On March 24, 2026, I spoke at an event sponsored by the Cornell Law School chapter of The Federalist Society. The topic was “Reforming Academia & Higher Education” featuring U. Penn Law Professor Amy Wax. We have covered Wax’s legal difficulties at Penn in great detail over many years, as you can see in our Amy Wax tag.
The event was supposed to be videotaped, but the video didn’t record so we only have audio. You can listen to the full audio at the bottom of this post. Wax spoke for about 25 minutes, then I spoke for about nine minutes, and Q&A started at 37:30 of the audio. Some of the questions were quite testy, including one student who accused Wax of using “rhetoric that denigrates and dehumanizes people who do not look like you.” I can also tell you that there is a post-event effort to malign Wax and distort (and outright lie) about what she said. Perhaps more on that at another time. But there’s audio, so what she did or did not say is objectively provable.
Here is my main segment, which came after Wax has spoken for about 25 minutes.
Transcript (auto-generated, may contain transcription errors, lightly edited for transcript clarity)
William A. Jacobson
Thank you for that. And those points.At my website we have followed professor Wax’s legal travails, and respect that she has stood up for her rights as best she can under the circumstances.Because it’s very difficult to be a dissenter in a university. The one place where that should be the easiest thing in the world is in fact the hardest place in the world.I’ve lectured a lot over the years. Some of you may know outside of the law school, I’ve got a foundation, a website, do a lot of media, etcetera.And I always ask the question, why is it that the one place that should be the most open in society, the universities, is in fact the most closed?Why is it that the universities almost alone have speech codes? They’ve scaled them back a little bit, but have speech codes, have bias response teams where you can report somebody anonymously and your life can be ruined based on an anonymous tip.Why is it that universities have become the least free place in the United States when they should be the most free place?And that’s what I think we have to examine. And it is absolutely true that higher education, certainly at the so-called elite level, has been captured by one political viewpoint.The Cornell Sun, I think it was two or three years ago, maybe it was four, I’ve lost track of time at this point, did a couple of surveys and I credit them for this, It was actually a good piece of journalism, where they looked up the political donations of faculty. Now, political donations are not a perfect alignment with Viewpoint, but it’s a rough alignment. And they found, over varying years, and it varied from department to department, but something between 95 and 100 percent, approaching a hundred percent, of the donations from faculty went to Democrats. And there was another survey they did as to. I think, political registration based on voter records. And it was approaching 100 percent Democrat.Is that a healthy status for a university?I don’t care if you like Republicans or you don’t like Republicans, they represent about half the country. But on universities, they’re one, two, three percent of the faculty. That’s not a healthy situation.And it’s least healthy for universities because universities depend, including Cornell as we all know, on public funding tremendously, even private universities. And you are creating a bubble that distances yourself from half the taxpayers who pay your bills, who pay for your classrooms, who pay for everything else through federal aid. It’s not healthy.And I think the universities need to figure out how they got to a position that they do not look like America. We always hear certain things need to look like America. Universities more than any place. politically and viewpoint wise, do not look like America.I saw a recent survey of Harvard faculty, I think it was the Harvard Crimson, it’s eased a little bit, but the survey from about two years ago found that 3% of the Harvard faculty identify as conservative or very conservative versus if you look at polling from Gallup and others, something approximating 38% of the US population. So 3% versus 38%. If you look at faculty who identify as liberal or very liberal, it was 70 to 80% of the Harvard faculty versus, and this is probably going come to a shock to you that fewer people in this country self-identify as liberal than conservative, versus 28 or so percent of the population who identify that way.So Harvard doesn’t look like America yet Harvard sure wants those federal dollars from America. And you know what? Under Trump they’re having trouble now because there’s a backlash.I think the universities have done themselves a disservice. How have they done themselves a disservice?And this is absolute heresy on a campus like Cornell, it’s faculty self-governance.As professor Wax pointed out, faculty self-governance has created a monoculture and I think universities need — the topic tonight is reforming academia — I think universities need to seriously consider changing that model because where has that model gotten you?It’s gotten you into conflict with half the population of the country. It’s gotten you into conflict where someone gets elected who you never thought in a million years could get elected, and now wants to cut your funding. And you know what?Half the people out there are cheering, defund it all. I don’t know where you go on the internet, but at least where I go, that’s what they’re saying.And you know, I think you need to consider that this model has failed. It’s failed not just the faculty, it’s failed the students and it’s failed the institutions. They have to change. Can they change?I’m asked this all the time, can we reform the universities? And the short answer is no. The short answer is universities cannot, or let me put it different way, can the universities reform themselves is the question. And the answer is no, they cannot because there is no internal opposition left on this campus.For the most part, you’re looking at the internal opposition [pointing to self]. One person, Penn is probably similar. That’s not healthy for the university. And nobody wants to hear that. And everybody wants to say, oh, you’re against academic freedom.Well, if academic freedom means you completely shut out half the country, then I think you’ve got a problem with your definition of academic freedom.So I don’t believe the universities can reform themselves. I think that is a prevailing wisdom in the half of the country that are not at Cornell.And therefore you have Trump coming in with executive orders trying to force change at the universities. And obviously you know about that clash. So I think it’s a problem. I think universities have done themselves a disservice.I think they still do not recognize the problem. They want to think Trump is the problem. Trump may be the symptom of the problem.The problem is that universities like Cornell have become monocultures out of step with the rest of the country and very vindictive monocultures.Just try criticizing Black Lives Matter on this campus in 2020, which is what I did, because I did not believe the movement was in the best interest of United States. I did not believe the movement and the founders of the movement were honest about their goals.And I think I’ve been vindicated by that. But the campus erupted and I think that that is a problem.The last point I want make is what is the ideology that’s the problem? It’s not liberalism or conservatism. To me it’s group identity. And that’s why I’m so against DEI.DEI forces you to identify by group. DEI forces you to judge people based on their group identity as opposed to who they are as an individual. And I believe that we need to get back to, and I’ve said this, I’ve been quoted in the Cornell Sun, exactly what I’m saying now.We need to get back to a culture on this campus where every individual is viewed as an individual without regard to to race, color, national origin, or sex. And only then can we really reform education and move forward.But as long as we have an ideology that puts people into group categories, I don’t think we can make any progress. That’s my view.
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