Below is a statement from FIRE Vice President of Campus Advocacy Alex Morey on University of Pennsylvania’s sanctions against law professor Amy Wax:
After years of promising it would find a way to punish professor Amy Wax for her controversial views on race and gender, Penn delivered today — despite zero evidence Wax ever discriminated against her students.
Faculty nationwide may now pay a heavy price for Penn’s willingness to undercut academic freedom for all to get at this one professor. After today, any university under pressure to censor a controversial faculty member need only follow Penn’s playbook.
But academic freedom is designed to protect controversial faculty from being punished for their speech or opinions. In an era when political forces right and left are all too eager to sanitize campuses of voices and views they dislike, faculty nationwide must be able to rely on the time-tested principles of academic freedom.
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