Free Republic

It is interesting but depressing to me that the more eminent a college or university is perceived to be, the more outrageous are efforts by administrators to stifle individual expression and enforce a numbing conformity of ideas reminiscent of universities in the old Soviet Union or Nazi Germany. The most prestigious group of schools in America is no doubt the Ivy League, eight elitist and highly selective institutions in seven Northeastern states. In the last decade, Yale attacked and hounded from campus two scholars who dared to defend the right of students to wear Halloween costumes similar to what grade-schoolers...

A University of Pennsylvania Law School professor's comments to Tucker Carlson have ignited a firestorm of criticism. Amy Wax told Carlson that "American Blacks" and non-Westerners feel "resentment, shame, and envy" toward Westerners for their "outsized achievements and contributions." Wax also referred to India as a "shithole" and said non-Western immigrants shouldn't criticize America because their countries are inferior. Nikki McCann Ramírez, senior research director at Media Matters for America, posted two clips of the exchange on Twitter. In fewer than 24 hours, the clips are approaching a cumulative 2 million views. The first begins with Carlson asking Wax about...

In 2001, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in a speech at Berkeley Law, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.”   Defending diversity -- taking the position that things would be better off with more nonwhites and fewer whites -- is at the very core of the social justice mentality plaguing America. The hard left doesn’t want to nominate another white male for president in 2020, or in the words of Politico, “a candidate that looks like Bernie or Joe.” In...

Penn Law professor Amy Wax, notorious for making controversial comments that have attracted national attention, has weighed in on the sexual misconduct allegations levied against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. In an online video entitled "Affirmative Action, Kavanaugh, and #MeToo," Wax characterized Christine Blasey Ford's allegations of sexual assault against the conservative judge as "stale" and "not fair."

‘Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away,” observed― Philip K. Dick in “I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon.” Somewhere deep in a file drawer, or on a computer server humming away in a basement, are thousands upon thousands of numbers, with names and identities attached. They’re called grades. They represent an objective reality, which exists independent of what people want reality to be. They sit silently, completely indifferent to indignation, angry petitions, irritable gestures, teachers’ removal from classrooms—all the furor and clamor of institutional politics. Those numbers are now solely within the control of...

The diversity imperative demands dissimulation and evasion. The academic-achievement gap, the behavioral differences that produce socioeconomic disparities, and the ubiquity of racial preferences must all be suppressed in public discourse, since they undercut the narrative that white racism is the driving force in American society. This dissimulation was on display last week at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, when Dean Ted Ruger announced that law professor Amy Wax would no longer teach mandatory first-year law courses at the school. In a memo announcing his decision, Ruger accused Wax of “conscious indifference” to truth. It is Ruger, however, who has...

By threatening to disrupt classes, Black Lives Matter unintentionally proves that professor who criticized affirmative action is correct Amy Wax, a professor who teaches at University of Pennsylvania law school, said the school has lower admission standards for blacks than for whites.Her claim is backed up by this New York Times article:A 2009 Princeton study showed Asian-Americans had to score 140 points higher on their SATs than whites, 270 points higher than Hispanics and 450 points higher than blacks to have the same chance of admission to leading universities.Since University of Pennsylvania is an Ivy League school, if falls under that...

The campus mob at the University of Pennsylvania Law School has scored a hit. Prof. Amy Wax will no longer be allowed to teach required first-year courses, the school’s dean announced last week. Now the leader of Black Lives Matter Pennsylvania wants Ms. Wax’s scalp. According to a weekend newspaper report, if she isn’t fired within a week, “he plans to make things on the West Philadelphia campus very uncomfortable.” Ms. Wax’s sin this time was to discuss publicly the negative consequences of affirmative action. Her punishment underscores again the dangers of speaking uncomfortable truths in a university setting. The...

A white University of Pennsylvania law school professor who said she has never seen a black student graduate in the top quarter of the class has been removed from teaching required first-year law courses. Law school dean Ted Ruger said professor Amy Wax spoke “disparagingly and inaccurately” about the performance of black students during an interview with Brown University economics professor Glenn Loury on the “downside of affirmative action” last year.

Too few Americans are qualified for the jobs available. Male working-age labor-force participation is at Depression-era lows. Opioid abuse is widespread. Homicidal violence plagues inner cities. Almost half of all children are born out of wedlock, and even more are raised by single mothers. Many college students lack basic skills, and high school students rank below those from two dozen other countries. The causes of these phenomena are multiple and complex, but implicated in these and other maladies is the breakdown of the country’s bourgeois culture. That culture laid out the script we all were supposed to follow: Get married...

RUSH: What essentially happened here at the University of Pennsylvania, Penn, a couple of professors, one of them working at the University of Pennsylvania, the other one University of San Diego, wrote an op-ed suggesting that what might be needed in the United States is a return to some of the nation’s values and moralities of the 1950s. And what happened after that op-ed ran is the story. “To the list of forbidden ideas on American college campuses, add ‘bourgeois norms.'” In other words, the old advisories of hard work, self-discipline, marriage, respect for authority. When people talk about going...

Abstract: In Ricci v. DeStefano, 129 S. Ct. 2658 (2009), the Supreme Court recently reaffirmed the doctrine, first articulated by the Court in Griggs v. Duke Power Company, 401 U.S. 424 (1971), that employers can be held liable under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act for neutral personnel practices with a disparate impact on minority workers. The Griggs Court further held that employers can escape liability by showing that their staffing practices are job related or consistent with business necessity. In the interim since Griggs, social scientists have generated evidence undermining two key assumptions behind that decision and...