suppression of the truth is a central feature of American higher education," she wrote:

"The mindset that values openness understands that the truth can be inconvenient and uncomfortable.... Hoarding and hiding information relevant to such differences... violates basic principles of fair play... Universities, like other institutions, scheme relentlessly to keep such facts from view...."

Author and social critic James Howard Kunstler lauded her as "very brave." Author and political analyst Mona Charen said that the op-ed on bourgeois values "expressed mainstream views that you will find at the center-left Brookings Institution and the center-right American Enterprise Institute, as well as at leading universities. It contained not a particle of racism," and that "if the Left cannot distinguish reasoned academic arguments from vile racist insinuations, it will strengthen the very extremists it fears." University of Pennsylvania Trustee Emeritus and University of Pennsylvania Law School Overseer Paul Levy resigned to protest what he termed "the shameful treatment of ... Wax. Her career-threatening offense was to state that in her experience with black students over 17 years at Penn, few had performed in the top half of their class. Penn Law’s dean, Ted Ruger, declared her in error but refused to provide evidence. For dissenting from politically correct orthodoxy, Mr. Ruger forbade Ms. Wax to teach her much-admired first-year course in civil procedure—for which the university gave her an award in 2015." Levy wrote in his letter of resignation: "Preventing Wax from teaching first-year students doesn't right academic or social wrongs. Rather, you are suppressing what is crucial to the liberal educational project: open, robust and critical debate over differing views of important social issues." Political commentator Heather MacDonald wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed in September 2017 om which she criticized the "hysterical response" to Wax's piece, asserting that the responses of those such as Penn Law Dean Ruger results in "an ever more monolithic intellectual environment on American campuses, where behavioral analyses of social problems may not even be whispered." Economist and professor Glenn Loury wrote: "there is an Orwellian aspect to this whole brouhaha — namely, that Wax’s generalizations are said not only to be offensive, but to be dead wrong, slanderous and ignorant. Yet, by Dean Ruger’s own backhanded admission ... the data ... are said either to be impossible to obtain, or to be unavailable for public review due to privacy concerns.... This is completely unconvincing! For, Penn Law surely knows the race of its applicants at the time of admission ... but somehow quickly “forgets” this information when taking note of their grades?".

Robert VerBruggen, deputy managing editor of the National Review, wrote:

"This paper has detailed data on students admitted to University of Michigan Law in 2002; it finds that blacks and whites hardly overlapped in their academic qualifications (measured by their undergrad GPAs and LSAT scores). The authors write that “the median black admit had an academic index at the second percentile of the white distribution, and the seventy-fifth percentile of the black admit distribution was at the eighth percentile of the white distribution.” .... t ... the University of Virginia and the University of Wisconsin the median black admit had an academic index that would place him below the first percentile of the white admit at the same school. As for what happens once students come to campus, ... Richard Sander of UCLA Law reported that “the black average at the most elite law schools was at the twenty-first percentile,” though his data are old as well. Among elite schools, fewer than 10 percent of black students ranked in the top half in terms of first-year grades .... If Penn Law is different, or if things have changed in recent years, let’s see some numbers."

Jonathan Zimmerman, who teaches education and history at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote: "I think a lot of what Amy Wax says is wrong. But ... I also think it's my duty to defend her right to say it, and to plead for a more honest and fair debate about it... we should want everyone to hear what she says, so that they can come to their own educated conclusions."

References

1. ^ "C.V." (PDF). University of Pennsylvania Law School.
2. ^ "Our History: Former Faculty: Wax, Amy L. (1994-2001); Tenured faculty at the University of Virginia School of Law through its history.", University of Virginia Law School.
3. Nick Roll, "Outrage Over Op-Ed", Inside Higher Ed, August 25, 2017.
4. ^ "Q&A with Amy Wax". C-SPAN. June 5, 2018.
5. ^ "Penn Law Faculty: Amy Wax, expert on Civil Procedure, Social Welfare Law and Policy, Law and Economics, Family Law". University of Pennsylvania Law School.
6. Amy Wax. Martindale-Hubbell. 2019 – via Google Books. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
7. ^ "Prof. Amy Wax; Robert Mundheim Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania Law School". The Federalist Society.
8. Amy Wax, Robert Mundheim Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania Law School website.
9. "Amy L. Wax". National Review.
10. "Amy Wax recipient of Penn’s Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching"
11. Madeleine Ngo, Penn Law prof. Amy Wax on Brett Kavanaugh allegations, Daily Pennsylvanian, September 30, 2018.
12. Amy Wax and Larry Alexander, Paying the price for breakdown of the country's bourgeois culture,The Philadelphia Inquirer, August 9, 2017.
13. Dan Spinelli, ‘Not all cultures are created equal’ says Penn Law professor in op-ed, Daily Pennsylvanian, August 10, 2017.
14. Joe Patrice, Professor Declares Black Students ‘Rarely’ Graduate In The Top Half Of Law School Class, Above The Law, Mar 8, 2018.
15. Juliana Feliciano Reyes, The internet wants Penn Law prof Amy Wax fired (again) — this time for her comments on the Kavanaugh hearing, The Philadelphia Inquirer, August 9, 2017.
17. Penn professor removed from class for saying black students underperform, Associated Press, Mar 14, 2018.

External links

• Amy Wax (September 2017). "Statement on email sent to Penn Law alumni by Dean Ruger."
• Amy L. Wax (October 2017). "Saving the American Dream; It’s not just about the people at the top," Commentary.
• Amy Wax (October 26, 2017). "What is Happening to the Family, and Why?", WF Buckley Jr Program at Yale, video.
• Amy L. Wax (November 1, 2017). "More Women Have Joyless Sex Than You Think; Yet the hook-up culture persists. Why?", The American Conservative.
• Sally Satel (introduction) and Amy Wax (February 20, 2018). "Debate and disagreement in academia today," American Enterprise Institute, video.
• Amy Wax (June 5, 2018). "Q&A with Amy Wax", C-Span, video.
• Amy L. Wax (November 8, 2018), "The Perilous Quest for Equal Results", The Heritage Foundation, a Russell Kirk Lecture, video.
• "Articles by Amy L. Wax," Penn Law: Legal Scholarship Repository.

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