Professor Thinks Banning These Words Would Fix Free Speech on College Campuses

University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax is accustomed to political wrong-think.

Wax has a bachelor’s degree from Yale College, a medical degree from Harvard, and a law degree from Columbia. But none of those was enough to exempt her from being on the receiving end of a full-fledged campaign to get her fired. Nor was arguing 15 cases before the Supreme Court on behalf of the Justice Department, but that’s beside the point.

Wax doesn’t fear being called racist, sexist, or xenophobic, probably because she’s been called many of those names before. Instead of retreating to the safety of her tenure when things get tough, she doubles down—demanding debate, evidence, and accountability.

Students and colleagues alike have attacked Wax for making the apparently offensive case that traditional marriage values lead to better results for children, and for putting forth the radical argument that many of the country’s problems are a symptom of the breakdown of the “bourgeois culture” (the 1940s and ’50s way of life).

In making that argument, Wax addressed the fact that things weren’t perfect back then, but like clockwork, her critics called her “racist and classist” anyway.

The straw that really broke the camel’s back, however, happened when student activists searching for dirt on Wax unearthed a 2017 podcast interview she did with economist and Brown University professor Glenn Loury.

More here