The audio recording of a 2019 University of Pennsylvania Law School “town hall” meeting where students urged Dean Ted Ruger to fire outspoken Professor Amy Wax was released earlier this week by the Washington Free Beacon.
We featured the story of how Dean Ruger caved to the students’ demands this past summer.
And we have covered Wax’s conflict with Penn Law from the very beginning:
Wax’s battle with the University began when she triggered the woke campus mob by unapologetically expressing conservative views in a 2017 op-ed. The students tried for two years to get her fired for her controversial opinions. But despite their best efforts (or perhaps because of them), Wax was still there at her desk in 2019.
That September, to address the “Amy Wax situation,” the group called a special “town hall” meeting. Only students were invited, to the private meeting, no faculty, to speak openly amongst themselves about her sins against them.
The town hall meeting was a 90-minute whining session with the dean:
At the meeting, one student complained:
Her language “makes it hard for all students in this room to thrive.” It “fuels … hate crimes” and “puts many of the people in this room at risk,” accusing the dean of legitimizing her comments by failing to fire her. “If you care about the health and wellbeing of our student body, especially students of color, why does Amy Wax continue to work here? What’s taking so long?” he demanded of the dean. [2:03 -2:27]
Another student pleaded:
“This is having a severe impact on our student body. And why does it have to be the onus of the students … to be starting this process to get somebody out of here who is physically and emotionally harming all of us?” [2:50-3:02]
Dean Ruger made sure the students knew he shared their outrage:
“Her presence here…makes me angry, it makes me pissed off,” [0:22] he said, adding that it “sucks” [32:17] that she was still there. When students talked about wanting to fire her, he said, apologetically, that “the only way to get rid of a tenured professor is this process…that’s gonna take months.” [3:28]
If there was ever any question that the dean is biased against Wax—as her lawyer later argued in their legal memorandum seeking to disqualify him as a Charging Party in the proceedings against her—these comments captured in real time should put it to rest.
As we reported over the summer, it was not long before the dean took up the students’ cause in the conflict that escalated as Wax continued to voice her unorthodox views over the years.
This past June, he submitted a letter to the Faculty Senate calling for a review of Wax’s conduct for violation of University policy under the Faculty Handbook and a “major sanction,” including possible loss of tenure and termination. The letter initiated the ongoing proceedings against her.
Wax and her lawyer, David Shapiro, say the University is trying to fire Wax, who is a tenured professor, for her speech.
In the most recent and potentially game-changing development, they hit back by filing a Grievance against Dean Ruger with the school’s Grievance Commission. The dean’s charges, they argue, “are nothing more than an attempt to use the sanction process … as a means of punishing and silencing the most powerful dissenting voice on campus and preventing students from being exposed to important conservative ideas.” If Wax and her lawyer succeed in moving the proceedings to the Commission, Dean Ruger will be forced to finally prove his case against her—or drop it.
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