Amy wax i was raised, born and raised in troy, new york, which is a small city north of albany in upstate new york. My parents are they are both deceased now, but were part of a very cohesive jewish community, up there, of fairly devout people, conservative and modern Orthodox Jews in that area, the tricity area. My father worked in the garment industry. He eventually bought a small business, a factory, up there and worked very hard his whole life to support his family, my two sisters and me. My mother was a teacher for a while and an administrator in the government, in albany. So i kind of come from the middle bourgeoisie, people who are not very well connected or in anyway, i think, privileged, so i regard myself, almost, as kind of a working class girl, certainly as a yeoman class girl. I attended the Public Schools in troy, new york. I went to college at yale college, in the early 1970s, which was when yale was just beginning to accept women. I majored in biophysics and biochemistry. I then went to oxford on a marshall scholarship to study philosophy, which i gotten very interested in. I attended harvard medical school. I did a year of Harvard Law School and actually, really, law seemed very attractive to me, so i decided to continue to pursue law. I ended up at the Justice Department under the reagan and bush administration, in an office called the office of the solicitor general, which handles all the United States business before the Supreme Court of the United States, a very exciting place to be, a really wonderful shop in the Justice Department. I, then, started teaching law at the university of virginia law school, and after about seven years, i moved to the university of Pennsylvania Law School. So, i have been an appellate practitioner, i have worked in medicine, and i have been an academic, a legal academic. Lamb go back to what you said about being a part of the bourgeoisie. What does that word mean . Wax well, ive had reason to think hard about what that word means because part of the reason that i become infamous, or infamous in my small way is that i published an oped about so called bourgeois values. My understanding of bourgeois values is a set of precepts or habits or guidelines that middleclass people, in the west and especially in the anglosphere, have developed as an ethos, a code and a set of practices, which is suited to democratic capitalism. One could make a list of the bourgeois virtues and values, and i feel that my family was very selfconsciously invested in those values. They were adherents, i guess you could say, including being hardworking, being lawabiding, trustworthy, frugal, honest, punctual, restraining, prudent, all of these good things that make for flourishing within a particular context, which is ours. Lamb well, you talk about your parents. Where did they come from, originally, or the family came from . Wax they came from eastern europe. They were immigrants during the first part of the 20th century, part of that wave of jewish immigration from russia and eastern europe. Lamb but as someone who has a lot of education, when did you get, originally, interested in learning . Wax well, i cant remember a time when i wasnt interested in learning. My parents were not super well educated. My mother did, eventually get a college degree. My father worked for an associate degree at night, but certainly they didnt start out their life terribly well educated, but they clearly revered learning and a certain kind of intellectual rigor and honesty, a searching approach to the truth, to empiricism, to facts and arguments and logic. That was their modus operandi, the way that they approached the world, and also a reverence for all of the high achievements of civilization in art, in music and literature. So i recall, very distinctly, that attitude being imparted to me in all sorts of ways, big and small. Lamb when you went to yale, what did you study for your undergrad . Wax well, i majored in science. I majored in something called molecular biophysics and biochemistry, which was an interdisciplinary major, but i also studied a lot of philosophy, of literature, of history. I really tried, quite selfconsciously and deliberately, to be broadly educated, to familiarize myself with the western canon, i guess you could say, my heritage, my tradition. One of my favorite courses in college was victorian poetry, which was really about so much more than victorian poetry. And i recently mentioned, to a friend of mine whos an englishman and quite literate, a poem by alfred, lord tennyson, called mariana, which he said hed never heard of. He said i outtennysond him about this poem. So, you know, i was i remember putting an enormous amount of effort into familiarizing myself with the best that had been thought and done, and i was quite curious about it. I wanted to know what the great ideas and achievements were, wholly apart from getting, just a very rigorous scientific education. Lamb at the end of your yale excuse me, my throat is not clear. At the end of your yale experience, what did you do right after that . Wax i went to oxford to study at oxford. Lamb whatd you study . Wax i studied philosophy, physiology, and psychology, a new program, undergraduate program that had just been launched, at oxford, called ppp. I did another undergraduate course, and all of this was by way of trying to decide whether i should continue on in science or go off in another direction, perhaps study philosophy. I did ultimately decide to continue onto medicine, although thats not what i ended up doing at the end of the day. I guess you could say i drifted off into another area, really by way of the Justice Department. Lamb could you did you get your medical degree . Wax i did. Lamb neurology . Wax and i trained in neurology. Lamb and so, you couldve been a neurologist . Wax absolutely, and that was certainly an option for me. Lamb when did you give that up and why . Wax well, it was a long time ago, so its hard to me for reconstruct exactly why. I think the main reason is that, i was temperamentally, not terribly wellsuited to the practice of medicine, you know, what you learn when you start out in one field and end up in another is that, the reasons why one field is suitable to you and others may not be or another may not be, can often be a rather humble reason, like, just your personality or the kind of person that you are, what floats your boat, what you look forward to when you wake in the morning, your temperament. I was not really a people person. I was more of an idea person, which doesnt mean that i dont enjoy people, but i dont think i get the kind of pleasure and satisfaction from helping people that, maybe, we associate with the female persona. Thats a hoary cliche, of course because there are many men who are that way and there are many women who are not. So, i found that law was more compelling and satisfying for me and its interesting because it helps me advise young people that i have done both things, young people who are trying to decide, often grappling with decisions about which direction they should go in and in many cases, its under parental pressure. There is there is familial and parental pressure to enter one field rather than the other, something that i, myself, felt when i was younger. So, i am entirely sympathetic to what theyre going through and i try to help them make the decision by asking some very simple questions about themselves and what they like, what they enjoy, moment by moment, day by day, hour by hour. And every field involves tedium. Every field has its aggravations, its irritations, and its challenges. The question is, which irritations you find least irritating, and then, of course, what compensations you find most compensating. So thats a very complicated calculus, and i think 20, 21yearolds, theyre really, not always equipped to make those decisions. Lamb so you got your medical degree from . Wax harvard. Lamb did you ever Practice Medicine . Wax i did, actually. I did a residency in neurology. When i decided to return to law school and complete my law degree, i faced the challenge of paying my tuition. By then, this period of exploding tuition had started to take off. You probably are aware that the cost of Higher Education and graduate education has increased dramatically. So it was already the 1980s and i had to work parttime to put myself through law school. So i did work in clinics, in the south bronx, and in brooklyn, hmos actually, some of the fledgling hmos, to help put myself through finish colombia law school. Lamb so your degree in law is from columbia . Wax yes, i transferred to columbia because i had married someone who was working in new york at the time. Lamb what was your experiences being a clerk to abner mikva, the former congressman from illinois . Wax right. Lamb and council to bill clinton . What was that like . Wax well, it was wonderful. Hes a terrific person, a great judge, was very nice to his clerks, the highest intellectual caliber, and of course, my coclerks were also wonderful as well, so i thoroughly enjoyed that experience. I dont think he and i were necessarily so eye to eye, politically, although at that point in my life, that was back in the 1980s, 1987, 1988, i guess i was there, i wasnt particularly politically aware. I didnt think about politics all that much and i think the general atmosphere was less polarized, far less polarized than it is now, so judges and clerks didnt really have to match up. There was no feeling that clerks had to be on the same page, have the same ideas. The notion was that law was this autonomous field that should be depoliticized as much as possible and that was the right way to do it. So we got along just fine, and i have i enjoyed that experience. That was the year, actually, that bork was nominated and was going through his hearings, and littleknown fact that bork, who was on the d. C. Circuit at the time that he was nominated lamb and so was ab mikva. Wax and so was ab mikva, so they were both on the same court and bork, still, was hearing cases, were very close friends. They had gone to law school together, at chicago. And so, bork was frequently in the office, consulting with ab mikva about the whole ordeal that he was going through. We, of course, the clerks, were not privy to these conversations but it was striking that they, clearly, were very close friends. And i know, robert bork trusted ab mikva, his wisdom and his acumen and his advice. Lamb so how did you get your job in the Solicitor Generals Office of the which president . Wax it was reagan, and Charles Fried was the solicitor general at the time. This was towards the end of his tenure as the solicitor general, that i was hired. I had been i had lucked into a summer internship at the Solicitor Generals Office while i was at columbia law school. I had a professor who was a visiting professor from chicago. Hes rather famous. His name is cass sunstein, and prolific. I had taken a couple of courses with him. He had said to me, its clear that you love to argue. He said, you should really think about doing an internship at the Justice Department in the Solicitor Generals Office because, of course, the solicitor general is the master litigator for the United States government. And everybody in the office had devoted to that mission, and i applied, and i got the job, so i spent a summer there, at the sgs office, as its known. I got to know Charles Fried, i got to know the people in the office, and they asked me to come back on the permanent staff after my clerkship was over. So i was i was quite a challenge because i was very green. I was newly minted lawyer. I really didnt have a lot of experience. I didnt have any litigation experience, so i it was a little reckless on Charles Frieds part, but i learned the ropes. I argued 15 cases before the court during my tenure there. I wrote briefs and participated in all the activities, and i really it was the most wonderful, the best years of my life. I can honestly say that. The people there were really wonderful all around. They were the smartest people ive ever worked with. They were people of very high integrity. The office is has a collegial atmosphere, like none other. Were all involved in a mutual endeavor, which is to do our very best for the government, before the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court trusts the Solicitor Generals Office, and the office tries to repay that high trust, and i think that they do. Lamb so, 15 times, you argued before the Supreme Court. Wax yes. Lamb do you remember the first time, and what was it like . Wax yes, i do. It was actually quite exhilarating, i think, because its a grand privilege to argue before the Supreme Court. Not very many people get to do it. It was a rather humble case involving a technical question of Social Security benefits and how the government collects and refunds Social Security benefits, but obviously, very, very important to many people because the Social Security program is enormous. Its massive, so a lot of money was involved. What struck me about the experience was that, it is a very intimate one. The courtroom is relatively small. The advocates are right up in front of the bench, of nine. In fact, one of the challenges is that, youre so close that its very hard to see all the justices at once. You have to kind of turn your head and make sure that youre monitoring the situation, and its really its a performance. Thats the other thing you realize, is it it is a great Training Ground for any kind of performance that you will ever have to deliver. And anything in your past life that involved performance, is preparation for it. So when i was an adolescent in troy, and in high school, i was on the Piano Competition circuit. I was something of an amateur pianist, certainly not of the highest rank, but good enough to participate in these competitions and occasionally win a competition. And i drew on that experience the most, i think, in preparing to argue before the Supreme Court because there is this trajectory of focus, of concentration, of preparation, of developing knowledge and expertise, about what youre of getting comfortable with what youre about to do, that a foresight and forethought, that, really its a common feature among any kind of performance that youre preparing for and planning. You know . Youre supposed to sound spontaneous, but in fact, if you havent planned every answer to every question, if youre at all surprised, then youve fallen short in your preparation to argue before the Supreme Court. Lamb how long have you been teaching at the university of pennsylvania . Wax since 2001. Lamb where is it . Wax its in philadelphia. Its actually in west philadelphia. Its a private university in west philadelphia. Lamb considered one of the ivy leagues . Wax it is an ivy league school, yes. Lamb how many students and how many professors at the law school . Wax oh, students, i dont know the precise number. I think its on the smaller side for elite law schools. I think its something like, oh, maybe 700, 600. That may not be quite as accurate. Lamb thats what it says on the wikipedia site. Wax yeah, thats my guess. And then, for professors, we actually have a relatively small faculty. I think we have 50 tenure, tenure track, fulltime facility. And we also have many adjuncts. We have many people from the community, the Law Community in philly, which is quite a distinguished one, teaching parttime various courses at our law school. Lamb with that background, let me get to the reason that we asked you to come talk. This is march 18, 2018, this year. Its written by heather macdonald, whos with the manhattan institute, and the headline on it is, the Penn Law School mob scores a victory. And just let me read the first paragraph. The campus mob at the university of Pennsylvania Law School has scored a hit. Professor amy wax will no longer be allowed to teach required first year courses, the schools dean announced last week. Ill stop there. Whats that about . Wax well, theres a theres a whole saga that leads up to it. I could try to give you the short form. I still havent figured it all out entirely because i think it ties into some broader themes of whats happening to our society, generally, and to the university sector, in particular, but i think it all began back last august 9, when i copublished little innocuous, ill bet, in the enquirer, the philadelphia enquirer or so, i regarded it, called paying the price for the breakdown of a countrys bourgeois values. And in it, my coauthor, Larry Alexander and i talked about this bourgeois script that i had mentioned to you, some basic precepts of behavior and how the loss of common fealty and adherence to those behaviors as the hallmark of mature adulthood, which we had identified as taking place over the past 30 or 40 years in our country, and the concomitant, resulting change in behavior, had we thought inflicted some damage on our country, not being, of course, the only thing happened, but something that was important, that in effect, that standards of behavior had declined and that all of us were paying the price for that in various ways. And some of the behaviors wed talked about was respect for law, criminally, which has leveled off to some extent, although theres question of whether the figures are accurate, but certainly saw a tremendous surge in the 1960s and 1970s, to much higher levels that have prevailed before. The lower work effort that is being put in by some segments of the american societies, such as prime age men, breakdown in the family, of course, that many children in some in some quarters most children are born out of wedlock. Theyre not raised in intact families, that, people have used profanity, quite liberally, that patriotism is out of fashion, that theres an adversarial relationship, very often, between employers and employees. I mean, we sort of made a list and we shouldve added the decline in thrift and frugality, which is quite dramatic, and all of these put together, have weve taken a hit from it. Lamb when did you you say you First Published it in the philadelphia inquire. What happened . When did it surface again . Wax well, we also said in the in that piece, and i think this is what ruffled a lot of people, that not all cultures are alike. We were trying to tout this code of behavior as being one that was particularly functional and suited to our current technological democratic capitalist society and comparing it to other cultures which arent as functional. And we gave some examples, and that immediately caused a firestorm. The very next day, there were protests and petitions. You know, social media, really, contributed so much to this, i think. People were going to my dean and objecting and saying that this was white supremacist talk, racist talk, xenophobic, putting all sorts of labels on it. A group of graduate students issued a statement, condemning me. A bunch of professors at drexel and temple signed a statement, condemning the oped as unacceptable, as injurious, as harmful, as racist. I gave an interview to the daily pennsylvanian, quite unwisely the next day, and that added fuel to the fire. Lamb Student Newspaper . Wax that was the Student Newspaper. That added fuel to the fire because the interviewer basically accused me of being a white supremacist and saying that, you know, whites were superior. I said well, no, im i very naively tried to correct him and say thats not at all what im saying. Im saying that a certain culture that came out of a european heritage, really an anglosaxon heritage, the anglosphere, was our heritage and a highly functional heritage, and you know, the functional superiority of it is measured by the fact that everybody wants to live in europe. You know, migrants flock to europe, not to venezuela, not to south east asia. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Weve weve discovered something. Weve worked something out which works really well. And this came out as, you know, europeans are superior because migrants want to go to europe, which actually is not that far from what i was saying, but many people found extremely offensive in the current climate. As my husband said, you pushed the western civ button. What i learned is that one is not allowed to praise the achievements of the west. That has become a suspect move in in the intellectual game. And that is what people objected to. As far as i could tell, i mean, i am not entirely sure because i am not of that mindset. Lamb this was back in august of 2017. Im looking at the daily pennsylvanian and from august the 20, 2017, and theres a dorothy roberts, a Sarah Barringer gordon, a serena mayeri, sophia z. Lee, tobias barrington wolff. Who are they . Wax those are my colleagues and they actually published a there were multiple pieces published and letters and protests publish. That piece was actually an attempt by four historians on the faculty to write a substantive response to our piece. I didnt object to that piece, i didnt agree with it at all. I thought it was the the argument was transparently fallacious. But they argued that praising bourgeois culture in the 1950s, which was sort of the Highwater Mark of it, or one of them in our country, was they objected to that. As far as i could reproduce their argument, their argument was you cant praise the 1950s because the 1950s were a time of patriarchy, racism, sexism, mistreatment of minorities, terrible things happened during the 1950s. Discrimination was rampant, and ergo there was nothing good about it. Now i consider that a complete nonsequitur. They seem to be making an argument like the only reason the 1950s were good for the people it was good for is because they they mistreated all these other people, which is a very strange argument to make. You know . We have if we stop mistreating people, things wont be as good . I i dont know what they were trying to get at there. Lamb let me let me just for the for the wax yes. Lamb this discussion, let me read what they said some of what they said. Nostalgia for the 1950s breezes over the truth of inequality and exclusion. The racial discrimination, in quotes, and the limited sex roles, in quotes, that the authors identify as imperfections in midcentury American Life were in fact core features of it. Exclusion and discrimination against people of color was the norm. North and south. During this period, home ownership, high quality education, jobs with fair pay and decent working conditions and the social Insurance Benefits of the new deal welfare state remain unavailable by design to most nonwhite americans. Wax ok. Well, i mean as a factual depiction of the 1950s, that is accurate, and we actually said in our oped that, you know, there were determents, there were flaws in that period which have since been corrected. But what they seem to be saying which, you know, i disagree with, is that those were core in the sense that the bourgeois virtues and the ability and willingness to practice bourgeois virtues was somehow dependent on keeping all of these people down. Now that is a very odd argument, and i dont agree with it. You know, the virtues of the period and the vices of the period were not inextricably linked in the way that that piece suggests. It is entirely possible, in my mind, to revive and practice some of the virtuous behaviors and cycles that we associate with the 1950s without attaching to it, the kind of discrimination, inequality, and bigotry that the period also exemplified. And, theres you can point to an example, so lets take an example. Just in the area of family breakdown, right, the upper middleclass today, whites, asians mainly, because minorities have always had weaker families. They, in effect, have 1950stype family patterns, right. They talk the 1960s, but they live the 1950s. Theyre married at a very high rate, their marriages endure, their children disproportionally grow up in traditional two parent families. Theyre highly conventional in the way that they conduct their family lives, relative to the rest of society. Theyre kind of this little bastion of the 1950s. They marry later, and they marry after a period of sexual experimentation, and that is a change from the 1950s. But they also believe in diversity and inclusion, they abhor bigotry, theyre onboard with the abolition of all forms of nefarious various discrimination and sexism that we have effectuated both culturally and legally. So, thats an example of being able to have it both ways. I think this oped is saying you cant have it both ways. Why not . Lamb after the pennsylvanian published the university of pennsylvania newspaper published these stories and all, when did it hit the wall street journal, and they published your remarks there . Wax well, i wrote an oped for them, it was a couple of months after this initially unfolded. What happened was, this started up, it spread like wildfire. A lot of people wrote about it, there were a lot of comments. There was a a very critical event which was something of a watershed, which was that 33 of my colleagues at penn law signed a letter also in the School Newspaper the daily pennsylvanian, condemning and categorically rejecting all of my claims and statements. Condemning everything that i had said i guess in this oped and subsequently categorically rejecting everything i said. No argument, no reasons given. No logic to it, just a an outright bald condemnation and categorical rejection. Lamb 33 . Wax 33. And it was instigated by one person in particular. And i really reacted to that very negatively. I thought this was a fundamental betrayal of academic values. And i dont use the term free speech, because i think that is the wrong term, its the wrong term for a number of reasons. First of all, the free speech rights that we all value so much do not apply against private institutions, and people forget that. Lamb penns a private institution . Wax yes. Congress shall make no law. And Public Institutions have to adhere to a free speech code. Private institutions can fire you for saying anything they want. I mean, thats thats the way that it the railroad has always been run. We have this employment at will. So technically i really have no free speech rights. I have tenure, thats something different. And they have the free speech right to categorically reject all my claims. And the students have the right to call me a racist and a sexist and a xenophobe, and white supremacist. I mean, this is not a matter of rights. Lamb so what happened on a personal basis after this happened . What was it like in the hallways of Penn Law School, for you . Wax well, it was, i think first of all, the 33 people who signed it didnt necessarily treat me in a friendly way. Whats striking is that none of them came to talk to me about why they signed it, and after it was released, it was released with very little notice to me, it was all done in secrecy, it was there was not any forthrightness about it. In fact, it was formulated and circulated in a way that was designed to keep me from knowing about it, so that in itself is telling. And after it was published, no one one or two people one person came to explain to me why he signed it. It became immediately apparent that he didnt really categorically reject all my claims, he didnt really disagree with every darn thing that we had said in the oped. I mean, how could they . They raised their own children this way. I mean, the hypocrisy here is stunning, the inconsistency here is incredible. But one person came and said, well, what you said, it was sort of nazi talk. These were very crude rationales for signing a condemnation. Lamb what about the professor that you ran into, i saw in one of the articles, after the summer and asked what kind of a summer did you have . And can you tell that story . Wax well after this condemnation and a number of conversations that i had had, the few conversations i had had with people on the faculty that were very hostile, very negative towards what i had written. I decided that i would write a piece for the wall street journal, actually i initially gave it as a speech, an invited speech to hillsdale college, they have a center here, Kearney Center for constitutional rights. So they asked me to give a talk, and i recounted my experience and why i thought that people had behaved inappropriately in an academic setting, given what the academy is supposed to stand for, and how they are supposed to conduct themselves, that this whole saga fell far short of that standard. And someone who read that piece said sent it to the wall street journal and said you really should publish this, because it is a very down to earth, blow by blow, particularized account of what is going on all around the country. The kinds of responses that unorthodox, whats considered a deviation from the progressive catechism, i guess you could say, the dogma, the politically correct line, what kind of response that it elicits nowadays, more and more . So, i wrote this piece for the wall street journal in which i recounted my experiences surrounding this oped and the responses i had gotten, and some of the stories i told, the few conversations i had with my colleagues, one involved going up to a colleague on the street in the summer, the summer immediately after i published this a few weeks later, and greeting him and him giving me a hostile look and saying, well, actually my summers been terrible, and i said why . And he said because of you, because of your oped and what you wrote, which i consider an attack on our school, an attack on our students. So, this language of attack, of harm, of damage that by expressing an opinion that people dont like, you have inflicted an injury. I found that very striking, and frankly, rather frightening, if the truth be told, and quite emblematic of the way that the left is now responding to any sort of dissent, and especially one that trenches on identity, grievance, politics, which of course is everywhere and has infected everything. Lamb go back to the dean, and what does the dean and what kind of power does the dean have . Wax well, his response to the oped was to immediately announce through his spokesperson that, you know, my opinions were not endorsed by the law school, which should be understood. And also, he saw fit to publish his own oped saying, you know, we reject i reject the position that one culture is better than all others, which of course is completely unresponsive to what we said, and a distortion of what we said, and that has been a hallmark of this entire saga, has been selective quotation, distortion, restatement, dishonesty of that sort. But in terms of his power, he has the power to assign courses to me and control what i teach and my schedule and the like. I mean, he has a fair amount of power to control my professional life. What he doesnt have the power to do is fire me entirely, because i have tenure, and according to the rules of the professional organization that were a member of, i guess the American University professors society, the association of american law schools, and all of these. I have to continue to be employed and i have to continue to be paid my salary, at least my base salary, and the only grounds on which i can be fired, i think, are professional misconduct, egregious professional misconduct, or various forms of criminal behavior. Lamb so what did he do how did he level a penalty on you . Wax well, in the immediate aftermath of my initial article, he resisted many calls to both strip me of first year mandatory classes and fire me as a general matter. I think the reason that mandatory classes became the Pressure Point is that students are assigned to a particular professor in the first year of law school. There is a fixed curriculum of courses that students have to take, and they are basically told what they have to take and whos going to be teaching it. So that is an exception to the rule in academia that students get to pick what they want to take and the like. I mean obviously, there are requirements for undergraduates as well, but a lot more leeway in deciding who your teacher is going to me. Going to be. So, the first the students thought, well, we shouldnt be required to sit in this womans classroom. Students shouldnt have to be taught by her, because she is clearly a racist, and it is harmful, it is uncomfortable, it is damaging, once again, that language, right, subjective, emotional harm, trauma, this language that all the students have learned to use, the psychologizing of pedagogy. Thats damaging to us. So, a lot of pressure to take me out of the first year. He initially resisted that pressure, i think in part because i am a good civil procedure professor, im one of three professors in the entire law school whove gotten a universitywide teaching award, something called the limbock prize a couple of years back. I get very high ratings as a professor, and maybe that was part of the motivation, i dont know. But there was a denouement that the students, especially the black law students association, really set their face against me and they went on a trolling operation to look back through my entire record to find something that would get me removed or fired. And what they found was this five minutes of an interview i had with glenn loury back in september. Lamb lets watch it. This is 48 seconds, but this is september the 10th. Wax this was my fireable offense, here. Lamb glenn loury runs a bloggingheads tv show that you were on, and you were in this you were at penn . Wax yes, and ive been on it several times. Im one of the guests on his bloggingheads. Lamb and people can get on bloggingheads. Tv and watch any of these things. Lets just watch the 48 seconds. Wax i mean, take Penn Law School or some top 10 law school. Heres a very inconvenient fact, glenn. I dont think ive ever seen a black Student Graduate in the top quarter of the class, and rarely, rarely in the top half. I can think of one or two students who have scored in the top half in my required first year course. Well, at what are we supposed to do about that, that youre really youre putting in front of this person a real uphill battle, and if they were better matched, it might be a better environment for them. Thats the mismatched hypothesis, of course. Were not saying they shouldnt go to college, were not saying that. I mean, some of them shouldnt. Lamb what do you mean by better match . Wax well, i mean that their incoming credentials, Law School Admission test score, and gpa, that is College Grade average, which are the main parameters and criteria that Admissions Officers use for Law School Admissions. And Law School Admissions are highly quantitative, or have been until very recently. The minority students underrepresented minority students at top law schools, lets say the top 10, their numbers are significantly lower than the numbers of other students who get admitted and come to the law school. There is a gap in the scores. Lamb when you grade somebody in your law class, do you know when they write the old days there used to be blue books that youd write in, and the professor wouldnt know who it was, i gather, and do you know . Wax no. In the first year, which of course those are the critical grades and by far the most important grades, we have blind grading. Its called blind grading. And that means that the students are assigned a number, they write the number on their exam or their blue book, and i actually give an objective exam now. I used to give an essay exam, and i found that if i asked multiple choice or shorter questions, i still got the same distribution, that that was a very good test of knowledge of how much how hard the student have studied, how much they had learned. I have no idea who i am assigning a particular grade to when i assign it. I give it to the registrar, she registers the grades, and then she unblinds the list, i find out after the fact who got what grade, but at that point i cannot change the grade. And the reason that theyre unblinded for us, for the professors, of course, is because we are in the position of being asked to recommend students, to tell employers and perspective employers and judges and various organizations that are hiring these people how they did in our class. We have to write recommendations. And if we request it, but we have to request it, we will we are even given their rank in class. There are some judges, the most elite and sought after, who want to know where the students rank in the class. Lamb and the school does not publish the grades or the ranking of any of the students in Penn Law School . Wax no, they are they have become increasingly secretive about the grades. You know, back when i was at Harvard Law School in ancient times, the grades were posted, we everybody the rank in class was an open information. The law review was determined strictly by rank in class. Our grades were not, you know, confidential, or they werent considered such, there was no open effort to disclose them, but people thought nothing of imparting that information. Lamb they need to get glenn lourys response to you from that same interview, its another 40 some seconds. [video starts] glenn loury do you have a racial diversity mandate for law review appointments at penn . Wax yes, yes. Loury so youre telling me that students of color who have served on law review are pretty much in the bottom half of their law classes at penn . Wax i would have to what i know, i havent done a survey, i havent done a systematic study, im talking about who gives the honor. I have a big i have a class of 89, 95 students every year. So, i see a big chunk of students every year, and i so im going on that, because a lot of this data is of course a closely guarded secret, as you can imagine. [video ends] lamb whats the solution to what youre talking about . Wax well, i mean, first, you have to decide theres a problem. And i think lamb does anybody think theres a problem, by the way . Wax one of the distortions thats come out of this little tiny clip, right, which is completely taken out of context, is the conclusion that i am, you know, completely, adamantly and totally against affirmative action and that i have some kind of crusade going about that. Well, i dont. I mean, my attitude towards affirmative action, like any good small c conservative, is it has pros, it has cons, it has cost, it has benefits. Its were not to going to bring about utopia because every benefit has every upside has a downside. My view is if were going to have this kind of social engineering, which is what it is, if were going to have this policy, we should at least be honest about it and evaluate it on the facts. And it used to be that when people discussed affirmative action and thought about it, whether it was a good idea or a bad idea, they were pretty forthright about the facts. Now, theyve doubled down and tripled down and decided that even discussing the facts, the actual questions of disparities, of academic achievement going in and the resulting academic achievement that comes out of it, performance beyond school for affirmative action admits that all of these subjects are verboten. To even talk about them is racist. So that involves you in this bizarre so, weve gotten ourselves into this situation of denial as a test of moral virtue. So, this involves us in some bizarre contradictions. Ive been talking about this around the country. On the one hand, every good person believes in affirmative action. If you are against affirmative action for underperforming minorities, and we know who were talking about here, were talking about blacks and to some extent hispanics, because asians dont need affirmative action, indians dont need affirmative action, other ethnic groups are doing very well. Because theyre doing very well and in some cases, theyre doing better than the majority white population on standard measures of academic achievement. Were talking about underperforming minorities. You have you have to be for affirmative action, but if you get down to discussing why we need affirmative action, which is that blacks and hispanics lag behind in test scores, in Academic Knowledge and academic performance, even mentioning that is dangerous, because that is considered an insult to students, a denigration, putting them down, an attack, which i consider bizarre. Its not an attack. Its a report. And then to talk about once they get to a very competitive institution, how did they do . Is their performance catching up, or does it continue to lag behind . Does the myth of affirmative action, which is the minute you get there, everything is fine, does that myth is it a myth or does it actually occur . Is there magic dirt for these institutions where we just bring people in all of their deficits are erased . You certainly cant talk about that. Its weird that the dean says on the one hand, everything she is saying is false. Everything im saying is false . I have a whole filing cabinet of my grades in civil procedure from 20 years and im going to sit here and tell you what i said about the performance of black students in my class for the past 20 years is not false. All right . I dont know about the rest of the school, as i admitted, im not really privy to this information, because it is kept secret. But on the other hand, he says, we dont keep records by race. We dont even have this information. So we cant possibly disclose it. Well lamb do you believe that . Wax well there is a contradiction there. There is a but no one has called him on that contradiction. So, i do not believe that. Lamb what happens what happens, you do not believe that they dont know . Wax that they could i believe that they could easily compile that information. Lamb so this fall, are you going back to the university of pennsylvania . And what classes are you allowed to teach now . Wax i have no idea what classes ill be teaching, because the dean has not spoken to me since march 18 when he issued an email to the entire Penn Community saying he was stripping me of my firstyear teaching responsibilities. I have just become, you know, persona nongrata pretty much. Lamb why do you stay there . Wax well, i have a very good job. And they pay me very well. And the other reason i stay is, you know, i get to write, and think, and i have a lot of projects underway right now. And there is a core of students, i think, who im very important to. Lamb would you expect any student to boycott your classes in the fall . Wax yes, i think that is definitely going to occur. On the other hand, i teach i teach two classes, one of which is a seminar in conservative political and legal thought, for which there was a waiting list this year. So there are students at penn law who are hungry for a broader exposure to a range of ideas which are more and more systematically excluded from the elite academy. Lamb out of the 50 professors at fulltime professors in the law school, how many of them are conservative . Wax at this point, well, conservative is a rather musty concept. Lamb how many are right of center in any way . Wax right of center, maybe four. Lamb is there any concern at the law school wax three or four. Lamb in the deans office about a balance when it comes to wax no, no. I think that the dean i dont want to speak for the dean, but i would say that many of people on the faculty think that purging the faculty of people who dont subscribe to hardline progressive ideas, except maybe in the economic sphere where theyre willing to tolerate a little bit more range of opinion, that purging a lot of socalled rightwing ideas is a great thing. Because those ideas are errant. They are wrong, and they are morally suspect. Not only are they false, but theyre immoral. I mean, this is a new era that we have now that opinion has become moralized and dissent is a kind of insult or an assault or an attack. So, we have a whole new rhetorical universe, right, in which moralization and the language of harm has become the language of discourse in ideas. Lamb amy wax is a professor of law at the university of pennsylvania. She also has a medical degree in neurology. And all what weve talked about today is online. You can find it through google, among other places, all your oped pieces. And we thank you very much for joining us. Wax well thank you. All q a programs are available on our website or as a podcast at cspan. Org. Next sunday on q a, professor margaret amira discusses her book, the coat, Silicon Valley and the remaking of america. Thats q a next sunday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern and pacific time on cspan. Cspans washington journal, live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. 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