In December 2021, University of Pennsylvania Law Professor Amy Wax appeared on Glenn Loury's podcast. During that podcast, Wax called for a more restrictive immigration policy, and specifically argued that the United States should accept fewer immigrants from Asian countries. In response to a listener, Wax further elaborated on that position in a written response. This sparked new calls for Wax to be disciplined by the university. A student petition called for a reform of the tenure system if necessary to remove her. Local politicians demanded that she be fired, contending that academic freedom and tenure did not protect "hate speech."
Wax is not new to such controversies. In 2018, she was removed from teaching first-year classes as a result of her public claims (also on the Glenn Loury podcast) that black students did not perform well at Penn. In 2019, she delivered a speech at the National Conservatism Conference arguing that immigration to the United States should primarily be restricted to immigrants coming from "Europe and the First World." There were calls for her to be fired then, and I argued that academic freedom principles protected her.
This past weekend, the Academic Freedom Alliance wrote to the leadership of the University of Pennsylvania urging it to resist bending its established rules so as to punish Wax for her personal political opinions expressed in constitutionally protected speech. I wrote in the letter:
